Because Faith and Freedom Matter

The 2013 Grove City College Commencement Address by  Dr. John A. Sparks ’66, Dean of the Alva J. Calderwood School of Arts and Letters  

Editor’s note: As one of his final works of service to his alma mater before retiring, Dr. John Sparks delivered the 2013 Grove City College commencement address, “Because Faith and Freedom Matter,” on May 18. You can watch Dr. Sparks deliver the address here or read it below. Please note that we have embedded links to Dr. Sparks’ past work and commentary in this speech.

President Jewell, honored guests, trustees, my dear faculty colleagues, parents, grandparents, and the members of the class of 2013.  I am deeply honored to be addressing you.

I first set foot as a freshman on the GCC campus 51 years ago, in the fall of 1962.  My parents dropped me off on lower campus at the OLD Colonial Hall.  My father shook my hand and my mother cried which was probably true of many of you four years ago (for a few it may have been five or six years ago). I lived in the old Colonial hall and walked across Rainbow Bridge and back more times than I like to remember. The U.S. President was John F. Kennedy.

The Soviet Union and East Germany have just begun the construction of something called the Berlin Wall to keep their own citizens from escaping the “Communist Paradise” into the West.  2.7 million East Germans had already fled, seeking freedom. In 1962, the Berlin wall presented, starkly, poignantly the question of Freedom.

The Great Gatsby Tells Us the World is an Empty Place Without Faith

Leonardo di Caprio plays Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's new film

Are you getting ready for The Great Gatsby, the latest film adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, which has already opened in America and which will open on this side of the pond next week? I myself have prepared by re-reading the book, and will most certainly be seeing the film when it arrives.

Why the excitement?

First of all, the director is Baz Luhrmann, whose Romeo + Juliet was so astonishing. Second, the cast is stellar. There is the relative newcomer Carey Mulligan, along with Leonardo di Caprio and Tobey Maguire, both of whom are first-class actors. Third, the book is, to use an overworn word which in this case is the only word that will do, iconic.

Fitzgerald is not that great a writer, and fans will probably not forgive me for saying that his other books are duds. But in Gatsby he manages to convey the atmosphere of the time; very few writers ever do this; Waugh is one, but Fitzgerald’s evocation of the lives of the rich and the less rich in the roaring Twenties (the events in the novel are set in the summer of 1922) probably creates our impression of the time as much as it describes it.

Read more at Catholic Herald >>

Children are Born Believers in God, Academic Claims

Children are "born believers" in God and do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination, according to an academic.

From The Telegraph
By Martin Beckford

Dr. Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose.

He says that young children have faith even when they have not been taught about it by family or at school, and argues that even those raised alone on a desert island would come to believe in God.

"The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children's minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"If we threw a handful on an island and they raised themselves I think they would believe in God."

In a lecture to be given at the University of Cambridge's Faraday Institute on Tuesday, Dr Barrett will cite psychological experiments carried out on children that he says show they instinctively believe that almost everything has been designed with a specific purpose.

In one study, six and seven-year-olds who were asked why the first bird existed replied "to make nice music" and "because it makes the world look nice".

Another experiment on 12-month-old babies suggested that they were surprised by a film in which a rolling ball apparently created a neat stack of blocks from a disordered heap.

Dr Barrett said there is evidence that even by the age of four, children understand that although some objects are made by humans, the natural world is different.

He added that this means children are more likely to believe in creationism rather than evolution, despite what they may be told by parents or teachers.

Dr Barrett claimed anthropologists have found that in some cultures children believe in God even when religious teachings are withheld from them.

"Children's normally and naturally developing minds make them prone to believe in divine creation and intelligent design. In contrast, evolution is unnatural for human minds; relatively difficult to believe."

How Christendom is Becoming Eurabia

Two very interesting articles on the rise of Islamo-fascism were published in the Wall Street Journal and carried by other newspapers in 2005. The first of the two-part series describes how radical Muslim influence has grown in France through a network of mosques and Muslim organizations working with second and third generation Muslims.

As Muslims call Europe home, isolation takes root

The second article describes how a Munich mosque for ex-Nazis became a beachhead for terrorism in the West and the transformation of the continent into "Eurabia."

A mosque for ex-Nazis became center of radical Islam

Deo Gratias!

Forty years ago "they created a wasteland and called it renewal." Since the Tridentine Mass was largely abandoned in the late sixties, ideologues infected by a virulent strain of clericalism, have imposed on the faithful every kind of liturgical experiment, abuse, and blasphemy. The result has been cataclysmic, with division and a worldwide loss of faith. Most Catholics no longer attend Mass on Sunday; only about a third believe in the Real Presence; and dire as things may be in the United States, once-Catholic European countries are slipping into anti-Christian paganism.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: "The Church's faith precedes the faith of the believer who is invited to adhere to it. When the Church celebrates the sacraments, she confesses the faith received from the apostles - whence the ancient saying: lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition."

With the publication of the following documents, the Holy Father has begun the journey toward greater unity and holiness, through a liturgy that more fully embodies the faith handed down to us from the Apostles.

Pope's letter accompanying the motu proprio [English translation from Vatican]

Summorum Pontificum (unofficial Vatican translation of the motu proprio)