Cardinal Levada on apologetics

Today's Zenit daily news bulletin reports on a talk that our Cardinal William Levada from L.A., the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, gave today at a conference about "A New Apologetics for a New Millennium."

Cardinal Levada said, "A new apologetics for the new millennium should focus on the beauty of God's creation.... we must pay greater attention to the mystery and the beauty of Catholic worship, of a sacramental vision of the world that lets us recognize and value the beauty of creation as a foreshadowing of the new heavens and the new earth."

Zenit reports that Cardinal Levada concluded with these words:

"... it should be possible after all to find the truth of the mind and of the heart in just such a dialogue where there emerges what Christians have learned to be the mind and strength and heart and soul of the Gospel revealed in Jesus: that God is love, and that our creation in God's image and likeness makes all humanity able to love God above all things and love our neighbor as ourselves."

It is nice, isn't it, to hear Cardinal Levada speak of the need to pay more attention to the mystery and beauty of Catholic worship. Somehow, when I hear those words, the Latin Mass comes to mind; how about you?

It would be nice if the cardinal's mentions of emphasizing "the beauty of creation" and of "our creation in God's image and likeness" would prompt more Catholics to include preborn babies in the mix when they think and pray about and act upon those things.

So let's you and I give witness, in our example and words every day, to the rights, dignity and profound worth of God's beautiful preborn babies and the place they deserve in everyone's heart and mind and soul.