Where is heaven?

This excerpt is from Fr. Pierre Benoit, Jesus and the Gospel, vol. 1 (1973), translated by Benet Weatherhead, pp. 251-53.

For the Ancients, Greek or Semite, the Universe had the earth for a foundation or a centre, surmounted or surrounded by a whole series of concentric heavens which efforts were made to count. The residence of God was in the highest of these cosmic heavens, separated from the earth by a more or less considerable number of intermediate ones; to get from the earth to God, therefore, it was necessary to ascend and pass through these heavens. It was only a step from this to describing the marvellous heavenly voyages that heroes introduced into the divine world had to make. Ancient religions often did this in their accounts of 'apotheoses', and so did the Christian Apocryphas when they were daring enough to undertake to describe the Ascension of Christ.

However, if we turn to the writings of the canonical tradition [Mark 16:19-20; Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-12], the only ones which have the right to command our faith, we are happily struck by their discretion in this regard. They abstain carefully from compromising their assertion of the transcendent triumph of Christ by the addition of doubtful notions drawn from human science. In order to enunciate the mystery they keep only the minimum of imagery necessary for human language to remain possible. They tell us that Christ ascended into heaven, beside his Father, because there is no other means for our human mind to express the truth that a human being has been taken from our corruptible world and introduced into the world of God. In the measure in which our thought remains subject to our senses and our imagination we continue, and we shall always continue despite all the discoveries of science, to 'feel' that God is 'above' us and call him 'our Father who art in heaven'. This is why it is absolutely legitimate and true to say that the glorified Christ has ascended into heaven.

But, once we have made allowance for the imaginative support which is indispensable to our thinking, we must be well on our guard against going too far and claiming to advance our understanding of the mystery by trying to combine it with speculation about the universe. The discretion of the inspired writings should dissuade us from anything like this. When they speak of Christ 'seated' at the 'right hand' of the Father, they are obviously only using anthropomorphic images which have no value except their symbolic reference. Commentators have always recognized this. (See for example St Thomas, [Summa theologiae,] IIIa, q. 58, a. 1 and the Fathers he quotes.) Similarly, when Scripture shows us Christ exalted above all the heavens (Eph 4:10), it simply means to indicate that he dominates our present Cosmos, and it would be useless to try and define Christ's position in relation to the 'final sphere'. The doctors of scholasticism, still bound to Aristotle's system, could go too far in this direction; yet the greatest of them, a St Thomas for example, were able to keep a wise and prudent reserve on this point. (Cf. St Thomas, [Summa theologiae,] IIIa, q. 57, a. 4. . . .)

The essential teaching of Scripture, which is to be retained by our faith, is that Christ, through his Resurrection and his Ascension, departed from this present world, a world corrupted by sin and destined for destruction, and entered the new world where God reigns as master and where matter is transformed, penetrated and dominated by the Spirit. It is a world that is real with a physical reality, like Christ's body itself, and which therefore occupies a 'place', but a world which exists as yet only as a promise, or rather in its embryo, the single risen body of Christ (to which must now be added that of his Holy Mother, according to the doctrine of the Assumption, defined as of faith [by Pope Pius XII] on the 1st November, 1950), and which will be definitively constituted and revealed only at the end of time, when the 'new heavens' and the 'new earth' are to appear.

While waiting for that day, the glorious body of Christ exists somewhere, real, much more real than our perishable world, because it alone possesses true Life, but it is useless to ask 'where', just as it is mistaken to imagine it 'far away'. This new world, where Christ reigns and awaits us, is not far away, it is not outside our world, it transcends it. It is of another order, is distinguished in terms of quality rather than of quantity, and we have access to it through faith and the sacraments, in a contact which is mysterious but more real and more close than any contact with our present world can be.

When we say and believe with the Church that the glorified Christ has ascended to heaven and is seated beside his Father, we mean by this that he has penetrated for ever into the new, final, spiritual world, of which he is the first cell, a world which is inaccessible to our senses and our imagination, but which is supremely real, much more real than the everyday world about us. And we believe readily, with the mass of the earliest Christian witnesses, that he inaugurated this new world on the day of his Resurrection, when he was rapt from the tomb by the Spirit to be exalted next to the Father.

My top ten board and card games

Just for fun, here are my 10 favorite games (from oldest to newest). What are yours?

Honorable Mention:
Monopoly (1933)
This quintessentially American board game is ruthless, as you attempt to reduce the other players to bankruptcy by gouging them on rent, making it a game poorly suited to children (my childhood best friend once called it "Make Your Friends Cry"). Unfairly maligned for supposedly taking hours to play, it takes only about one to two hours if you play by the rules (the popular house rules [1] that give players a bunch of cash from the bank for landing on Free Parking and [2] that forgo the auctioning of unwanted properties greatly prolong the game in an attempt to make it less cutthroat). Monopoly was based on The Landlord's Game, created by Elizabeth Magie in 1904.
(For 2-8 players, ages 8+)

Book recommendation: The MONOPOLY Companion: The Players' Guide, by Philip Orbanes (2007). Contains a fascinating history of the game as well as a basic strategic and statistical analysis of the game, complete with many easy-to-read charts. Explains why the orange properties are the best.

Top Ten:
Scrabble (1948)
The classic word game is best played 1-on-1 like Chess because 3- and 4-player games have a lot of downtime. In tournament play, chess clocks are used, giving each player 25 minutes for the whole game (-10 point penalty for each extra minute), but you can also use a sand-timer for quick play. Scrabble is all about word knowledge (for tournament play this means memorizing word-lists) and being able to anagram. Basic strategy: Try to play all your tiles at once for a 50-point bonus (called a bingo); blanks can be very helpful in this. Use the letter s to hook a word onto the end of another word by pluralizing it. When you're desperate, play a phony word and hope your opponent doesn't challenge it. Memorizing all 101 two-letter words found in the Official Scrabble Player's Dictionary (4th ed.), which is really not that hard, will revolutionize your gameplay by allowing you to lay a word right next to another word, creating one ore more two-letter words in the process. Next step: memorize the 29 words that contain the letter q not followed by a u.
(For 2-4 players, ages 8+)

Book recommendation: Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, by Stefan Fatsis (2002). Fascinating, gripping story in which a writer completely throws himself into the world of competitive Scrabble and meets some very, um, unusual people.

Risk (1959)
The classic war game that blends strategy and chance is, like Monopoly, completely ruthless, as you wage world war on a continually escalating scale against all the other players. Popular strategies include holing up in Australia, creating a bottle-neck in either Siam or Indonesia; creating a gigantic blob of armies that you slowly move around the board; and the fool's errand of trying to conquer Asia. Invented by French film director Albert Lamorisse in 1957 under the name La Conquête du Monde, the American version was released by Parker Brothers (owner of Monopoly) two years later.
(For 2-6 players, ages 10+)

Magic: The Gathering (1993)
The original and best Trading Card Game. I'm not going to lie to you: it's a money-pit, as it is has 57 expansion sets so far (three are published every year, adding over 500 cards to the game annually). But it is possible to enjoy it without spending absurd amounts of money buying new cards, if you can control yourself. Although the rules are far more complex than any board game, the basics are surprisingly simple and easy to learn. Winning depends heavily upon strategy, and there is a steep learning curve. The fantasy theme (very similar to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons), collectible nature, and high level of complexity unfortunately will always prevent the game from achieving mainstream success. Invented by Dr. Richard Garfield in 1993, he partnered with a brand-new game company called Wizards of the Coast to market it. His company was eventually bought out by Hasbro, which also owns Parker Brothers.
(For 2+ players, ages 13+)

The Settlers of Catan (1995)
This German game was the first to achieve great success in America. It is, to my knowledge, the only German game sold in big American department stores (e.g., Target). Highly strategic yet elegantly simple, the premise is to colonize an island that produces five kinds of resources (oar, grain, wool, brick, and lumber), which players use to build roads, settlements (1 point), and cities (2 points). The first player to 10 points wins! The emphasis on building up instead of attacking (Risk) or tearing down (Monopoly) marks it out as a German game. To me this will always be the standard against which all such games are measured. In addition to spin-offs, it has three expansion sets: Seafarers, Cities & Knights, and Traders & Barbarians. You can also download three official scenarios: Jungle, Volcano, and Oil Springs, the last of which contains an environmental message and introduces a powerful new resource: Oil.
(For 2-6 players, ages 10+)

Lost Cities (1999)
An abstract (i.e., mathematical) German card game based on four stacks of cards numbered 2-10, it is a 2-player game given flavor by an archaeological theme, as your four stacks of cards represent four different expeditions to lost cities, the numbers 2-10 representing the progress of your expedition. Great fun if, like my wife and I, you like abstract games. One of those games I hope math teachers buy for their classrooms.
(For 2 players, ages 10+)

Carcassonne (2000)
Another German game, it is lighthearted and fun like Settlers but with completely different gameplay, as you slowly create a city (the medieval French city of Carassonne) by laying down tiles one at a time. I've only played it a few times, but am very interested in adding it to my collection. In addition to spin-offs and small expansion sets, it has seven large expansion sets: Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, The Princess & the Dragon, The Tower, Abbey & Mayor, The Catapult, and Bridges, Castles, & Bazaars.
(For 2-5 players, ages 8+)

Puerto Rico (2002)
A complex game of economics (German, of course) in which the players take on different roles (e.g., Mayor, Builder, Trader) while developing plantations in early-modern Puerto Rico. (We'll overlook the colonial nature of the game!) It's kind of like Settlers in that you collect five different agricultural resources (corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee), which you use to get Victory Points. I haven't played it in years but would really like to add it to my collection to play at my friend's monthly game night. There is a small, nameless expansion set that introduces new buildings to the game that you can put in your plantation.
(For 2-5 players, ages 12+)

Agricola (2007)
Another German game in the spirit of Settlers and Puerto Rico. This time you're a farmer (the Latin word agricola means "farmer") with four resources to collect and use (wood, clay, stone, and reed) in order to harvest both wheat and vegetables and to raise three kinds of livestock (sheep, boars, and cattle). You slowly build up your farm while struggling to feed your ever-expanding family. Whoever has the most complete, well-rounded farm (according to a specific set of criteria) after 14 rounds of play (during which each player makes 2-5 moves) wins. The game can also be played solitary.
(For 1-5 players, ages 12+)

Dominion (2008)
A card game reminiscent of Magic but without the trading element. Each game begins with a random selection of 10 copies of 10 different cards (the base game and each of the four major expansion sets [Intrigue, Seaside, Prosperity, and Hinterlands] comes with 25 different cards, leading to incredible variety). Your starting deck is 7 Coppers (worth $1 each) and 3 Estates (worth 1 point each). On your turn you may play one Action card, lay down your Coppers, Silvers, and Golds, and then buy another card to add to your deck. Once all the Provinces (worth 6 points each) are gone, or once any three piles of cards are gone, the game ends and whoever has the most Victory Points wins. Hidden beneath this simplicity is a great depth of strategy and fun. Incredibly addictive.
(For 2-4 players, ages 8+)

7 Wonders (2010)
The latest gaming craze, this card-drafting game is themed around the seven wonders of the ancient world. It plays very simply: you play three hands of seven cards, dealt out randomly to each player. On your turn, you pick a card to play, then pass the remaining cards to the player next to you (the final card will be discarded, meaning each player will play 18 cards total). There are six different types of cards: resources (lumber, clay, ore, and stone), manufactured goods (papyrus, cloth, and loom), commerce, civic (Victory Points), military, and science. In lieu of playing a card, you can discard one for three coins or use one to build a stage of your ancient wonder, each of which does different things to help you to victory. At the end of the game, whoever has the most Victory Points wins. There is an expansion set that adds a new dimension to the game: Leaders, which I've never played.
(For 2-7 players, ages 10+)


"The institution of the Lord's Day helps everyone enjoy adequate rest and leisure to cultivate their familial, cultural, social, and religious lives" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2184).

The power of satire

This blog post satirizing self-appointed Catholic "heresy-hunters" was mildly amusing. To wit: "Especially note how they spell the word Mass. If they don’t capitalize the word “Mass,” do not risk further interaction with this devil. Not only do they hate God, but they hate the Mass!"

But, if you look through the comments, it's also proof that, no matter how blatantly satirical or sarcastic you're being, there will always be some people on the internet that will take it literally. Thus, from the comments:

• I think this over-the-top strategy for seeking out the heretics in our congregation would leave few of us in the pews.

• Jesus ate and drank with sinners, and I am one of them.
  
  
• If this is the direction that we are going in the catholic church, I may need to start looking for another faith community.

Oh brother!

But, to get a bit serious for a moment, I was also disappointed (but not surprised) to read a number of comments, recognizing that it was satire, saying that the author shouldn't make fun of heresy. No joking about serious and holy things! Fortunately those of who do have a sense of humor and realize the follies of self-appointed "heresy-hunters" can appeal to the authority of one of the Doctors of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila, who said: "God save us from sour-faced saints!"

Message to Santorum: College is not detrimental to faith

I was shocked by this inaccurate pandering by Santorum to Republicans who did not go to college. Worse than the false attack on Obama, to me, is how obviously disingenuous it is, since of course he himself went to college and wants his kids to go to college. I also knew that his statement about college ruining people's faith was false because I remember reading years ago in Christianity Today about how a recent study had shown that while many young adults become disenfranchised from religion, those who don't go to college become disenfranchised at higher rates than those who do. This actually makes sense when one realizes how many religious student organizations there are at colleges that students can join. And, of course, it is utterly mistaken to think that higher education is antithetical to faith. On the contrary, it is ignorance that is antithetical to faith.

More on conscience controversy

Piece explaning why it's morally okay for Catholic institutions to have insurance plans that provide free contraception to employees who want it. It's troubling to me that the moral theologians quoted at the end were too timorous to speak on record. After all, it is precisely the job of theologians to voice their opinion on theological controversies. This is for the benefit of bishops and laity alike.

Excellent piece on the conscience compromise

Dr. Stephen Schneck (Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholics Studies at The Catholic University of America) has an excellent piece about why the White House's compromise on conscience is good and should be accepted by Catholics (pace the USCCB, which wants a complete repeal). He says exactly what I have been thinking, in three main ways:

1. It is morally acceptable for Catholic institutions to buy insurance plans from insurance companies that also give out contraception.

S: American Catholics have been paying for [contraception] for many decades. Our taxes and FICA withholdings fund it for the military, in insurance for government employees, and in Medicaid, just as we pay for wars that we believe are unjust and for wrongful executions. We’re told however that it is not immoral for us to pay taxes for such things because of the distance between what we pay and these policies. Having insurance companies pay for contraception, indeed, distances Catholic institutions from the coverage even more than the situation with taxes.

I have heard some Catholics claim that the shift in responsibility from religious institutions to the insurance companies is no change at all. But that argument only follows if you embrace a "boycott" mentality. But such a mentality is not supported by Catholic moral principles, since we are all inevitably embroiled in evil in many indirect ways just by the fact that we live in society (as when we pay our taxes or vote).

2. An exception still needs to be added for self-insuring religious institutions (e.g., the Archdiocese of Washington).

S: A handful of Catholic institutions have self-funded plans, wherein they are their own insurer. Friday’s language does not address such cases. That needs to be fixed, perhaps by grandfathering institutional exemptions to the mandate for such plans. The administration has telegraphed that addressing this problem is a priority. 

 If this doesn't get fixed, I assume that those institutions will switch to an insurance plan.

3. Demanding a total retraction of the mandate makes the issue about contraception instead of conscience.

Demanding total elimination of the contraception mandate transforms the issue from one of religious liberty for church institutions to one about contraception itself. The vast majority of Americans understand contraception as health care—in the same way that they think about blood transfusions as health care. For them, it’s one thing if a church institution wants to be exempt from public health laws, but it’s another if Taco Bell wants exemptions from health laws. . . . It’s “Church & State” not employer and state.

There is no hope whatsoever of American society embracing the Catholic position against contraception, so such a demand will appear to be a foolish and doomed attempt to use politics to promote a rule ignored even by most church-going Catholics.


There's no doubt in my mind that Obama has bungled this whole affair, and it disturbs me that he tried to force religious institutions to pay for contraception (including the morning after pill*) and sterilization. However, the fact that he compromised proves that he is not totally insensitive to matters of conscience. If conservatives continue to proclaim that he is engaged in some kind of war against religion or against Catholicism, I predict that they are going to find less and less people willing to listen to their overheated and inaccurate rhetoric.

*The so-called morning after pill is generally believed (thought it is not known for certain) to be capable of preventing a fertilized ovum from implanting in the uterus. Since pregnancy is, in the medical community, defined as beginning at implantation, this is not technically an abortion. However, a fertilized ovum is a biologically unique human being and, as such, should not be killed. Indeed, for all we know (how could anyone ever disprove it?), a human soul may come into existence as soon as the egg is fertilized. (N.B.: The Catholic Church has no teaching about exactly when ensoulment occurs.)

Susan G. Komen and the goals of the pro-life movement

I am glad that the Susan K. Komen Foundation has backed down on its decision to remove a grant to Planned Parenthood for cancer-screening (including breast exams and mammograms or mammogram-referrals). Let me explain.



I believe that embryos and fetuses should be protected by law as human beings. It is always morally wrong to kill them through abortion. I am pro-life.

That said, I am deeply concerned about the state of the pro-life political movement in this country. Our goal, I believe, should be to convince people not to have abortions and to support people who are at risk of having abortions (the poor and single mothers, for example). A secondary goal should be to convince the 9% of Americans who aren't sure whether abortion should be legal that it shouldn't be. The law will change only when the will of the people changes.*

I did not agree with most of my fellow pro-lifers when they got elated that the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to remove their grant to Planned Parenthood, nor am I now mad that they backed down. Why? Because opposing this grant for PP does not further the goals of the pro-life movement since it had nothing to do with abortion. The grant was for breast-cancer screening, which is consistent with the Susan G. Komen Foundation's goals. The fact that the grant went to a group that also provides abortion is immaterial. There is no moral principle that forbids a person to give his or her money to an institution that participates in evil, so long as you aren't giving the money specifically for that evil. In no way is this grant cooperating with evil, since the money is used exclusively for a morally good service (breast-cancer screening), unlike, say, paying your taxes, which is cooperating with evil, since you can't designate how the federal government spend that money.

Railing against Planned Parenthood and this grant is counterproductive to the goals I outlined above. On the contrary, since 90% of their patients go in for things other than abortions,† the only real effect of the sort of bitter rhetoric one typically sees from pro-life people about PP is that it turns the 9% off the pro-life movement because it makes it seem as if pro-life people don't want to support women's health, especially for the poor, through such services as STI testing, cancer screening and prevention, and contraceptives, which is where the vast majority of their resources go.** This feeds into exactly what pro-choicers say about us: that we don't care about women or their health. But supporting women and their health should be a part of the pro-life movement, an integral part, which is why we pro-lifers need to avoid assiduously giving any impression that we don't support mammograms.

This is yet another PR disaster for the pro-life movement, coming right after the foolhardy and failed Republican attempt to remove federal funding for Planned Parenthood, even though that funding already cannot be used for abortions. At that time Sen. Jon Kyl falsely and stupidly claimed in the Congress that over 90% of Planned Parenthood's resources go to abortion. He later bizarrely said that his statement was "not intended to be a factual statement," inviting much ridicule from Stephen Colbert and others. If this is the pro-life agenda (which it shouldn't be!), then I don't blame anyone for thinking that the pro-life movement is anti-woman and just plain irrational.

Let's get it together, my fellow pro-lifers, and stand together to work to end abortion, both in fact and in law, not to get into petty political squabbles about cancer-screening grants that distract from our goal and make us look like misogynists to the very people we need to convince.

*For those who vote Republican in the hopes of pro-life judges being appointed to the Supreme Court, may I remind you of Planned Parenthood v. Casey [1992], the decision of judges appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush? There are so many important things that the President does, such as, especially, declaring war. Have those pro-life votes for George W. Bush actually brought us closer to a country where abortion is no longer accepted, or did it just give us the president who started an anti-life war in Iraq?

†Yes, I know that 10% still makes them the largest abortion-provider in the country. (I corrected my previous statement that it was 3% on the basis of this WaPo piece.)

**I realize that some pro-lifers do not support contraceptives (like myself), but trying to attach that to the pro-life agenda is political suicide, since only a tiny fraction—1% maybe?—of Americans oppose contraception. Look at the trouble Rick Santorum just got into (perhaps unfairly). The National Right-to-Life Committee, which is the largest pro-life organization in the country, has always wisely fought to keep that out of the pro-life agenda. Certainly no pro-lifer should be trying to say that contraceptives should be illegal, as that would be totalitarian.