Father Johannes Schwarz in English

Catechetical genius Father Johannes Schwarz has released an English trailer for his new project:

Father Johannes Schwarz is a Genius

I always thought that the Rev. Father Johannes Schwarz, a priest of the Archdiocese of Vaduz (Liechtenstein) and graduate of the ITI in Trumau, was a man of extraordinary talent, but just what an absolute genius he is didn’t become clear to me till he released the catechetical video series Mein Gott und Walter.

The Way of the Cross and Real Apprehension of Sin

One of the purposes of devotions such as the Way of the Cross seems to be that they make us realize things which we already know. Or, to put it in Bl. J. H. Newman’s terms, they give us real apprehension of truths which we tend to apprehend only notionally. Take for example mortal sin: we apprehend at least notionally that with mortal sin we oppose God. Bl. Columba Marmion states this with great force:

Sin is […] the negation by the creature of the existence of God, of His truth, His sovereignty, His holiness, His goodness. […] In voluntarily performing an action contrary to God’s will [the soul] practically denies that God is sovereign wisdom and has the power to establish laws; it practically denies the holiness of God and refuses to give Him the adoration due to Him; it practically denies that God is omnipotent and has the right of claiming the obedience of beings that receive their life from Him; it denies that God is supreme goodness worthy of being preferred to all that is not Himself; it puts God beneath the creature. Non serviam: “I know Thee not, I will not serve Thee”, says this soul, repeating the words of Satan on the day of his revolt. Does it say them with the lips? No, at least not always; perhaps it would not like to do so, but it says them in act. Sin is the practical negation of the Divine perfections […] practically, if such a thing were not rendered impossible by the nature of the Divinity, this soul would work evil to the Infinite Majesty and Goodness; it would destroy God.

He then immediately proceeds to show how this infinite malice is revealed in the passion:

And was not this what happened? When God took to Himself a human form, did not sin slay him? (Christ the Life of the Soul)

But the problem is that we tend that revelation tends in turn to be only notionally apprehended. And this is where the Way of the Cross can help us, since the contemplation of the concrete circumstances of the Passion leads to real apprehension. Thus many meditations on the Stations begin by contemplating the malice of sin. Here is Bl. Cardinal Newman’s own meditation on the first station:

Jesus is condemned to death. His death-warrant is signed, and who signed it but I, when I committed my first mortal sins? My first mortal sins, when I fell away from the state of grace into which Thou didst place me by baptism; these it was that were Thy death-warrant, O Lord. The Innocent suffered for the guilty. Those sins of mine were the voices which cried out, "Let Him be crucified." That willingness and delight of heart with which I committed them was the consent which Pilate gave to this clamorous multitude. And the hardness of heart which followed upon them, my disgust, my despair, my proud impatience, my obstinate resolve to sin on, the love of sin which took possession of me—what were these contrary and impetuous feelings but the blows and the blasphemies with which the fierce soldiers and the populace received Thee, thus carrying out the sentence which Pilate had pronounced?

Kingsley on Lectures

Charles Kingsley, whose clumsy attack on Newman lead to the writing of the Apologia, was a popular lecturer. He had, however, no illusions about the usefulness of lectures:

I myself prize classes far higher than I do lectures. From my own experience, a lecture is often a very dangerous method of teaching ; it is apt to engender in the mind of men ungrounded conceit and sciolism, or the bad habit of knowing about subjects without really knowing the subject itself. A young man hears an interesting lecture, and carries away from it doubtless a great many new facts and results: but he really must not go home fancying himself a much wiser man ; and why ? Because he has only heard the lecturer’s side of the story. He has been forced to take the facts and the results on trust. He has not examined the facts for himself. He has had no share in the process by which the results were arrived at. In short, he has not gone into the real scientia, that is, the ‘ knowing’ of the matter. He has gained a certain quantity of second-hand information: but he has gained nothing in mental training, nothing in the great art of learning the art of finding out things for himself, and of discerning truth from falsehood.

The point is so obvious that it is difficult to see how the German method of teaching primarily though lectures came to be so widespread. For the Victorians lectures were a form of amusement:

Now mind—I do not say all this to make you give up attending lectures. Heaven forbid. They amuse, that is, they turn the mind off from business; they relax it, and as it were bathe and refresh it with new thoughts, after the day’s drudgery, or the day’s commonplaces; they fill it with pleasant and healthful images for afterthought. Above all, they make one feel what a fair, wide, wonderful world one lives in; how much there is to be known, and how little one knows; and to the earnest man suggest future subjects of study.