Keeping the light on in dark times

Legates soon will have a timely opportunity at Legatus Summit East 2021 to learn how to be salt and light in a world that has seen much decay and darkness amid the political unrest and Coronavirus lockdowns of 2020. Among the Summit speakers at the Jan. 14-1 conference in Palm beach, FL, will be Andrew Abela, dean of the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America, and Andrew Swafford, associate professor of theology at Benedictine College, Atchison, KS. Abela will discuss "Faithful Catholic Business Leadership in a Time of Moral Hyper-Confusion," and Swafford, "The Catholic Faith in the Letter to the Hebrews." Here is a preview of their talks.

Modern moral hyper-confusion

As a Catholic and business school dean, Andrew Abela has keenly observed the moral confusion marked by relativism that swirls about in the present age. Now, however, he sees it intensifying into something worse — what he calls moral hyper-confusion characterized by a new absolutism.

“We used to hear people say there’s ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth.’ Now, it seems like there’s one truth, but it’s the wrong one – the woke capitalism movement where we have groups of people telling us what to think and what is right and wrong. There is no room for discussion, no room for any kind of alternative opinion.”

Such thinking, he continued, attacks reason itself. “It replaces reason and analysis with feelings.” This can be seen, he said, in those who claim to oppose social ills such as racism, but promote Marxist economic and family goals, conflating their opposition to racism with principles that are contrary to the Gospel. Similarly, he said, when the head of the school of engineering education at a major university asserted that academic rigor selectively benefits white heterosexual males and enforces white privilege, she was condemning a discipline that affects the structural integrity of skyscrapers and bridges.

Cling to human, moral excellence

In the midst of this kind of confusion, Abela encourages business leaders to fight such battles as best they can politically and socially, but in their day-to-day lives to focus on cultivating specific virtues. “That is the way to keep yourself aligned with human and moral excellence when everyone around you is hyper-confused.”

Abela, co-editor of A Catechism for Business, has been doing research on the 50-plus human virtues catalogued by St. Thomas Aquinas, analyzing them and seeing how they fit together. These virtues, he said, form a way to map out every aspect of life and can be used to perfect how we think, feel and act.

Thomas Aquinas, he said, describes these virtues in his Summa Theologica and also has given them a clearly organized framework that divides human life into these desirable qualities. For example, the virtue of prudence perfects thinking and decision-making and the virtue of justice governs the rightness of actions and ensuring fair treatment of others. Fortitude, on the other hand, deals with feelings of repulsion, leading to right actions in the face of fear, and temperance governs feelings of attraction for such things as food, drink, and physical pleasure. These four virtues are known as the cardinal, or hinge, virtues, because all the others turn on them. Each is also subdivided into others. Abstinence and sobriety, for example, fall under temperance. As part of his work, Abela is pointing to examples of how faithful Catholic and Christian business leaders, many of them Legates, have lived these virtues and what a particular virtue looks like in the lives of men like Legatus founder Tom Monaghan. A visual version of Aquinas’s “taxonomy of virtues” and a list of biographies and business books by the leaders cited is available at VirtuousAdministration.org. Included in the list is Monaghan’s Pizza Tiger.

Abela said faithful Catholic business leaders often have a routine of attending daily Mass and praying regularly, but what happens in between in their meetings, analysis, and decision-making is where the virtues take shape in their lives. “Yes, you pray about and ask for guidance, but the ‘what else’ is the virtues, the spirituality of everyday life. This is the life of a faithful Catholic, particularly now.”

Stabilizing power of The Eucharist

With Catholics returning to Mass following coronavirus shutdowns that darkened their churches, Andrew Swafford is hoping to shine a light into their understanding of the Eucharist as the source and summit of their faith.

Before the virus hit, Swafford had begun working with fellow author and scholar Jeff Cavins on Hebrews: The New and Eternal Covenant, a study and DVD series for Ascension Press on the biblical book of Hebrews. He sees the timing of its release as an opportunity to help Catholics renew their appreciation for the Mass. His hope, he said, is that they will see the Mass “not as an afterthought, but the center of gravity and fulfillment to which the entire Bible is pointing.”

Although the book of Hebrews can be overwhelming, Swafford said, it reflects the Catholic faith in its rich liturgical and Eucharistic themes, showing how the Eucharist completes the entire biblical story. “It’s sort of like entering the holy of holies in biblical theology. It unveils the way in which the new covenant fulfills the old and that movement from old to new, from the earthly to the heavenly, comes out on full display.”

Written for an audience that would have been familiar with the Old Testament, or Jewish scriptures, the book is like no other in its treatment of the priesthood of Christ and his sacrifice, Swafford said.

If Catholics ever wonder whether their faith is the same faith professed by the Apostles, Swafford said, they can find reassurance in Hebrews, which is from the first generation of Christians. “There are clear links to the divinity of Jesus, the saints, the priesthood of Jesus. It’s kind of a mini-catechism that witnesses to the faith we believe was there from the beginning.”

Swafford said Catholics are fortunate in having the Mass because it bridges the gap between then and now. “God didn’t just drop a philosophy down for us. He became one of us, sat with us, touched us, ate with us. The sacraments continue that embodied presence with us. In all the sacraments, Christ acts by His power, but in the Eucharist, it is Christ Himself, the fulfillment of Him dwelling in our midst. The Eucharist makes the Church because the Church becomes the body of Christ through the one-flesh union with Him in the Eucharist.”

The more people move away from faith, Swafford said, the more they are inclined toward superstition because of their inherent thirst for the transcendent and for encounter. “The Eucharist provides just that if we take it seriously. This was the bedrock and key to the faith from the very beginning. Ignatius of Antioch described the Eucharist as the medicine of immortality. When we receive the Eucharist, we have the hope of our own resurrection.”

This means that, for Catholics, the Mass is more than an obligation. “This is what I get to do. I get to walk into the inner quarters of heaven. Hebrews explains this – that this is that for which Isaiah longed. This is what the people of the old covenant longed to see and we take for granted.”

JUDY ROBERTS is a Legatus magazine staff writer.