Give me C.S. Lewis any day

I recently wrote a piece called “The sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars’: Most recent shemitah year ended Sept. 13,” which I posted Sept. 28 (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/the-sycamores-are-cut-down-but-we-will-change-them-into-cedars-most-recent-shemitah-year-ended-sept-13/). Shortly before I had written about blood moons.

A shemitah year, also spelled as shmita, has ancient roots dating back 3,000 years and is grounded in the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel and still observed in contemporary Judaism. During a shemitah year, the land is left to lie fallow.

While shemitahs and blood moons are not common terrain for most Catholic writers to venture into, they certainly have a biblically sound scriptural basis, particularly in the Old Testament books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and in the case of blood moons, Joel.

I tend to work across denominational lines and I find my patience tried by those of any denomination, Catholic or Protestant, or any religion, Christian or non-Christian, or for that matter the religious and non-religious, who are demonstrably uncharitable towards their fellow man. I’m happy enough to spend time with people of any faith or no faith, for that matter, if they demonstrate kindness and goodwill.

After publishing “The sycamores are cut down, but we will change them into cedars’: Most recent shemitah year ended Sept. 13,” one of my Protestant evangelical acquaintances introduced me to John Haller, an Ohio lawyer and evangelical, who has an undergraduate degree from Grace College & Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, and Master of Science (MSc.) and Doctor of Law (JD) graduate degrees from Indiana University in Indianapolis, and who is currently a partner at Shumaker Loop & Kendrick LLP in Columbus, Ohio, with a commercial law practice specializing in the areas of litigation matters involving restrictive covenant and theft of trade secrets, breach of contract claims, securities, finance, lender liability, professional liability and product liability. He’s also listed as a “leader” at Fellowship Bible Chapel, founded in June 2013 in Lewis Center, Ohio, about 20 miles north of Columbus.

“Along same lines as shemitah … John Haller does a weekly prophecy update,” my evangelical acquaintance wrote. I promised to take a look at the YouTube video when I got a chance, observing, “This may not be one that would have been on my normal Catholic viewing list otherwise.”

Sadly what I discovered was not so much a prophetic word, in my view, but rather a diatribe against Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic Church, trotting out the usual canards, criticizing the Catholic Church based on such differences as the preference of some (not all) Protestants for the “empty cross” versus the body of the crucified Christ depicted on the cross on Catholic crucifixes, as they argue we should not dwell on Christ’s death but his resurrection, and that an empty cross is a symbol of his resurrection. And so on. I think I understand Haller’s empty cross argument – and in terms of symbolism I don’t have any problem with the point it makes. But I think he shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both the mass and Catholicism if he thinks Catholics don’t believe the cross is sufficient.  Yes, we liturgically focus on the crucifixion on Good Friday. And then two days later, we celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday, the most important day of the year, as the very raison d’etre of all Christian claims, in the Catholic liturgical year – surpassing even Christmas – and we’re folks, remember, who like our midnight mass liturgy.

Viewing Haller’s “2015 09 27 John Haller Prophecy Update “Check the Box? / False Religion Palooza!,” the link I was sent on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=licpV7kXjIU) just reminds me how far we have to go in building bridges between peoples of different Christian faith communities, different faiths, and no faith at all. If you have any need to check that out for yourself, to see what I am talking about when it comes to Haller, Catholicism and Pope Francis, just go the 45-minute mark and keep on watching. Offensive would be something of an understatement.

C.S. Lewis, the former atheist-turned-Christian apologist, was an Anglican, but one who was distinctly untaken with Christian denominationalism and focused on the essentials of the faith in his writing, not preferential practices.

In an article commemorating the 100th anniversary of Lewis’s birth, evangelical writer J.I. Packer called him “our patron saint.” Christianity Today on Sept. 7, 1998 said Lewis “has come to be the Aquinas, the Augustine, and the Aesop of contemporary Evangelicalism”) and added on April 23, 2001 that Lewis was “the 20th century’s greatest Christian apologist.” While I myself might have exhibited just a tad bit of admittedly denominational bias and opted for the Roman Catholic convert from Anglicanism, G.K. Chesterton, for that honour, Lewis is certainly not an unreasonable claim for being the last century’s most important Christian apologist.

In the pre-publication editing process for the manuscript of what many scholars consider his most important apologetics work, Mere Christianity, published in 1952, Lewis said he tried to guard against putting forth too much his own Anglican beliefs “by sending the original script of what is now Book II to four clergymen (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic) and asking for their criticism.  The Methodist thought I had not said enough about Faith, and the Roman Catholic thought I had gone rather too far about the comparative unimportance of theories in explanation of the Atonement.  Otherwise all five of us were agreed.”

Quite so.

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International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA): Three-day ‘Wide World of Sales Conference’ kicks off Jan. 14 at Bally’s & Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino

Scanning the conference program for the three-day International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA) “Wide World of Sales Conference” running from Jan. 14-16 at Bally’s & Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, billed by its promoters as the “only sales and marketing conference for end-of-life professionals,” one is quickly brought to the realization that the funeral business is first and foremost just that; a business. And secondly, its conference format and focus doesn’t look so very different than the dozens of such events I used to attend for lawyers, judges, law students and law professors back when I was chief writer for Ontario Lawyers Weekly (now The Lawyers Weekly) in Toronto.

The ICCFA is chalk full of trade ideas on how to better utilize “death business management software” and the conference features motivational speakers, such as Anthony Iannarino, CEO of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy in Columbus, Ohio, and Gary O’Sullivan, of The Gary O’Sullivan Company in Winter Garden, Florida, who will be holding a 90-minute “fireside chat” from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday for arriving conference attendees. Apparently the members of the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association involved in sales very much like what O’Sullivan has to say because he was recognized as their speaker of the decade in 2000 – and then again, for an unprecedented second time, in 2010.

While there is nothing surprising about any of this, I can’t help recalling the late Jessica Mitford’s 1963 landmark investigative journalism in her best-selling book, The American Way of Death, an expose of abuses in the early 1960s funeral home industry in the United States, which was still being read by aspiring journalists 20 years later when I was in journalism school. Feeling that death had become much too sentimentalized, highly commercialized, and, above all, excessively expensive, Mitford documents the ways in which, she argued, funeral directors took advantage of the shock and grief of friends and relatives of loved ones to convince them to pay far more than necessary for the funeral and other services. Mitford died at the age of 78 in July 1996, but shortly before her death she had completed The American Way of Death Revisited, which was published posthumously in 1998. Mitford, in keeping with her wishes, was cremated in an inexpensive funeral by Pacific Interment Service in San Francisco at a total cost reportedly of $533.31.

The Sterling, Virginia-based International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association is the only international trade association representing all segments of the cemetery, funeral service, cremation and memorialization industry.

“Founded in 1887 as the Association of American Cemetery Superintendents,” according to the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association’s website, “the organization was created by a group of 18 cemeterians whose goal was to improve the appearance and operations of their properties. Throughout its first century of operation, the association grew in size and mission and underwent several name changes, but it remained a national cemetery-only organization. In 1996, the association became the International Cemetery and Funeral Association, expanding its membership to include funeral homes and other related businesses and extending its reach beyond U.S. borders. In 2007, ‘Cremation’ was added to the name to more accurately reflect the operations and goals of its membership.”

Today, the ICCFA is composed of more than 7,500 cemeteries, funeral homes, crematories, memorial designers and related businesses worldwide.

One of the hot topics trending in the funeral industry for 2015, experts predict, will be death DNA. CD Funeral News ConnectingDirectors.com , a Zanesville, Ohio-based online publication for funeral professionals, published by Ryan Thogmartin, who also owns DISRUPT Media, asked in a Dec. 21 post, “Consumers are having discussions daily about DNA, how is your funeral home addressing this emerging subject? The piece by Terri Sullivan, an Emmy Award winning anchor-reporter at ABC 6/Fox 28 in Columbus, Ohio, opened with “a” local funeral home is helping central Ohio families cope with the loss of a loved one by saving a bit of the past for the future. In some cases it could be lifesaving. It’s called a DNA memorial.

“Schoedinger Funeral And Cremation Service has offered it for about a month. A swab is used to collect cells from inside the mouth, which, along with a snippet of hair, is sent off to a lab for processing.

“I think one of the big reasons people are starting to do this is the technology continues to evolve every year on what we can do with genes and dna genetics and so forth,” said Michael Schoedinger. “And what we’re learning is the cremation rate is approaching 50 per cent. Once a person’s been cremated, we can’t reverse the process and collect their DNA. It’s destroyed forever … Schoedinger said the reasons people opt for the service vary. Some use to it determine their risk of disease or certain medical conditions, others want to know more about their family history.

“Schoedinger says in many ways it’s a gift from the past to future generations.” You can read the complete article here at: http://connectingdirectors.com/articles/45459-millions-of-consumers-are-having-this-conversation-is-your-firm-taking-part

“The relevance of DNA to funeral consumers (because we are destroying the DNA of deceased people when we cremate) will continue to emerge as a subject of importance,” Jeff Harbeson of the Roanoke, Virginia area wrote Jan. 1 in a post in The Funeral Commander, his widely followed industry blog. “Will 2015 be the first year a family will sue a funeral home for destroying their loved ones genetic record without telling them?” Harbeson asks. You can read the complete post here at: http://thefuneralcommander.com/2015/01/01/funeral-industry-2014-in-the-rear-view-mirror-2015-in-the-windshield/

Harbeson, who retired from the U.S. military as a captain, got his start in the funeral industry in January 2004 with as a sales consultant with Batesville Casket Company of Batesville, Indiana. He founded The Harbeson Group in January 2010 and was the co-founder of Family Choice Funerals & Cremations in November 2009.

And in a Canadian connection to the death retrieval DNA trend, Harbeson, although not a scientist, was named president last July of CG Labs Inc. in Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario, founded by its chief scientist, Ryan Lehto, who graduated from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay with a BSc. and in biology and MSc. in molecular biology with a specialization in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) research. Lehto used to work for the university. Harbeson, also a company director, is on board for his specialized marketing experience. As well as the funeral industry, CG Labs, which is based in the McKellar LifeCentre on South Archibald Street, offers expert opinion and services in areas including mass disaster identification; film and television projects; cold case unsolved mysteries (CG Labs once purchased some of Al Capone’s hair at an auction and were able to extract the DNA. It now hangs on the wall, a framed exhibit, so to speak); archaeological sites; and aboriginal land claims.

Last September, CG Labs Inc. began marketing their Secure My DNA brand “to consumers in non-post death situations.” You can watch a 2m6sec YouTube clip called SecureMyDNA here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GCj6Y82VnY

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