The Dialog

By Carol Zimmermann

Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — School-choice initiatives, akin to the quiet students in the back of a classroom, have kept a relatively low profile in recent years while steadily working their way to the front. The movement was given a big boost in late March when the Indiana Supreme Court upheld one of the country’s most comprehensive school-choice programs. The state court backed a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said that because school vouchers primarily benefit families, they could not be viewed as an unconstitutional state support for religion.

Currently, there are 30 school-choice programs in 17 states and the District of Columbia, serving more than 250,000 students. School-choice programs, primarily vouchers and tax-credit scholarships, have continued to grow since 1990, when the first school-voucher program started in Milwaukee, followed close behind by similar programs in Ohio and Florida. Read more »

By Catholic News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. — Every step Roberto Santiago takes — on numbing winter sidewalks, sharp-edged gravel pathways and feathery grass fields — he walks in solidarity with the poorest of the poor.

For six years, the member of Holy Family Parish in Portland has gone without shoes.

Roberto Santiago of Portland, Ore., who goes barefoot in solidarity with the poor, is seen in an April 16 photo. The Portland Catholic has gone without shoes for almost six years and says it connects him with people on society’s margins. (CNS photo/Clarice Keating, Catholic Sentinel)

It’s just a very small act of solidarity,” Santiago told the Catholic Sentinel, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon. “It gives me a little bit of a way to stay connected and be appreciative for what I have.”

The World Health Organization reports that more than 25,000 children in developing countries under the age of 5 die every day from illness or malnutrition that could have been prevented with just a few dollars’ worth of food or medicine. When Santiago heard that startling statistic six years ago, it troubled him.

The summer that year had been warm, and he’d been in the habit of kicking off his shoes while puttering around the house. Then one day he felt a strong calling that he shouldn’t put those shoes back on.

In its infancy, the calling’s complete meaning eluded even Santiago, but over time he has come to understand why his act of solidarity is important. Personally, he sees it as a reminder to be ever thankful and humble. Publicly, he hopes his message helps raise awareness about the abject poverty experienced by people in developing countries all over the world.

Getting kicked out of an establishment for lack of proper footwear provides an opportunity to meditate and pray for those suffering from ostracism: the homeless, mentally ill or other marginalized people. Stepping on a sharp object gives a jarring reminder to pray for those who live in pain and sickness.

Most importantly, going barefoot serves as a starting point for conversation. Reactions run the gamut. Adults are mostly accepting but aren’t likely to ask questions, especially in a free-spirited city such as Portland. Those same social barriers don’t impede children’s curiosity.

In a crowd, Santiago will occasionally hear a tiny voice pipe up, “Mommy, why isn’t that man wearing shoes?” He explains to the young ones that there are many children in the world who do not own a pair of shoes because they cannot afford them. Their reactions, Santiago, said, often are touching.

One child turned to her parents and asked if she could take money from her piggy bank to donate to poor children. Another child’s response never fails to choke up the sturdy computer programmer.

“He took his shoes off and handed them to me.”

The reality, Santiago said, is that going shoeless in Portland isn’t a hardship. He gets up and eats breakfast, gets into a heated car and walks at most three blocks to his office. Though he regularly takes long walks through his neighborhood, going without shoes in tidy Portland has little risk compared to the life experienced by people in developing countries who are exposed to bacteria and parasitic disease.

Some people are offended by Santiago’s choice and tell him so. At first, that repudiation made Santiago feel self-righteous. Eventually, he learned confrontation is rarely an effective portal to education. Now he apologizes for any offense and slips on a pair of flip-flops if they are unwilling to budge.

“Part of the path has taught me to pick my battles carefully because it’s clear that some people are not going to be moved,” he said. “Losing that unproductive righteousness has transitioned into a willingness to offer apology that sometimes opens up the conversation.”

Overall, negative responses are rare; people in Portland are generally accommodating and supportive. More passersby look askance when Santiago and wife Anne visit their families in their home states of Wisconsin and Virginia.

Anne, a political science professor at the University of Portland, said her husband’s calling means they don’t often go out to fancy restaurants.

That’s OK, though; it’s not their style. At this point, businesses and people in their community who are familiar with Santiago don’t bat an eye at his exposed toes, she said.

“It’s an interesting thing he does to keep himself humble and a reminder of where his place is in the world,” Anne said. “In the United States, we are so focused on our perspective that we don’t realize how 75 percent of the world lives. It’s very different from the comforts that we have.”

Santiago’s children, first-grader Madalena and fourth-grader Xavier, are accustomed to their father’s feet; it’s been part of his existence for a good portion of their lives.

Going barefoot helps Santiago remember the joy of being a child, spending entire summers running around barefoot, but also the vulnerability.

“I’m vulnerable to being ostracized,” he said. “I’m vulnerable to a very sharp piece of glass on the street that I don’t see before I step on it.”

After a year without shoes, Santiago’s soles developed hard calluses that protect from most ground hazards. Several times a week, he gives his feet a deep scouring to clean dirt that can’t be scrubbed off in the shower.

When his shoes first came off, Santiago was working with a team of adults at Holy Family to prepare teens for confirmation. His calling, which was so far outside of the norm, but also so meaningful, resonated with the teens, Santiago said. Many of his former students have grown up and gone on to college. But when they visit their home parish during holidays and summer, the first thing they do is look down to see if Santiago is still barefoot.

Occasionally, people tell Santiago that they remember feeling called to an act that was unusual, but felt deterred for a variety of reasons.

“Do it. If you feel called to it, do it,” he said.

By Clarice Keating, Catholic Sentinel.

By Sister Mona Castelazo

Catholic News Service

“Rooted in Love: Our Calling as Catholic Women” by Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle. Ave Maria Press (Notre Dame, Ind., 2012). 206 pp., $14.95.

“Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves,” edited by Helen M. Alvare. Our Sunday Visitor (Huntington, Ind., 2012). 173 pp., $16.95.

“Grace Under Pressure: The Roles of Women — Then and Now — in the Catholic Church” by Barbara A. O’Reilly. West Bow Press (Bloomington, Ind., 2012). 329 pp., $24.99.

In “Rooted in Love,” Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle explores the role of the Catholic woman in today’s world, a role which has become more significant in recent times. The author believes that women support one another through sharing their challenges, uncertainties and pain and therefore offers the reader examples from her own life. The book presents woman’s primary role as one of service to others and O’Boyle recounts specific incidents of her own practice of charity and mercy.

Explanations of the Catholic belief are offered throughout the book with quotations from John Paul II, Pope Benedict, Mother Teresa and the Catholic catechism. O’Boyle is a well-known personality on EWTN and radio.

Helen Alvare, in “Breaking Through,” offers 10 essays by Catholic women of differing ages, occupations, social status and educational backgrounds. Topics covered include working mothers, material wealth, religious life, sexual abuse, single parenthood, the single life and same-sex attraction. Several writers discuss their struggles with and reconciliation to church teachings. The book details the everyday life of Catholic women as well as opportunities and advantages gained by them over the years.

Whereas both books mentioned above view the term “feminism” as referring to a movement that negatively influenced women to become either anti-masculine or over-masculinized, Barbara O’Reilly, author of “Grace Under Pressure,” views Jesus as being a feminist, meaning that he treated women as equals in respect to individuality, intelligence, faith and dignity, regardless of social customs of the time. The focus of her book is how Jesus treated women and how that should affect them today.

O’Reilly begins by showing that women were influential in the early church community and were an integral part of “the praise ministry.” The book reveals the importance of early women deacons, medieval abbesses and women mystics. Deaconesses from apostolic times were initiated by the laying on of hands. Abbesses held authority similar to bishops, with the exception of ordination. Women mystics through the ages were not only influential in their day, but are being rediscovered as rich spiritual resources today.

However, O’Reilly points out, after the 12th century, structures of domination spread. The Pauline doctrine that was believed to be part of the early baptismal formula was eclipsed: “There is neither Jew nor gentile; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

The book shows the influence of a long history of patriarchy combined with questionable teachings about women from prominent church authors. Tertullian taught that women are “the gate of death”; Clement of Alexandria thought women should be filled with shame for being female; Thomas Aquinas called women misfits; and Augustine believed that only men were made in God’s image.

It is no wonder, suggests O’Reilly, that as a result of society at large and of supposed “Christian” teachings that women have had minor, subordinate positions in the church. Although opportunities are now available to women in ministry, they are to this day excluded from sacramental roles and policy decisions.

O’Reilly states that Jesus’ concern for and treatment of women as equals and his gifts of freedom in the risen life have been subverted. Perhaps the church’s failure through time to implement the vision of the passage from Galatians in its own institution contributed to the subordination of women in its history. The book shows how women’s roles have changed from scriptural days to the present. However, the author also shows remarkable accomplishments of Catholic women and offers hope. “Yes, change is difficult, but not impossible. God is not static. The church shouldn’t be either,” concludes the author.

Sister Mona Castelazo, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, has taught English for many years in Los Angeles. She is the author of “Under the Skyflower Tree: Reflections of a Nun-Entity,” published by iUniverse.

By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — For the first time in history, the Vatican is home to a pope and a retired pope.

Pope Francis welcomed his predecessor, retired Pope Benedict XVI, to the Vatican May 2 outside the convent remodeled for the 86-year-old retired pontiff and five aides. Pope Francis and Pope Benedict entered the convent’s chapel together “for a brief moment of prayer,” said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman.

Retired Pope Benedict XVI greets Pope Francis at the Vatican May 2. The 86-year-old retired pontiff, who had been staying at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo since retiring Feb. 28, returned to the Vatican to live in a monastery in the Vatican Gardens. (CNS photo/L’Ossevatore Romano via Reuters)

Pope Benedict had been staying at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo since retiring Feb. 28. Pope Francis traveled to the villa 10 days after his election to visit, pray and have lunch with Pope Benedict; the new pope also has telephoned his predecessor on at least two occasions.

In response to questions about the fact that Pope Benedict seemed to be much frailer than he was two months ago, Father Lombardi told reporters, “He’s an elderly man, weakened by age, but he is not suffering from any illness.”

In the last year of his pontificate, Pope Benedict was seen walking with a cane on more and more public occasions; after Pope Benedict retired, Father Lombardi confirmed that he had had a pacemaker inserted before becoming pope in 2005 and had undergone a brief procedure in November to replace the battery.

While the Vatican is now home to a pope and his predecessor, neither lives in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace. Pope Francis continues to live in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guesthouse just south of St. Peter’s Basilica where the cardinals stayed during the conclave; the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery where Pope Benedict is living is just to the north of the basilica.

Arriving in Castel Gandolfo a couple hours before his retirement became official, Pope Benedict told a crowd gathered in the town square to welcome him, “I am a simple pilgrim who begins the last stage of his pilgrimage on this earth.

“With all my heart, with all my love, with my prayers, with my reflection, with all my interior strength, I still want to work for the common good and the good of the church and humanity,” he said, reaffirming his plans to spend his retirement in a “hidden life” of prayer and study.

The location he chose as his residence had served since 1994 as home to four different communities of cloistered nuns — Poor Clares, Carmelites, Benedictines and Visitandines — who each spent a five- or three-year term there in a life dedicated to praying for the pope and the church.

The structure includes what was once the Vatican gardener’s house; before the first group of nuns took up residence, Blessed John Paul II had it expanded to about 4,600 square feet, including a large chapel, refectory and infirmary.

Since the Visitandine nuns moved in November, the building has undergone a remodeling, including an expansion of the library specifically for Pope Benedict.

The retired pope will live in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery with Archbishop Georg Ganswein, his secretary, who also serves Pope Francis as prefect of the papal household; and with four consecrated laywomen from Memores Domini, Father Lombardi said. The building also has a guestroom designed particularly for visits from Pope Benedict’s older brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger.

The Italian government helicopter bringing Pope Benedict to the Vatican from Castel Gandolfo was met at the Vatican heliport by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals; and other officials from the Vatican governor’s office and the secretariat of state.

Waiting in St. Peter’s Square to see the helicopter arrive was a priest from Kenya, who did not want to give his name. He told Catholic News Service, “It’s good he (Pope Benedict) comes to pray for the new pope and everyone else. He teaches us how to pray.”

“I guess he didn’t want any fanfare,” the priest said, noting that the large video screens in St. Peter’s Square were blank and the Vatican Television Center did not provide images. A battery of TV cameras stood outside the square with the same hope of catching a glimpse of the helicopter.

Jenna Cooper of Cornwall, N.Y., who is studying at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, said she came to the square “because I love Pope Emeritus Benedict. I wanted to be here to offer my prayerful support. I wanted to witness this historic event.

“It’s a beautiful witness that he’s dedicating his life to prayer; it shows how important prayer is for the life of the church,” Cooper said.

Father Bryan Jerabek of the Diocese of Birmingham, Ala., also studying at Holy Cross, said he came to see the retired pope fly back and was hoping the Vatican would show video on the monitors, “but he asked to be hidden from the world” so perhaps he asked that there not be live coverage. “But it was nice to see the helicopter.”

As for having a pope and a retired pope living in the Vatican, Father Jerabek said: “It’s absolutely unprecedented. We’re all still trying to figure out what it means.”

Noting that Pope Francis has visited and phoned Pope Benedict, Father Jerabek said, “It’s obvious he wants to have a close relationship with his predecessor. And now he can take a 15-minute walk to see him.”

By Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration “acted irresponsibly” with its decision to lower the age limit from 17 to 15 for purchasing an over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, said an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“No public health consideration justifies the unsupervised sale of such drugs to young teens,” said Deirdre McQuade, spokeswoman for the USCCB’s Secretariat for Pro Life Activities.

The Food and Drug Administration “acted irresponsibly” with its decision to lower the age limit from 17 to 15 for purchasing an over-the-counter emergency contraceptive, said an official of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (CNS)

Plan B One-Step now will be sold openly on pharmacy shelves while the generic brands will still be sold under pharmacy counters and only for those 17-years of age. Those who purchase the drugs will have to show identification to prove their age.

A ruling by a federal judge in early April said the Food and Drug Administration must make emergency contraceptives available to all ages by May 6.

The Justice Department announced May 1 that it is appealing this decision, saying the judge who issued the ruling had exceeded his authority and that his decision should be suspended while the appeal is under way.

The appeal and a request for an injunction will not affect the FDA’s April 30 decision to allow emergency contraceptives to be sold without a prescription to 15-year-olds.

U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn, N.Y., said the case wasn’t about the potential misuse of the emergency contraceptive by 11-year-olds because he said the number of girls that age likely to use the drugs was minuscule.

Korman’s ruling was in response to a lawsuit by the Center for Reproductive Rights seeking to expand access to emergency contraception.

McQuade said in a May 1 statement that she hopes the FDA will appeal the federal judge’s decision. The FDA said in a statement that its April 30 decision was independent of the court case and was not intended to address it.

Plan B, known generically as levonorgestrel, uses large doses of birth-control pills to prevent conception up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. According to the FDA it will “not stop a pregnancy when a woman is already pregnant, and there is no medical evidence that the product will harm a developing fetus.”

In 2006, the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of Plan B to women 18 and older; three years later, a court ruling made it available to women 17 and older without a prescription. Until Korman’s ruling, anyone younger still needed a prescription.

The Associated Press reported that the FDA was ready to lift all age limits on emergency contraceptives and let them be sold over the counter in late 2011, but Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, changed the FDA’s course, saying that even though some girls as young as 11 are physically capable of bearing children they shouldn’t be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.

McQuade said the FDA’s latest decision will make young teens “vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and sexual manipulation.”

She said studies have shown that “wider access to so-called emergency contraception reduces neither pregnancy nor abortion rates, but can contribute to higher rates of sexually transmitted disease, especially among young people.”

The group Concerned Women for America charged that health officials were putting politics and so-called progress ahead of the health of children as well as women.

“It makes no sense that kids need parental permission to take aspirin at school, but they’re free to buy and administer Plan B,” Penny Nance, CEO and president of CWA, said in a statement.

Some women’s groups said the FDA’s decision was seen as not doing enough by some women’s groups who noted that some young women without identification will still be unable to purchase the emergency contraceptives.

A Feb. 21 statement by the German bishops said the “morning-after pills,” or Plan B, can be dispensed at church-run hospitals to prevent rape victims from becoming pregnant.

“Women who have been victims of rape will, of course, receive human, medical, psychological and pastoral help in Catholic hospitals. This can include administration of the ‘morning-after pill’ as long as it has a preventive rather than abortive effect,” the bishops’ conference said.

They added that “medical and pharmaceutical methods that result in the death of an embryo may still not be used.”

By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Amid widespread speculation about a complete and quick reorganization of Vatican departments and rumors in the Italian media that Pope Francis was going to close the Vatican bank, a top Vatican official told everyone to calm down.

“It’s a bit strange; the pope still has not met the group of advisers he chose and already the advice is raining down,” said Archbishop Angelo Becciu, the substitute secretary for general affairs in the Vatican Secretariat of State.

The Institute for the Works of Religion, popularly known as the Vatican bank, is seen in a 2009 photo. Amid widespread speculation about a complete and quick reorganization of Vatican departments and rumors in the Italian media that Pope Francis was going to close the Vatican back, a top Vatican official told everyone to calm down. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Catholic Press Photo)

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, ran a front-page interview April 30 with Archbishop Becciu, whose job is similar to a chief of staff.

Asked about rumors that Pope Francis intended to close the Institute for Religious Works, commonly called the Vatican bank, Archbishop Becciu said, “The pope was surprised to see attributed to him phrases that he never said and that misrepresent his thought.”

Vatican bank employees joined the pope April 24 for his morning Mass; in his homily the pope said the story of the church is part of the story of God’s love for humanity and human beings’ love for God; Pope Francis said bureaucracies, structures and offices, like the Vatican bank, for example, must never get in the way of living and sharing that story of love.

“In the context of a serious call to never lose sight of the essence of the church,” the pope’s reference to the Vatican bank was simply an acknowledgment that some of the employees were present, the archbishop said.

As for the panel of eight cardinals Pope Francis named April 13 to advise him on “the governance of the universal church and to study a plan” to reorganize the Roman Curia, Archbishop Becciu said, “at this moment it is absolutely premature to advance any hypothesis about the future structure of the Curia.”

“Pope Francis is listening to everyone, but wants to hear first of all from those he chose as advisers,” the archbishop said. The eight cardinals — including Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston and Cardinal George Pell of Sydney — are supposed to hold their first formal meeting in October.

In the meantime, Archbishop Becciu said, Pope Francis has asked all the heads of Vatican congregations and councils to stay on “for now.” As of April 30, the pope had not offered any Vatican office head a more permanent position, but he also has asked Vatican officials with an expired five-year appointment to continue in their jobs, the archbishop said.

“This shows the desire of the Holy Father to take the time he needs for reflection — and for prayer, let’s not forget — in order to have a complete picture of the situation,” he said.

Archbishop Becciu was asked about a commentator’s opinion that by appointing a group of advisers Pope Francis was putting in jeopardy the primacy of the papacy. The archbishop dismissed the claim.

“It’s a consultative body, not a decision-making one, and I truly do not see how Pope Francis’ decision could put primacy into question,” he said. Appointing advisers does, however, demonstrate how “the Holy Father wants to exercise his ministry,” listening to the opinions of cardinals from around the world.

In the church, Archbishop Becciu said, consultative bodies work on the parish, diocesan and universal levels and religious orders have them, too, but the bodies do not lessen the authority of the pastor, the bishop, the pope or the orders’ superiors.

Outside the church, he said, people might think a council without decision-making powers is irrelevant, “but that would mean comparing the church to a business.” In the church, he said, advisers and members of councils “help the superior in the work of discernment, in understanding what the Spirit is asking of the church at a precise historical moment.”

By Russell Shaw

On the evening of the Boston Marathon bombing, I was doing a radio interview about a book I’d written. Before getting to me, the host asked listeners to pray for victims of the atrocity in Boston and for the nation. When my turn came, I said, “My prayer is ‘deliver us from evil.’” The host agreed that was the right prayer.

A woman is comforted by a man near a triage tent set up for the Boston Marathon after explosions went off at the 117th marathon April 15. Two bombs exploded in the crowded streets near the finish line of the marathon, killing at least three people, including an 8-year-old boy, and injuring more than 140. (CNS photo/Jessica Rinaldi, Reuters)

Remember America the Impregnable? It’s just a memory now. The United States used to be literally beyond the reach of foes, protected by two mighty oceans and peaceful neighbors. But the cold war, with its ever-present nuclear threat, put an end to that. And with 9/11, impregnability was a vanished dream.

Now, of course, Americans find themselves menaced not just by foreign threats–al-Qaeda, North Korea, whatever–but also by a seemingly bottomless reservoir of home-grown monsters acting out fantasies of homicidal violence in settings like schools and movie theaters. “Terrorism is a fact of modern life,” an Op Ed commentator pronounces. So, deliver us from facts of modern life!

The nation is responding to the reality of pervasive, universal vulnerability in a variety of ways. Abroad, President Obama sharply escalates drone attacks on terrorists, a controversial policy whose strongest talking point may be that it helps keep us from blundering into another Iraq.

Back in the U.S. a homeland security regime is taking shape, with a burgeoning network of intrusive new procedures to match. More subtly, pit-of-the-stomach anxiety is likely swelling the market for escapist entertainment while encouraging some Americans to seek distraction in outlets like alcohol, drugs, and pornography.

Signs of the times abound. Driving into Washington, D.C. from the Maryland suburbs the day after the Boston bombing, I encountered a large electric sign conspicuously placed on the median ahead of me and flashing this message “See Something/Say Something/Report Suspicious Activity/Call or E-mail” — with a phone number and e-mail address. Welcome to your nation’s capital in the spring.

What is religion’s contribution to this new state of affairs? Bury the dead, comfort the injured and console the survivors of course. Those are eminently worthwhile things to do. But does faith point to any meaning in current events?

Looking for an answer, I turned to an old book by Caryll Houselander, a notable British spiritual writer of the last century with a strong mystical streak and a powerful sense of the Mystical Body of Christ. The book, “This War Is the Passion,” was written in wartime London at the height of the Blitz and published in 1941. The title wasn’t poetry but, for Houselander, a statement of literal fact. “For us,” the book begins, “the war is the Passion of Christ.”

This is not the place to attempt a genuine summary of this unusual book, much less a critique. I quote only one passage in illustration of the author’s message:

“The consistent Christian will, with Christ for his strength, be led on to risk all he has, gladly, offering his sacrifice in reparation for all evil. He will see men not as people of different nations at war, but as one great family, wounded, insane, in dire need of healing and help, and in all that he does he will offer the only healing and help there is, Christ in his heart for a sacrifice.”

Impractical to the point of being irrelevant? Perhaps. But either this sheds light on the meaning of events like the London Blitz and the Boston bombing, or else there is no light to shed. I prefer to think there is.

By Joseph Ryan

Dialog editor

Sister Suzanne Donovan, the first full-time director of Human Resources for the Diocese of Wilmington, has announced her retirement at the end of July.

In addition to heading Human Resources for 14 years, Sister Suzanne has been the first director of the diocese’s Safe Environments program, including running “For the Sake of God’s Children,” the program she helped develop in response to the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” issued by the U.S. bishops in 2002. Read more »

By Carol Glatz

Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Evolutionary science is still grappling with understanding how the human species, with its unique capacities for language, culture, abstract reasoning and spirituality, may have emerged from a pre-ape ancestor.

While the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God, “in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life,” the church still considers the scientific investigation of the origins of humanity to be a valuable contribution to human knowledge.

A counselor specializing in biofeedback therapy poses next to an illustration of the human brain in his office in Litchfield Park, Ariz., in 2012. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is in dialogue with world-renowned scientific experts about the physical and cultural changes that occurred during mankind’s evolution, including the development of the human brain. (CNS photo/ Nancy Phelan Wiechec)

In its continuing dialogue with world-renowned scientific experts, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences brought together evolutionary biologists, paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, neuroscientists, theologians and philosophers to discuss the major physical and cultural changes that occurred during mankind’s evolution.

The working group on “The Emergence of the Human Being” met April 19-21 to discuss topics such as the mastery and use of fire, the beginning of burial and funeral rites and the emergence of language, culture and conscience.

Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the science academy’s chancellor, told the group that scientific truths are part of divine truth and “can help philosophy and theology understand ever more fully the status and future of the human person.”

Science investigates the external world and how it works, while religion is concerned with “the internal world of the self, which belongs to the spirit present in his being and to his relationship with God,” the bishop said.

As such, theology and philosophy “must not engage in a losing battle to establish the facts of nature that constitute the very scope of science,” he said.

“Philosophy and theology should ask themselves how they can find a meeting point with and become enriched by the naturalist viewpoint of science, starting from the assumption that the human being is already a speaking, questioning being,” he added.

How that speaking, questioning being emerged from a 5 million-year-long lineage of other primates is still a matter of much debate.

Along that evolutionary path, no species turned out to be more unlike its ancestors than the human species, said Ian Tattersall, a British-American paleontologist and former curator of the anthropology division of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

What’s so unusual is humans ended up with such “special and unique properties” even though they followed the same evolutionary mechanisms of genetic variation, adaptation and natural selection as all other species, he said.

That radical transformation “I think was due to culture,” he said, which changed the way early humans responded to their environment.

But how that transformation came about is still a mystery, Tattersall said.

“It’s absolutely mind-boggling: How do you go from a nonlinguistic and non-symbolic creature to a symbolic and linguistic successor?” he said.

Wolf Singer, a neurophysiologist and founding director of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and co-director of the Brain Imaging Center in Frankfurt, Germany, said, “The neurons are the same in our (human) cerebral cortexes as they are in the mollusk.”

Groups of neurons — called modules — in the brain cortex also didn’t experience any structural changes during evolution, so “a piece of cortex from a cat is exactly the same as a piece of cortex from a human being,” he said.

But the human brain radically diverged from other species in that it experienced a rapid and dramatic increase in volume; in evolution, “more of the same makes all the difference,” Singer said.

Simple animal brains have “a fairly short path” to follow from sensory perception to processing the information to reacting to that external stimulus, he said.

However, in the bigger, more complex human brain, there is an increase in areas that “digest the output of already existing areas” of the brain.

Neurons no longer take a direct path from sensing to responding or “talking to the environment,” but they mull things over in the cerebral cortex, “talking” to other neurons and engaging in highly dynamic and large scale interactions, he said.

Singer said it’s precisely this “very autistic, self-referential system” of neurons computing each other’s output in numerous stages that allows for increasingly abstract representation, “imagery, imagination, extrapolation and model-making” and ultimately a sense of self and consciousness.

“While we know a lot about the nuts and bolts of the system,” like how neurons work and pass signals to one another, these high-level human brain functions like reasoning, long-term memory and assigning meaning are enormously complex and “resist explanation,” he said.

Brain research has implications for topics that normally concerned only philosophy, such as free will, the boundaries of mind and body, and the nature of consciousness, he said.

“All of these are questions that neurobiologists can’t avoid anymore and there are heated debates with our fellow philosophers,” he said.

Bishop Sanchez said the evolutionary laws of heredity and genetic mutation pose no conflict to the Catholic faith and offer a biological explanation for the development of species on earth.

However, he said, the beginning of the universe, “the transition from nothing to being,” is not a mutation; God is the first cause of creation and being.

“In this first transcendent origin of the human being we should in fact admit the direct participation of God,” which also occurs with each conception of human life, he said.

Human beings are not just biological creatures, but spiritual, too, whose “incorruptible soul,” he said, “requires a creative act of God.”

Msgr. Fiorenzo Facchini, who is an anthropologist and paleontologist, said evolution could have ended at the pre-human stage, but thanks to God’s will, humans emerged with the capacity for self-reflection and knowing the transcendent.

Msgr. Facchini has said that rather than picturing it as humans descending from the apes, humans ascended or rose up from the animal kingdom to a higher level, thanks to the hand of God.

By Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY — Even with modern scientific technology, the Shroud of Turin continues to baffle researchers.

Barrie Schwortz was the documenting photographer for the Shroud of Turin research project in 1978, an in-depth examination of what many people believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus.

The Shroud of Turin is seen on display in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy, in this April 26, 2010, file photo. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, “it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’m a Jew and involved with probably the most important relic of Christianity,” Schwortz told Catholic News Service.

“Isn’t it funny how God always picks a Jew to be the messenger,” he said.

Schwortz said that he, along with the other members of the research team who came from various faith backgrounds, had to set aside personal beliefs and focus on the shroud itself rather than any religious implication it might carry.

“We were there to gather information … to do empirical science and do it to the best of our abilities,” Schwortz said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with my personal religious beliefs. It has to do with the truth.”

The Shroud of Turin is a 14-foot linen that has a full-length photonegative image of a wounded man on the front and back of the cloth. The scientific team spent five days analyzing the chemical and physical properties of the shroud, paying special attention to the topographical information showing depth that was encoded in the light and dark shading of the cloth.

“Our team went to Turin to answer one simple question: How was the image formed?” Schwortz said. “Ultimately, we failed.

“We could tell you what it’s not — not a painting, not a photograph, not a scorch, not a rubbing — but we know of no mechanism to this day that can make an image with the same chemical and physical properties as the image on the shroud.”

Testing has been performed on the shroud since the initial analyses, and the results continue to be contested. In 1988 carbon testing dated the cloth to the 12th century, leading many to conclude that the shroud is a medieval forgery.

In a paper published in 2005, chemist Raymond Rogers, member of the 1978 research team, challenged the claim that the shroud is a fake. He said the sample used in the 1988 carbon testing was a piece used to mend the cloth in the Middle Ages and that the methodology of the testing was erroneous.

Even though the controversy over the origin of the cloth does not seem like it will be determined any time soon, Schwortz said the shroud can still be regarded as a bridge between science and faith.

“I think the implication of the shroud, for those particularly of the Christian faith, is that this is a document that precisely coincides with the Gospel account of what was done to the man Jesus,” he said.

Schwortz said the public online technical database, www.shroud.com, that the team created should be used as a tool to learn more about the physical attributes of the shroud, but that individuals should draw their own conclusions about what it means for their faith.

“People often ask me, ‘Does this prove the resurrection?’” Schwortz said. “The shroud did not come with a book of instructions. So the answer to faith isn’t going to be on that piece of cloth, but more likely in the eyes and the hearts of those who look upon it.”