Monday, January 9, 2012

Standing Room Ony For Boston College's Kreeft

Dr. Peter Kreeft stood before an audience so large it threatened to cause Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel to burst at the seams. Kreeft’s November 17 lecture, “How to Win the Culture War: A Christian Battle Plan for a Society in Crisis,” drew hundreds of Franciscan students, faculty, and guests to hear the Boston College philosophy professor—who has published over 63 books—speak on the fate of the Church. 
Kreeft used a seven-letter acronym, PHONEYS, to highlight society’s biggest problems—Politicization, Happy talk, Organizationalism, Neoworship, Egalitarianism, Yuppiedom, and Spirituality. With deadpan humor and a collection of “Kreeft-isms,” 
he explained the challenges they present to the Church. Beginning with politicization, Kreeft described the tendency Americans have to confuse politics for religion. He drew awareness to the trend of defining oneself by politics instead of religion, saying, “We have persuaded many of them to judge their faith by the standard of ‘political correctness’ rather than vice versa.” Kreeft’s principle of happy talk raised the ante on the average ignorance-is-bliss mentality. He pointed out that Catholics must first return to being Catholic, and correct their own practices before projecting to non-Catholics. 
“Catholics abort, contracept, sodomize, fornicate, divorce, and sexually abuse,” he said, “at almost exactly the same rate as non-Catholics. Amid this devastation, keep them happy talking. Keep them saying ‘Peace, Peace,’ when there is no peace." 
He wants Catholics to take responsibility for their behavior, make a conscious effort to change it, and to acknowledge that blame can't be placed entirely on the secular world.
Link (here) to Franciscan University
Watch his fantastic speech (here)

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