Thursday, 21 January

21:51

Blizzard won't stop march, but safety concerns cancel some trips to D.C. [CNS Top Stories]

By Jennifer Brinker

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Sometimes being pro-life means making difficult decisions.

Because of a predicted snowstorm in Washington, the St. Louis archdiocesan Catholic Youth Apostolate canceled its Generation Life pilgrimage to the March for Life.

About 2,200 teens, adult chaperones, volunteers and staff were expected to participate in the 43rd annual march Jan. 22.

The youth apostolate consulted with several area meteorologists, who were "95 percent confident" the Washington region would receive approximately 15 to 18 inches or more of snow over a few days, beginning the day of the march, according to executive director Brian Miller.

Participants will be refunded the cost of the trip, minus a small non-refundable registration fee. The apostolate planned to host a local event at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis the afternoon of Jan. 23.

"This is not a decision that was taken lightly," Miller told the St. Louise Review, the archdiocesan newspaper. "The likelihood was so high of a major weather event in D.C. As a father, I considered if those were my children on the bus, what would I want to happen? We have a moral obligation to prioritize the safety and well-being of our youth."

As of late afternoon Jan. 21, the Capital Weather Gang was reporting that starting at 3 p.m. (EST) Jan. 22, a blizzard warning will span the entire Washington region until 6 a.m. (EST) Jan. 24. About 2 feet of snow was forecast for the area.

"Everything is still on schedule," Jeanne Monahan-Mancini, president of March for Life, told Catholic News Service mid-day Jan. 21. She said that so far only one speaker had canceled.

"The March for Life will go on no matter the weather," noted the organization's website, http://marchforlife.org.

"Pro-Life Is Pro-Woman" is this year's theme.

Because of the ongoing refurbishment of the National Mall and strict new regulations that require temporary flooring to protect the grass, the Jan. 22 rally will be held at noon on the Washington Monument grounds.

Others schedule to speak included retired Baltimore Ravens football player Matt Birk; Republican presidential candidate and businesswoman Carly Fiorina; Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family.

Daly also was headlining the first major pro-life conference for evangelicals to be held in conjunction with the March for Life.

After the rally, participants planned to march up Constitution Avenue to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many groups that still planned to come to the event marking the anniversary of the 1973 Roe decision included busloads from the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota.

"They're a bunch of tough folks," said Suzanne O'Connor, an office assistant at St. Peter's Catholic Church on Capitol Hill, where the North Dakotans expected to arrive in the early morning Jan. 22 before the rally and march.

Also not canceling as of the afternoon Jan. 21 were groups from the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, and the dioceses of St. Augustine and Venice, Florida.

AP quoted Monahan-Mancini as saying that "most marchers do tend to come from a strong religious background" that makes them willing to sacrifice their comfort at what usually is the coldest time of the year."

She added that anyone who is pro-life and "a peaceful protester is welcome to join us at the March for Life."

The Missouri Life Caravan was moving forward with its travel plans to attend the march, according to Connie Eller of Missouri Right to Life.

Other pilgrims from St. Louis arrived in Washington a week earlier last week and were expected to go ahead with plans to participate in the march. And more than 500 St. Louis teens separate from the Generation Life group had tickets to attend the Rally and Mass for Life at the Verizon Center, organized by the Archdiocese of Washington.

Diocesan groups in Ohio, Virginia, Indiana and Michigan canceled their trips to Washington, but the Philadelphia Archdiocese indicated no change in plans as late Jan. 21. Some Philadelphia parishes were canceling their trips, and the archdiocese left the call up to individuals.

Auxiliary Bishop John J. McIntyre planned to lead the Philadelphia contingent traveling by bus, train and car to Washington. Hundreds of parishioners, clergy and religious from the Philadelphia Archdiocese normally travel each year for the march.

Dubbed Winter Storm Jonas, some 74 million Americans from Nebraska to New York City will be affected by blizzard conditions of the mammoth storm.

- - -

Brinker is a staff writer at the St. Louis Review, newspaper of the Archdiocese of St. Louis. She and photojournalist Lisa Johnston of the Review arrived in Washington Jan. 19 to cover the march but the impending blizzard cut their trip short. Contributing to this story was Kurt Jensen in Washington and Matthew Gambino in Philadelphia.

- - -

Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

21:47

Pope Francis makes it official, women may now have their feet washed in Church ... [Abbey Roads]

It's about time.


More specifically ...

(1) Pope Francis did not write a letter confirming the decree. He wrote a letter to Cardinal Sarah on December 20 requesting the change to the rubric in the Roman Missal.
(2) The decree has been issued not by Francis himself but by the Congregation over the signatures of Cardinal Sarah and Archbishop Roche.
The decree follows Francis’s request for “an adequate explanation” of the meaning of the rite, but it is interesting to see how Francis’s intent has perhaps already been mediated. He asked that pastors should be able to select participants from the entire membership of the People of God, but the decree from the Congregation specifies a “small group” (parvum coetum in the Latin,gruppetto in the Italian translation), which might be viewed as an attempt to control those celebrations where a large number, or even all, of those present have their feet washed.
However, also notable is the spelling-out that the group can include both men and women, young and old, the healthy and the sick, and clergy, consecrated religious and lay people. - Paul Inwood


It's not a big deal to me.


Song for this post here.

h/t jnstl

21:28

Pope Francis Blesses Lambs on St. Agnes’ Feast Day [The Daily Register]

By CNA/EWTN NEWS | VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis observed the feast of St. Agnes on Thursday with the time-honored custom of the blessing of lambs (video here), whose wool will be used to make palliums, a vestment worn by metropolitan archbishops,...

21:25

Best take I’ve seen on Maundy Thursday female foot fetish, er, washing [A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics]

You know……just a dumb thought.  There are some dudes, long repressed, who develop very strange fetishes.  Some involve being a flasher and exposing themselves to women.  Some involve great pain inflicted on themselves.  Some are into feet.  We had a priest in this diocese who seemed to fall into that latter category.  He just wanted a little touch every now and then.  Maybe Francis…….?

But, with some much better thoughts, Vox Cantoris, who recommends the new foot washing rubric as a great reason to abandon the Novus Ordo and immerse oneself in the bosom of tradition.  I really couldn’t agree more (most emphasis in original, I add comments):

Pope proves that if you disobey a law long enough, the Church will change it.

His “god of surprises” has more in store!

Reason #5264 why we should just leave the Nervous Disordered Mess and its Bugnini lead Masonic inspired sacrilege. It has just been revealed, hidden as it was since a few days before Christmas, that Franciscus has changed the rubrics for Holy Thursday from “Viri Selecti.”

That’s right ladies, you can wear a short skirt and give a little flash to Father Bob as he pours water on your feet in front of the congregation. But don’t worry, he’ll probably have no interest because he’s as queer as this decision…….

…….You and I, however; we are the dissenters. We are the sinners of course. We are those not open to his “god of surprises.” [Leftism masquerading as the Holy Spirit, more like?]

Well, surprise!

Does Franciscus have the legal power to do this? Of course.
Does he have the moral authority? NO, not in a million years. [But that’s just the thing.  The liturgical and doctrinal revolution of Vatican II ushered in an era of progressive will to power, where whatever they want, they just do, whether justified by tradition or morality or not]
It is another example of dissenters changing practice, changing doctrine. [Concur]
Communion-in-the-hand.
Girl Altar Boys.
Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.
It is all, as it this, a liturgical abuse, legalised through the breaking of the law.
So, how do you like the god of surprises, so far, eh?

I will never, ever attend the Sacred Triduum in the Novus Ordo as long as I shall live. I will sit home and read it first before I will ever attend it again if that was all I could do! 
…….
Is it true then? Did he really stand up and shout that he would strip the 13 Cardinals of their red hats? “Full power has been given to me, I run the show around here?”Did he say it? Because if he didn’t, he sure acts like it! [So I almost blogged on this yesterday, but kind of ran of time and sorta thought it was still a bit conjectural.  But frankly, I don’t doubt it a bit that Francis lost his, uh, stuff, when he first heard about the intervention of the 13 cardinals at the Ordinary Synod.  Too bad it wasn’t 130 cardinals]
No Wotyla, No Ratzinger would ever have gotten away with this.

What a blatant, idiotic, abominable decision on the part of the Bishop of Rome. The lawbreaker has become the lawmaker!

Fathers reading this! You have a choice. 
[This is really key…..]  The Washing of the Feet was not part of the Mass until 1955. It was a rite reserved to Cathedrals, Monasteries, Seminaries and Religious Houses. When it was put after the homily on Holy Thursday in the “Reformed Holy Week” by Pius XII at the urging of Annibale Bugnini and other modernists hidden away in the liturgical offices of the Vatican, it was the first time in 2000 years that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was interrupted for a para-liturgy. It was then and remains in the traditional Missal and in the modernist Missal, an “option.” It does not have to be done. It can be optioned out! So, option it out! The decree only changes what it expressly seeks to change. The fact is, it is still an option! [Yes, but we can rest assured that almost all national conferences and individual bishocrats will insist on this being the “norm” for their nations/dioceses, upon pain of supposed “disobedience.” Ergo, fleeing for the Ecclesia Dei communities is really the best if not only option, at least for now.  We’ll see how long that lasts, what with pressure being applied to Pope Francis by liberals to modify the traditional Liturgy, as well.  In which case, I suspect the Society can expect rapid growth]

It does not apply to the traditional Mass.

Where is the consultation with the “brother bishops?” Where is the “collegiality?” This Pope has become a dictator, an absolutist, a Peronist!…….

…….You have one choice friends, leave the Novus Ordo. Get out of it and get into Tradition in every way. It is going to come crashing down. It is a valid Mass when, blah, blah, blah; but it cannot be reformed, it can only be abrogated and it will be! [Said the man who has worked for the “reform of the reform,” by his own admission, for 30  years.  That is to say, this is not a flippant admission.  I have to agree.  I have to further agree that I plan to never attend another N.O. as long as I live, and have great sympathy for those whose circumstances make a fully regular TLM difficult to impossible to assist at]

Tell us how you really feel, Vox!

Naw, I’m right there with you.  I’m not surprised, but I am scandalized as all get out.  And I don’t think this is anywhere close to the end.  If you hold out hope that this pontificate may be shortened by abdication, you may as well forget that now.  I’ve never known a progressive to not hold onto power as long as humanly possible.  So we can probably expect dramatically worse things to come.

Metaphor for the Church:

Ja, Russkieland. And the dude just drove on!

But seriously, we really must be praying for our Church and for Francis.  The reckoning that man will face……….makes me shudder.


21:19

Zeigt her eure Füße [katholon]

DSCF9937Nun dürfen auch Frauen die Füße gewaschen werden. Ganz offiziell! Ganz rituell! Der Papst hat die einschlägigen liturgischen Vorschriften geändert und damit einmal wieder bewiesen, daß er ohne viel Federlesens darum zu machen Gesetze ändert. Hatten sich in den vergangenen Jahren besonders traditionelle Kreise darüber mokiert, daß Papst Franziskus mit der Tradition seiner Vorgänger gebrochen hat und Männern und Frauen im Gefängnis am Gründonnerstag die Füße gewaschen hat, so kann jetzt keiner mehr meckern. Es ist ab sofort alles rite et recte.

Der Papst hat erneut gezeigt, was er auf unsere europäischen Traditionen gibt: Nichts. Das schwache europäische Christentum hat weder Strahlkraft noch die Kraft, den Papst an seine Traditionen zu binden. Sie kümmern ihn nicht. Er wohnt nicht, wo ein Papst zu wohnen hat, er spricht nicht, wie ein Papst zu sprechen hat, er fährt nicht das Auto, das ein Papst zu fahren hat und er tut nicht, was ein Papst dem Protokoll entsprechend zu tun hat. Fertig. Er ist der Papst und der Papst ist in seiner Amtsführung völlig frei. Sollte der Papst morgen festlegen, daß Priester bei der Messe Kartoffelsackalben zu tragen haben, dann ist das so. Ende. Arme Kirche der Armen.

Arme europäische Kirche. Da haben wir rund 1,7 Jahrtausende diesen Kontinent und rund fünfhundert Jahre von diesem Kontinent die Welt dominiert. Auch die europäische Kirche hat die Kirche in der Welt dominiert. Dabei haben wir nicht nur den Glauben an Christus in die Welt getragen, wir haben zudem eine ganze Reihe an Traditionen entwickelt, die uns lieb und wert sind.

Uns, damit sind die gemeint, die in Europa immer noch zur Kirche stehen, die den Glauben hochhalten und für Wahrheit in der Boxring der veröffentlichten Meinung springen. Das, was uns lieb und wert ist, woraus wir (auch) geistliche Kraft ziehen, bewegt den Papst nicht sonderlich. Er hat unseren Bischöfen und damit auch uns gesagt, wie er unsere Kirche sieht. Er hat es, nimmt man es ganz genau, den Bischöfen nicht einmal gesagt. Er hat ihnen einen Zettel in die Hand gedrückt und sie nach Hause geschickt. So wie man unartige Schulbuben mit einer Strafarbeit nach Hause schickt. Auf dem Zettel steht eine Menge drauf, was wie Hausaufgaben aussieht. Der Papst als guter Lehrer weiß genau, daß niemand von den reichen, verwöhnten und verweltlichten Schülern aus Deutschland sich um diese Hausaufgaben kümmern wird. Was kümmert also den Papst das, was uns noch was wert ist? Schwache, verweltlichte, verweichlichte Kirche, die wir sind müssen wir erst einmal wieder Christus in die Mitte stellen und verkündigen.

In der Tradition der Befreiungstheologie und durchaus nach Ansicht einiger Exegeten ist die Fußwaschung der Auftrag Jesu an die Jünger den armen Brüdern und Schwestern zu dienen. Man könnte gewissermaßen sagen, daß der Herr mit der Fußwaschung den Diakonat eingesetzt hat. Während die Einsetzungsworte die Apostel zum priesterlichen Dienst beauftragt haben, liegt hier die Aufgabe zur Diakonie. Recht früh in der Kirche hat sich das dreigliedrige Weiheamt Diakon – Priester – Bischof entfaltet. Beachtenswert ist, daß jede der Weihestufen die vorherige(n) einschließt. Der Priester ist auch Diakon und bleibt Diakon, wenn er zum Priester geweiht wird. Gleiches gilt für den Bischof, der auch Priester und Diakon ist. Früher wurde dies deutlich, indem der Bischof auch die Gewänder des Diakons bei liturgischen Handlungen trug.

Da also die europäische Tradition die Fußwaschung am Gründonnerstag eher im Zusammenhang mit der Einsetzung der Eucharistie und des Priestertums sieht, ist es logisch, daß hier nur symbolisch Männern die Füße gewaschen werden. Nimmt man die Deutung, die der Papst aber auch viele europäische Theologen vertreten, so ist es im Grunde logisch, daß sowohl Männern als auch Frauen die Füße gewaschen werden. Und es sollten wirklich arme Männer und Frauen sein, denn es ist der Caritasdienst der Kirche, der sich hier auf Ursprünge zurück führt.

Mögen wir nun, die wir mal wieder einer unserer liebgewonnenen Traditionen beraubt worden sind, Zeter und Mordio schreien. Den Papst schert das nicht. Er hat ein Gesetz erlassen und das gilt. Das Geschrei des alten und schwächlich gewordenen Europa hören sowieso nur wir selber.

Lassen wir das Geschrei um die Fußwaschung. Kümmern wir uns lieber darum, daß in Europa das Christentum wieder stark wird. Und wer ganz ehrlich zu sich selber ist, ist denn diese Fußwaschung nicht schon längst zu einem Jahrmarkt der Eitelkeiten verkommen? Da werden die blitzblanken Füße von Honoratioren mit Wasser beträufelt und abgewischt. Ja und in deutschen Gemeinden wurde auch Frauen die Füße gewaschen, schon lange vor dem neuen Gesetz von Papst Franziskus. Wenn das die schlimmste liturgische Verfehlung in unseren Gemeinden wäre, könnte man damit sofort einverstanden sein. Da wir eh‘ keine Filiale von Rom sind, haben wir in der Vergangenheit gemacht, was wir wollten und das wird sich vorläufig nicht ändern. Also mag die Füße waschen, wer wem die Füße waschen will. Und wo sich jemand an die alte Tradition halten will, zwölf Männern die Füße zu waschen, wer sollte ihn hindern?

Genug gemault. Manchmal hätte man sich gewünscht, Papst Benedikt XVI. wäre genauso fix und rigoros mit dem Erlaß oder der Änderung von Gesetzen gewesen. Doch Papst Benedikt XVI. war damit sehr zurückhaltend. Leider. Doch Papst Benedikt XVI. war der sensible einfühlsame Lehrer, der auf Einsicht und Vernunft der Schüler setzt, nicht auf Gesetze. Papst Franziskus nimmt diese Rücksichten eben nicht. Er ist ein durch und durch monarchischer Papst mit einem sehr autoritären Führungsstil. Doch das wissen wir ja nicht erst seit gestern.

 

21:18

Pope Francis: Women May Have Their Feet Washed at Holy Thursday Mass [The Daily Register]

By CNA/EWTN NEWS | VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has changed the rules for the Church’s traditional foot-washing ceremony on Holy Thursday, issuing a decree allowing women to participate in what has until now been a ritual officially open only to...

21:18

The car Pope Francis used in Philly is up for auction [CNA Daily News]

Philadelphia, Pa., Jan 21, 2016 / 02:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Archdiocese of Philadelphia and World Meeting of Families have announced that they have a unique way to raise money for local charities this year: auction off the car that Pope Francis used during his historic first trip to the United States.

“I’m deeply grateful to FIAT Chrysler for its generosity in giving the Archdiocese of Philadelphia the two FIATS used by Pope Francis during his visit to Philadelphia on September 26-27, 2015,” said Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. in a Jan. 20 press release.

During his September 2016 visit, FIAT Chrysler made a pair of FIAT 500Ls available for the Holy Father to use during his time in Philadelphia.

After the trip, the cars were donated to the archdiocese who has teamed up with the annual Philadelphia Car Show to auction at least one of the cars to benefit various archdiocesan charitable initiatives including Catholic Charities, a women’s maternity home, and special education schools, among others.

“The FIAT is such an icon of Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia and the auction of this vehicle serves as an extraordinary final event to close this memorable chapter in the City’s history,” Donna Crilley Farrell, Executive Director of the World Meeting of Families – Philadelphia 2015 said. “The good that this auction will bring to the Catholic Charities Appeal, Mercy Hospice, Casa Del Carmen and the Archdiocesan Schools of Special Education is simply incomparable.”

Each year, the Philadelphia Auto Show Black Tie Tailgate which will be held on Jan. 29 and the Philadelphia Auto Show, which will run from Jan. 30 to Feb. 7, benefits the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia through Auto Dealers CARing for Kids Foundation, a group of Philadelphia-area car dealerships that has contributed more than $6.3 million to the hospital and other children’s charities. This year the event will benefit the hospital’s Division of Neurology and, through the papal car auction, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Bidding will take place on the night of the Black Tie Tailgate at 9 p.m. EST, where attendees can place bids in person and remotely, allowing even more people to participate.

“When we learned that these vehicles would be given to us, we wanted to find some way for the public to see them and answer Pope Francis’ call to love and care for the poor,” Archbishop Chaput said. “Our partnership with the Philadelphia Auto Show provides us with the wonderful opportunity to share these vehicles with the community while also connecting with a highly engaged audience for the great benefit of society’s most vulnerable and marginalized members.”  

The second car will be on display to the public for the duration of the Philadelphia Auto Show. However, the archdiocese has said that they may choose to auction that one off as well.

“We are delighted to have Pope Francis’ FIAT 500L on display for the entirety of the Philadelphia Auto Show and we are excited to add this auction component to the Black Tie Tailgate. David Kelleher, Chairman of the Philadelphia Auto Show said.

“No other Auto Show in the U.S. has such a display and we are hopeful that this will drive even greater attendance in Philadelphia. An opportunity like this is truly once in a lifetime.”

 

21:04

Destruction of Mar Elia Monastery and the Criminal Nihilism of ISIS [Aleteia.org]

I had just finished a letter of condolence to dear Muslim friends in a war torn country in the Middle East. An elderly couple whom I had met decades ago, and with whom I have stayed in touch over the years, has suffered far beyond what I can imagine. Their oldest son was kidnapped by Read More…

20:39

Backing up hard drives and moving to a new computer: TIPS sought [Fr. Z's Blog]

hddburnA question for you tech-knowledgeable readers.

I know someone who recently lost everything because the hard-drive died (yes, I know there are ways to deal with that, but in the case that’s not going to happen).

Since disasters seem to come in threes (another was today), my antennae are waving.

All of us need to know that this is not a matter of “if” but “when”. We all need to back up, save, back up more.

So… how about some strategies for saving what we have?

I have my computer set up the way I want it now. So, I ask, is there a way to “clone” my hard drive, make an image as it were, and, in the case of moving to a new computer for any reason (yes, I know that MS is imposing the hideous 10), simply … move…?

I have an unsullied 1 TB drive waiting for use.

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20:32

Some Exegesis on the “Innovation” In 1 Samuel 15 [OnePeterFive]

cattle-640985_960_720

In my post earlier today, I quoted Pope Francis on the topic of what Saul did in the Old Testament. This was the basis for his comments about Christians with “closed hearts,” the “sin of divination” when adhering to tradition, and the sin of “idolatry” when Christians are “obstinate.” The papal statement in question:

“In the first reading, Saul was rejected by God as King of Israel because he disobeyed, preferring to listen to the people rather than the will of God. The people, after a victory in battle, wanted to offer a sacrifice of the best animals to God, because, he said, “It’s always been done that way.” But God, this time, did not want that. The prophet Samuel rebuked Saul: “Does the Lord so delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obedience to the command of the Lord?”

“[This is] the sin of so many Christians who cling to what has always been done and do not allow others to change. And they end up with half a life, [a life that is]patched, mended, meaningless.” The sin, he said, is a “closed heart”, that “does not hear the voice of the Lord, that is not open to the newness of the Lord, to the Spirit that always surprises us.” This rebellion, says Samuel, is “the sin of divination,” and obstinacy is the sin of idolatry.

Over at the fine blog, Unam Sanctam, there is a brief exegesis on this passage which shows that things are not as the Holy Father presented them:

Note the way Francis interprets this passage. Saul has disobeyed God and lost the kingship. What was his disobedience? According to Francis, it was that Saul refuses to obey God by appealing to tradition. “It’s always been done that way”, is how the pope paraphrases Saul. “But God, this time, did not want that.” Saul is portrayed as obstinately clinging to a tradition that is now contrary to the will of God. God is attempting to innovate with a new command. Saul is not open to the “newness of the Lord.” He has closed himself off to the “surprises” of God and taken refuge behind the “meaningless” veil of custom.

So according to Francis’ exegesis, God is the innovator and Saul is the one stubbornly resisting change.

The problem is, the Scriptures suggest the exact opposite is true. If we read 1 Samuel 15, we see that Saul never once appeals to some custom of tradition to justify his disobedience. He simply makes up excuses. He says, “The people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed” (1 Sam. 15:15); a little later on he repeats his excuse: “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I have gone on the mission which the Lord has sent me, I have brought Agag, king of Amalek, and I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God in Gilgal” (1 Sam. 15:20-21).

These are the only two justifications Saul offers for his behavior. He does not appeal to tradition, custom, or that “it’s always been done that way.” Thus, the dichotomy the pope attempts to create between Saul the traditionalist and God the innovator is not supported by the text.

[…]

Far from being a “surprise”, the command to eradicate the Amalekites was established many decades centuries beforehand.

The implication of this is that Saul’s sin is not an obstinate clinging to tradition, but rather an innovation! God had traditionally demanded the destruction of devoted cattle; He did so again in 1 Samuel 15:2-3. Saul was not the traditionalist but the innovator. He disobeyed the tradition of herem warfare by sparing those cattle committed to destruction. Samuel and God rebuke Saul not for stubbornly maintaining a tradition, but for deviating from it.

There’s a good bit more, and taking the time to go through it to arrive at an authentic understanding of this scriptural example is very helpful, especially if you’re not well-versed in the Old Testament.

Why are you still here? Go read it.

The post Some Exegesis on the “Innovation” In 1 Samuel 15 appeared first on OnePeterFive.

20:26

They Live In An Abbey—But They Are Not Monks [The Daily Register]

By Kevin Di Camillo | Indeed, they do live in an abbey, under an abbot (from the Hebrew “abba” and the Latin “abbas” meaning “father”), but they are not monks. They are “Canons”. Specifically “Canons Regular”. Or, in this particular case, even more...

20:16

Abp Nienstedt resigns from helping ill Michigan priest after Detriot Free Press pressures diocese [The Badger Catholic]

Former St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt has resigned from a temporary post at a Michigan church, “in light of the unintended discord that his presence was causing,” the priest at the church wrote to parishioners Thursday.

The Rev. John D. Fleckenstein, pastor at St. Philip Catholic Church in Battle Creek, said that “anger and fear” had surfaced as a result of Nienstedt’s assignment, which started just two weeks ago. Nienstedt was expected to stay about six months.

Bishop Paul J. Bradley of the Kalamazoo Diocese issued a statement later Thursday, saying he regrets not understanding the “emotional reaction” created by Nienstedt’s arrival.

“Archbishop Nienstedt’s presence has unintentionally brought about a sense of disunity, fear, and hurt to many of you during this brief period of time,” wrote Bradley. “As your spiritual father and shepherd, I regret that more than words can express.”
continue at STrib

19:38

Link [Diligite iustitiam]

Chiesa: At the Vatican There Is a “Seismograph” That Is Setting Off Tremors by Sandro Magister

The latest incident is on how Francis interprets and implements Vatican Council II. The “school of Bologna” is chanting victory. But two letters from the pope say the opposite


19:31

Taking It to the Streets: Pro-Life Marches Create a Coast-to-Coast Groundswell of Action [The Daily Register]

By PETER JESSERER SMITH | LOS ANGELES — Internationally acclaimed Christian speaker Nick Vujicic has no arms and legs, but he has changed thousands of lives with his personal testimony. This weekend at OneLife LA, Los Angeles’ annual pro-life...

19:27

Miscarriage Causes Woman to Rethink Abortion...Not at all [Creative Minority Report]

Vox, the popular website (I'm told), ran a piece today titled "I had a miscarriage, and it forced me to rethink everything I believed about abortion."

And it's a fine piece if you enjoy headlines lying to you. Here's what Vox considers "rethinking" about abortion. So you've got this young woman who's vehemently pro-choice who has a miscarriage and finds herself thinking about her unborn child as an unborn child and not as tissue so that leads her to become...drumroll please...a vehemently pro-choice young woman.

Wow. Now that's a philosophical journey, huh?

I'm not critiquing her pain in miscarrying. But Vox putting this up there as a major "rethink" on abortion is ludicrous. She's pro-choice in the beginning and she's pro-choice in the end. There's no rethink at all. At all.

Her upshot is that sometimes it's a baby and sometimes it's not. Or something.

I trust women to know themselves, to know their lives, and to make good choices for themselves. I know now too that making a family is hard, that the beginning of life is ambiguous, part science, part spirit. With something so fragile, so hard, we should do all we can to support women in their journey, to celebrate when they celebrate, to mourn when they mourn. I will always mourn the loss of my unborn baby, and I will always fight to keep women's right to choose, and access to abortion, alive.
This is what passes for real thinking on the pro-choice side.




*subhead*Put Your Blurb Here.*subhead*

18:48

“I have decided:” Francis introduces massive liturgical novelty as personal whim [A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics]

So the inevitable has happened, and Francis has further paved the way for fake women priests by formally directing the women’s feet may be washed during the Maundy Thursday Mass in the universal Church.  It is assumed this does not apply to the Ecclesia Dei communities, but I don’t know on what sure basis such assumptions stand.  The formal declaration is worded in such a way that this act would require a direct repudiation by a successor to repeal: something the conservativish popes since the Council have been reticent to do.  Some details via the Vatican Information Service:

Vatican City, 21 January 2016 (VIS) – The Holy Father has written a letter, dated 20 December and published today, to Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in which he decrees that from now on, the people chosen for the washing of the feet in the liturgy of Holy Thursday may be selected from all the People of God, and not only men and boys.

The Pope writes to the cardinal that he has for some time reflected on the “rite of the washing of the feet contained in the Liturgy of the Mass in Coena Domini, with the intention of improving the way in which it is performed so that it might express more fully the meaning of Jesus’ gesture in the Cenacle, His giving of Himself unto the end for the salvation of the world, His limitless charity”. [Certainly the foot washing had that intent.  But it also had the intent of confirming the male apostles as the heirs of Christ’s salvific action and the inheritors of his Body on Earth, the Church.  This action is a huge demonstration of the all-male priesthood intended by Christ, and by stripping it away, Pope Francis now severely undercuts the popular rationale for the male priesthood.  I cannot believe this to be incidental.]

“After careful consideration”, he continues, “I have decided to make a change to the Roman Missal. I therefore decree that the section according to which those persons chosen for the Washing of the feet must be men or boys, so that from now on the Pastors of the Church may choose the participants in the rite from among all the members of the People of God. I also recommend that an adequate explanation of the rite itself be provided to those who are chosen”. [This “may” will manifest in all non-traditional parishes as a “must.”  I would be shocked if 1 in 100 Novus Ordo parishes did not have women in the lineup this Holy Thursday]

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has today published a decree on the aforementioned rite, dated 6 January 2016, the full text of which is published below:

The reform of the Holy Week, by the decree Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria of November 1955, provides the faculty, where counselled by pastoral motives, to perform the washing of the feet of twelve men during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, after the reading of the Gospel according to John, as if almost to represent Christ’s humility and love for His disciples. [Nice little bit of return fire there from Cardinal Sarah of the CDW, attempting to undo a bit of the damage by plainly laying out why Christ had only men in the Upper Room and why he only washed male feet – because that was His specific intent, not because he was limited by any constraints of the times.  What a ludicrous proposition to impose such a restriction on the God of the Universe who had worked countless miracles before hundreds of thousands of souls!]

I also included that last bit to say this: we can see where even the well-meaning reforms of the 1950s could lead.  Some of those reforms under Pius XII were returns to ancient practice, to be sure, but others were great novelties.  There were reasons they had been abrogated or diminished over the Church’s long history.  When meddling with ancient, infinitely sacred things, unintended consequences tend to abound.

I wonder if more priests of relative orthodoxy will now, following the example of a few already, determine it pastorally unhelpful to do the foot washing?

Will this be one of Francis’ “grand gestures” that prove difficult or impossible to reform?  Do you think this is just a bit of multi-kulti pandering, or is this an act deliberately intended to fundamentally weaken the logic behind the male priesthood?

Do priests who have steadfastly held to the liturgical rites as written in spite of great pressure to emulate the Franciscan example now feel total fools, having the rug pulled out from underneath them?

Note that Francis remains disobedient to the liturgical norms even as he has modified them: he speaks of inviting the “people of God,” which means souls in union with the Church, to the Mandatum, but he himself has used those not in such union, including practicing muslims.

Also note that the constant apologists for the papacy are now telling us how wonderful a gift to the Church this act is, even declaring, as a good reason for the reform (and I am not making this up), that women’s feet are cute.  It is amazing the lengths to which these folks will go to justify the unjustifiable.  It leaves me wondering the extent to which their adherence to the Novus Ordo (and I mean no disrespect to those here who have no option) informs this seeming willingness to see the Liturgy continuously reformed out of existence.

Bergoglio has been doing this for a looong time.  There are numerous photos of him as Archbishop of Buenos Aires washing the feet of women, whether Catholic or not (and typically not).  How many of those subsequently converted by this “grand example” is not known.  A small sampling below:

images (12)

pope-bergoglio-01

images (13)

I have to say to the cardinals who elected this pope……really?!?  This guy was so known for who and what he was, we have the testimony of the “St. Gallen” group of collaboration in destroying Benedict and electing this guy, and yet most cardinals still went along with it.  Were 2/3 really in on the plot?  Or is my surmise right, that half or more of even cardinals are just reeds shaking in the wind, blowing whichever way they see as favorable for them from one minute to the next, with no real faith or even backbone to guide them?

 


18:42

Pietro Maso, Who Murdered His Parents: “Pope Francis Had Mercy on Me” [Aleteia.org]

“My name is Pietro Maso. In July I’ll be 45, and I have been in prison for 22 years for killing my parents on April 17, 1991. I was evil. And yet Pope Francis had compassion for me. I wrote him a letter that was given to him by my spiritual father, Msgr. Guido Todeschini. Read More…

18:41

Jesus Proclaims Jubilee! 2nd Sunday in OT [The Sacred Page]

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18:30

Gründonnerstagsliturgie: allgemeiner Fußwaschtag... [Beiboot Petri]

oder?
Kardinal R. Sarah (Autor von "Gott oder nichts") mußte ein Päpstliches Dekret zur Änderung des Ritus zur traditionellen Fußwaschung während der Missa in Coena Domini veröffentlichen.
Hier das Dekret in in lateinischer & italienischer Sprache:   klicken

                              " Decreto In Missa in Cena Domini"

Das konnte natürlich nicht unkommentiert bleiben.
Father Hunwicke : klicken
"Ein noch neueres Mandat"
Unser Hl. Vater hat befohlen, die Novus-Ordo-Vorschriften für das Pedilavium zu ändern, damit die Gruppe derer, deren Füße gewaschen werden, weitere Gläubige - Frauen nicht ausgeschlossen-umfaßt.
Aber beide -seine eigenen Worte und das aus ihnen resultierende Decretum der Liturgiekongregation beschränken diese Gruppe ganz klar auf "die Gläubigen" und das "Volk Gottes".
In der Vergangenheit hat Papst Bergoglio das geltende, bestehende Gesetz ignoriert. Jetzt hat er (wie es in seiner Kompetenz ist) das Gesetz geändert und ich frage mich, ob er es jetzt seines Gehorsams würdigt und die Nichtgetauften ausschließt.
Wenn er das tut, werde ich das als Fortschritt betrachten. Wenn er seinen vorherigen willkürlichen Umgang mit dem Gesetz fortsetzt, dessen oberster Erlasser er ist, könnte ich weniger gut von ihm denken."

Rorate Caeli:  New Catholic: 
"Zwei Bemerkungen zu historischen Themen:
1. Dieses ist eines der Zeichen der unveränderbaren Handlungen von Papst Franziskus. Seit Beginn seines Pontifikates haben seine Hauptunterstützer-einschließlich Kardinal Maradiaga- darauf bestanden, daß der Papst seine Reformen so groß und symbolisch gestalten wolle, daß kein Nachfolger sie je wieder rückgängig machen könne. Dieses ist sicher ein Beispiel dafür.

2. Besonders tragisch dabei ist, zu sehen, daß die selben Impulse, die den Anglikanismus implodieren ließen Jahrzehnte später für lateinische Kirche auferlegt werden sollen. Diese Impulse sind nicht nur untraditionell - was im Denken des Papstes eine vorteilhafte Eigenschaft sein könnte- sondern kontraproduktiv. Außer die Absicht wäre, die Seele und Stärke der Kirche zu zerstören, sie weiter zu schwächen und Zweifel an der Unveränderlichkeiet der symbolischen Erklärung des männlichen Priestertums in der Katholischen Kirche zu säen. Das war sicher nicht beabsichtigt und gewollt. Sicher nicht!"

18:27

I Apologise! [Fr Ray Blake's Blog]


I apologise of all the faithful and beseech their prayers who in my misconceived arrogance have been excluded by my legalism.
I apologise in particular to those ladies who would have liked to have had their feet washed at the Mandatum on Holy Thursday and were excluded by my rigourism.
I apologise, you were right and I was wrong.
I apologise for teaching that this Rite was about Christ washing the feet of those twelve chosen to be Apostles rather than seeing it as a Rite that expressed Christ's care for the world and for sinners and for the poor. I apologise for suggesting that this Rite was about Christ's priesthood and the Apostles participation in it, I apologise for suggesting that this Rite was in any sense hieratic. I apologise for quoting the Pope Emeritus, and the schismatic Patriarchs of Constantinople and Moscow in a sermon about this Rite. They were obviously misunderstood by me or were dealing with their own local situation. I was wrong, I was also mistaken. I humbly ask anyone who has been misinformed by me to in future to disregard any teaching I might have given at any time, and especially if I have claimed that it was the Church's teaching.
I apologise too to the poor, I apologise to those my brother clergy who chose to ignore the written Law of the Church but nevertheless had the spiritual insight to understand the Spirit of the Law.
I have indeed been a Neo-Pelagian Promethean and I humbly promise in future to follow custom rather than any directives coming from the Holy See or printed in the Missal. I will indeed do my best to not to teach  but to set people free to follow their own lights and inspiration.
I am humbly grateful for this change in the Church's law, though because of the increasing stiffness in my knees for the last few years I have been unable to wash the feet of anyone.

18:10

Cardinal Bagnasco, Italian Bishops' Conference chairman, in favor of Natural Marriage - Pope humiliates him [RORATE CÆLI]

[Background: the Italian Parliament is about to approve the civil recognition of same-sex "couples". Only a few faithful bishops are supporting the millions of Catholics who are protesting it - led by the president of the Italian Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Bagnasco. Pope Francis does not like it.]

The Pope “cancels” Bagnasco, supporter of “Family Day”

by Carlo Tecce
Il Fatto Quotidiano
20th January 2016

Tomorrow [today] Francis will not meet the President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) as planned. He was not pleased at being drawn into Italian political issues. Jorge Mario Bergoglio has eliminated Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco from his agenda of official meetings, so, [there will be] no audience tomorrow morning. The private meeting fixed a week ago by the permanent Episcopal Council, appeared and then disappeared from the internal “Bollettino - Prefettura della Casa Pontificia". The is the umpteenth episode and perhaps the most clamorous, which sanctions the distance between the Church of Francis and the Church of the Bishops presided over by Bagnasco himself.

The motive: the Cardinal’s media- exposure – and consequently that of the Italian Bishops - on behalf of the “Family Day” scheduled for the 30th of January. The Argentinean Pontiff can no longer put up with the political activism of the Bishops’ Conference, accustomed to amending law texts, and is angered because Bagnasco himself has dragged him into the public debate about the public event against Civil Unions. The Pope did not authorize the public demonstration nor the pressures on Parliament.

Pope Francis supports the traditional family i.e. marriage between a man and a woman – but prefers not to interfere with coarse and (even) offensive judgments. It is all about the language of understanding, which is what he adopts to draw the Church nearer to the divorced and homosexuals. Nobody should be excluded or rejected by Christ’s flock. The former Archbishop of Buenos Aires does not hold a different idea of the family and repeated this with insistence during the tumultuous Synod of last October, but he is still convinced that bishops are called to the role of shepherds, not senators or auxiliary members of Parliament.

In order to illustrate the less than idyllic relationship between the bishops of Bagnasco (a survivor from the time of Bertone) – and Bergoglio’s pontificate, no interpretations are necessary: it is sufficient to summarize the facts.

The first: immediately after his election (in the summer of 2013) Pope Francis changed the Secretary General of the Italian Bishops’ Conference: replaced by Nunzio Galantino, Mariano Crociata ended up in the Archdiocese of Latina. The second: at the Bishops’ Assembly, some months later, (May 2014), Bergoglio discouraged Bagnasco: the Argentine delivered the opening address which inaugurated the work and put forward Gualtiero Bassetti as a candidate to be President. The same behavior last May: “The Pope is not the last to speak”, [was] a message directed at Bagnasco. The third: Francis took part in the Bishops’ meeting in Florence (November 2015), in sequence discarding the ‘seasons’ of the eternal Camillo Ruini and his more fragile successor, Bagnasco. “I prefer a Church that is bruised, wounded and dirty from being out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being closed up and clinging in comfort to its own certainties. We must not be obsessed by power, even when this takes on the face of a useful and functional power for the Church’s social image. If the Church doesn’t adopt Jesus’ sentiments, it loses its bearings, it loses its meaning.”

On that occasion, in front of a plateau of somewhat hostile monsignors, Francis also explained the behavior the CEI must assume: “Dialogue is not negotiating in order to try and get one’s piece of the cake. Dialogue is to seek the common good, for everyone; it is to discuss together and think of the best solutions for everyone”.

Even if he is trying to represent the conservative Church which still resists Pope Francis, Bagnasco next year will complete his mandate with an evident delay: they have been waiting in vain in the Vatican for his resignation, [as]they would have endorsed it. (Those who want reform the most report this with enthusiasm). The election of the new head of the CEI will be a significant Italian evaluation on Bergoglio’s pontificate. Who knows if the Vatican will forgive Bagnasco before long and summon him to the Apostolic Palace or, on the other hand, to Santa Marta for a rebuke. For sure, instead of the Cardinal, in the future Bergoglio sees a nuncio. As if to say: my Church is the world, yours is the halls of the Chamber and Senate.

[Source: Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano, via Il Sismografo. Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana.]

17:46

Little Saint Agnes [Abbey Roads]



“A new kind of martyrdom!” exclaimed St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan.
I was thinking of the Saint this morning.

Agnes was only twelve years old when she was martyred!  She had been confined to a brothel, tortured and tormented, for refusing marriage to the Prefect's son.  One is reminded of Maria Goretti who was killed refusing the advances of a would be rapist.

How young these virgin martyrs, how courageous facing death, how compassionate for their persecutors.  It is said Agnes healed the blindness of the man who tried to violate her, and we know Maria Goretti was concerned for the soul of her would be rapist, resisting his advances warning him of mortal sin, and after her death, appearing in a dream which effected his repentance.

These young girls faced with violations against their human dignity, their chastity - resisting unto death their attackers - remind me of the victims of systematic, weaponized rape in our day.  Be it widespread or isolated - it is now understood as a crime against humanity, a war crime.  Certainly ISIS is using it as such.

I pray St. Agnes to intercede for the victims of these crimes.

A new kind of war crime!

Rape, as a crime against humanity: Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity. - Source

It seems to me we must examine our so-called freedoms to abortion, divorce, promiscuity, pornography, sexual exploitation of minors, and other acts of sexual violence as a way to 'control' population, and or undermine human dignity.  Not sure how to express it, but it seems to me these disorders cause serious harm to humanity as well.  

17:42

Pope Francis celebrates Saint Agnes with blessing of lambs [CNA Daily News]

Vatican City, Jan 21, 2016 / 10:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis observed the feast of St. Agnes on Thursday with the time-honored custom of the blessing of lambs, whose wool will be used to make palliums, a vestment worn by metropolitan archbishops which signify their unity with the Church of Rome.

A video posted by Catholic News Agency (@catholicnewsagency) on Jan 21, 2016 at 10:28am PST

The two small lambs, traditionally less than a year old, were placed in baskets and carried to the Urban VIII Chapel in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace Jan. 21, where they received the Holy Father’s blessing.

St. Agnes, whose name means “lamb” in Latin, was a young girl when she consecrated her virginity to God. Although stories of her martyrdom vary, tradition holds that the beautiful young girl was pursued by various men, whom she refused because of her promise to God.

Feeling slighted, these men then turned her over to Roman authorities, outing her as a Christian. She was then put to death by the sword after refusing to give up her virginity or denounce her faith, at the young age of 12 or 13.

The young saint is buried in the basilica named for her, located on Rome’s Via Nomentana. Since she is mentioned in the Roman Canon, her association with the pallium is an important symbol of unity with the successor of Saint Peter.

During the blessing of the lambs, one lamb wears a white crown symbolizing the saint’s purity, and the other lamb to wear a red crown, emblematic of her martyrdom.

St. Agnes is usually depicted as carrying a lamb in her arms, and she is the patron saint of young girls, engaged couples, and victims of sexual assault.

When the sheep are shorn in the summer, religious sisters will collect the wool and use it to weave the palliums, which are white stoles with six black crosses worn by archbishops to show their unity with the Pope and their apostolic authority. The vestment dates back to at least the fifth century.

After the palliums are woven, they are kept in an urn at the tomb of St. Peter until the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, when they are presented to the archbishops who were newly appointed in the last year.

 

The #Pope blessing lambs today, the feast day of the young #saint and #martyr #Agnes – whose name means “lamb” in Latin. Their wool will be used to make the white palliums worn by archbishops. #catholics #catholicchurch#catholic #catholicism #popefrancis Photo : Osservatore Romano

A photo posted by Catholic News Agency (@catholicnewsagency) on Jan 21, 2016 at 7:08am PST

17:30

St. Agnes in Flames [The Rad Trad]

(Ercole Ferrata)
From the Golden Legend:

Then the bishops of the idols made a great discord among the people, so that all they cried: "Take away this sorceress and witch that turned men’s minds and alieneth their wits." When the provost saw these marvels he would gladly have delivered Saint Agnes because she had raised his son, but he doubted to be banished, and set in his place a lieutenant named Aspasius for to satisfy the people, and because he could not deliver her he departed sorrowfully. This Aspasius did make a great fire among all the people and did cast Saint Agnes therein.

Anon as this was done the flame departed in two parts, and burnt them that made the discords, and she abode all whole without feeling the fire. The people weened that she had done all by enchantment. Then made Saint Agnes her orison to God thanking him that she was escaped from the peril to lose her virginity, and also from the burning of the flame. And when she had made her orison the fire lost all his heat, and quenched it. Aspasius, for the doubtance of the people, commanded to put a sword in her body, and so she was martyred.

Anon came the Christian men and the parents of Saint Agnes and buried the body, but the heathen defended it, and cast so stones at them, that scarcely they escaped.

17:25

Foot-washing ritual not limited to men, Vatican says in new decree [CNS Top Stories]

IMAGE: CNS photo/Victor Aleman, Vida Nueva

By Junno Arocho Esteves

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Following a request by Pope Francis, the Vatican issued a decree specifying that the Holy Thursday foot-washing ritual can include "all members of the people of God," including women -- a practice already observed by the pope and many priests around the world.

In a letter dated December 2014 and addressed to Cardinal Robert Sarah, the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, the pope said the rubric of the Roman Missal, which mentions only men as participants in the foot-washing rite, should be changed so that priests can choose from all members of the church.

The pope said the change would help express the full meaning of Jesus' gesture at the Last Supper, his "giving himself 'to the end' for the salvation of the world" and his endless charity. However, the pope insisted those chosen be given "an adequate explanation of the meaning of the rite itself."

The pope's letter and the congregation's decree were released by the Vatican Jan. 21.

The decree, issued by Cardinal Sarah and dated Jan. 6, states that pastors can choose "a small group of the faithful to represent the variety and the unity of each part of the people of God. Such small groups can be made up of men and women, and it is appropriate that they consist of people young and old, healthy and sick, clerics, consecrated men and women and laity."

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told journalists that although traditionally 12 men were selected to represent the 12 apostles, the meaning of the rite signifies Jesus' unconditional love. With the pope's decree, he said, the pope wished "this dimension of the gesture of Christ's love for all" be the focus rather than just a portrayal of the biblical scene during the Last Supper.

Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, explained the history of the foot-washing rite in an article published in the Vatican newspaper Jan. 21.

He said the rite has endured various changes and modifications throughout the church's history. For example, the "mandatum" from 1600 said the custom was for bishops to wash, dry and kiss "the feet of 'thirteen' poor people after having dressed them, fed them and given them a charitable donation."

Changes made by Pope Pius XII were reformed again in 1970, further simplifying the rite and omitting the requirement that the number participating be 12. The significance of the current modifications, the archbishop added, "does not now relate so much to the exterior imitation of what Jesus did, but rather the meaning of what he accomplished, which has a universal importance."

"The washing of feet is not obligatory" during the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper, Archbishop Roche said. "It is for pastors to evaluate its desirability, according to the pastoral considerations and circumstances which exist, in such a way that it does not become something automatic or artificial, deprived of meaning and reduced to a staged event."

In 1987, the then-Committee on the Liturgy of the U.S. bishops' conference explained, "The element of humble service has accentuated the celebration of the foot washing rite in the United States over the last decade or more. In this regard, it has become customary in many places to invite both men and women to be participants in this rite in recognition of the service that should be given by all the faithful to the church and to the world. Thus, in the United States, a variation in the rite developed in which not only charity is signified but also humble service."

 

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17:22

The child Agnes [Fr Ray Blake's Blog]


Image result for st agnes relicsIt is the relic of St Agnes, that tiny skull in her Church in the Piazza Navona, it is the skull of a small child, it haunts me.
It is a stark reminder of the very nature of Christianity, of the Church of the little ones, of both ancient and modern martyrs. The proto-martyrs of Christianity were the Holy Innocents, Daesh are still killing faithful Christian children or selling them into sexual slavery. To kill a child is a terrible act of inhumanity, it is the ultimate act of terror, because it is not so much the child one wants kill, the child is no threat, it is the terror that wants to transmit in child killing.

The real passion of St Agnes has been lost in legend, perhaps even her real relics have been lost and what we venerate is not the real Agnes but the legend of her martyrdom is terrible and persists in the Christian memory, central is the idea of the virgin violated, of the child who remains faithful.
It is the littleness of St Agnes, her weakness, her in-consequentiality that haunts me. In pictures she is shown as a teenager on the verge of maidenhood but relic is the skull of a child at the most four or five, probably younger. It is the skull of someone incapable of any kind of power, or of any kind of real choice, let alone any act of self defence. She is the meek lamb, the swaddled lamb, who like her Lord is led to her death, without the strength or power to resist.

She makes me question what we mean by 'virginity', it is not so much as the Liturgy might have us think, the bride who has made a choice for her heavenly Groom but rather the victim who has been chosen. It is not just bodily integrity, it is about powerlessness or more accurately a lack of any potency.

Christian ascetical practice is about choosing impotence: a monk or a nun living in monastery, without contact with the world chooses not to have power except the powerless power of prayer. Similarly fasting or keeping vigils or other corporal penances are about choosing weakness. Through exhausting bodies we exhaust the will,

17:19

What to do if feds confiscate guns?!? Advice below. [A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics]

A long time friend, Catholic father of nine, and Colorado Springs city councilman sent me this pic.  I agree, I would have a tragic boating accident where all (guns) were lost.  Shame that.  Can’t turn over my guns.  Lake Superior.  I have no idea where I was at.  Really deep.  Good luck finding them.

FullSizeRender

Make that 11.

As a corollary, Sinaloa Cartel head Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was arrested again a couple weeks ago.  Given the corruption in Mexico, it is unlikely he will remain caught for long.  However, the relevant matter for this post is that during his capture, there was quite a firefight that resulted in several narcos being killed and one Mexican marine being injured.  It turns out that one of the guns Guzman had was a Fast and Furious gun, a .50 cal Barrett.

Fast and Furious of course was a very scandalous effort that deliberately sold thousands of semi-automatic weapons from US sources to Mexican drug cartels in a failed attempt to identify major gun dealers.  Those guns have been involved in the commission of a number of felonies, including the murder of a Border Patrol agent AND the failed terror attack in Garland last  year (the Mohammad cartoon imbroglio).

How on earth can we take seriously any supposed concerns over the availability of firearms from this administration when it carried out a program to divert thousands of such weapons deliberately into the hands of known felonious criminals?  But of course gun control efforts from Obama and his cohort are motivated entirely by humanitarian reasons and not at all about bringing a reluctant populace to heel.

Wonder what Bishop Farrell would have to say about that?


17:14

Women may now have their feet washed at Holy Thursday Mass, Pope says [CNA Daily News]

Vatican City, Jan 21, 2016 / 10:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has changed the rules for the Church’s traditional foot-washing ceremony on Holy Thursday, issuing a decree allowing women to participate in what has until now been a ritual officially open only to men.

In a letter addressed to Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Pope said that from now on the 12 persons chosen to participate in the ritual of the washing of the feet will be selected “from among all members of the People of God.”

“For some time I have been reflecting on the rite of the washing of the feet, which forms part of the Liturgy of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, with the intention of improving the ways in which it is put into practice, so that we fully express the meaning of the gesture made by Jesus in the Upper Room, his gift of self until the end for the salvation of the world, his boundless charity.”

Francis also stressed that “an adequate explanation of the meaning of the rite itself” ought to be provided for those chosen to participate.

The official decree was signed by Cardinal Sarah Jan. 6. In it, the cardinal specified that the previous text of the Roman Missal, which says that “the men chosen are accompanied by the ministers,” has now been changed to read “those chosen from among the People of God are accompanied by the ministers.”

Pastors can freely choose a group of faithful “that represents the variety and unity of every part of the people of God,” he said, explaining that this group may now consist of “men and women, and suitably of young and elderly, healthy and sick, clerics, consecrated and laity.”

Many parishes around the world had already been including women in the ritual for years; the decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship makes the practice licit.

Francis himself had a habit of including women and non-Catholics in the ritual during his own Holy Thursday liturgies, which have taken place in both a juvenile detention center and a center for the elderly and disabled.

Just after his election as Bishop of Rome in 2013, Pope Francis said Mass at Rome’s Casal del Marmo juvenile detention center, where washed the feet of 12 youth, including two women and two Muslims.

A year later, he said Holy Thursday Mass at the Don Gnocchi center for the elderly and disabled, where he washed the feet of both young people and elderly, four of whom were women.

Although the Pope has previously chosen to wash the feet of both non-Catholics and non-Christians, Archbishop Arthur Roche, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, cautioned that the new change does not necessarily include them.

In Jan. 21 comments to CNA, the archbishop said that the changes are meant for “the local community,” and members of “the local parish.”

He said that reading the decree as an invitation for non-Catholics to participate would be a “selective interpretation” of the text, and that while this could be something that happens “in the future,” it’s probably not what the Pope’s decision intended.

However, Archbishop Roche did say that although the decree is meant for the local community, it’s possible that a non-Catholic spouse of a parishioner who regularly attends the Catholic liturgy could be chosen to participate.

The archbishop also touched on the topic of whether non-Christians could be chosen. He pointed to Pope Francis’ decision to wash the feel of Muslim youth in 2013, distinguishing between papal liturgies from the everyday liturgy in “normal” situations.

He explained that when Pope Francis chose to wash the feet of Muslim youth, it was under “special circumstances” and took place in an “unusual setting,” whereas the current decree is intended for the “normal, everyday liturgy in the parish.”

So when reading the decree’s emphasis on the “People of God,” Archbishop Roche said the phrase can be interpreted from its use in Lumen gentium, the Second Vatican Council's dogmatic constitution on the Church, in which the term refers “specifically to the Church.”

17:02

St Thomas and St Agnes [Sancrucensis]

SaintAgnes

Today being the feast of St Agnes, I remembered Fr. Romanus Cessario O.P. mentioning that St Thomas Aquinas carried a relic of the virgin martyr at his breast. I looked it up, and found that he also once sponsored a meal for his students on her feast:

One of Aquinas’s early biographers tells us that he also kept relics of St. Agnes on his person: “reliquias dicte sancte, quas ad pectus suspensas ex deuotione portabat.” In other words, Aquinas piously wore the relics of St.Agnes at his breast. On one occasion we know that St.Thomas used these relics to obtain the intercession of the young saint in order to cure his sick socius or priest-companion, Friar Reginald of Piperno.When St. Agnes’s mediation was discovered to have been successful, and Reginald’s health had improved, Aquinas spontaneously promised to sponsor a special meal for his students on every twenty-first of January. This cure took place in 1272, and thus it happened, as a contemporary chronicler observes, that Aquinas was able to fulfill his votive promise only once— namely, in the winter of 1273. (“Circa res . . . aliquid fit,” p. 74)


17:00

The secret and admirable way of silence [Vultus Christi]

Mectide de Bar

Mother Mectilde de Bar to a Religious of the Monastery of Toul, 1678 (Part II)

Blessed the soul that attends faithfully to her God by this secret and admirable way of silence. Never depart from it lest you become unfaithful. If, in this silence, one should say to you, “What are you doing?” You yourself do not know what you are doing: your support is naked faith. Be content that God knows it and that He knows it through and through.

Do not take fright at any temptation, no matter what it may be. You have not yet come to the end. There are souls who, [praying] in this way, suffer terrifying temptations. It is necessary that God alone, in pure faith, be enough for you; learn to do without all the rest. If one should say to you that you do not know what you adore, be assured, on this point, that you cannot miss the mark, because you are adoring in spirit and in truth He who is, and that you adore Him all the more truly in that you gaze upon Him by means of a simple faith, as He is in Himself, without image and without distinction.

Close your ears to all the interrogations that will be made concerning your way; be content in knowing that it is your path. Do not quit it, and do not trouble yourself over its obscurity nor over the obstacles that you meet. Abide in a loving confidence in God. Many souls arrive a certain degree of prayer, but they do not get beyond it. Saint Teresa says that she does not know the cause of this, and someone else says that the fault comes from our having too much self–love and holding back. We do not enough abandon ourselves blindly, under the best pretexts in the world.

If I followed my thoughts, I would write much on this subject, and I don’t know why Our Lord has given me so many little lights on this subject, given the abyss of my infidelities and how far I am from the purity of this way. It is true that there is a great distance from the union of love with God and the holiness  that one must have to enter heaven. God moves souls along during life and He brings them to consummation at death: it is the work of His divine hand. As for your sins, do not trouble yourself looking for them. If God wants an extraordinary confession of you, He will give you the grace and light to make it. Do not worry about it. Ask for the sanctification of this community and for my soul a perfect annihilation.

I embrace you in the pure and sacred love of our Divine Master, and I leave you in His Divine Heart, and in the hands of His most holy Mother. Farewell in God forever, without separating ourselves from the holy union that is ours in Him, in life and in death.

16:51

Blog problems resolved [Fr. Z's Blog]

Yes, the blog was down today for a while.  I think this was a combination of Zuhlsdorf’s Law and another one of Pope Francis’ … interesting moves.

A reboot took care of the annoying problem.

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16:42

Francis orders change to Foot Washing Rite on Holy Thursday to include females [Fr. Z's Blog]

Today brought the news that the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments (CDW) was ordered by Pope Francis to issue a document that allows for the washing of the feet of females on Holy Thursday in the optional foot washing rite during the Mass of the Last Supper in the Ordinary Form.

A letter from Francis to Card. Sarah, the CDW Prefect, dated 20 December 2014 but only posted today (21 Jan 2016) via the Bolletino notes that Francis had discussed this with Sarah previously. Francis is trying to “improve” (migliorare) the rites so that they express fully the meaning of Christ’s gesture in the Upper Room. Then Francis seems to lock into a certain interpretation of that gesture: “his self-gift ‘unto the end’ for the salvation of the world, his charity without boundaries”. Francis mentions nothing of the relationship of Christ with His Apostles. Francis then commands that there be a change in the rubrics of the Roman Missal, saying “sono giunto alla deliberazione … I have reached the decision…”.

This has been brewing for over a year.

In Card. Sarah’s Decree we read that “it seemed good to the Supreme Pontiff Francis to change the norm”. Thus, now: Missalis Romani (p. 300 n. 11) legitur: «Viri selecti deducuntur a ministris…», quae idcirco sequenti modo mutari debet: «Qui selecti sunt ex populo Dei deducuntur a ministris…» (et consequenter in Caeremoniali Episcoporum n. 301 et n. 299 b: «sedes pro designatis»).

I note, however, that – in the Missale Romanum – the group from which people might be selected is restricted to “Populus Dei… the People of God”, which means, I think, at least Christians.   The Caerimoniale has different language.

So, the rubric changes from “viri selecti… chosen males” to “qui selecti sunt… those who were chosen”.

This unprecedented innovation will be in effect for the Ordinary Form this coming Triduum.

Observations.

First, in the Ordinary Form the footwashing rite or “Mandatum” is optional. It need not be done at all. Neither can any bishop or priest be constrained to do it. Fathers, you can simply drop it.  If you are being pressured to add women or girls to those chosen, don’t do the rite.

Second, this does not apply to the Extraordinary Form. Fathers. Think about it. ¡Hagan lío!

Third, just as in the cases of Communion in the hand and the use of altar girls, both of which were legalized after years of blatant disobedience to the law, this move by Pope Francis could be interpreted to mean that liturgical norms mean very little and, worse, that liturgy means very little.  Thus, we move deeper into a brave new antinomian world.  I suspect, however, that it one were to choose to make it up as you go (disobey) in the traditional direction rather than in the innovative direction, the world would be brought down on one’s head.

Fourth, see number two, above.

The moderation queue is ON.   Please keep the spittle-flecked nutties to yourselves.  I have enough of that in my email.  Thanks in advance.

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16:39

Women now included (lawfully) in the Washing of the Feet [Semiduplex]

Today, the Vatican has released a letter from the Holy Father to Cardinal Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and a decree of the Congregation, In Missa in Cena Domini, both to the same effect: women may now be lawfully included in the ceremony of the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday. The Holy Father had previously included women in the rites he personally celebrated, but the liturgical law of the Church had still referred to viri selecti. And so, for the past couple of years, as Maundy Thursday came around, there would be a little debate about whether it was proper for rank-and-file priests to follow the Holy Father’s lead, notwithstanding the rubrics in the Missale Romanum. (One’s answer depended largely on one’s ideological orientation.) New Liturgical Movement has translated the relevant portions of the Holy Father’s letter and Cardinal Sarah’s decree implementing the Holy Father’s wishes.

As you might imagine, traditionally minded Catholics have noticed.

The current rites for the washing of feet, as Cardinal Sarah’s decree notes, really go back to 1955, when the Sacred Congregation for Rites handed down Maxima redemptionis, the decree reforming the entire Holy Week liturgy. And, as even casual observers of the liturgy know, the 1955 Holy Week reforms were a sign of things to come. First, the 1962 Missale Romanum of St. John XXIII, then the various post-Conciliar revisions to the liturgy, culminating, of course, in the 1970 Missale Romanum of Bl. Paul VI. So, really, in a sense, today’s decree is simply another milestone along the road that began all the way back in 1955. However, given the connection between the washing of feet by Christ and the priesthood, it is not an insignificant milestone. The argument is already making the rounds that this weakens one of the symbolic justifications for the all-male priesthood. While Ordinatio sacerdotalis remains an essentially infallible pronouncement, given the haste and glee with which other aspects of John Paul’s magisterium have been dismantled, we are not altogether sure that Ordinatio sacerdotalis is an impregnable fortress against the innovators. So, while we are not as given to alarmism as some are, we do not wholly discount their warnings.

We do not see any indication of whether this decree is to have effect for the Forma Extraordinaria. The Holy Father did not mention it specifically in his letter and the decree did not mention it, either. Recall that the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae, which implemented more particularly Summorum Pontificum, and which remains in full force and effect, provides (no. 24) that “[t]he liturgical books of the forma extraordinaria are to be used as they are. All those who wish to celebrate according to the forma extraordinaria of the Roman Rite must know the pertinent rubrics and are obliged to follow them correctly.” (Italics in original.) Thus, it seems to us that, in the Forma Extraordinaria, the washing of feet is limited to men, but in the Forma Ordinaria, the washing of feet may include both men and women. (Father Hunwicke notes that, in both forms, the rite is limited to Christians even under today’s decree, though the Holy Father’s personal practice usually includes Muslims.) One imagines that Archbishop Pozzo will have to release some statement from Ecclesia Dei before Maundy Thursday this year, lest real confusion take hold.

Of course, we note the usual consternation from traditionally minded Catholics—though, if our instincts are right, and this change does not affect the Forma Extraordinaria, it is unlikely that traditionally minded Catholics will be affected by the change—and we anticipate that there will be more consternation over the subject. However, this practice, illicit though it was, has existed for some time in Novus Ordo parishes. The Holy Father has made it lawful, but he certainly hasn’t made it up for the first time. The real issue, as New Catholic notes at Rorate Caeli, is that this appears to be essentially an irreformable act. The Holy Father’s reform on this point is “so great and symbolic no successor of his could ever overturn [it].” (Practically speaking. Legally speaking, his successor could abrogate the decree as soon as he walks back inside from the Urbi et Orbi.)


16:38

1.21.1793. [Just Thomism]

Louis XVI was executed today at 10 AM. Norman Malcolm describes the significance of the event by pointing out that at the time of the execution the civilized world had accepted hereditary monarchy for five thousand years. For the last few years I’ve spent the day taking stock of my opinions of the hereditary monarchs* of the ancien régime and the modern/liberal order that replaced them.

I first unearthed my opinion about kings accidentally. I was trying to understand Dawkins’s opinions on God, which are a peculiar mix of utter apathy that turn out to be grounded on contempt, and I hit on the thought that this was more or less how I felt about kings. I’m physically incapable of seeing political authority as conferred by the normal course of birth, which makes me a-monarchist in the same way that Dawkins protests he is atheist – it’s not that he hates or rejects God but that he simply has no feelings about him one way or another. This apathy-which-is-not-contempt is unstable since everyone sees his dispositions to the world as rational, and so unless the other guy insists that his love of God or monarchs is a personality quirk or a sheer matter of taste both Dawkins and I have no choice but to see him as irrational. The more earnestly such a person insists on his reasons, the harder it gets for us to avoid contempt. This is before raising the possibility that the other guy might want us to bow to our King.

Our self-descriptions can be more or less coherently imagined as counter-factual. I have very little trouble imagining what it would be like to work as a store manager or to come from a larger family or even be a protestant, but when I try to imagine what it would be like to be female or extraverted I hit a conceptual wall. What I have to deny is so close to the core of my personality that I can’t conceptualize the sort of self that could transition from one way to another. It’s easier for me to imagine taking the blue pill and waking up in the Matrix than to imagine myself finding it natural to bow to hereditary ruler.

But that doesn’t make me right. I’m suspicious of any opinion that commits me to seeing myself as living on a small island of political rationality, and so I either have to adopt historical relativism about political order or search around for some basis in my self for the rational belief in the justice of hereditary rule. If there is something wrong with it, it is a far more subtle error than I’m taking it to be.

—–
* I stress that it’s precisely as hereditary that the kings fascinate/repulse me. It’s the denial of the justice of hereditary rule that I take as the fundamental sense of the political equality of persons. Only fools think that no one is born more fit to rule than any other – the dispute is over whether the rulers can be justly identified by birth alone, or whether they must be empowered by a process that human beings have set up themselves: a lottery, an election, a rational test of ability, etc. This seems like a small dispute but is of tremendous consequence – it will ultimately determine whether we see nature as a co-partner in human life or not. But if it has no partnership with us, what is it? A sublime and indifferent object we can merely look at? A heap of mere material to be dominated and worked into our schemes? A faceless monster with no intentions at all, much less ones that might incorporate our existence into itself? Perhaps a foolish or delicate creature in need of our protection and oversight? The king is the nexus of nature/birth and human affairs. The equality of modernity is the explicit rejection of just such a nexus, and we have yet to come to terms with what this modernity entails.


16:30

Bishop Bobby Barron: faker or faithful? [AKA Catholic]

Robert Barron, to my mind, is the quintessential poster boy for the so-called “New Evangelization.” He has all the right qualifications: He is a camera-ready media creation with practically nothing of substance to offer beyond sugar-coated platitudes packaged in Catholic language. He is an ecumenist who is well-versed in the craft of religious diplomacy. He is an erudite apologist, not for the Faith that comes to us from the Apostles, but rather, and almost exclusively, for the Crap that comes to us from the Council. He is an Ultramontanist papal fanboy; ever at the ready to cheer the pope’s every more »

16:28

"Gay Marriage": Bishops Uncertain About Pope's Course -- Which Led to Defeat in Argentina in 2010 [The Eponymous Flower]

(Rome) The Family Day, which is the planned demonstration for the 30th of January, organized by the Italian Manif pour tous, and the Pope's attitude about it, has set off a battle royal in the Italian Bishops' Conference -- between its President Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco and the General Secretary Bishop Nunzio Galantino.  Additionally it's still being discussed in Argentina to this day whether Jorge Mario Bergoglio, had favored the introduction of "gay marriage"  when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate of Argentina in 2010.
The president  of the Italian Episcopal Conference is automatically the pope as Bishop of Rome. However, he appointed as representative  both a delegated President [He was voted in by a majority vote, which was then considered a snub to the pope.] as well as the Secretary-General. Cardinal Bagnasco was acquired by Pope Francis from his predecessor. Bishop Galatino, however, was introduced by him and is considered a "man of the pope". On the first Family Day, on June 20, 2015   a million people took part to protest against the introduction of "gay marriage" and against the gender ideology in schools.  Now the debate begins in Parliament, which is the reason for a second Family Day, to tell the representatives of the people what the Catholics and other people of good will do not want.

Dispute in the Bishops' Conference Means Weakening

Galatino let the bishops, organizers and the public know that there would be no support for the Family Day by the Episcopal Conference. He also revealed with regards to the controversial draft laws, that they are acceptable to him, except for the adoption rights for homosexuals and equality of gay partnerships with marriage.
Cardinal Bagnasco, however has assigned Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Episcopal Conference,  to devote  attention and gain visibility for Family Day. The editorial promptly obeyed the episode after previously stony silence had reigned for days.
The process is tricky, because the official editor of the daily is General Secretary Galatino. The media of the Episcopal Conference is nominally under the General Secretariat.
Cardinal Bagnasco also telephoned on 16 January with Kiko Argüello, founder and president of the Neocatechumenal Way to encourage him to participate and mobilize. On June 20, thousands of families of the Neocatechumenal Way came to the Piazza San Giovanni.
Argüello responded immediately. He had the content of his telephone conversation with Cardinal Bagnasco published on the news service Zenit of the Legionaries of Christ, and was simultaneously announced his support for the Family Day.
"It is very important that the Italian bishops are with us, because otherwise were we going there alone, we'd be exposed to being accused that were 'homophobic'  and things like that. Behind us stands the Church who supported us in this defense of the Christian family, which is being hurt in this way."
Last Sunday, Cardinal Bagnasco spoke publicly against the bill, and in principle, and not just selectively, as Secretary Galatino has. The bill was "on the part of the Parliament, a great distraction from the real problems of Italy". He also announced his support for the Family Day. The rally he described as "comprehensible", "reasonable" and "absolutely necessary".
On January 25, a day before parliament starts debate on the introduction of "gay marriage" and five days before the Family Day, the winter session of the Permanent Council of the Bishops' Conference begins. "Sparks  should fly," said Vatican expert Sandro Magister.
Secretary Galatino has never allowed, since taking office in late 2013,  an opportunity to escape to let people know that he was acting on direct orders from Pope Francis. It  is not hard to believe him in this particular case, says Magister.  Pope Francis' dislike of  public confrontation is well known. Above all, he does not like confrontation with the political left, when it comes to issues such as right to life, abortion, euthanasia and homosexuality.

Argentina and the Introduction of "Gay Marriage"


Cardinal Bergoglio in Buenos Aires subway

In Argentina Bergoglio 2010 had the claim to impose his leadership as Primate in the fight against the legalization of "gay marriage". In reality, he maneuvered the Catholics in an impasse. He prevented an open resistance and thus sealed the defeat of the Church, even before the battle had begun. This is also known in the Vatican, the bishops' conference and by the organizers of the Family Day and brings considerable difficulties all together. They need a hand to avoid the mistakes of Argentina, in order not to end up as  it finished in France, but at the same time paying attention to the Pope, who wants to repeat the Argentine way, but can not be contradicted easily in the open. The conflict takes place behind the scenes, without too much coming to the public. And it takes place in the second and third row,  holding the course willed by Pope course wrong, without calling the Pope by name. Particularly problematic is proving that to Church representatives who give the organizers a hard time  "on behalf of the Pope."
In addition, there remains the hardly calculable factor, as to how Pope Francis will even behave. In Argentina 2010, he interfered actively to send the Catholics back home who wanted to resist the "gay marriage". He leaked, not to held to be idle,   that he had requested cloistered nuns, four monasteries, to have their prayers against the law. In correspondence he described the devil as the author of the law.
In Argentina some take him for evil, because  a diversionary tactic was seen to stifle Catholics. But it got worse. That is why it is discussed in Argentina today,  whether the "gay marriage"  had  been implemented in  2010 also thanks to the involvement of Cardinal Bergoglio.

What really happened in 2010 in Argentina?


President Cristina Kirchner triumphed 2010 - with flanking help?

"Credible Catholic sources from Buenos Aires have provided us  additional information in the last few days  on the matter," wrote the Vatican expert Sandro Magister.
"The letter of Bergoglio to the Carmelites, which was top secret until then, was suddenly made ​​public on 8 July 2010, but not by the official news service AICA of the Argentine Episcopal Conference, but on the website of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, apparently since the Archbishop so wanted it. 
That was a bomb. The letter was adopted by all media and also AICA finally had it published. For days nothing else was talked about in Argentina  in and outside Parliament, where the supporters of the law had an easy time to make fun of Bergoglio's word choice about the devil and against them. 
The most zealous supporters of the law, the Kirchnerista Miguel Pichetto, let his scorn have free reign, that 'such an intelligent man as the Cardinal' could 'express themselves that way. President Cristina Kirchner said she was shocked about, 'this return to the Middle Ages'."
Bergoglio had asked Catholics to keep still, because he would take care of the matter. Even so, not all were satisfied. Until July 8, 2010, several mass rallies against the bill were held in Argentina. People went in such large numbers on the street that President Kirchner could not be further  from certain of finding a majority in favor of the bill in parliament. The mood had turned against them.
Then Bergoglio,  with the publication of his letter to the four monasteries, really garnered ridicule for the Catholic rejection of "gay marriage." Kirchner triumphed.

With the release of Bergoglio's letter "everything changed"

"With the date of publication of the letter," said Magister, "everything changed.  The conflict was now polarized between the obscurantism of the Church and the enlightenment of progress." At least, its release represented for the proponents of the bill a coup and returned  them to the upper hand. On 15 July 2010,"gay marriage" was introduced with only three votes majority.
"In fact, there then reigned  an uneasiness among many Catholics who were committed to the defense of the family about Bergoglio's use of words in the letter, who had always expressed himself so cautiously and controlled in public. 
And even today, as then, many wonder whether the publication of this letter did not have a counter-productive effect and thus favored the adoption of the law."
Magister adds this about his sources: "The Catholic,  Argentine sources have asked us not to reveal their identity," because, "since there is now  a new ecclesiastical establishment in Rome, then it can be dangerous", remember that "We here in Buenos Aires have lived with it for a long time."
Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Wikicommons / Settimo Cielo / anw (Screenshot)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG

16:02

John Paine is the Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth [The Daily Register]

By Patty Knap | Some of us can be nudged out of our complacency with just a subtle thought, a conversation, an inspiration. God chooses a more dramatic and painful path for others. We often wonder how God wants to use the deepest suffering in our...

16:01

People Who Kill Innocent People Have Nothing to Brag About [The Daily Register]

By Patti Armstrong | Public bragging about abortion is the latest attempt to fight a losing battle. Abortions are at record lows as Americans grow increasingly intolerant of it.  Last summer’s undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s...

16:00

College Professors Who Are Building a Culture of Life [Cardinal Newman Society All Posts]

The Cardinal Newman Society’s reporting in 2015 featured interviews with numerous Catholic professors who, doing their best to build a culture of life, spoke on pro-life topics such as the undercover Planned Parenthood videos, support for Planned Parenthood on campus and the Obama administration’s contraceptive “HHS Mandate.”

The following list highlights seven professors that the Newman Society spoke to in the last year who are helping to advance the pro-life movement, both at their respective institutions and within society. This list is not meant to be exclusive or to be considered as a ranking of any kind.

More...

15:56

Lutheran Group Reportedly Given Holy Communion in St. Peter's Basilica [The Daily Register]

By Edward Pentin | A Lutheran group from Finland, led by their bishop, Samuel Salmi of Oulu, reportedly received Holy Communion in St  Peter’s basilica this week, despite indicating to the priests present that they were ineligible to do...

15:54

Jewish Priests and Catholic Priests [Podcast] [Taylor Marshall]

My goal this week is to talk with you about the theology of priesthood – from the Old Testament and how it relates to the Catholic Priesthood.

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#101: Jewish Priests and Catholic Priests [Podcast]

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  • Proverb of the Week: Sirach 7:31
  • Featured Segment: 101 Jewish Priests and Catholic Priests
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  • Latin Phrase of the Week: Sacerdos

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Podcast Archive
# Title Released
100 Is Star Wars Christian or Anti-Christian? 01/06/2016
099 Should Catholics Share the Gospel with Jewish Friends 12/16/2015
098 Was Muhammad Evil? 11/18/2015
097 Revelation Ch. 22 Tree of Life and Holy Water 11/10/2015
096 Revelation Ch. 21 Heaven as a Cube and the New Jerusalem 11/04/2015
095 Taylor’s Thoughts on Being Father of a Large Family 10/28/2015
094 On the Indissolubility of Marriage and the Synod on the Family 10/21/2015
093 Revelation Ch. 20 The Millennium in Catholic Tradition 10/15/2015
092 Revelation Ch.19 Eucharist as Apocalypse 10/07/2015
091 Revelation Ch. 18 Fallen is Babylon the Great 09/30/2015
090 Revelation Ch. 17 The Whore of Babylon and Her Beast 09/23/2015
089 Do Babies Know the Existence of God 09/9/2015
088 Revelation (Chs 15-16) 7 Chalices of Wrath (Catholic Apocalypse Part 10) 09/2/2015
087 Revelation Ch. 14 Lamb on the Mountain with 6 Angels against Babylon 08/26/2015
086 Taylor’s Conversion Story to Catholicism – Interview with Matthew Leonard 08/19/2015
085 Revelation Chapter 13 The Sea Beast and the Land Beast the Mark of the Beast 08/13/2015
084 Revelation Chapter 12 – Our Lady of the Apocalypse 07/29/2015
083 The Giant Angel and Two Witnesses: Revelation Part 6 (Chapters 10-11) 07/15/2015
082 The Seven Trumpets: Book of Revelation Part 5 (Chapters 8-9) 07/02/2015
081 Book of Revelation Part 4 (Chapters 6-7) 07/09/2015
080 Taylor’s Catholic Thoughts on Same Sex Marriage 06/30/2015
079 Book of Revelation Part 3 (Chapters 4-5) 06/17/2015
078 Is the Relic of True Cross Real? 06/16/2015
077 Book of Revelation Part 2 (Chapter 2-3) 06/10/2015
076 Book of Revelation Part 1 (Chapter 1) 06/03/2015
075 Trinity Sunday, Liturgy, Thomas Becket and Anglican Use Thoughts 05/29/2015
074 Tongues of Fire in Acts, 1 Enoch, and Pre-Vatican Liturgy 05/27/2015
073 Advice on Being a Man 05/22/2015
072 What was the Priestly Status of Mary? Was she a Levite? 05/16/2015
071 The Theology of Cooking Food 05/14/2015
070 3 Steps to Overcoming Anxiety and Stress 05/06/2015
069 How to Read the Summa in One Year 04/22/2015
068 St Paul on Faith and Works Catholic vs Protestant Debate 03/25/2015
067 How Your Fears Are Hurting You Spiritually? 03/18/2015
066 What is 666 and the Mark of the Beast? 03/04/2015
065 40 Days of Joy 02/26/2015
064 Why did God make you? Luke 19 Gives the Answer 02/11/2015
063 Is Being A Christian Hard or Easy? 01/21/2015
062 Catholic View of the End Times and Tribulation 01/14/2015
061 When Other People Really Hurt You 01/07/2015
060 Is Saint George Still a Saint? 01/01/2015
059 Revolution in Catholic Education – Jennifer Fulwiler Interviews Taylor Marshall 12/31/2014
058 The Hidden Theology in Sword and Serpent with St George and Sabra 12/11/2014
057 Advent Total Consecration to Mary 11/13/2014
056 Top 5 Advent Devotions 11/07/2014
055 Why Do We Baptize Babies? The Covenantal Argument 10/22/2014
054 Is God Male or Female – The Catholic Teaching 10/08/2014
053 Lucifer vs. Saint Michael 10/01/2014
052 1 Year Anniversary Special Edition: Essentialism What is the Essence of Your Life? 09/24/2014
051 The Price of Your Anger 09/17/2014
050 The Seven Sorrows of Mary are the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit 09/15/2014
049 6 Obstacles in Your Life (How to Conquer Them) 09/10/2014
048 Brain Science, Your Soul & Prayer 09/03/2014
047 Don’t Swallow the Camel 08/27/2014
046 The Secret Life of Thomas Aquinas 08/22/2014
045 Did Saint Paul Teach Once Saved Always Saved? 08/06/2014
044 How to Escape Joyless Catholicism, Part 2 07/30/2014
043 How to Escape Joyless Catholicism, Part 1 07/24/2014
042 Golf Cart Saints 07/15/2014
041 5 Intellectual Virtues and Pornography, Art, and Culture 07/02/2014
040 Taylor and Joy Talk About Their Marriage 06/25/2014
039 How Was the Bible Assembled? (plus Joy joins me) 06/18/2014
038 Should You Budget Time (or Money)? 06/04/2014
037 The Theology of Vacation, Leisure, and Recreation 05/28/2014
036 Noah Movie Review – Rock Monsters? 05/21/2014
035 Children Need Fortitude 05/14/2014
034 Jokes of Saint John XXIII 05/07/2014
033 Divine Mercy: 5 Common Questions 04/30/2014
032 4 Sections of Hell 04/23/2014
031 Meet the Saint Version of You 04/16/2014
030 Should You Be an Optimist? 04/09/2014
029 Finding Fellowship like Samwise Gamgee 04/01/2014
028 Demons, Snakes, and Ticks: Lessons from a Hunting Trip 03/26/2014
027 How to Make an Eternal Impact with Your Life 03/19/2014
026 Thoughts on My Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe 02/26/2014
025 Why is the Catholic Church Roman? 02/19/2014
024 The Seven Lies We Believe About Our Failures 02/11/2014
023 How to Restart Your Mental Computer 02/06/2014
022 Top Five Productivity Tips from Thomas Aquinas 01/29/2014
021 Did You Miss God’s Plan for Your Life? 01/23/2014
020 When Prayer Becomes a Chore 01/15/2014
019 12 Attributes of a Baptized Christian 01/08/2014
018 A Podcast Against Bitter Catholics! 12/30/2013
017 Mary’s Painless Delivery of Christ Explained 12/18/2013
016 Our Lady of Guadalupe and Saint Luke (Plus How to Set Goals) 12/11/2013
015 Total Consecration to Mary 12/04/2013
014 What’s Your Apostolate? 11/27/2013
013 6 Items for the Liturgy of Your Life 11/20/2013
012 Why You Should Be More Creative 11/13/2013
011 Why Did They Stop Teaching Virtue? 11/06/2013
010 How Do Saints Hear Our Prayers? 10/30/2013
009 My Opinion of Martin Luther 10/23/2013
008 My Top 5 Daily Prayers 10/16/2013
007 Your Guardian Angel 10/03/2013
006 How You Can Convert 7 Billion People 09/25/2013
005 3 Strategies for a Marriage that Sings! 09/18/2013
004 4 Step Plan When Family Leave the Faith 09/12/2013
003 5 Tools for Deep Daily Prayer Life 09/04/2013
002 Three Tips to Increase Your Passion for Life 08/28/2013
001 How to Find a Spiritual Director 08/18/2013

The post Jewish Priests and Catholic Priests [Podcast] appeared first on Taylor Marshall.

15:47

A Mandatum even more Novum [Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment]

Our Holy Father has commanded to be changed the Novus Ordo prescriptions for the Pedilavium so that the group whose feet are washed may include a diverse group of the Faithful, not excluding females. This is, of course, entirely within his competence. But, most interesting, both his own words, and the consequent Decree of the CDW, clearly restrict the group to "the Faithful" [fideles once] and "

15:46

For Washing of the Feet, Pope Legalizes "All Are Welcome" [Whispers in the Loggia]


Three years after bringing his longtime practice in Buenos Aires to Rome – and infuriating traditionalists in the process – the Pope has employed his prerogative to alter liturgical law and officially open the Holy Thursday Washing of the Feet to "those chosen from among the People of God," abolishing the rubric that (at least, technically) restricted the rite to men.

Even as the now-superseded rule tended to be honored as much in the breach as the observance, Francis directed the formal change to the Roman Missal, which was enacted by means of a 6 January decree from the Congregation for Divine Worship and released today.

In a personal letter to the CDW prefect Cardinal Robert Sarah published alongside the legal text, the pontiff conveyed his sense that the change to the rite was intended to better reflect Jesus' "giving of himself 'once and for all' for the salvation of the world, his love without limits." The decree itself, meanwhile, says that "pastors may choose a group of faithful representing the variety and unity of every part of the People of God... consist[ing] of men and women, and ideally of the young and the old, healthy and sick, clerics, consecrated persons and laypeople."

The Last Supper ceremony only restored to use in Pius XII's 1950s reform of the Holy Week liturgies, while centuries of tradition had limited participation in the Washing of the Feet – officially known as the Mandatum – to "chosen men" (
"viri selecti") in representation of the twelve apostles, the post-Conciliar practice in many places of including women (and, sometimes, young children) received de facto approval in a 1987 clarification from the US bishops' liturgy arm, which stated that, although "this variation may differ from the rubric of the Sacramentary which mentions only men, it may nevertheless be said that the intention to emphasize service along with charity in the celebration of the rite is an understandable way of accentuating the evangelical command of the Lord... that all members of the church must serve one another in love."

To be sure, enforcement of the prior rubric as stated has been far from widespread, and the few bishops who've openly urged against the adapted practice have tended to take a public drubbing among parishioners and the press even beyond their respective dioceses. For his part, Francis' decision to stick with his Argentine custom of celebrating the Holy Thursday Evening Mass in prisons, hospitals or rehab centers and include women, children and non-Catholics in the foot-washing has become a regularly-cited example of the Pope's "inclusive" shift of tone; in their turns at the rite – which, by custom, would historically take place in Rome's cathedral at the Lateran Basilica – prior pontiffs usually washed the feet of 12 elderly priests.

For clarity's sake, it bears noting that the new law has no impact the Extraordinary Form of the Roman liturgy, which will maintain the men-only rule as stipulated in the 1962 Missal used in its communities.

Here below, the English translation of the CDW decree as released this morning by the Holy See:

The reform of the Holy Week, by the decree Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria of November 1955, provides the faculty, where counselled by pastoral motives, to perform the washing of the feet of twelve men during the Mass of the Lord's Supper, after the reading of the Gospel according to John, as if almost to represent Christ's humility and love for His disciples.

In the Roman liturgy this rite was handed down with the name of the Mandatum of the Lord on brotherly charity in accordance with Jesus' words, sung in the Antiphon during the celebration.

In performing this rite, bishops and priests are invited to conform intimately to Christ who 'came not to be served but to serve' and, driven by a love 'to the end', to give His life for the salvation of all humankind.

To manifest the full meaning of the rite to those who participate in it, the Holy Father Francis has seen fit to change the rule by in the Roman Missal (p.300, No. 11) according to which the chosen men are accompanied by the ministers, which must therefore be modified as follows: 'Those chosen from among the People of God are accompanied by the ministers' (and consequently in the Caeremoniale Episcoporum No. 301 and No. 299 b referring to the seats for the chosen men, so that pastors may choose a group of faithful representing the variety and unity of every part of the People of God. This group may consist of men and women, and ideally of the young and the old, healthy and sick, clerics, consecrated persons and laypeople.

This Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disipline of the Sacraments, by means of the faculties granted by the Supreme Pontiff, introduces this innovation in the liturgical books of the Roman Rite, recalling pastors of their duty to instruct adequately both the chosen faithful and others, so that they may participate in the rite consciously, actively and fruitfully.
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15:35

The inevitable: Pope Francis decrees that Maundy Thursday foot-washing can include women [RORATE CÆLI]

When, within two weeks of his election, Francis chose to include women (including a Muslim) among the "viri" whose feet he washed as part of the Maundy Thursday Mass, we immediately grasped its significance and posted that it was "The Official End of the Reform of the Reform - by example". He repeated the inclusion of women in the foot-washing rite in 2014 and 2015, which could only have meant that he desired to normalize the practice. Today's reform was inevitable. It was only a matter of time. 

We predict that before long, like many other “options” such as communion in the hand, female altar boys, “extraordinary” ministers of holy communion and “ad populum” celebrations, having women take part in the Maundy Thursday washing of the feet will become virtually obligatory, with the priests who refuse it being stigmatized as “reactionaries” and punished in a variety of ways. 

Francis pushing this decree through Robert Cardinal Sarah is another reminder that, no matter what the highest officials of the CDW say and do in their private capacity, it is still the express will of the Pope that matters in the end. Beautiful reflections, edifying personal example and words of encouragement are no substitutes for clear legislation. As long as the “Reform of the Reform” is not embodied in clear legislation that is vigorously enforced from the very top, it will never take off the ground and will never be more than the hobby of a tiny minority. No amount of brave talk from a handful of bloggers will change this.

At the same time this "reform" should not be surprising, as it flows from the intrinsic malleability of the “Novus Ordo” (by which we mean not only the Mass but also the entire range of liturgical books associated with it.) The reality of the Novus Ordo makes slogans such as “say the black and do the red” and the entire concept of “liturgical abuse”, essentially meaningless. When the “black” and “red” could be changed anytime under the pressure of clerical and lay disobedience and the whims of those in power, today’s “disobedience” could end up being tomorrow’s obedience to the “God of Surprises”. 

One last point: the new rubrics for foot washing still limits it to the "faithful", members of the "People of God". Muslims are definitely not part of the "People of God", no matter how much one tries to stretch the meaning of the term without losing all coherence. Next Maundy Thursday, will the Pope still wash the feet of an unbaptized woman or two?

There is a silver lining to all this, of course: our fellow Rorate contributor Joseph Shaw explains in his Statement on allowing the washing of the feet of women at the OF mandatum:

These concessions have moved many to reconsider the Extraordinary Form, which is not affected by this decree, or similar concessions to liturgical abuses in the past. It is in the Extraordinary Form that the Church's liturgical traditions are maintained.

ORIGINAL POST:

_____________________________________________


From Vatican Information Service:

The Pope decrees that not only men may be chosen for the washing of the feet in the Liturgy of Holy Thursday
Vatican City, 21 January 2016 (VIS) – The Holy Father has written a letter, dated 20 December and published today, to Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in which he decrees that from now on, the people chosen for the washing of the feet in the liturgy of Holy Thursday may be selected from all the People of God, and not only men and boys.

The Pope writes to the cardinal that he has for some time reflected on the "rite of the washing of the feet contained in the Liturgy of the Mass in Coena Domini, with the intention of improving the way in which it is performed so that it might express more fully the meaning of Jesus' gesture in the Cenacle, His giving of Himself unto the end for the salvation of the world, His limitless charity".

"After careful consideration", he continues, "I have decided to make a change to the Roman Missal. I therefore decree that the section according to which those persons chosen for the Washing of the feet must be men or boys, so that from now on the Pastors of the Church may choose the participants in the rite from among all the members of the People of God. I also recommend that an adequate explanation of the rite itself be provided to those who are chosen".

The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has today published a decree on the aforementioned rite, dated 6 January 2016, the full text of which is published below:

"The reform of the Holy Week, by the decree Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria of November 1955, provides the faculty, where counselled by pastoral motives, to perform the washing of the feet of twelve men during the Mass of the Lord's Supper, after the reading of the Gospel according to John, as if almost to represent Christ's humility and love for His disciples.

In the Roman liturgy this rite was handed down with the name of the Mandatum of the Lord on brotherly charity in accordance with Jesus' words, sung in the Antiphon during the celebration.

In performing this rite, bishops and priests are invited to conform intimately to Christ who 'came not to be served but to serve' and, driven by a love 'to the end', to give His life for the salvation of all humankind.

To manifest the full meaning of the rite to those who participate in it, the Holy Father Francis has seen fit to change the rule by in the Roman Missal (p.300, No. 11) according to which the chosen men are accompanied by the ministers, which must therefore be modified as follows: 'Those chosen from among the People of God are accompanied by the ministers' (and consequently in the Caeremoniale Episcoporum No. 301 and No. 299 b referring to the seats for the chosen men, so that pastors may choose a group of faithful representing the variety and unity of every part of the People of God. This group may consist of men and women, and ideally of the young and the old, healthy and sick, clerics, consecrated persons and laypeople.

This Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disipline of the Sacraments, by means of the faculties granted by the Supreme Pontiff, introduces this innovation in the liturgical books of the Roman Rite, recalling pastors of their duty to instruct adequately both the chosen faithful and others, so that they may participate in the rite consciously, actively and fruitfully".


[New Catholic: Two comments on historical matters. (1) This is one of the signs of irreformable acts by Francis. Since the beginning of his pontificate, his main supporters, including Cardinal Maradiaga, have insisted that the Pope wanted his reforms to be so great and symbolic no successor of his could ever overturn them. This is surely one example. (2) What is most tragic is to see the very same impulses that imploded Anglicanism imposed on Latin Church decades later. These impulses are not only untraditional -- which may be an advantageous characteristic in the Pope's mind -- but counterproductive. Unless the intention is to destroy the soul and strength of the Church, weaken Her even more, and to sow doubts on the immutability of symbolic explanations for the Male Priesthood in the Catholic Church. Surely that is not what was intended and what was sought. Surely not!]

15:28

Church leaders condemn new vandalism at two Christian sites in Jerusalem [CNS Top Stories]

IMAGE: CNS photo/Courtesy Dormition Abbey

By Judith Sudilovsky

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Two teenagers were arrested in connection with the vandalism of two Christian sites next to the Old City.

Because of their age, 16 and 15, authorities released few details about the incidents in which anti-Christian slogans in Hebrew were discovered scrawled on the walls of the Benedictine Dormition Abbey monastery and the neighboring Greek Orthodox seminary, both located on Mount Zion next to the walls of the Old City.

The vandalism occurred Jan. 16 and 17, a week after a Christian cemetery was desecrated outside of Jerusalem.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the media that police were continuing their investigation to determine whether there is a connection between the latest vandalism and other anti-Christian incidents in the Old City. He said security has been heightened in the Old City.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem denounced the acts and repeated its belief in the importance of education toward tolerance while urging "follow-up" against those who incite intolerance against Christians.

"It is regrettable that such episodes of hatred come 50 years after 'Nostra Aetate' which initiated the interreligious dialogue of the Catholic Church with other religions, and turned a new page between Catholic Church and Judaism," the patriarchate said in a statement Jan. 17. "We hope that the perpetrators will be arrested before proposed threats are carried out."

Auxiliary Bishop William Shomali, chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, later said on the patriarchate's website that the young age of the two suspects shows that a change in the education system is needed for young people who are "encased in intolerance."

For the Dormition Abbey, which is believed to have been built on the spot where Mary died, it was the fifth time the building was vandalized in recent years. A fire that broke out at the monastery in February was determined to be arson, and another arson incident took place just after Pope Francis' visit to the monastery in May 2015. In 2012 and 2013, anti-Christian graffiti also appeared on abbey walls.

Authorities said the graffiti appeared to be written by different hands. Photographs depicting the graffiti showed statements such as "Christians go to hell," "Death to the heathen Christians, the enemies of Israel" and "Let his (Jesus') name and memory be obliterated."

Benedictine Father Nikodemus Schnabel, spokesman for the abbey, said in a statement Jan. 17 that the red and black paint the Israeli police used to crudely and unsuccessfully try to cover up the graffiti did even more damage.

He noted that between the nights of Jan. 16 and 17, there had been a loud and aggressive gathering with music and chanting by "Jewish right-wing radicals" in their neighborhood near the contested Tomb of David site. He said such disruptive gatherings have taken place nearly every Saturday for three years.

The graffiti, he said, was found in an area of the monastery that is not monitored by security cameras despite what he said was promised by Israeli security authorities in the summer 2013 when several monastery cars were badly damaged and hate graffiti was discovered on monastery walls.

Rosenfeld said he was unaware of such a promise about cameras and that police were investigating the most recent.

"We call on the security agencies to take appropriate measures against this hate crime and to work toward an improvement of the security situation on Mount Zion as it has been promised since summer 2013," Father Schnabel said in his statement. "We are grateful for the overwhelming solidarity of all our friends in Israel. We as monks of Dormition Abbey will not cease to pray for reconciliation, justice and peace -- and also for the perpetrators of tonight, that hatred may disappear from their hearts."

As they have done since 2011 after other incidents, Tag Meir, a faith-based organization working to end racism in Israel, sent a delegation of members in support of the monastery and seminary to denounce the attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attacks during a weekly cabinet meeting, saying "there is no place for actions like these."

- - -

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15:13

Why is the Pope’s phone call to a killer being publicised? [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

The Pietro Maso murder case remains one of the most haunting and horrific that Italy has ever experienced. Pietro Maso murdered his parents in 1991. I was living in Italy at the time, and the news of the murder, and subsequent coverage of the trial, was hard to avoid. There is a full account of the case here, in Italian, which is well worth reading.

Why did the case command such attention? There were many reasons. For a start, Maso was a young and handsome 19-year-old, whose demeanour in court showed a chilling lack of remorse; indeed, he seemed very pleased with himself. Then there were the accomplices: Maso had persuaded three of his friends to help him murder his parents, and they allowed themselves to be persuaded, which seemed to suggest that Maso’s powers of influence were considerable.

The murder itself and its coldly premeditated nature – there were two previous plots that were abandoned – was frightful. Antonio and Maria Rosa Maso did not have easy deaths, but were beaten with blunt instruments and then suffocated, over a period of 50 minutes. But most horrible of all was the motivation to which Maso eventually confessed. He wanted his parents’ money, so he could spend it in expensive restaurants, bars and nightclubs. The murder was meant to look as if a robbery had taken place, but this fooled no one. Maso got 22 years, some of it in an open prison, which seems a light sentence for a double murder. Gruesomely, he became a celebrity in prison, and was overwhelmed with fan mail.

Now he has had a call from the Pope. Here we need to exercise some caution. Maso has given an interview to Chi, an Italian celebrity magazine, as the Catholic Herald reports. In it he recounts the way that some two years ago his spiritual director passed on a letter he had written to the Pope, and the Pope later phoned him, some time in 2013. Maso’s letter was one asking for forgiveness, or so he says. As for the content of the phone call, Maso says: “Ero il male ma lui ha avuto compassione di me” (I was the Evil One, but the Pope had pity on me.) 

However, this is not the first time that Maso has done this sort of thing. In 1996 Maso wrote to the Bishop of Vicenza, who had presided at his parents’ funeral (they were devout Catholics), expressing his remorse, and the bishop visited Maso in prison.

Many psychologists have mulled over the Maso case, and the general verdict seems to be that he is a narcissist, a conclusion I find it hard to doubt. Why does Maso have to give an interview to a celebrity magazine now? Why does he have to publicise this telephone call from the Pope? Why does he have to “ask forgiveness” from first the Bishop of Vicenza, then the Pope himself? After all, neither Bishop nor Pope are the injured parties here. Aren’t there more private and effective ways of expressing remorse?

It seems to me regrettable that the Pope’s phone call has been made use of in this way. As for Antonio and Maria Rosa Maso, unjustly deprived of life, may they rest in peace; and may God comfort their two daughters, unjustly deprived of their parents. Antonio and Maria Rosa were an exemplary couple, and their memory deserves our attention. As for their son, it would be better if he lived out the rest of his days in obscurity.

15:09

Pope Francis Decrees: Women and Children Included in Footwashing [Aleteia.org]

On his very first Holy Thursday as Vicar of Christ, Pope Francis famously (and to some criticism and some cheers) washed the feet of both men and women, even including non-Catholics as participants in a most moving and meaningful tradition within the Triduum. He has repeated that action each year, and now, he has made Read More…

15:06

Statement on allowing the washing of the feet of women at the OF mandatum [LMS Chairman]

IMG_6926
The Stripping of the Altars on Maundy Thursday, with the FSSP in Reading.
Until 1955, the Mandatum took place after this, final ceremony of the Mass of Maundy Thursday.

I've been asked for a statement on the decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship allowing the washing of the feet of women as well as men in the 'mandatum' of Maundy Thursday.

I feel very sorry for priests who have been trying to obey liturgical law on this issue, as on other issues in the Ordinary Form. They may well feel betrayed. Equally, I can see that from the Roman perspective, the rule has become meaningless - and did so even before the Holy Father broke it himself. This has happened again and again since Vatican II. The traditions of the Roman liturgy, as preserved in the Ordinary Form, are being stripped away one by one.

An important aspect, which is generally neglected is the question of the etiquette of men washing the feet of women. This would have been considered inappropriate only a few decades ago in the West, and such a view persists in many cultures. In many developing countries there is serious conflict between people trying to be as progressive as possible on such matters, and others reasserting traditional sexual constraints and gender roles. This decree is not going to help priests in those places.


Here's the statement.



This decree can be seen as a concession to existing practice, and its good intentions are evident. It nevertheless undermines attempts to 'resacralise' the Ordinary Form, and it reinforces the trend which has seen priests increasingly surrounded by women during Mass, serving, doing the readings, and as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. This inevitably makes the all-male priesthood itself harder to understand.

Liturgical conservatives who have sought in recent decades to keep the rules of the Roman Missal by admitting only men to the ceremony of the mandatum, often in the face of considerable pressure, may well feel the rug has been pulled from under them by this decree. This has happened many times, as Rome has felt unable to hold the line on liturgical abuses, and has simply allowed them: notably female altar servers and Communion in the hand.

These concessions have moved many to reconsider the Extraordinary Form, which is not affected by this decree, or similar concessions to liturgical abuses in the past. It is in the Extraordinary Form that the Church's liturgical traditions are maintained.

Background

The ceremony of washing of feet on Maundy Thursday was based on Our Lord washing the feet of the disciples, which was adopted first by Abbots washing the feet of their monks, and Bishops washing the feet of their clergy. Outside the liturgy, Kings would wash the feet of poor men - and queens of women. For men to wash the feet of women would have been unthinkable until very recently, and would be problematic in many cultures today.

Before 1955 the mandatum did not take place after the Gospel, but after the end of Mass; it is optional, and it is not always done in celebrations of the Extraordinary Form. The 1955 reform indicated that it should take place in the choir (or sanctuary) of the church, which is properly speaking an area reserved for the clergy, and the servers assisting them. Opening this area to laymen, and now women, weakens the symbolism of the separation of nave and sanctuary. Women were forbidden to go into the sanctuary of the church, even to read a reading, as recently as the 1974 General Instruction of the Roman Missal.


Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

15:01

Washing of the Feet Officially Opened to Women [New Liturgical Movement]

By a letter to Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Pope Francis has officially ordered the modification the rubric of the Roman Missal according to which only men were to have their feet washed at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. The letter and a relevant decree of the Congregation were announced today on the Vatican website; the dating of the letter is currently given on the website as December 20, 2014, which one can safely assume is a mistake for 2015. The relevant portion of the letter reads as follows.

“As I have said to you in conversation, for some time I have been reflecting on the rite of the washing of the feet, which forms part of the Liturgy of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, with the intention of improving the ways in which it is put into practice, so that they may fully express the significance of the gesture carried out by Jesus in the Upper Room, His giving of Himself ‘unto the very end’ for the salvation of the world, his charity without limits.

After due consideration, I have come to the decision to introduce a change to the rubrics of the Roman Missal. I order therefore that the rubric be modified according to which the person chosen to receive the Washing of the Feet must be men or boys, so that from now on, the pastors of the Church may choose the participants in the rite from among all the members of the People of God. It is furthermore recommended that to those who are so chosen, an adequate explanation of the meaning of the rite itself be provided.”

This relevant portion of the CDW decree reads as follows.

“At the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, after the reading of the Gospel according to St John, to demonstrate the humility and charity of Christ towards His disciples as it were in a drama, the restoration of Holy Week, y the decree Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria (November 30, 1955), gave the opportunity of performing the washing of the feet of twelve men, where pastoral reasons recommended this. This rite, in the Roman liturgy, had been handed down with the name of the Lord’s Mandatum (commandment) about fraterncal charity, from the words of Jesus (cf. John 13, 34) which were sung in an antiphon during the celebration.

Bishops and priests acting in this rite are intimately invited to conform themselves to Christ, who “came not to be served, but to serve,” and driven by charty “unto the end” (John 13, 1), to give His life for the salvation of the whole human race.

That this full significance of the rite may be expressed to those who participate in it, it seemed good to the Supreme Pontiff Francis to change the norm which is read in the rubrics of the Roman Missal Romani (p. 300 no. 11) legitur, “Chosen men (viri) are lead by the ministers…”, which therefore must be changed in the following manner, “Those who are chosen from the people of God are lead by the ministers…” (and consequenly in the Bishops’ Ceremonial no. 301 and no. 299 b: “seats for those designated”), so that pastors may choose a small group of the faithful to represent the variety and unity of each portion of the people of God. This group may consist of men and woman, and suitably (may consist) of young and old, the healthy and the sick, clergy, consecrated persons and laity.

This Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, with the force of the faculties given to it by the Supreme Pontiff, introdces this change in the liturgical books of the Roman Rite, reminding pastors of their duty to instruct with appropriate preparation both the faithful chosen (to have their feet washed) and others, so that they may participate in the rite knowledgably, actively and fruitfully.”

15:00

Fundstück.... [Beiboot Petri]

gefunden auf der "achse des guten", geschrieben von Vera Lengfeld über einen Brückenkopf des IS in Bosnien, an einem völlig unbewachten, leicht und unkontrolliert zu überquerenden Schengen-Außengrenzabschnitt zu Kroatien. Lächeln mit der Kanzlerin......
Hier geht´s zum Text:  klicken
Und hier zur Übersetzung der Deutschen Wirtschaftsnachrichten der Meldung des Corriere della Sera aus Bosnien: klicken

Wie Lengfeld bemerkt, muß man bei uns inzwischen u.a. auf italienische Tageszeitungen zurückgreifen, wenn man etwas anderes als Regierungsverlautbarungen aus den Medien erfahren möchte. Wer hätte das gedacht!? Wir kennen diese Situation ja schon länger aus der Berichterstattung über die Katholische Weltkirche, die Berichte aus Rom, den Vatican und die Päpste (durchgehend seit 2005).
Hier ein sprechendes Lengfeld-Zitat:

"Dass unsere Qualitätsmedien darüber berichten werden, ist eher unwahrscheinlich. Die haben sich nach drei Tagen Schreck über die Silvester- Vorfälle wieder darauf konzentriert, die Kanzlerinnen- Verlautbarungen kritiklos unter das Volk zu bringen. In unserem Fall die absurde Behauptung, die Wirtschaft würde zusammenbrechen und Europa auseinanderfallen, wenn Deutschland seine Grenzen für illegale Einwanderer schließt. Dabei legt Merkel den Sprengsatz an Europa und die Zündung wird in Bosnien vorbereitet.
Zum Glück gibt es die sozialen Netzwerke, über die man mehr erfährt, als aus den Qualitätsmedien. Für alle, die nicht Italienisch können, haben die „Deutschen Wirtschaftsnachrichten“ für eine deutsche Zusammenfassung des Corriere della Sera Artikels gesorgt."


Quelle: achse des guten, V, Lengfeld, Corriere della Sera, D.Wirtschaftsnachrichten

Pelosi Against Abortion on Demand, Just Whenever A Woman Wants It [Creative Minority Report]

She just believes that a woman should have the right to an abortion any time she wants. Yeah, I'm not understanding the difference either. But she seems intent on making one.



HT Hot Air


*subhead*Wait, what?*subhead*

Honor Roll Schools Bringing Major Student Presence to 2016 March for Life [Cardinal Newman Society All Posts]

Students from faithful Catholic high schools across the country recognized as Schools of Excellence and Honorary Mentions on The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Education Honor Roll will travel thousands of miles to the nation’s capital to defend the right to life at the 2016 March for Life, according to testimonies given to the Newman Society.

Beckman Catholic High School in Dyersville, Iowa, will have a presence at the 2016 March for Life for the thirteenth year, sending 46 students, 22 adult chaperones and two faculty members. “There have been abortion issues addressed during this government administration that call us more than ever to be a voice for the unborn,” said Pat Meade, principal of Beckman Catholic.

More...

14:56

Pope Changes Rules for Washing of the Feet on Holy Thursday [The Daily Register]

By Edward Pentin | Pope Francis has decreed that from now on, the people chosen for the washing of the feet in the liturgy of Holy Thursday may be selected from all the People of God, and not only men and boys. In a letter, dated 20 December and...

14:47

14:30

Paul's Pagan Quotations III [Siris]

Another passage in which Paul seems to be quoting a pagan author is in I Corinthians 15:

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame. [NIV]

'Bad company corrupts good character' is widely regarded from very early as a quotation. It actually is a good iambic line in the Greek, and so is exactly the sort of thing you would expect to find in a Greek tragedy or comedy.

In his Ecclesiastical History, from the fifth century, Socrates Scholasticus claims that it is a quotation of Euripides. In context (Book III, Chapter 16), Socrates is talking about our very subject, Paul's quotations from Greek pagan literature:

Should any one imagine that in making these assertions we wrest the Scriptures from their legitimate construction, let it be remembered that the Apostle not only does not forbid our being instructed in Greek learning, but that he himself seems by no means to have neglected it, inasmuch as he knows many of the sayings of the Greeks. Whence did he get the saying, ‘The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow-bellies,’ but from a perusal of The Oracles of Epimenides, the Cretan Initiator? Or how would he have known this, ‘For we are also his offspring,’ had he not been acquainted with The Phenomena of Aratus the astronomer? Again this sentence, ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners,’ is a sufficient proof that he was conversant with the tragedies of Euripides.

Unfortunately, the line doesn't occur in any extant play by Euripides. It's worth keeping in mind that this doesn't mean much. We only have at most 19 complete plays out of an oeuvre that may have originally had as many as 90, and the ones we had are a bit of an odd selection, since we get them from one anthology of ten plays that was probably used in schools and one surviving volume of a larger alphabetical collection of his plays (which is why so many of the titles of Euripides' extant plays start with H or I), somewhat as if we were trying to reconstruct Shakespeare from a school textbook and volume 3 of an alphabetical collected works. There's lots of room for the line being in one of the many lost plays.

Socrates seems to be the only person to attribute the line to the tragedies of Euripides. The most common attribution is to the comedies of Menander. This attribution appears to be due to Jerome in his Commentary on Titus (chapter 1), although some others also mention it; unfortunately, I have neither a hardcopy nor an online version of this work, so I only know this through a secondary source. Unfortunately, we don't have any extant play be Menander in which the line occurs, either; we only have one complete Menander play and a lot of fragments.

It is possible that, if Menander has the line, that he was quoting Euripides; there are known cases of him having quoted Euripides elsewhere. If that's so, though, we have no way whatsoever of knowing whether Paul was quoting Menander or Euripides -- beyond the bare antecedent probability that it seems more likely that he would be quoting a tragedy, with its high moral tone, than a comedy, particularly in the middle of a serious admonition. On the other hand, Justin Martyr can be found less than a century later either quoting or alluding in a favorable way to Menander on another topic (First Apology, Chapter XX), and the same can be said for Clement of Alexandria, who refers to him a fair amount, so even that doesn't seem to weigh all that much.

So tragic Euripides or comic Menander? We don't know, although the evidence is reasonably good that he's quoting one or the other.

It has also been suggested that Menander is being quoted or paraphrased in I Timothy 1:15 and 4:9:

Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. [NIV]

For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. [NIV]

'This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance' has some similarities to a comment in a play by Terence, Adelphoi, which heavily adapts from Menander. But, of course, it's also possible that this is just coincidental, or that the phrase just became a common phrase in some quarters, and thus is not a quotation at all.

14:25

The lesson of the Anglican crisis? That a church built upon man will shift and fall [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

The effective suspension of the Episcopal Church of the United States from the global Anglican Communion has been a vastly entertaining font of commentary and analysis, as people discover just how much you can learn about architecture from watching your neighbour’s house burn down.

As Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith rightly and eloquently warned earlier this week, this is where a rush for decentralisation can lead in religious governance, and the slow-motion schism of the Anglicans does appear to be a cautionary tale about where the German bishops seem to want to take the Catholic Church. While this lesson should be digested, there are other repercussions to consider, especially in the context of Anglicanism in this country.

The basic narrative of the Anglican split is well known: the Episcopal Church has, through its progressive and loving understanding of both human and divine nature, enacted common sense reforms to recognise and consecrate gay marriage and, thus, incurred the wrath of a bunch of backward, hypocritical, bigots from, you know, “down there”.

It has been quite amusing to see the more progressive voices of the Anglican Communion recoil from the African Primates’ intransigence that marriage is between a man and a woman with the same enlightened horror that their imperial forebears once felt about suttee.

But, closer to home, real questions have to be addressed about how the Church of England, as an established institution in this country, can have a different definition of marriage to that of Parliament. The MP Chris Bryant, who originally departed from ministry in the Church of England in 1991, and who seems to be in a perpetual state of righteous indignation about everything, left the Church of England, again, last week, claiming that history would regard its failure to recognise same-sex marriage in the same light as participation in the slave trade.

This particular analogy, increasingly favoured on both sides of the Atlantic by rich, powerful, white people, is an appalling trivialisation of slavery and only ever made from the smug safety of Parliament or Congress, university offices, or television studios. It is certainly not a line I would recommend throwing around in my former parish in southeast Washington, DC. Yet there is an underlying logic to Bryant’s point: how can the Church of England be at odds with the national government and remain the Established Church?

The Church of England was once famously described as the Conservative Party at prayer. While this is certainly no longer the case, if it ever was, from its very foundation Anglicanism has been the Establishment at prayer, continually changing to reflect the will of the government, royal or parliamentary. This was the point of John Keble’s famous sermon on National Apostasy in 1833, which led (in the end) to Newman’s conversion in 1845. The Church of England was not conceived as an expression of existing national belief, on the contrary: its function was to impose a new belief upon the population of Catholic England.

When the same-sex marriage bill was passed by Parliament, it was not because of a mandate from the electorate, nor even a majority of popular support, but because it was the will of Parliament which it felt should come to be accepted by the country as a whole, and it has: I would be surprised to read any data which showed that a majority of church-going Anglicans in this country would not now support same-sex weddings in their churches.

Of course, there is no such thing as doctrine by democracy in the Catholic Church. This is because its authority rests upon its divine institution and its mandate to preserve and transmit, unaltered, the deposit of faith; the founding authority is Christ and the immediate reference point is the Bishop of Rome, who guarantees it, under the guidance, or when necessary even the restraint, of the Holy Spirit.

For the established Church of England, the founding authority is, and remains, the Sovereign-in-Parliament. The logical consequences and developments of this historical fact may have taken, and may well continue to take, the doctrine and practice of the Established Church further and further away from what is traditionally recognised as Christianity, as a complex theological whole rather than a few culturally significant slogans.

While many Christians, within and without the Church of England, may lament the direction of travel and the ever increasing distance covered, it seems to be the inevitable course which was charted from its beginning. While English Catholics and Anglicans alike may lament the continued decline of a great treasury of our national Christian cultural, it is to be hoped that the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham will emerge as a capable guardian of what is being lost, and be recognised as such by those who see and regret this trend.

The real architectural insight to be glimpsed through the flames engulfing Canterbury is not about synodality, but about the importance of the foundation on which you build: a church built upon man will, over time, inevitably shift and crack and fall.

14:23

A jealous heart is an ugly, tormented heart, pope says at morning Mass [CNS Top Stories]

By Junno Arocho Esteves

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Jealousy and envy are ugly sins that grow like weeds in one's heart, Pope Francis said at his morning Mass.

A heart that is envious is not only tormented, but can even "lead one to kill," the pope said Jan. 21 during the Mass in the chapel of Domus Sanctae Marthae.

The pope focused his homily on the day's first reading (1 Sm 18: 6-9; 19: 1-7) in which Saul plots to kill David out of jealousy for his growing fame. Although Saul heeded his son's advice to not murder David, the pope said, his jealousy returned like a "sickness" that opened the door to envy.

"Envy is an ugly thing! It is an attitude, an ugly sin," he said. "And jealousy or envy grows in the heart like a bad weed: It grows, but does not let the grass grow."

One who has an envious heart, he continued, cannot find peace and is tormented. The pope noted that because of Satan's envy, "death entered into the world."

"Envy kills and it cannot tolerate that someone has something that I don't have," he said. "And he is always suffering because the heart of someone jealous or envious suffers. It is a suffering heart."

The pope called on Christians to pray for the grace to not open their "hearts to jealousy, to not open the heart to envy because these things always lead to death."

Envy, he added, was also "the instrument" used by the high priests and scribes to deliver Jesus to Pontius Pilate and be put to death.

"Let us also ask the Lord for the grace to never deliver to death a brother, a sister of the parish, of the community, not even a neighbor because of envy," Pope Francis said. "Each one has their sins, each one has their virtues; they are specific to each one. Look for the good and do not kill (others) with gossip out of envy or jealousy."

- - -

Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

14:01

What is Truth? [The Daily Register]

By Bob Dirgo | In the Gospel of John, Pilate says to our Lord, "So You are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of...

14:00

Josep Obiols, An “Other Modern” Artist from Catalonia [New Liturgical Movement]

From time to time, the New Liturgical Movement will cover the work of artists and architects from recent history, whose work, while “modern,” nonetheless took a different and more traditional path than that of the “modernism” of Le Corbusier or Picasso, a path which we call“the Other Modern.”
My Cuban grandfather, José Morell, was never quite sure where his family had come from. Blue-grey eyes and a rather unconventionally un-Spanish last name made him suppose they might have been Basque, or French, or Catalan. A bit of genealogical research and the fact he shares a last name with a very small town near Valencia—where my family, on vacation in 2014, found an open coffee shop and some very friendly if ultimately somewhat perplexed locals—suggests the Morells were probably Catalan at one time. So, when we took a day trip on that same vacation up to the Marian mother shrine of the Catalan people, the mysterious monastery of Montserrat, I took more than a usual interest. As I write, a small black and gold image of La Moreneta—the Black Madonna—watches me from one of my shelves.
Montserrat is worth an article in itself—it is an eerie, moving, otherworldly sort of place, suspended below the great toothed mountain that gives the shrine its name, its slopes spiked with great rocky promontories that appear always on the verge of looking like something else, but never quite do. The Benedictine monastery there has been embellished numerous times over the centuries, the present church having been begun in 1559 and consecrated in 1592, though much of the interior decoration and its apse is in the high-flown nineteenth-century chivalric style of the Catalan Renaixença, and the exterior contrafacciata looks mid-twentieth century—its inscription, “Cataluña será cristiana o no será” is, somewhat pointedly, in alien Spanish.

Much of the excellent painted paleo-Christian style decoration that marks the long rising ambulatory up to the shrine statue dates from this era, and is the work of Josep Obiols i Palau (1894-1967). One of the more distinguished of Catalonia’s twentieth-century painters, after time in Italy he made a name for himself as a muralist, and his work at Montserrat is only part of a larger oevre that includes everything from large-scale work in Montjuïc’s Palacio Nacional to rather sketchy, abstract bookplate designs. An excellent monograph is available on him (Josep Obiols: Pintor de Montserrat by Alexandre Cirici Pellicer et al.), though it is unfortunately only available in Catalan and Spanish.

Most of his work at Montserrat consists of frescoes in an interestingly loose, almost El Greco-esque take on early Christian and Byzantine art, without eschewing a touch of something modern, or at least unique, that nonetheless does not shade into the angular sterility of modernism. Catalonia is full of such apparent and quite triumphant artistic contradictions—indeed, had Picasso bothered to study the Romanesque murals in the Catalan National Museum with more diligence than fervor, we might have gotten quite a few more Pantocrators and a lot less Demoiselles d'Avignon.

Obiols’ frescoes can be seen in the shrine ambulatory, the monks’ refectory (1945), the new sacristy (1944-1945) and abbot’s sala (1951). In addition to his work near the shrine of the Madonna, which also includes some stunning mosaics around the statue itself (1947) and relief work on adjacent doors (1953), he executed a series of stunning marquetry images of local saints and holy figures—including several uncanonized but significant abbots of Montserrat shown with the old square halo, an interesting choice—for the cabinet doors of the new sacristy (1945), as well as for the abbatial throne (1957); it is unclear to me if this is the current abbatial throne in the choir, a former throne there, or a throne elsewhere in the complex; in any case, the insertion of that more “modernistic” element into the lush décor of the main church is a bit jarring.

His is a fascinating style as it owes very little to many of the “Other Moderns” we have discussed before, which often have a far clearer link to Art Nouveau or even Art Deco. There is also a small touch of Art Deco here (mostly in the marquetry), but there is also much that is uncategorizable or perhaps reminiscent of mainstream continental painting of the period, albeit quite successfully blended into the numinous, symbol-rich, yet strangely straightforward art of the early Christians. The fact that an unabashedly traditional artist was working with great, almost medieval-level Church commissions so late into the last century (and not only that, but in 1945, when the rest of the continent was otherwise occupied) only adds to the unique and peculiarly Spanish and Catalan story behind his work. But, considering he sprang from a city whose most daring and avant-garde architect ended life as a reclusive saint living in the crypt where he would some day be buried, it is no surprise that another Catalonian could close that gap so successfully.

13:56

Abortion steals our future [katholon]

Einfach mal ansehen und darüber nachdenken …

Abtreibung stiehlt unsere Zukunft.
Wir hatten in den letzten 40 Jahren Millionen Abtreibungen in Deutschland.
Wieviel unserer Zukunft ist uns gestohlen worden?

13:55

Love in Action Witnessed Amid 33-Year Coma [The Daily Register]

By CNA/EWTN NEWS | LYON, France — After sustaining a damaged leg tendon in 1982, 34-year-old international footballer Jean-Pierre Adams thought that a routine knee surgery at a hospital in Lyon, France, would relieve some of his discomfort. By the...

13:52

Error as a Parasite [The Josias]

A Philosophical Bagatelle

by Peter A. Kwasniewski


I wrote this little piece in 1997, when reading an article on parasites that had appeared in National Geographic.

 

There can be a philosophy of error—a “love of wisdom” in regard to error—only per accidens. As Aristotle says, a true explanation will at the same time refute the objections or opposed positions. So, too, it may be said that an understanding of how error works, the way error grafts itself onto truth, is implicitly present in understanding what truth is and how it presents itself.

Perhaps the most elegant example is Aristotle’s refutation of Parmenides and Melissus in Book I of the Physics. When he has laid out his own explanation, he returns to the difficulties and shows why the partial truths contained in the erroneous theories can be saved only when they are integrated into the whole he has set forth. There is thus a kind of wisdom attained about the errors, if wisdom signifies a knowledge in reference to the end of a given genus, which is always some whole. The man who is “wise about war” is one who understands the particulars of warfare in reference to the end of victory. There can thus be a “wisdom” about error insofar as one is studying the manner in which wisdom offers the pattern according to which a deceiver or an ignoramus could approximate the truth by a likeness yet not attain it. Without the pattern, there could not be a bad copy; without the whole there could not be a rebellious part.

A theory or philosophy of error has to begin from the fact that error is a parasite which lives by attaching itself to some truth, or host-organism, from which it derives its sustenance, that is, its credibility. The host organism is a larger body of truth which contains enough superfluity, so to speak, to permit an error to be drawn off of it. In other words, if one starts with a very simple truth, like the principle of non-contradiction or the principle of identity, it is rather difficult to generate an error from it immediately. The principle is in itself so clear, and so “thin” as a proposition, that it has no fatness from which a falsehood could derive nourishment. Alhough Hegel’s comment that the concept of being is the emptiest of concepts is false, he is pointing out a truth: when speaking of “being in general,” one has already committed the error of making being a genus. “Being” that is applicable to all things is a logical abstraction. When we say that the principle of non-contradiction is “thin” we mean that its truth is so transparent as to admit of no unclarity, no possibility of mistaking the meaning. At the level of the undressed principle of non-contradiction, no one who was capable of thought or perception could fail to embrace it. Related to this inherent transparency is the principle of non-contradiction’s infinite fertility as a principle, its “thickness” in applicability or extension.

Accordingly, while it is true to say that the principle of non-contradiction contains within itself the truth, or truth-value, of all possible particular propositions, nevertheless it must also be admitted that the universal is the emptiest, as far as its concretion or application is concerned. Its power only becomes apparent when it is “fleshed out,” as the phrase goes; and the more fleshed out it is, the more food it affords for error. As Aristotle observes, we are rarely mistaken about the universals which can be gathered easily from experience (e.g., the whole is greater than any of its parts), but we frequently err in applying what we know in general to what we encounter in particulars. For example, we may know that all mules are sterile, but we may not know that this particular animal is sterile if we do not identify it as a mule. As long as we stick to the simplest axioms and theorems of geometry, we are not likely to fall into error; but the further we go in drawing conclusions, the more complex the proofs become and greater room opens up for making a mistake in reasoning. Room for error becomes broader still when thought shifts from reasoning in the strict sense (i.e., in a manner reducible to syllogism) to reasoning on the basis of probabilities—as when we reason about natural events which are “for the most part,” or about ethics, where tight logical inference is weakened by the factors of free will and custom—or on the basis of likenesses, as when we draw arguments from features common to man and other animals, or properties analogously predicable of God and man.

A superfluity of expanded truth, an unfolded system, a fully-formed and well-nourished body of observations, inferences, or deductions, affords opportunities for a parasite, which is not equal to the task of appropriating the whole, to seize some part of the whole and maintain its independent life by removing and transforming that part into its own life-system. Superfluity, as suggestive of useless excess, may be the wrong term; but I wish to convey the notion of a sort of “padding” around a system of truth, portions of which can be stolen from it without destroying the fundamental truths of the system itself. Without these truths, the parasites can no longer live; paradoxically, their survival depend on the health of the principles and many of the conclusions as well.

Some elements of an “organic” theory of error would be as follows.

  1. The connection of error and truth, or more accurately, the necessary subordination of falsehood to the truth from which it derives its sole means of subsistence. Error is intelligible to the extent that it still contains in its stomach the digestibilia of truth.
  2. The dependence of the parasite idea upon the host idea which precontains the segment used by the parasite; precontains it, moreover, in a holistic way whereby it serves as a part that benefits the greater organism. It is precisely this holistic function of the particular truth that the parasite directly counteracts by isolating a part and taking it out of the whole. The truth is only a “full” or “functional” truth within the organism of which it constitutes an element; when removed, it is dead, like the hand severed from the body which is called a hand only equivocally. Thus, the truth taken by the parasite becomes, in isolation, a falsehood because it is taken out of or away from the context, the body, in which it has a purposeful place in the entire organic structure. The particular truth or element is teleological, in that it contributes to the good of the entire organism; an organism is in fact an “organized body,” a multiplicity governed by the soul for the sake of some end or hierarchy of ends (nutrition, sensation, cognition, volition).[i]

  3. The Mystical Body of Christ can be parasitized; that is the essence of heresy. Heresy is in the theological realm what intellectual error is in the philosophical realm. Protestantism lives to the extent that Catholicity remains within it, as digestibilia. When a Protestantism which has cut itself off definitively from the Body thoroughly digests what it has taken, it dies for want of nourishment, as can be seen clearly in the liberal Protestantism of the 19th and 20th centuries which has now metamorphosed into agnostic social activism, usually with a diabolical twist.
  4. Error cannot be understood independently of truth, as though it were an isolated item that could be placed in a separate category or box. The very being of a falsehood is relative to a truth to which it must remain somehow attached, even if in an attitude of antagonism or hostility, or minimally, in an attitude of selfish utility. Thus, for example, the early modern philosophers cannot develop their systems except in contradistinction and opposition to the ancients and medievals[ii]; the modern systems are in fact parasitical in nature, in so far as they start from a rejection of the old whole and carve out whatever portions of it they wish to maintain for their own sub-holistic purposes. They can exist only to the extent that the old whole still exists and provides nourishment to their errors and a whole to which their systems (which are really “sub-systems,” in that they result from a constriction of the prior whole, and not from a separation and independent development) can be opposed.
  5. Biological parasitology can teach us this, too: by far the greater number of animal species in existence, perhaps as much as three-quarters of known species, are parasitical.[iii] By analogy, one would expect error mingled with truth to outweigh pure truth—and so it does, as we can see from looking around us at the errors in which most of mankind is embroiled. The fall of man is a fall from friendship with God, where there is mutual cooperation, to a kind of parasitism off of God’s creation. This is also the essence of capitalism: a mechanism of preying off of other members of the social body for the benefit of the predator.

The truth of the theory of error presented here is confirmed by the simple fact that there could never be a philoplanē or philosphalma—that is, a “love of error” analogous to “love of wisdom”—for the simple reason that the mind of its very nature is borne towards the true and cannot accept anything false except because it has first persuaded itself that the false is true.[iv] A “thought-experiment,” for example, means a situation where one adopts a certain thesis as true, even if it is false strictly speaking, and proceeds to deduce the consequences, as in Lobachevsky’s non-Euclidean geometry. Moreover, if an opponent of non-Euclidean geometry grants that it “works” when applied to curved surfaces, he is admitting precisely that the geometry is true so far as curved surfaces are concerned, but not with plane surfaces where the straight line has an unbending definition.

It seems only fitting to let that great truth-lover St. Augustine have the final word:

People have such a love for truth that when they happen to love something else, they want it to be the truth; and because they do not wish to be proven wrong, they refuse to be shown their mistake. And so, they end up hating the truth for the sake of the object which they have come to love instead of the truth.


NOTES

[i] The term “system” in its original etymology should be examined more carefully along the lines sketched here.

[ii] Gabriel Marcel says that Sartre’s ethical position can exist, as a position, only when there is a contrary understanding of freedom and truth for it to oppose. (The same is true, one might point out, of James Madison’s understanding of man and political community.) One might say that an error only exists as a position, that is, something posited or placed against something else. Truth has a kind of independent or self-sufficient being, which does not stand in need of something extraneous in order to stand; not so with error.

[iii] See National Geographic, October 1997.

[iv] Vincent McCabe argues this point exceptionally well in his book The Catholic Church and Philosophy.


13:36

It falls like tears, like wasted years [Semiduplex]

At Rorate Caeli, there is a very lengthy, very interesting piece about the probability of a unified date for Easter. The author’s assessment: nil. In short, the Church of Rome has long insisted upon the Gregorian calendar for the date for Easter, and the Orthodox churches have long insisted on the Julian calendar. While there have been favorable noises from both the Holy Father and the Ecumenical Patriarch about a unified date for Easter, the Moscow Patriarchate, which does not take orders from the Ecumenical Patriarch, to put it mildly, prefers the retention of the status quo. And if Moscow doesn’t go along, the proposal will be dead in the water in Constantinople—dead in the Bosphorus, as it were. Read the whole thing there.

We add briefly that the talk of a unified Easter seemed to come out of nowhere, and that the mentions we saw were awfully enthusiastic. While ecumenical dialogue is one of the great loves of the Church after Vatican II, it should be noted that very few results are actually achieved. Certainly, enthusiastic joint statements, lengthy joint declarations about shared beliefs and stumbling blocks to full communion, and the like are regularly produced, but, as far as results in the ut unum sint sense, well, that’s another story. And the Rorate Caeli piece shows why: ecumenical dialogue involves not only the Church and her doctrine but also the other institution and its doctrine. In this case, the Orthodox have a long, complex history about their calendar preferences. And a surge of ecumenical enthusiasm is not likely to overcome those preferences.


13:26

Hey Ladies, line up to get your feet washed. Francis changes Holy Thursday rubrics to the Mass after 2000 years! [Vox Cantoris]

Jorge Bergoglio goes from the supreme "lawbreaker" of the Church in Buenos Aires to the Church's "lawmaker!" 

Pope proves that if you disobey a law long enough, the Church will change it.

His "god of surprises" has more in store!

Jorge Card. Bergoglio breaks the Law of the Church and washes women's feet in Buenos Aires
Reason #5264 why we should just leave the Nervous Disordered Mess and its Bugnini lead Masonic inspired sacrilege. It has just been revealed, hidden as it was since a few days before Christmas, that Franciscus has changed the rubrics for Holy Thursday from "Viri Selecti."

That's right ladies, you can wear a short skirt and give a little flash to Father Bob as he pours water on your feet in front of the congregation. But don't worry, he'll probably have no interest because he's as queer as this decision.

Now the picture above is when Francis was just plain out Cardinal Jorge. This means that the Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires broke liturgical law and thus, Canon Law. When he became Pope and chose to repeat this as Pope the last three years, he had the right to dispense with the Law. As Cardinal, and whenever he did this before becoming a Cardinal, he did not have the right. This means that the current Bishop of Rome did not respect the Law of the Church in these matters before. Hence, he has no respect now. He has told all of this for well over a year now, even as recently as Monday morning.

You and I, however; we are the dissenters. We are the sinners of course. We are those not open to his "god of surprises."

Well, surprise!

Does Franciscus have the legal power to do this? Of course.

Does he have the moral authority? NO, not in a million years.

It is another example of dissenters changing practice, changing doctrine.

Communion-in-the-hand.

Girl Altar Boys.

Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.

It is all, as it this, a liturgical abuse, legalised through the breaking of the law. 

So, how do you like the god of surprises, so far, eh?

I will never, ever attend the Sacred Triduum in the Novus Ordo as long as I shall live. I will sit home and read it first before I will ever attend it again if that was all I could do! 


I am seriously considering renouncing all work in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite towards restoration and any possible "Reform of the Reform." It is dead. It died in February 2013 as we were abandoned by our Papa and left to fend for ourselves against the modernist, Masonic and Peronist wolves! I will contemplate the never again attending the modernist mess of a Mass bequeathed by Paul VI, weddings, funerals, chanting - all of it. Thirty years nearly of work. for what? For this? This liturgical disgrace foisted upon us by a Bishop of Rome that writes, "I had...I have...I came...I order!" What kind of Pope is this? I, I, I! Who is this Argentine Peronist! 

Is it true then? Did he really stand up and shout that he would strip the 13 Cardinals of their red hats? "Full power has been given to me, I run the show around here?" Did he say it? Because if he didn't, he sure acts like it!

No Wotyla, No Ratzinger would ever have gotten away with this.

What a blatant, idiotic, abominable decision on the part of the Bishop of Rome. The lawbreaker has become the lawmaker!

Fathers reading this! You have a choice. 

The Washing of the Feet was not part of the Mass until 1955. It was a rite reserved to Cathedrals, Monasteries, Seminaries and Religious Religious Houses. When it was put after the homily on Holy Thursday in the "Reformed Holy Week" by Pius XII at the urging of Annibale Bugnini and other modernists hidden away in the liturgical offices of the Vatican, it was the first time in 2000 years that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was interrupted for a para-liturgy. It was then and remains in the traditional Missal and in the modernist Missal, an "option." It does not have to be done. It can be optioned out! So, option it out! The decree only changes what it expressly seeks to change. The fact is, it is still an option!

It does not apply to the traditional Mass.

Where is the consultation with the "brother bishops?" Where is the "collegiality?" This Pope has become a dictator, an absolutist, a Peronist!

But mark my words; a future pope will undo this liturgical crime.

You have one choice friends, leave the Novus Ordo. Get out of it and get into Tradition in every way. It is going to come crashing down. It is a valid Mass when, blah, blah, blah; but it cannot be reformed, it can only be abrogated and it will be!

Mark. My. Words.

To my Venerable Brother Cardinal ROBERT SARAH
Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

Your Eminence,

As I had the opportunity to tell you, for some time I have been reflecting on the rite of "washing of the feet," contained in the Liturgy of the Mass of the Lord's Supper, in order to improve the methods of implementation, to express the full meaning of the gesture made by Jesus at the Last Supper, his gift of himself "to the end" for the salvation of the world, his boundless charity. After careful consideration, I came to the decision to make a change in the rubrics of the Roman Missal.

Therefore I order to appear a change to the heading under which the people chosen to receive the washing of the feet should be men or boys, so that from now on the Church's Pastors can choose the participants in the rite among all the members of the People's God. It also recommends that the chosen is provided an adequate explanation of the meaning of the rite itself.

Grateful for the valuable service of this dicastery, I assure you, Your Eminence, to the Secretary and to all the staff of my remembrance in prayer and, formulating my best wishes for Christmas, I send to all my Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican, 20 December 2014

FRANCISCUS
Here is the Latin Decree from the Congregation, no doubt, forced upon them: 
In Missa in Cena Domini, post lectionem Evangelii secundum Ioannem, ad humilitatem et caritatem Christi erga discipulos suos quasi scaenice demonstrandam, instauratio Hebdomadae sanctae, decreto Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria (die 30 Novembris 1955), dedit facultatem, ubi ratio pastoralis id suadebatur, lotionem pedum agendi duodecim virorum.

Qui ritus, in liturgia romana, traditus fuerat nomine Mandatum Domini de caritate fraterna ex Iesu verbis (cfr Io 13, 34), quae Antiphona in celebratione resonabant.

Episcopi et presbyteri hoc ritu agentes intime invitantur ad sese conformandum Christo qui «non venit ministrari sed ministrare» (Mt 20, 28) et, caritate «in finem» (Io 13, 1) compulsus, vitam dare pro totius generis humani salute.

Ut participantibus haec plena significatio ritus exprimatur bonum visum est Summo Pontifici Francisco normam variare quae in rubricis Missalis Romani (p. 300 n. 11) legitur: «Viri selecti deducuntur a ministris…», quae idcirco sequenti modo mutari debet: «Qui selecti sunt ex populo Dei deducuntur a ministris…» (et consequenter in Caeremoniali Episcoporum n. 301 et n. 299 b: «sedes pro designatis»), ita ut pastores seligere possint parvum fidelium coetum ad repraesentandam varietatem et unitatem uniuscuiusque portionis populi Dei. Qui coetus constare potest ex viris et mulieribus, et convenienter ex iuvenibus et senibus, sanis et aegrotis, clericis, consecratis, laicis.

Quam innovationem haec Congregatio de Cultu Divino et Disciplina Sacramentorum, vigore facultatum a Summo Pontifice tributarum, in libris liturgicis Ritus Romani inducit, pastores admonens de proprio munere instituendi, apta manuductione, sive fideles qui seliguntur, sive alios ut ritui participent scienter, actuose et fructuose.

Contrariis quibuslibet minime obstantibus.

Ex aedibus Congregationis de Cultu Divino et Disciplina Sacramentorum, die 6 mensis Ianuarii anno 2016, in sollemnitate Epiphaniae Domini.In the Mass, the Lord's Supper, after the reading of the Gospel according to John, in order to demonstrate the humility and the love of Christ's love for his disciples, and as it were, dramatically, for the establishment of Holy Week and the decree of the greatest mysteries of our Redemption (the day 30 of November, 1955), given us the possibility, where he was advised to give a pastoral reason, the washing, the feet of twelve men of action.
A non-official English translation. 
This rite is celebrated, in the Roman rite, and delivered to the words of Jesus had been the name of the Lord's commandment of brotherly love (cf. Jn 13, 34), which is echoed in the celebration of Antiphon.

Intimately thanks to the conformation of this rite are invited to the bishops and priests were Christ himself who "came not to be served but to serve" (Mt 20, 28) You know, in love "to the end" (Jn 13: 1), driven by, and the life I gave him for the salvation of the whole human race.

In order to take part in the rite are full of the meaning of an expression to change it in accordance with a good view of what is in the rubrics of the Roman Missal, the Sovereign Pontiff Francisco (p. 300 n. 11) we read: "Husbands selected the boys are taken by the ministers of ...», which therefore ought to be changed in the following manner: "For those who are selected the boys are taken by the ministers of the people of God ... "(and, consequently, in the Ceremonial of Bishops, n. 301 and n. 299 b:" seats for the designated »), so that they can be to select a small group of the faithful in the representation of the variety and the unity of the pastors of each portion of the people of God. And they can be seen from a group of men and women, and was suitable for the young and old, the healthy and the infirm, the clergy, the consecrated life, lay associations.

How the renewal of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the strength of the faculties by the Supreme Pontiff, in the liturgical books of the Roman Rite and makes the gift of shepherds to train in mind about one's own, a suitable guidance, whether they be believers who are selected to participate in or to any other, that the rite of the conscious, active, and fruitful .

To the contrary notwithstanding.

From the offices of the Congregation for the Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the 6th day of the month of January in the year 2016, on the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord.

In accord with Benedict XVI, Universae Ecclesiae, this does not apply to the Roman Missal of 1962 as nothing coming after 1962 which conflicts, is licit. For example, Girl Altar Boys, Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, Anticipated Sunday liturgy. Should Jorge Bergoglio abrogate U.E., there will be literal hell to pay.

http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/de/bollettino/pubblico/2016/01/21/0041/00085.html

13:04

Watch this video and 'wake up' from indifference to persecuted Christians [CNA Daily News]

Santander, Spain, Jan 21, 2016 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A video that shares the testimonies of people who have personally suffered the persecution of Christians in the Middle East is calling on their fellow Christians in the West to “wake up” to the grave crisis facing their brethren.

The most important thing that Christians can do for their brethen in Iraq and Syria is to build a courageously Christians society in their own countries, an exiled Iraqi bishop says in his interview.

The two objectives of the short video are to “help people become more aware of the persecution that is taking place in the East” and to “encourage Christians to begin to live a more profound faith with courage,” Sr. Megan María Conway, SHM, told CNA.

The video, “Wake Up!” is produced by the EUK Mamie Foundation, a new evangelization effort of the Home of the Mother, an international public association of the faithful which was approved by the Vatican in 2010.

One of the testimonies is from Father Douglas Bazi, an Iraqi priest who in 2006 was kidnapped and tortured by Muslim extremists. He is currently rector of the St. Elijah parish and refugee camp in Erbil, where tens of thousands of residents of Mosul fled after it was captured by the Islamic State in June 2014.

“First of all, I ask you to wake up,” Fr. Bazi says to the video's viewers. “If you are going to just be silent, it is the same thing as agreeing with those who are persecuting us. So don't be silent. If you can, don’t just watch. Take action. And – wake up.”

Archbishop Amel Shamon Nona of the Chaldean Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Sydney – and who was the Chaldean bishop of Mosul until January 2015 – stated that “the whole Western world is in danger, because many suicide bombers, many militants, Islamic State militants, have come to us from Europe, America, and Australia.”

An Argentine religious priest who serves at the Baghdad cathedral, Fr. Luis Montes, said that the Islamic State “has reached this level of madness, this craziness, because (they’ve) let hatred enter into their hearts.”

The video also presents the testimony of Miereille Al Farah, a Syrian Catholic woman who works as a marketing director in Damascus. She comments that “there is a certain rejection of what we are, I don’t like to say it, but a certain hatred...We were born Christians, but we’ve also chosen this faith and it’s the only true Way, as Jesus says: 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life'.”

Nevertheless, Fr. Montes said, “the Christians in Iraq are an incredible example of forgiveness. People who forgive, who forgive with all their hearts.”

“We have to fight against this hatred by doing good. With the charity that Jesus taught us, that led him to give his life for us, the same charity that inspires these martyrs,” the priest adds.

“We have martyrs, I don’t like to say this, but if we’re going to have more martyrs than the people who have faith in Europe, I think we have a problem,” Fr. Bazi then warns.

Archbishop Nona says that “you can help us by building a more active and courageous Christian society, which is active, brave. You have to evangelize your society again with courage, without any fear of saying, 'we’re Christians'. This is the help you can give us.”

13:01

When You Get Sick, Do You Want “Prayers” or “Warm Thoughts”? [The Daily Register]

By Kathy Schiffer | You are at death's door. You're battling a terminal illness, or facing exploratory surgery, or you just have a miserable head cold that confines you to bed with a heating pad and a big box of Kleenex. So which do you prefer...

12:52

What’s inside this week’s Catholic Herald? [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

Cover story…

This week Tim Stanley asks if The Donald can charm Catholic voters

More comment…

Francis versus Benedict XVI? It’s not that simple, says Fr Raymond de Souza

Sir James MacMillan says his frail granddaughter possessed a treasure the powerful can only dream of

The Oscar-nominated director of Spotlight talks to Will Gore

Jonathan Wright asks how much Catholic and Mormon really have in common

Bishop David McGough reflects on new beginnings

Exclusively in print and available on the Catholic Herald app…

Ed West asks if Pope Francis is getting ready to take on Mexico’s drug cartels

Andrew M Brown on how he dealt with angry Bowie fans

I love Western wealth but I want to share it, says Ann Widdecombe

Marie-Louise Van Spyk on the theology of love that doesn’t ignore single people

Secularism has left France in a real muddle, says Mary Kenny

Jenny McCartney finds The Revenant an ordeal, literally

Our churches are not meeting halls, insists Pastor Iuventus

Piers Paul Read on the debt Judaism owes the Church

Let your soul catch up with you, says Fr Ronald Rolheiser

To download the entire issue for free with our new app, go here or to subscribe to the Catholic Herald magazine go here.

12:47

Pope Francis opens Holy Thursday foot-washing rite to women [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

Pope Francis has issued a decree changing the way that the Holy Thursday foot-washing rite is celebrated around the world.

The decree was published today by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and signed by prefect Cardinal Robert Sarah.

The decree says that the rite should no longer be limited to men.

The Vatican website has published a letter from Pope Francis to Cardinal Sarah confirming the changes.

The letter, written in Italian, says that the Pope made the changes “so that it might express more fully the meaning of Jesus’s gesture in the Cenacle, His giving of Himself unto the end for the salvation of the world, His limitless charity”.

The Pope continues: “After careful consideration, I have decided to make a change to the Roman Missal. I therefore decree that the section according to which those persons chosen for the washing of the feet must be men or boys, so that from now on the Pastors of the Church may choose the participants in the rite from among all the members of the People of God. I also recommend that an adequate explanation of the rite itself be provided to those who are chosen.”

Francis broke convention on the first Holy Thursday after his papal election in 2013, when he washed the feet of women prisoners.

In practice, many parishes around the world have long included women in the rite.

The foot-washing rite is known as the Mandatum, after the first word of Jesus’s saying in John 13:34 before he washed his disciples’ feet: “Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos” (“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another”).

The rite was celebrated separately to the Holy Thursday Mass before Pope Pius XII restored it in 1955.

The rubric for the washing of the feet in force until today read: “After the homily, where a pastoral reason suggests it, the Washing of Feet follows. The men who have been chosen (viri selecti) are led by the ministers to seats prepared in a suitable place. Then the priest (removing his chasuble if necessary) goes to each one, and, with the help of the ministers, pours water over each one’s feet and then dries them.”

According to the decree, the rubric will now read “Those chosen from among the People of God” instead of “The men who have been chosen”.

According to the Vatican Information Service, the decree says: “The reform of the Holy Week, by the decree Maxima Redemptionis nostrae mysteria of November 1955, provides the faculty, where counselled by pastoral motives, to perform the washing of the feet of twelve men during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, after the reading of the Gospel according to John, as if almost to represent Christ’s humility and love for His disciples.

“In the Roman liturgy this rite was handed down with the name of the Mandatum of the Lord on brotherly charity in accordance with Jesus’ words, sung in the Antiphon during the celebration.

“In performing this rite, bishops and priests are invited to conform intimately to Christ who ‘came not to be served but to serve’ and, driven by a love ‘to the end’, to give His life for the salvation of all humankind.

“To manifest the full meaning of the rite to those who participate in it, the Holy Father Francis has seen fit to change the rule by in the Roman Missal (p.300, No. 11) according to which the chosen men are accompanied by the ministers, which must therefore be modified as follows: ‘Those chosen from among the People of God are accompanied by the ministers’ (and consequently in the Caeremoniale Episcoporum No. 301 and No. 299 b referring to the seats for the chosen men, so that pastors may choose a group of faithful representing the variety and unity of every part of the People of God. This group may consist of men and women, and ideally of the young and the old, healthy and sick, clerics, consecrated persons and lay people.

“This Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, by means of the faculties granted by the Supreme Pontiff, introduces this innovation in the liturgical books of the Roman Rite, recalling pastors of their duty to instruct adequately both the chosen faithful and others, so that they may participate in the rite consciously, actively and fruitfully.”

In a statement, the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales said: “This decree can be seen as a concession to existing practice, and its good intentions are evident. It nevertheless undermines attempts to ‘resacralise’ the Ordinary Form, and it reinforces the trend which has seen priests increasingly surrounded by women during Mass, serving, doing the readings, and as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. This inevitably makes the all-male priesthood itself harder to understand.

“Liturgical conservatives who have sought in recent decades to keep the rules of the Roman Missal by admitting only men to the ceremony of the Mandatum, often in the face of considerable pressure, may well feel the rug has been pulled from under them by this decree. This has happened many times, as Rome has felt unable to hold the line on liturgical abuses, and has simply allowed them: notably female altar servers and Communion in the hand.

“These concessions have moved many to reconsider the Extraordinary Form, which is not affected by this decree, or similar concessions to liturgical abuses in the past. It is in the Extraordinary Form that the Church’s liturgical traditions are maintained.”

12:38

Wildbad Kreuth: Promiauflauf bei der CSU [Beiboot Petri]

Gestern war ja nicht nur die Kanzlerin in Wildbad-Kreuth, aber wie man aus vielen Quellen hört, hat's ihr diesmal nicht so gut gefallen dort ....

Aber es war ja noch jemand da.



Interessant, was der Kardinal zu sagen hat - aber auch kein Wunder, denn die Fraktion muss auch ihm ordentlich "eingeheizt" haben.
Zumindest wies der bayerische Ministerpräsident heute in der Pressekonferenz darauf hin, dass die Fraktion dem Kardinal gesagt hat, dass auch die einheimische Bevölkerung Rechte hat, insbesondere hier in Sicherheit und Frieden zu leben.

Ja, und ich erinnere mich auch daran, dass der Kardinal damals bei seiner "Einholung" nach München im Amtssitz des Ministerpräsidenten einen Eid auf die Bayerische Verfassung geleistet hat - und nicht auf die sozialistische Internationale.

Gut, dass man ihn in Kreuth wohl daran erinnert hat.

Inzwischen haben auch die Münchner Kirchennachrichten einen längeren Bericht zum Thema. Hier wird das eine oder andere noch weiter erklärt.

12:15

SPECIAL REPORT: 20 Catholic Colleges Sponsor Chapters of Pro-Abortion Amnesty International [Cardinal Newman Society All Posts]

Although known for its long history of fighting human rights abuses, Amnesty International has become a world leader in pushing for legalized abortion and gay marriage, establishing themselves as an opponent of the Catholic Church. But research conducted by The Cardinal Newman Society found that 20 Catholic colleges and six Catholic law schools sponsor active student chapters of Amnesty International despite the organization’s anti-Catholic activism worldwide.

“While there is still much ignorance about Amnesty International’s radical swing toward abortion advocacy, we are informing Catholic educators and urging them to refrain from any cooperation with the organization,” said Newman Society President Patrick Reilly.

Historically, Amnesty International (AI) maintained a neutral stance on abortion, but in 2007 the group’s executive board announced that the organization would support abortion in certain situations.

More...

12:05

Can Donald Trump win over Catholics? [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

What should the thoughtful Catholic make of presidential candidate Donald Trump? Love him? Loathe him? Laugh at him? Or gaze in awe at his ageless hair? Somewhere, buried deep inside it, Raquel Welch is probably battling a dinosaur.

In the middle of a rally last year, Trump invited a woman onto the stage to prove that it was real. “Have I ever met you before?” he asked, like a magician. She said no – and he invited her to tug on his locks. She confirmed that they were genuine. His critics, however, retain their doubts. Ricardo Sanchez, a radio host in Los Angeles, calls him el hombre del peluquin. It means man of the toupee.

The hostility of any Spanish-speaker is down to Trump’s signature issue: immigration. He exploded into the race last year with a speech in which he said that Mexico was sending its murderers and rapists north of the border. Normally when the media criticises a candidate for those kind of comments, the candidate buckles or spins. Not Trump. He doubled down. Promising a “great wall” across the border, he lashed out at the media and upped the rhetorical ante. The Republican debates, for the first time in a long time, were actually watched by people. Some 25 million tuned in to see Trump mock his opponents and pledge to bring “strength, energy, quickness and brain” to the White House; the most popular Republican debate in 2011 drew just 11 million.

And while the viewing figures tick up, so do the poll numbers. Trump leads the field by a country mile. He may come a cropper in Iowa, the first state to ballot, because of its complicated voting rules which favour the kind of grassroots organisation that he’s not had time to build. But even if the Trump momentum is eventually stopped, he’s revolutionised US politics. And he’s done it while hardly spending a dime.

What is Trumpism? Let’s start with the billionaire’s biography. He was born in 1946, the son of a real-estate giant. He was a rough kid, so daddy enrolled him in a military school to iron him out. Interviews with friends reveal a college boy who was disciplined, astonishingly self-confident and focused on building a property empire. He used a $1 million loan from his father to buy stock for development. We shouldn’t dismiss his present fortune as entirely “inherited”, however. Trump does have the Midas touch. His genius was to buy cheap in rundown locations, invest in high-quality architecture, win awards, draw middle-class tenants and gentrify. His success was New York’s success, too – he contributed to the emergence of a richer, cleaner city where angels no longer feared to tread.

To this he added casinos and golf courses, including in Scotland.

Some of his businesses folded; he often skirted ruin. But the empire seemed to be kept afloat by sheer ego. Trump branded everything he owned and sold. You can even buy Trump ties, although the department store Macy’s dropped his menswear line after his remarks about Mexico.

While Europeans find Trump vulgar, he’s as American as apple pie. The country was built by businessmen, some of them merchant adventurers, like Mellon, Rockefeller and Ford. Beneath all the glitz, however, what is the nature of the real Donald Trump? That’s hard to tell because he can be surprisingly elliptical. Trump has declared that he is a faithful Presbyterian but that he doesn’t feel the urge to ask God for forgiveness. He told an interviewer: “When I drink my little wine – which is about the only wine I drink – and have my little cracker, I guess that is a form of asking for forgiveness.” But, on the whole, “if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

Friends say that he is funny, kind and great company. He’s now on his third wife, Melania, and folks could get cynical about the fact that she’s a former model 24 years younger than him. Yet the couple’s recent interview with Barbara Walters, one of the few journalists to show respect to the businessman, revealed a softer side. It was obvious in their body language that Donald knows he’s a very lucky guy. And he’s clearly as much in love with her as the day they first met at a New York fashion-week party. Trump, incidentally, had arrived with a date – and still asked for Melania’s number.

What is Trumpism as an ideology? It might be easier to think of it as a social phenomenon, tapping into economic and cultural anxiety. The golden age to be a white male American was the 1950s and 1960s, when wages rose fast, the living was cheap and the government was there to help with things like free tuition. Since then, things have been sliding. A husband can no longer expect to maintain a housewife and two kids on a single wage – and he’s far more likely now to be underpaid, overworked, divorced and forking out alimony.

America has recovered from its credit crunch but it left deep financial and psychological scars. Many Middle Americans are convinced that Barack Obama has made things worse, that he diverted money towards the poor and failed to protect wages by stemming illegal immigration. In fact, deportations under Obama have hit a record high. Despite this, white male voters with low incomes and relatively low education are apparently flocking to Trump. He taps into a strong, Evangelical, anti-statist tradition of believing that the key to success isn’t socialism but individual liberty. Let us go, leave us alone and we’ll prosper: we could all be billionaires if the government just got off our backs.

Trump might have a distinctly Protestant ethic, but he’s most often compared with America’s foremost conservative Catholic populist, Pat Buchanan. In 1992, 1996 and 2000, Buchanan ran for president on a platform similar to Trump’s. He was anti-immigration, critical of free trade and, as Trump has hinted, sceptical of foreign intervention. The Buchanan and Trump tickets both tapped into an American tradition of business nationalism, which keeps the government out of personal affairs except to protect industry and raise the prospects of the little man. Buchanan has welcomed the Trump candidacy and Trump has praised Buchanan. They are both pro-life and anti-gun control. (Buchanan once defined good gun control as being able to aim well.)

But Buchanan only represents one dimension of US political Catholicism – its socially conservative wing with fond family memories of the Fifties rosary crusades led by Bing Crosby. There is also a liberal, internationalist wing, keen to remind Catholics of European descent that they were once immigrants too and were persecuted by the Anglo-Saxon “natives”. Contemporary liberal Catholics, who take their lead from the Vatican II reforms of the 1960s and are strongly represented by Democrats on the Hill, regard Pope Francis as an advocate of progress. Buchanan, by contrast, has criticised Francis’s theology. Trump has challenged his economics.

On immigration, Donald said that Francis’s “words are beautiful and I respect the Pope” but that Americans can’t afford to take any more people. And on climate change, he concluded: “Weather changes and you have storms and you have rain and you have beautiful days. But I do not believe that we should imperil the companies within our countries.” Business comes first.

The Catholic vote matters: 22 per cent of Americans identify themselves with the Church. In the past, they were overwhelmingly drawn from European immigrant stock and Republicans hoped to turn them into a powerful part of their culturally conservative coalition. But many Catholics have gone the way of the rest of US society, becoming less white and less Right-wing. They did not overwhelmingly vote for Buchanan and probably won’t go for Trump either. On the contrary, Buchanan’s support tended to rely more on Evangelicals – and his candidacy was controversial and raw in a way that drew intense criticism. In 2000, someone said of him: “I guess he’s an anti-Semite … He doesn’t like the blacks, he doesn’t like the gays. It’s just incredible that anybody could embrace this guy.” That critic was Donald Trump.

This is the problem with defining Trump: he’s been many things. He not only gave money to Hillary Clinton but also invited her to his wedding. Now he says she probably belongs in jail. He has moved so dramatically from Left to Right that ideological conservatives refuse to recognise him as one of their own.

While he’s espoused certain ideas with sufficient strength to give the impression of a coherent platform, that’s not really what he’s running on. What Trump is selling in this election is Trump. After decades of drift, recession and unwinnable wars, he offers the nation his own brand of leadership rooted in his personal story of success. It’s no coincidence that in almost every interview he gives, he justifies a policy by pointing to his poll position. When Jeb Bush told Trump in a debate that he couldn’t just “insult your way to the presidency”, Trump replied: “Well, I’m at 42 per cent and you’re at three. So, so far I’m doing better.” And the audience went wild.

Rather than asking what kind of man Trump really is, it’s perhaps best to ask what kind of times have produced him. In a globalised world disrupted by constant security threats, he offers control. In an age of economic uncertainty, he promises riches. And at a time when celebrity is worth a lot more than experience or intellect, he brilliantly manipulates social media. Britons may not be aware that he was the star of the original US series of The Apprentice – and the visual imagery of a powerful man hiring and firing job applicants has helped define him in the minds of millions. While other candidates have had to go to diners and church halls to meet the people individually, or saturate the airwaves with ads, Trump has been welcomed back into millions of living rooms like a familiar friend.

Will fame be enough to win him the presidency? Probably not. The US Republican primaries are fought over several months: they are a long campaign composed of many individual battles. If Trump loses Iowa on February 1, his momentum will recede. Even if he wins the next contest, New Hampshire, it will require serious organisation to sustain his lead into bigger and bigger states. The more people face the prospect of a Trump nomination, the less they might like the idea. And there are equally compelling alternatives. Marco Rubio is teeing up as the establishment candidate; Ted Cruz is popular among the religious right and women. If Trump falls, there is plenty of talent to take his place and, ironically, both these men are Hispanic.

In generational terms, it would be tempting to see Trump versus Rubio as a tug of war between the past and the future. For the future, demographically, lies with Spanish speakers. If nothing else, that should be good for Mass attendance.

Tim Stanley is a historian, Daily Telegraph columnist and contributing editor of the Catholic Herald.

This article first appeared in the January 22 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald. To download the entire issue for free with our new app, go here

12:00

Free Downloads • Works by Cardinal Bartolucci [Corpus Christi Watershed news]

Free Downloads • Works by Cardinal Bartolucci

12:00

Newman Society, Pro-Life Groups Call on Media to Fairly Cover March for Life [Cardinal Newman Society All Posts]

The Cardinal Newman Society joined with 16 pro-life organizations, two members of Congress and the Media Research Center (MRC) this week to call on media networks and journalists to offer fair coverage of this year’s March for Life and refrain from any kind of undue censorship.

“Thousands of pro-life school and college students join the March for Life every year, often traveling hundreds of miles in buses to declare themselves the pro-life generation,” said Newman Society President Patrick Reilly in the coalition’s press statement. “Any objective reporter would see the news value in this and be on the ground, getting interviews and reporting on this extraordinary youth activism for ‘traditional’ values.”

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11:46

Res Ipsa Loquitur [The American Catholic]

  Dutch men in miniskirts protesting the Cologne New Year’s Eve attacks on women by Islamic “refugees”.  With such defenders every European woman should invest in a firearm and learn how to use it.  Of course in many European countries the law abiding populations are disarmed by the same governments importing the “refugees” from Islamic […]

11:42

Meet five Catholic heroes of science [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

In a previous post I discussed the life and work of Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian Jesuit and cosmologist. Lemaitre’s work and faith challenges the idea, proposed by New Atheism, that religion and science are in conflict. He is not alone as Catholic Church has raised up many scientific pioneers whose stories deserve to be better known, especially in the context of the New Evangelisation and Catholic apologetics. Here are a few examples to consider.

Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel is to genetics what Georges Lemaitre is to cosmology. Sadly, during his lifetime he did not receive the credit that he deserved. The significance of his work was only recognised more than 30 years later.

The main focus of Mendel’s scientific life was the study of variation, heredity and evolution in plants. Initially studying pea plants he focused on seven traits which included, seed shape, pod shape, colouring of flowers, seed coat, pod colour when not ripe, plant height and flower location. Over a period of almost seven years he cultivated 29,000 plants for testing. His studies concluded that there was a pattern of inheritance of various traits. He produced two generalisations which later became known as Mendelian inheritance.

Mendel’s first publication was in 1866 and it had relatively little impact at the time. This is partly because he was not a professional scientist and he had limited means to communicate his work with the scientific community. There was also criticism from some in the scientific world, but his paper is now considered to be a seminal work. Gregor Mendel’s work encompassed far more than the study of pea plants but unfortunately much of his writing was destroyed when his papers were burned after his death.

In 1843, Mendel entered the Augustinian Monastery in Brno, which is today in the Czech Republic. He later was ordained to the priesthood and in 1868 was elevated as abbot. The administrative work and commitments required of an abbot saw the end of Mendel’s scientific work. In later years, Mendel smoked up to 20 cigars a day, in an effort to lose weight, but it did not work. He died on January 6 1884.

Mary Kenneth Keller
When we think of the pioneers of computer science the image of a religious sister is probably far from our minds. Mary Keller entered the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ohio in 1932 and made her final profession in 1940. She was an outstanding mathematician and gained several degrees over the next few years.

In the late 1950s, Keller began working in the Computer Science Centre at Dartmouth College. At the time she was the only woman on the staff and faced some hostility. After gaining her doctorate she moved to Clarke College in Iowa to found a computer science department. During her twenty year tenure, her department did much pioneering work and she became renowned in her field.

She is remembered today through a scholarship created in her honour and a department at the college which is named after her. Sister Mary Keller wrote four books, which were influential at the time and certainly helped lay the foundations for modern computer science.

Stephen Barr
Barr was awarded the Benemerenti Medal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 for his work in the areas of religion, science and public life. He regularly gives lectures on the relationship between religion and science and has published such discussion in journals and peer reviews. Stephen Barr’s writing has also reached more popular audiences with appearances in secular newspapers and magazines.

He is a practising Catholic who takes his faith and family life seriously. Stephen Barr’s significant scientific achievements have mainly involved research in cosmology and theoretical particle physics. He has helped to make significant discoveries in the study of basic particles.

Barr’s academic CV is impressive. He obtained his Ph.D from Princeton in 1978 and has since held research and leadership posts at the University Pennsylvania, University of Washington and the Brookhaven National Laboratory. He has been based at the University of Delaware since 1987 and has held the position of Director of the Bartol Research Institute, within the university, since 2011. He is also a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. For several years Barr has been a fellow of the prestigious American Physical Society, which is the world’s largest organisation for physicists.

Barr is a good example of a Catholic who combines fidelity to science and his faith.

Giovanni Inghirami
Giovanni Inghirami is not alone among Catholic priests in having parts of the moon named after him, having both a valley and a crater which bear his name. This accolade reflects his significant contribution to astronomy.

At the age of 17 Giovanni Inghirami joined the Piarist Fathers. He started work as a teacher, eventually rising to the position of Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at the Pious Schools of Volterra. He published works primarily on astronomy and astronomic tables and lesser works on hydraulics and statics.

In his religious life Inghirami rose to be Superior General of his order but he later resigned this office due to his failing health and poor eyesight. This retirement gave him more time to teach, write and research. He continued working until a few weeks before he died in 1851. He also influenced a future Pope as one of his former pupils was Pius IX.

Mariano Artigas
A member of the personal prelature, Opus Dei, Fr Artigas was ordained to the priesthood in 1964. In 1995 he received the Templeton Prize for his work on the relationship between science and religion. Much of his work was in the area of apologetics and he was a consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Dialogue with non-believers.

Mariano Artigas was interested in the ways in which science, philosophy and religious could actually work together and this led to him co-founding The Science, Reason and Faith Research Group at the University of Navarra in 2002. He also published over 150 articles and books on the interweaving of these three areas.

He held Ph.Ds. in philosophy, physics and theology. He died in 2006.

His work certainly challenges the shallow arguments that new atheism proposes about the relationship of religion and science.

In his opening words in the Encyclical, Fides et Ratio, Pope St John Paul II states that “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart the desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that by knowing and loving God, men and women can come to the fullness of the truth about themselves”. These faithful Catholic scientists have lived out this reality in their lives and work. We should use their stories and example when meeting with those who try to use science to undermine faith and belief.

11:42

LMS Pilgrimage to Caversham 20th Feb [LMS Chairman]






The annual Latin Mass Society Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Caversham will take place on Saturday 20th February, the Ember Saturday of Lent, 11:30am. It will be a sung or high Mass.

The celebrant will be Fr Anthony Conlon; Mass will be accompanied by the Schola Abelis (chant) and Cantus Magnus (polyphony).

The church is located at 2 South View Avenue, Reading RG4 5AB:P click for a map.



IMG_0216
The restored Shrine of Our Lady of Caversham, a medieval shrine of ancient foundation which was venerated by Queen Catherine of Aragon among many others, was beautifully constructed in the 1950s on the side of the church of Our Lady and St Anne; the shrine image was crowned by papal mandate in 1996. Anyone living in area should make Our Lady of Caversham a regular place to visit, and there is no better way of doing it than with the Latin Mass Society's pilgrimage.

The Ember Saturday of Lent, with its glorious chants and extra readings, is the ideal liturgical and spiritual preparation for Holy Week.

Cantus Magus, directed by Matthew Schellhorn, will sing:

William Byrd (c.1539/40 – 1623) Mass for Three Voices
Claudio Casciolini (1697 – 1760) Paris angelicus a 3
Cristóbal de Morales (c. 1500 – 1553) In die tribulations

More about the shrine and the pilgrimage here.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

11:25

Britain should stay inside the EU, says top Vatican official [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

Britain should stay inside the European Union, the Vatican’s British “foreign minister” has said.

Archbishop Paul Gallagher, who was raised in Liverpool, spoke to ITV about the forthcoming referendum and the refugee crisis.

The Vatican Secretary of State for Relations, colloquially referred to as the Holy See’s foreign minister, spoke about his weekly meeting with Pope Francis, who he said is “extremely courteous, he always greets you, has a kind word. He’s quite self-deprecating.”

Speaking about the migrant crisis facing the Middle East and Europe, he said: “No one is doing enough – one of the important things is that the EU has got to work together on this.”

Asked what the Holy See’s view on the upcoming Brexit referendum, Archbishop Gallagher said: “We respect the ultimate decision of the British people, that’s for the British electorate to decide. We would see it as not something that would make a stronger Europe. Better in than out.”

He also criticised what Donald Trump said about a moratorium on Muslim immigration: “I found it very shocking that he would say that… We’re not in favour of walls.”

Archbishop Gallagher confided that when he first arrived in Rome as a young man he had never been on an aeroplane “or eaten a bowl of spaghetti”, and it took him three weeks to get used to the idea.

11:12

Catholics of Sudbury - Get thee to the Latin Mass! [Vox Cantoris]

Let us rejoice with some good news for the Catholics of Sudbury, a vibrant city in northern Ontario which has given, or I should say, sold to the world much of what it sits on. A few months ago, I had heard through some contacts there and in the liturgical movement in Canada that after many years, a traditional Latin Mass was to be held regularly. 

A reader has kindly sent me there new web page. The community is known as the Mater Dei Latin Mass Community and Mass it twice per week; a Read Mass on Wednesday at 5:00 P.M. and a Sung Mass with incense on Sundays at 5:00 P.M. The Masses are offered at St. Casimir's Church at 210 Paris Street.  

The community has a Facebook page and their web page which can be found at http://www.materdeiparish.ca/.

God bless the people who have made this possible.

+JMJ+
My friends, greetings! My name is Fr. Vince Fiore.
Please take a moment to read this. Thank you.
Installed by the Catholic Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, I am the new pastor of the MATER DEI LATIN MASS COMMUNITY in Sudbury, Ontario.
Mater Dei (Mother of God) is a brand new community that will offer a weekly option of attending the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass in the Traditional Latin Rite on Sundays at 5:00 P.M., beginning:
When: Sunday, 17 January 2016
Where: St. Casimir Church, 210 Paris Street, Sudbury, Ontario (parking lot in back, accessible from Van Horne, then Solidarity Lane).
Attending Mass in the Traditional Rite FULFILLS THE CATHOLIC SUNDAY OBLIGATION TO ATTEND MASS.
We are very excited and are diligently working to be able to offer to Almighty God the fullness of the splendour of this extraordinary Liturgy which, thanks to Dr. David Buley, professor of Music Education at Laurentian University, includes an exquisite integration of Gregorian Chant.
A Low Mass will be offered weekly as well, at St. Casimir on Wednesdays at 5:00 P.M.. This is also often referred to as a 'quiet Mass', that is, without the chanting and incensing one would normally experience at a Sunday High Mass and other 'High Feast Days'.
Sacrament of Penance (Confession) will be made available before Mass on Sunday and Wednesday at 4:00 P.M..
We are totally dependent on the generosity of others. Please remember the Mater Dei Latin Mass Community in your prayers. As usual, a collection will be taken up at the Sunday Masses, please give as generously as possible. Thank you.
As well, please consider Mater Dei as a charitable option, monthly or as regular as possible. It is amazing, as you know, how quickly and wildly costs will mount. Tax receipts will be issued. Donations can be made out and sent to:
Mater Dei Latin Mass
c/o 21 Ste. Anne Road
Sudbury, Ontario
P3C 5P6
This is a Diocesan-wide initiative. Please feel free to come and experience the Divine Liturgy as the Saints you know and love would have known it.
Do not have concerns such as "I won't know what to do", or, "I don't understand Latin". To follow along, resources will be provided. Myself, the servers and the musicians are learning, too. So, be at peace and know that we will be growing in this endeavour together. Very exciting!
We are currently working on our website.
Thank you to Almighty God and Our Lady for this extraordinary opportunity!
Thank you and Dominus Vobiscum! (The Lord be with you!)
Please help spread the word!
Through Him, With Him, and In Him,
Pater Vincenzo Fiore
(Father Vince Fiore)
Mater Dei, ora pro nobis! Mother of God, pray for us!

11:00

Is Francis really against Benedict? [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

In our cover story last week, Damian Thompson asked whether Pope Francis was steering the Church away from the direction charted by Pope Benedict XVI, noting the prominence given to Cardinal Walter Kasper – “Joseph Ratzinger’s longest theological adversary” – and the sacking of Cardinal Raymond Burke. The suggestion is plausible, but the stronger evidence is not from Germany, but Belgium. It was lost amid the attention paid to the opening of the Holy Year, but in December the new Archbishop of Brussels, Jozef De Kesel, was installed. Therein lies a tale.

In 2009, as Cardinal Godfried Danneels was completing 30 years as archbishop of Brussels, he and the apostolic nuncio in Belgium at the time, Archbishop Karl-Josef Rauber, agreed that the successor should be Danneels’s protégé, Bishop De Kesel, auxiliary of Brussels since 2002.

Pope Benedict XVI did not agree that another in the line of Danneels was needed, perhaps remembering that at the 1985 extraordinary synod of bishops on the legacy of Vatican II, it was an exasperated Danneels who protested that far too much attention was being given to The Ratzinger Report, the book-length interview with Vittorio Messori. Benedict chose instead André-Joseph Léonard, then almost 20 years Bishop of Namur, to succeed Danneels in January 2010. Neither Danneels nor the nuncio were pleased.

Indeed, just months after Léonard’s transfer to Brussels, the now retired nuncio, Archbishop Rauber, gave an incendiary interview to Il Regno. In a most unusual breach of diplomatic manners, Rauber strongly opposed Benedict for the succession in Brussels, criticising Léonard as a bad choice, made over his own and Cardinal Danneels’s objections. Rauber further attacked Benedict, revealing that while he was nuncio in Switzerland, Ratzinger had four times complained about him to the Secretariat of State.

In due course, Léonard would have been created a cardinal after Danneels turned 80 in 2013. But by that time Benedict was no longer pope, and Francis took a different course. In the consistories of 2014 and 2015, he passed over Léonard for the red hat. Both years he appointed Danneels to the synods on the family – leaving Léonard out, despite him being the most senior bishop in Belgium – indicating clearly that he disapproved of Benedict’s decision in Brussels.

Moreover, in the consistory of 2015, Francis elevated Karl-Josef Rauber to the College of Cardinals as one of the distinguished prelates over 80. In ecclesiastical Rome, the public humiliation of Léonard – and by implication, Benedict – could not have been less subtle. The decision, later in 2015, to appoint De Kesel, the one that Rauber wanted back in 2009, to succeed Léonard simply followed the rewarding of a nuncio who publicly attacked a sitting pope. In his own retirement, Léonard gave a recent interview to Famille Chrétienne in which he defended his more orthodox tenure – including a remarkable tenfold increase in seminarians – but declined to speak of Francis in the way that Rauber spoke of Benedict.

The evidence therefore that, despite their warm public greetings, Francis wishes to undermine what Benedict did, is rather stronger than Damian Thompson suggests.

There is another tale to be told though, one of continuity rather than rupture. Ten years ago this month, Benedict’s first encyclical was released, Deus Caritas Est, in which he wrote: “The Church’s deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: for proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia) and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity that could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.”

The direct continuity here is easy to see. If St John Paul was the great proclaimer, and Benedict the great liturgist, Francis exercises the charitable service of the Church without peer. Indeed, Benedict’s harsh words for the bureaucratic Church have been taken up afresh by Francis.

The latter’s warnings about the Church not becoming a mere NGO echo exactly what the former taught.

Indeed, one of the great battles of Benedict’s pontificate was over the Catholic identity of the Church’s international charitable agencies. Cardinal Robert Sarah, then president of Cor Unum, wanted a more robust Catholic identity, with closer ties to both the local bishops and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, then president of Caritas Internationalis, fought him every step of the way. Sarah won a remarkable victory. Though he then occupied a rather marginal Vatican post, he routed Rodríguez with Benedict’s support.

It was Francis who then promoted Cardinal Sarah to be head of the Vatican liturgy and worship office, from where he led the effort against attempts to get the synod to modify the teachings about Holy Communion and marriage.

Of the two tales, the rise of Cardinal Sarah is more consequential than that of Danneels, De Kesel and Rauber, all of whom are utterly marginal regarding the new evangelisation in northern Europe.

So is Francis against Benedict? It is plausible to argue just that, but much evidence points the other way.

Fr Raymond J de Souza is a priest of the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario, and editor-in-chief of Convivium magazine

This article first appeared in the January 22 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald. To download the entire issue for free with our new app, go here

Blessed by a little angel [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

People say – in fact, the most interesting people say – that God intervened in human history. That is, he interfered with our story, to become one of us, to know what it means to be human, and for us to know Him and to discover that He loves us, with all the implications that has.

Other people will also maintain that this interference in our lives has manifested itself in other ways, perhaps less dramatic, less cosmic, less strange and inexplicable but with parallel revelations.

I can think of a few of these revelatory interferences. Perhaps you can too. The music of JS Bach, the writings of Shakespeare, Michelangelo’s Pietà, the evolution of democracy from ancient Greece to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Einstein’s development of the Theory of Relativity … Celtic winning the European Cup in 1967.

Nearly six years ago my daughter Catherine gave birth to a beautiful little girl, Sara Maria, who was multiply handicapped due to Dandy Walker Syndrome. She had lots of problems, was helpless in every way, but she changed our world. She died on January 5.

Over these years with Sara some of us experienced other, more gradual, more surprising, more silent and transformative realisations of the divine love I mentioned above in the unassuming, patient, tiny, broken, handicapped, smiling, listening, quacking, delighted presence of Sara.

It is not an exaggeration to say that lives have been changed through knowing this little angel; from her mother Catherine, whose life changed forever when she said yes to new life, to the wider family and friends who saw in this relationship an astonishing love and devotion, who saw rapture gazing at rapture, who saw tenderness embrace tenderness, who saw devotion build upon devotion, who saw worship meet worship, who saw the cherisher lift up the cherished, who saw the enchanter astonish the enchanted, who saw heart lost to heart. And how this deep and cosmic love spread out to everyone who was privileged to enter their lives. There are people throughout the world who have become different people through their associations with Sara.

She touched people who only knew her from afar – through electronic communication with her mother and family. Catherine was sustained by parents around the world who were able to share the challenges, the problems and the love of fragile special-needs children. Even those who never met her, and who only heard of her through my wife, Lynne, and me, have commented in these days on how we would both light up with pride and joy every time we got the chance to talk about Sara and her mum.

One of my current projects has taken me to the shrine of Our Lady at Fatima, for which I am presently writing a new work to mark the centenary of the apparitions to the shepherd children in 1917. Lynne and I visited Fatima in May last year and discussed with the director of the shrine some practical issues relating to a planned visit there of Sara and Catherine, which even involved the types of food blenders we might be able to use.

We have had beautiful messages this week from the heart of Our Lady’s shrine. This, for example, from the directors of the sanctuary in Portugal: “Feel our embrace directly from Fatima, directly from the house of the Mother of God. She will pray her Son for little Sara’s soul who is already in God’s arms.”

And this from Fr Vitor Coutinho, rector of the sanctuary: “Certain in faith that she is in the joy of God’s love, we pray particularly for Catherine, grandparents and the rest of the family, that during the pain of separation you may feel the comfort of Mary, the one that stands by the Cross offering her Son.

On behalf of the whole team of the shrine of Fatima, we present our most heartfelt condolences and we ensure you of our prayerful presence during this moment in your life. In the Holy Mass, here in the shrine, we will thank God for the gift of Sara’s life.”

It is strange that this momentous interference in our stories has come from someone so weak and small. Our world celebrates strength and power, after all. We glorify in might and wealth and health and success. We cheer winners and achievers. We bow before men and women of financial clout. We laud politicians of guile and ruthlessness – the more rabble-rousing and populist the better these days, it seems.

Sara had nothing of any of this. Our society doesn’t know what to make of children like Sara any more. There are some very important, powerful, professional, “caring” people who made it clear that they thought Sara should not exist – that the compassionate response to her significant disabilities would be to stop her living, for her mother to say “no” instead of “yes” to Sara. The concept of lebensunwertes leben (“life unworthy of life”) did not disappear 70 years ago on the defeat of Nazi Germany. It’s here now in our modern, oh-so-caring-and-sharing nice democracies. Well, Sara interfered with that narrative, too, and turned it on its head.

Love itself, which is the fundamental necessity for human life and is the true signifier of the sanctity of life, is hard. It is easier to turn our backs on love. That is why these interferences I mention, whether they are from God, or Mozart or from wee Sara, are such blessings and transformations. We have been blessed and transformed through knowing and loving Sara, and being known and loved in return by her.

Sara’s parish priest Fr Euan Marley OP wrote this: “The Church teaches that young children and the handicapped, who are unable to make a choice, if they are baptised, are freed from the sin of humanity and incapable of sinning. So if they die, their soul is admitted into the vision of God and they are happy for ever. Everyone who gets to heaven gets there through the grace of God, but for most of us, it involves a struggle, because that’s the way it is. To lose a child is a great grief and we should never take it lightly. Yet God’s will prevails, and Sara is now a saint in heaven.”

I pray that her divine interference, which has been her commission from God, will continue in unexpected ways in our lives, that our grief at her departure can be swallowed by the joy of remembering her and that we will join her again, one day, in heaven.

Sir James MacMillan is a composer and a contributing editor of the Catholic Herald.

This article first appeared in the January 22 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald. To download the entire issue for free with our new app, go here

Are Mormons and Catholics really ‘siblings’? [CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk]

Catholic and Mormon: A Theological Conversation
By Stephen H Webb and Alonzo L Gaskill, Oxford University Press, £18.99

‘We think that readers will be very surprised by how close Catholics and Mormons are on a number of the most basic theological topics.” So state Stephen Webb, a Catholic, and Alonzo Gaskill, a Mormon, close to the beginning of their ambitious book. They write of the “beauty that can be found through looking at another’s religious tradition with an open and understanding heart”, but they are after more than a cosy chat. Webb reveals that he has travelled “deep into the spiritual geography of Mormonism”, while Gaskill has learned to “love and appreciate Catholicism”. They conclude that “Catholics and Mormons may not be twins, but they are certainly siblings.”

A thematic approach is adopted, with the two men exploring the two groups’ positions on a particular issue and comparing them with views across the denominational aisle. We are told that both faiths understand the role of works in salvation (while never forgetting the crucial role of grace) and “see holiness as a journey not a state”. Next, we learn that, “united by a love of ritual”, Catholic and Mormon religious practices are “steeped in ceremony”, though, according to Webb, Mormonism has a “strong Protestant streak when it comes to the aesthetics of Sunday worship”. The temples are ornate but the everyday meeting houses tend to be plain. Marian devotion is another shared passion, and while Mormons revere their unique texts they certainly “do not shy away from the Bible”.

There is an effort to highlight differences, too, but when seeking common ground the book sometimes fails to distinguish between superficial similarity and fundamental theological agreement. There are instances of this in the aforementioned discussions, and we also hear that Catholics and Mormons share an appreciation for authority in ecclesiastical matters, a distaste for religious fragmentation and a universalist sense of their Church. This sounds reasonable, though there are major contrasts when it comes to how such authority should be articulated and enshrined.

Other points of supposed concord are even trickier. Mormons famously place emphasis on post-New Testament era revelations and it is explained that this should not, in and of itself, offend Catholic sensibilities. This, of course, is a long way from a Catholic looking kindly on the idea that “Joseph Smith is a modern Moses or Paul”.

We are also reminded that Mormons, just like Catholics, hold Jesus Christ in the highest esteem, but the specifics of Mormon Christology are not easy for a Catholic to swallow. Christ is seen as a “fully divine being who is literally God’s son”, but He is also “subordinate to the Father as He is dependent on the Father for His existence”. Catholics, of course, rejected such subordinationism back in the councils of the early Church.

Sometimes the authors readily admit to sources of tension. The respectful, friendly approach of the book does not preclude moments of candour. Gaskill reports that “while in the last 50 years they have become more ecumenical than ever in their history, as it relates to Mormons the Catholic Church is more closed-minded than ever” and notes that “we are almost the only Christian denomination they have singled out as ‘unacceptable’ ”. He adds that he does not take offence.

Webb, meanwhile, points to one of the major stumbling blocks to interaction between the two faiths. The Mormon vision of history identifies centuries’ worth of apostasy and decline prior to the arrival of Joseph Smith. This clearly places the continuous Catholic tradition, the entirety of Catholic history, in a negative light and Webb finds it a “bit frustrating” that Mormons can sometimes have such a roseate view of their own past, which was rocked by an impressive number of splits, rebellions and squabbles.

Then again, there are times when the book tries far too hard to locate shared horizons and this can lead to some curious statements. Are we really to accept, for instance, that “Mormonism and Catholicism are less like contrasting alternatives than complementary versions of each other?”

Conversation between faiths is, however, always an interesting idea and, as the authors explain, these two traditions have one thing very much in common, especially in the context of the United States. They have both been “vulnerable to spiritual typecasting” and have endured a “remarkably parallel list of affronts and denunciations”. In addition to shared enemies, they have also looked at each other with suspicion for a very long time and, latterly, “the media has not been slow to cover the tensions that can arise when Mormonism spreads into places where the Catholic Church has long been established”.

A “theological conversation” is therefore welcome and it is good to know that the authors “do not want to make Protestants the common enemy in order to draw Catholics and Mormons closer together”. The question is how close they can (or should want) to become. For all their good intentions, Webb and Gaskill cannot change the fact that, on some very fundamental levels, Catholicism and Mormonism are radically different faiths.

This article first appeared in the January 22 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald. To download the entire issue for free with our new app, go here

10:54

E. Gotti Tedeschi wünscht sich einen Syllabus für dieses Jahrhundert. [Beiboot Petri]

Das Buch "Handwerk des Teufels" kommt in die Buchhandlungen. Ein Interviewbuch, in dem sich E.Gotti Tedeschi und Paolo Gambi unterhalten. "Die Gnosis hat triumphiert", sagt Tedeschi und man muß befürchten, daß er Recht hat. Gleichzeitig muß man seinen Mut bewundern, in allem dem gängigen mainstream-Denken zu widersprechen, bei uns hätte er das als Person des öffentlichen Lebens nicht überlebt, die allfällige virtuelle Hinrichtung wäre absolut sicher auf die bewährte Weise erfolgt.
A. Tornielli hat den Ex-Präsidenten des IOR, Tedeschi, für Vatican Insider interviewt und ihn - wie man sehr deutlich herauslesen kann in seiner neuerworbenen Eigenschaft als 3/4 offizielles Sprachrohr von Papst Franziskus und seiner Entourage zu tatsächlichen oder angenommenen kritischen Äußerungen über diesen Papst verhört- befragt. Wer den Gesamttext lesen möchte, kann das im Original hier tun: klicken
Wir haben Auszüge aus dem Interview übersetzt.

 "GOTTI TEDESCHI: EIN SYLLABUS FÜR UNSER JAHRHUNDERT WÄRE NÜTZLICH"

"Was ist heute Korruption?" fragt Paolo Gambi an einem bestimmten Punkt den Wirtschaftsmann Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Der Ex-Präsident des IOR antwortet:  "die grassierende Corruptio optimi pessima nicht sehen zu wollen und sie zu rechtfertigen. Das ist etwas anderes als Korruption in der Politik und Wirtschaft"
(.....)

Frage Tornielli: "Warum haben Sie die Enzyklika "Laudato Si´" kritisiert?"

Antwort Tedeschi: " Ich glaube, daß ich zu den Ersten gehörte, die eine Wertung der gerade erst veröffentlichten Enzyklika abgegegen haben - bei Il Foglio. Dabei habe ich die Aufmerksamkeit der Leser ( die durch Vorabmeldungen voller Vorurteile der verschiedensten Art waren) auf ihre absolute Übereinstimmung mit der Tradition des Lehramtes gelenkt.
Ich habe erklärt, daß in der Enzyklika geschrieben steht, daß die Umweltschäden Konsequenz des moralischen Niederganges sind.
Aber in mehreren Punkten scheint sie Ursache und Wirkung zu verwechseln. Das Wichtigste ist einfach, daß der Ursprung der Umweltproblematik ursächlich in den Lehren der ambientalistischen Neo-Malthusianer zu finden ist. Im zitierten Artikel habe ich das gut erklärt und habe von vielen Seiten-auch "römischer"- Zustimmung erhalten. Nur  in den neomalthusianischen Kreisen sagte man, ich wolle die Enzyklika des Papstes angreifen."



Frage: "Und warum schlagen Sie einen neuen Syllabus für unser Jahrhundert vor?"

Tedeschi : "Aus vielen Gründen. Der erste und wichtigste ist, weil die Gnosis überall  triumphiert hat. Sie hat in der Philosophie den Relativismus gegen den Absolutismus der Katholischen Religion durchgesetzt, in der Anthropologie, wo die Schöpfung als Kinder Gottes nur noch ein evolutionierter Bazillus ist, in den Wissenschaften, von denen die Katholische Religion nur noch als abergläubisches Hindernis bei der Anwendung eben dieser Wissenschaften wahrgenommen wird, die den Menschen retten könnte, in der Wirtschaft, wo sie das Kriterium der Moral ausgelöscht hat und behauptet, daß das wirtschaftliche Problem das moralisches verursacht- obwohl es umgekehrt ist-, in der Soziologie, wo das malthusianische Denken auch Teile der Katholischen Welt erobert hat, im Bereich der Sexualität, wo entgegen der Natur das Kriterium Natur verschwunden ist.
Das Zweitwichtigste ist, daß sich die dominierende kulturelle Konformität so negativ auswirkt, daß Menschen in verantwortlichen Positionen buchstäblich Terror davor verspüren, sich vom dominierenden Denken zu entfernen.
Versuchen Sie einmal, Europa mit seinem Diktat zu den Moralgesetzen in Frage zu stellen, versuchen Sie einmal, ausführlicher zu erklären, warum Sie gegen die Gendertheorie und zivile Ehen sind, versuchen Sie einmal Zweifel daran zu äußern, wie dem Problem des Ambientalismus zugestimmt wird, versuchen Sie, zu behaupten , das Problem der Immigration sei nicht jenes, das uns präsentiert wird
Gut, ist das nicht genügend Material für einen neuen Syllabus?"

Quelle: Vatican Insider, E.Gotti Tedeschi, A. Tornielli

10:30

PopeWatch: Blogs [The American Catholic]

    PopeWatch confesses that when he first heard of this, he recalled the scene from the film Twelve O’clock High where General Savage, played by Gregory Peck, is briefing his 918th Bomb Group.  He announces to them that Intelligence  has reported that the Germans have been taking fighter units from the East Front and stationing […]

10:15

Intolerance of minorities (1) [Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment]

In 1966, a former Conciliar peritus, Fr Ratzinger, wrote some very far-sighted words about Ecumenism: "The Catholic has to recognise that his own Church is not yet prepared to accept the phenomenon of multiplicity in unity; he must orient himself towards this reality ... the Catholic Church has no right to absorb the other Churches. The Church has not yet prepared for them a place of their own,

09:53

Heimat [Laudator Temporis Acti]

Evelyn, Princess Blücher (1876-1960), An English Wife in Berlin: A Private Memoir of Events, Politics, and Daily Life in Germany Throughout the War and the Social Revolution of 1918 (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1920), p. 295:

The greater part of them were men fighting blindly to guard an ideal, the "Heimat," some patch of mother earth, a small cottage half hidden in its sheltering fruit trees, ploughed fields rising on the slope of a hill up to the dark forest of pines, maybe, or a wide stretch of flat country where the golden corn-fields sway and wave in the wind as far as the eye can reach.

This everything, that meant "home" to them, they were told was in danger, and this they went out to save.

09:26

The Blame Game [Laudator Temporis Acti]

Homer, Odyssey 1.32-34 (Zeus is speaking, tr. A.T. Murray and George E. Dimcock):

It's astonishing how ready mortals are to blame the gods.
It is from us, they say, that evils come, but they even by themselves,
through their own blind folly, have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.

ὢ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς βροτοὶ αἰτιόωνται·
ἐξ ἡμέων γάρ φασι κάκ᾽ ἔμμεναι, οἱ δὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ
σφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπὲρ μόρον ἄλγε᾽ ἔχουσιν.
Solon, fragment 11, lines 1-2 (tr. Douglas E. Gerber):
If you have suffered grief because of your wrong action,
do not lay the blame for this on the gods.

εἰ δὲ πεπόνθατε λυγρὰ δι᾿ ὑμετέρην κακότητα,
   μὴ θεοῖσιν τούτων μοῖραν ἐπαμφέρετε.

08:52

Das Konventsiegel als Gegenstück zum Abtssiegel [EUCist News]

Mit der Erlaubnis von Papst Benedikt XII. im Jahr 1335 erhielt jede Cistercienserabtei das Privileg einer zweiten Beurkundungsstelle. Anfangs hat nur die Abtskanzlei über ein Siegel verfügt. Als es aber zu häufig abwesenden oder wirtschaftlich verantwortungslosen Äbten kam, bot das Konventsiegel einen Ausweg für besorgte Konvente. Das zweite Siegel wurde vom Prior verwaltet und erlaubte dem Kloster eine juristische und verwaltungstechnische Alternative zum Abtssiegel. Fortan mussten in besonders spannungsbeladenen Situation beide Parteien – Abt und Konvent – ihre Zustimmung zur Transaktion geben. Der Abt besiegelte und der Konvent leistete dazu die Gegenbesiegelung.

Auch in wohlgeordneten und observanten Klöstern lebte das Konventsiegel fort. Es war in der Zeit der Barockprälaten, die wegen ihrer Verpflichtungen am Hof oft abwesend waren, das amtliche Siegel des Priors. Sie waren in der Frühen Neuzeit keine Seltenheit auf wichtigen Briefen, die der Prior verfasste; auch im 20. Jh. wurden sie als Priorats"stempel" häufig verwendet, ohne freilich eine vorhergehende Abstimmung im Konvent zu implizieren.

Es wird oft gesagt, dass ein Konventsiegel eine marianische Darstellung braucht. In der Tat sind Mariendarstellungen in den Siegelbildern des 14. Jahrhunderts weit verbreitet, aber es gibt Ausnahmen. Das Bild oben zeigt das Konventsiegel von Heiligenkreuz; darauf finden wir keine Mariendarstellung, sondern die in einer Kukulle gekleidete Hand des Abtes, den Abtsstab haltend. Wie im ähnlichen Konventsiegel des Klosters Rievaulx (Yorkshire) von 1315 greift man hier den Konventgedanken anders auf. Es geht nicht um eine Opposition zwischen Abt und Prior, sondern um das Siegel als Zeichen der Einheit. Es wurde vom Prior und vier dazu bestimmten Mönchen verwaltet. Eventuell unterscheidet das zweite Kreuz im abgebildeten Heiligenkreuzer Siegel das Konventsiegel vom Abtssiegel. Heraldisch wäre das zweite Kreuz sonst schwer zu erklären.

Das Konventsiegel von Himmerod (rechts) zeigt auch keine Mariendarstellung, geht aber in sehr eleganter und ziffernmystischer Weise auf die Einheit zwischen Abt und Konvent ein.

08:00

Übergriffiger Papst [et nunc]

- sie genießt es.
 Gestern (20.1.2016) bei der Audienz des Papstes.
In Deutschland würde man so etwas
sexuelle Belästigung nennen, oder?
Dabei war es doch gut gemeint:
ein päpstlicher Segen.




Issued by a Church of France That is Generally Dying [Diligite iustitiam]

&

A new document on Muslim-Christian marriages has just been published by the Church in France.

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Wednesday, January 13, 2016

07:31

Christian Unity 2016 [iBenedictines]

The Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity began on Sunday and will end with the feast of St Paul on Monday, 25 January. During the course of these eight days there will be numerous attempts to celebrate the unity we (…)

Read the rest of this entry »

07:09

Want to see the relics of St. Maximilian Kolbe? They're in the US right now [CNA Daily News]

Washington D.C., Jan 21, 2016 / 12:09 am (National Catholic Register).- The major relics of Maximilian Kolbe, who was canonized by St. John Paul II, began an 8-month tour Jan. 15-17 in Ellicott City, Md., at the Shrine of St. Anthony. The tour started with noon Mass at the shrine.

The tour sponsored by the Franciscan Friars Minor Conventual of the Our Lady of the Angels Province will continue until August 14, the date commemorating the 75th anniversary of Kolbe’s martyrdom in the World War II Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland.

The pilgrimage will be historic — the largest tour of his relics ever mounted in the United States. Traveling up and down the east coast and also into Canada, St. Maximilian's relics will visit 39 sites. At each site there will be a liturgy, opportunities for veneration, time for prayer and material for study.

Most stops will be for two days, such as an early one at St. Casimir Church in Baltimore, Md., on Jan. 22-24, and later ones such as St. Francis of Assisi Church in Athol Springs, N.Y., on May 20-22. A few will last several days, like the one scheduled at Catholic University of America in Washington for Feb. 17-21.

The large silver and bronze reliquary presents different symbols from his life and, notably holds strands from St. Maximilian’s beard. Because he was martyred at Auschwitz, these are the only remaining first class relics — something that was part of a saint’s body.

In 1938, the saintly friar returned from a missionary journey to Japan sporting a full, long beard. He had grown it to help his missionary work in Japan because the beard earned the respect of those people who was there to serve. But in Poland, the beard was more than a detraction.

Under the country’s National Socialism, the beard incited his own persecution and the persecution of fellow friars — there were hundreds in the monastery, a phenomenal number.

One book on his life offers this quote from the saint: “Beards provoke the enemy who rapidly is approaching our friary. Our Franciscan habits also will provoke him. I can part with my beard. I can’t sacrifice my habit.”

Joseph Hamilton, spokesman for the tour and director of development for the Franciscan Friars Conventual in Ellicott City, told the story of how Maximilian’s beard came to be saved.

“He was the only friar in Poland like that at the time. All the others were clean shaven,” Hamilton explained. In the fall of 1939 when the Nazis invaded Poland, the printing presses established by Maximilian Kolbe were running 24 hours a day.

“He was on the Nazi radar,” Hamilton emphasized. His superior told him it was better he shaved his beard off so as not to stand out in the society.

Hamilton described how “the brother shaving off the beard put it aside. Maximillian saw it and asked what he was doing.” Then he told the barber brother to throw the beard into the fire. The brother did, but there were no coals.

“So when Maximilian left, he fished it out. By 1939 he was a ‘force’, so the guys knew we better grab some relics while we can," Hamilton said.

Indeed Maximilian Kolbe was a “force” on the watch list. He founded the Militia Immaculata (MI), an evangelization movement identifying with Mary, the Immaculate. He founded “Cities of the Immaculata” in Niepokalanow, Poland outside Warsaw, and in Nagasaki, Japan.

Religious works poured from the printing presses in Niepokalanow including a daily newspaper with a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with over one million circulation. Friars and seminarians there numbered an astounding 782 already by 1936.

Of course, in 1939 Maximilian was arrested along with 50 other friars, but they were released. He was arrested again on Feb. 17, 1941. This time he would not make it out. It didn’t come as a surprise because, Hamilton told me, “After the first arrest they knew.”

The barber friar’s decision to save the beard turned out to be providential.

After the Gestapo arrested him the second time, he was sent to Auschwitz where he volunteered to take the place of an innocent husband and father to be executed. Maximilian died a martyr on Aug. 14, 1941.

Hamilton added more details about the relic. He said a large chunk of beard was stuffed into a pickle jar. Today two main or biggest sections of it are split between Rome and Poland. Some of the strands were placed into four identical reliquaries. One is used for this pilgrimage.

Father James McCurry of the Franciscan Friars Conventual and minister provincial of the Our Lady of the Angels Province, explained the importance of relics.

“Relics remind us that saints were real human beings with hair, skin, bones and blood,” he noted. “We venerate relics to connect with the real person behind them — now proclaimed by the Church to be in Heaven, from where he or she remains interested and involved in our lives.”

The Reliquary

The large silver and bronze reliquary holding the strands from Maximilian’s beard in a glass case is quite unique. It’s designed to include important symbols from his life too.

The base is shaped like Poland, the place of his birth and where his vocation and work first flourished. “Thorns” grow from this Poland symbolizing the occupation by the Third Reich and then the Auschwitz concentration camp too.

But from the thorns grow a lily symbolizing purity and a tulip symbolizing martyrdom. The flowers tell how God made him blossom like a lily, while both flowers symbolize his love being victorious over hate.

The glass case holding the strands from his beard is encircled by a Franciscan cord with its tradition three knots for the three Franciscan vows. It symbolizes his vocation.

Year of Mercy Saint

In 1982 St. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "Martyr of Charity" and “patron saint of our difficult century.” St. Maximilian Kolbe is also the patron saint of prisoners, families, the pro-life movement, journalists, and chemically addicted.

How do the Franciscans of Our Lady of the Angels Province see this pilgrimage fitting into the Year of Mercy?

"St. Maximilian Kolbe died as a ‘Martyr of Charity’ at Auschwitz Concentration Camp 75 years ago (Aug. 14, 1941).  His death bore witness to "mercy" par excellence,”   Father McCurry told the Register. “Its anniversary aptly coincides with the Church’s Jubilee Year of Mercy.”

The minister provincial explained, “Mercy — in Latin, Misericordia — means ‘to feel in one’s heart the misery of others.’  Moved with such compassion for the miserable plight of a fellow prisoner, St. Maximilian offered to take the condemned man’s place in a starvation bunker.  His martyrdom was an act of mercy, showing that God uses ordinary men and women to exemplify extraordinary love of neighbor."

This relic tour again brings to light that act of mercy in this jubilee year.

See the complete pilgrimage itinerary here.

07:00

Baloney Meters [RSS]

 

“Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody's system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody's sense of reality: to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense.”  --  G.K. Chesterton

Everyone carries a personal baloney-meter in his mind.  I'm speaking of the useful little app that lights up and beeps when you hear nonsense, prompting you to say to yourself, “That's baloney.”  The baloney-meter is factory-installed, not an option.  You have one, I have one, we all have one -- ever since reaching the age of reason.  Each of us depends on it constantly.  “Tell you what,” says your friend.  “Let's pool our life savings and invest them in the lottery.  One of us is sure to win, and we can split the take.”  Beep!  Beep!  “That's baloney.”

One would be a fool not to recognize how much better off we are having baloney-meters than we would be without them.  Yet even the most appreciative among us must recognize that baloney-meters aren't perfect.  Sometimes they light up and beep when the words we hear are not baloney, and sometimes they fail to light up and beep when they are.  Because you have to use your baloney-meter to recognize a defect in a baloney-meter, the problem is easiest to notice in someone else’s baloney-meter.  Perhaps you haven't noticed this malfunction in your own, but I can assure you that others have.

What causes baloney-meters to go awry?  Is there something wrong with the factory programming?   No, but think for a moment about what it would take for your baloney-meter to be infallible.  The factory would have to program it with a sample of every possible piece of baloney that anyone might ever try to feed you -- libraries upon libraries of samples.  In life, whenever another person spoke to you (or you spoke to yourself), the baloney-meter would look for a match.  If it found one, it would light up and beep.  You can see what's wrong with this design.  Baloney is infinitely various.  Not even galaxies of libraries could hold all the necessary samples.  (No, not even the internet.)

The only practical way to build a baloney-meter is to give it just that basic programming which will allow it to learn more about baloney from experience.  This basic programming is the ability to recognize the truth of what philosophers call the first principles of practical and theoretical reasoning.  “First principles of practical reasoning” is another name for the first principles of natural moral law.

Reflection on the design of the baloney-meter explains several important facts.

In the first place, the factory programming explains why the baloney-meters of different people, even in different cultures, tend to light up and beep about pretty much the same things in certain areas of life.  High-minded men among both the Greeks and the Chinese condemned disrespect for the dead; among both the Vikings and the Babylonians condemned stealing one's neighbor's wife; among both the Hindus and the Egyptians condemned treachery -- not just men whom we call high-minded, but whom they called high-minded.  As C.S. Lewis remarks, “Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud for double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him.  You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.”

In the second place, the fact that the factory programming is only basic explains why the baloney-meters of different people light up and beep about different things in other areas of life -- and also why they can go off over what is not baloney and fail to off over what is.  For although you do know certain things without having to learn them, you learn most things from experience.  But any being that can learn from experience can learn incorrectly -- partly because his experience is not complete, and partly because he may rebel against the lesson.

We see then that any baloney-meter, however perfectly programmed in the factory, will tend to get out of correct calibration.  Originally, the purpose of a higher education was to recalibrate it.  A secondary purpose was to teach it to perform further recalibration on its own.

Courses of study like logic and mathematics trained the mind to think clearly.  Courses of study like history, literature, and politics immersed the mind in the experience of centuries so that it was not isolated on the little island of its own experience.  Courses of study like ethics recalled the mind to what it knew already, so that it did not drown in its own new depths.  Courses of study like theology directed the mind to consider what was deeper and greater than itself.  And courses of study like revealed theology exploded the mind's self-deceptions and enabled it to know what it could not have discovered solely through its own resources.

This attitude toward higher education was humble.  A teacher like Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas respected the baloney-meter.  He always started with the common sense of mankind, something he did not invent, then went on to refine it, ennoble it, and gently correct its errors.  You may feel that such humility is impossible, because in our own culture common sense seems largely to have disappeared.  We have come to feel it normal to have disagreements about fundamental issues of morals, just as we might have them about politics and other areas more distant from the factory programming.  This condition, in turn, changes the kind of disagreements we have in politics.  In fact the condition is not normal at all.  Rather it is a symptom of a civilization in an advanced state of decay.

Unlike classical higher education, modern higher education is not humble.  It both reflects and contributes to the decay of the civilization by insisting on the disconnection of the baloney-meter and its replacement by “theory” of its own devising.  It cannot really be disconnected, but it can be scrambled by having another hooked up alongside it.  What educated people now call their common sense is largely a collection of dogmas pumped in from the outside.  Because these dogmas are often pumped in under the guise of liberation from dogma, they often pass unrecognized.  We are entering a strange era in which, in some respects, the educated know a good deal less than the uneducated.

The methods used in higher education for disconnecting the baloney-meter are many.  One method is false anthropology, whereby young people are taught the wholly spurious idea that the human race is in complete disagreement about all the elementary points of right and wrong.  Another method is outright assault.  An especially subtle method is teaching ethics by “quandaries” -- imaginary occasions for moral decision which are deliberately contrived to baffle, the common result being that students lose their confidence that moral law tells them anything at all.

In turn, the usual method for replacing the baloney-meter is meta-ethics -- in which we no longer talk about right and wrong, but instead talk about the talk about it, or maybe even talk about the talk about the talk.  In this way we get further and further from the data.  If mentioned at all, the natural law itself is presented as but one of many competing theories of ethics.  This is like treating the existence of light as but one of many competing theories of vision.  In fact, light is presupposed in any sane theory of vision; in the same way, the law written on the heart ought to be presupposed in any theory of ethics.  Just as in geometry, if we don't already know something, we can't even get started learning the rest.

How would a classical moral teacher go about teaching under such circumstances?  As we have seen, his humble goal is to recalibrate the baloney-meter, not to replace but to refine the common sense of mankind.  But one cannot recalibrate a baloney-meter that receives continuous interfering signals from another installed alongside it.  The ersatz baloney-meter implanted by modern education cannot be calibrated at all.  It lights up and beeps at the very mention of an objective moral law.  “Aren't we beyond all that now?”  “Aren't morals just relative?”  “Aren't good and evil up to the individual?”

In the classroom I answer such questions, “Tell that to the man who is trying to rape or murder you.”  This is a much more aggressive response than Aristotle and St. Thomas would make to their students, but their students did not ask such questions.  Today a classical teacher must be aggressive before he can exercise his humility.  For before the students' original baloney-meters can be recalibrated, the ersatz baloney-meters that have been installed alongside them must be disconnected.  So students must unlearn before they can learn.  A classical teacher today is first, though not last, an unteacher.

Adapted from J. Budziszewski,

Written on the Heart: The

Case for Natural Law

 

The Greatness of Louis XVI [Tea at Trianon]

The Mad Monarchist memorializes the murdered King of France. People forget that Louis had many great accomplishments as a political leader and was widely admired by the other sovereigns of Europe while still in his 20's. Napoleon used the army and navy which had been equipped and built up by Louis XVI to conquer most of Europe. Louis' victory over England threatened to upset the hegemony of the British Empire, especially since the French were beginning to make a headway in the Far East. Perhaps this is one of the reasons so many pornographic pamphlets were sent into France by the British government to destroy the French monarchy. To quote:
King Louis XVI was a man of devout faith. He never took a mistress, never shirked his religious duties, genuinely preferred work to frivolous parties and truly saw his kingship as a sacred duty rather than an opportunity to have the best for himself. All of that is well established and should be well known. However, even those who praise King Louis XVI for his pious spirit often portray him as rather lacking in the more secular qualities most often required of kingship. At times he is contrasted with King Louis XIV who, while certainly far from being a pious man, was a more decisive leader who steered the ship of state with a firm hand, bringing glory to France and around whom almost all the affairs of Europe revolved. The exact opposite of Louis XVI we are to believe. Yet, while it is true that the two men were very different, it is certainly not true that King Louis XVI occupied himself only with other-worldly matters.

It is tragic any time a nation sets to destroying itself rather than accomplishing the great deeds possible if they worked together to channel all of that energy into the pursuit of some more lofty ambition. Although he had trepidations about some of it, there is ample reason to believe that had it not been for the outbreak of the Revolution, King Louis XVI might have gone down in history as one of the greatest Kings of France in secular as well as spiritual terms. In all the focus on the Revolution and his personal character, the great events and foreign policies of his reign are often overlooked. In the first place, he was no despot and from the very start favored giving the people a greater say in how their money was spent and how France was governed. However, even with all of the problems facing France, as a monarch, Louis XVI took a broader look at the past, present and future of France and wanted to see past losses made right and gains made for a greater future for his country. Of course, particularly after the drubbing France had taken in the recent conflicts with Great Britain, it was the British who would be the primary rival in his foreign policy. The King was not malicious or reckless by any means but he was determined to see British gains made at the expense of France reversed.

This was what ultimately led to the French intervention in the American Revolution (or more properly ‘War for Independence’). Louis XVI had deep reservations about helping any rebels in waging war against their sovereign yet he was persuaded to make an alliance with the fledgling United States by a combination of the urging of his advisers and his desire to see an end to the British domination of North America and, perhaps, a much greater French influence in the region. Although not often remembered, following the French and Indian War the French military had been reformed and greatly improved. The expeditionary force sent to North America fought extremely well and, along with the French navy, proved decisive in securing the independence of the United States by forcing Great Britain to give up on the war and come to terms with their former fellow subjects. The islands of Tobago and Grenada were taken from the British (Tobago being retained by France along with Senegal in the final settlement) but, to some extent, Louis XVI was undercut by his American allies who made a separate peace with Great Britain and effectively thwarted the greatest ambition King Louis had for the conflict which was the recovery of Canada. Had the war gone on there is every reason to believe that could have happened.

In the other great arena of colonial competition, Louis XVI also hoped to reverse previous losses and see the growing British dominance in India come to an end. He allied with the Maratha Empire and took the side of the Sultan of Mysore in the Second Anglo-Mysore War in the hope of breaking the dominance of the British East India Company, curtailing British influence in India and increasing French influence. France actually had a much larger sphere of influence in India, controlling large parts of the east coast and holding sway over the majority of the southern subcontinent. French troops and ships were active in the region but due to the distance involved the campaign was overtaken by events elsewhere and when the end of the American Revolution forced France to make a hasty peace with Britain the previous French support for the Indians was withdrawn. In the end Britain and the Indian forces made peace that restored the pre-war status quo in India. Again, had not the situation in American brought hostilities to an end, it is conceivable that France, working through local alliances, might have dethroned Britain from her place of prominence in India.

There was also the Far East to consider and, though not often remembered, it was under King Louis XVI that France first took a serious interest in Vietnam and, indirectly, helped bring about the victory of the last great imperial dynasty of Vietnamese history. Crown Prince Canh, heir of the future Emperor Gia Long, came to Versailles as a boy, converting to Christianity and symbolizing the alliance by which French support was promised to his father in exchange for favorable trade agreements and some minor territorial concessions. The previous regime in Vietnam had viciously persecuted Christians and King Louis was anxious to see a more humane dynasty put in place. A Catholic missionary had saved the life of Gia Long and he vowed that the rights of Christians would always be respected in his domain. However, by the time these great events were to take place in southeast Asia the forces of the Revolution were gaining strength and events rapidly approached a climax. King Louis was not able to play the decisive role he had wished to. Still, the Bishop of Adran acted on his own to help Emperor Gia Long take the throne and so things worked out. The only problems arose in the future when post-revolutionary French regimes tried to collect the payments promised to Louis XVI which the Vietnamese were reluctant to grant since it was the Bishop rather than the government in Paris which had actually helped them at the critical time.

King Louis also sponsored around-the-world voyages of exploration and the world (certainly North America) owes a great deal to Louis XIV for doing the same in his time. The point of all of this is that King Louis XVI was not, as he is so often portrayed, some sort of totally indecisive ditherer who fussed and prayed over one crisis after another. He had big plans for France, he had ambition, he wanted to see France recover her place of greatness in the world and had a few things gone differently there is no reason to believe that she could not have done so. (Read entire post.)

06:59

La primavera conciliar que marchitó la virginidad y la pureza [Adelante la Fe]

Jerusalén ha pecado gravemente, por eso es ahora objeto de asco; cuantos la honraban la deshonran, pues han visto su desnudez; y ella misma vuelve su rostro gimiendo. (Lamentaciones 1,8)

El otro día cuando iba caminando de regreso a casa, detrás de mí venían dos adolescentes hablando sin ningún tipo de pudor sobre sus relaciones sexuales. Ralenticé mi paso, ya que me encontraba perpleja con todo lo que iban comentando y esperé a que me pasaran para tomar un poco de aire. Se puede decir que yo, casi he perdido la capacidad de escandalizarme por nada, ya que la zafiedad gobierna nuestra sociedad. Varias cosas, además de la ordinariez y vulgaridad de la conversación, me llamaron la atención, eran dos adolescentes, tendrían unos 16 años, llevaban uniforme de un colegio religioso y el largo de su falda, lo marcaba el muslo. Resumiendo, aquella película de “Lolita” que causó tanto escándalo, casi parecía un capítulo de Heidi al lado de esta escena. Mientras en muchos países del mundo, las niñas son torturadas y obligadas a entregar sus cuerpos, en nuestros países, pudiendo resguardarlos, los ofrecen como si fuera el menú del día.

¿Qué ha sucedido en nuestra sociedad? la pureza está completamente denostada, a juzgar por lo que se escucha y se ve, la Virginidad ya no es un don a preservar. Los Sacerdotes no hablan de esto en sus predicaciones, en los colegios, sean religiosos o no, exponen los métodos anticonceptivos para explicar como tener relaciones sin “peligro”, en casa, papá y mamá reafirman toda esta enseñanza e incluso les abren las puertas del hogar, para que su primera relación la tengan al calor de la cama familiar.

Por si fuera poco en las catequesis parroquiales y en los cursos prematrimoniales, nos reafirman en la “pureza” del sexo puramente animal, y bajo el nombre de “planificación familiar natural”, nos dicen que Dios, bendice el lecho conyugal. ¿Por qué no hablan en estos cursos tan instructivos de matrimonios Santos como fueron San Nicolás de Flue y su amada esposa Dorotea Wysling, que después de tener 10 hijos, cuando llegaron a la edad madura, optaron por la castidad matrimonial? ¿Saben por qué? Porque nos ofrecen tanto dentro como fuera de la Iglesia, un mundo que no vive de cara a Dios, somos esclavos del maligno, atrapados por la carne

Se puede decir sin miedo a equivocarnos que la llegada de la primavera conciliar trajo el marchitamiento de gran parte de la flor católica, se abrió la puerta a la profanación de la Santa Misa y con ello, todo lo demás vino rodado, los Mandamientos dejaron de tener valor para los feligreses,  muchos Sacerdotes y Obispos, nos confirmaron en las bondades de una vida de pecado y la virginidad entendida como tal, pasó a ser un concepto de otra época, en vez de lágrimas, su pérdida, ahora, genera risas

Gózate, pues ¡Oh Virgen!, interiormente y séte a ti misma dulce y suave y no te hastiarás de ti misma, como sucede a menudo a los pecadores, pues tu sencillez te agradará más que el ir vestida con esos ropajes mentirosos del cuerpo.

(San Ambrosio, Tratado de la Virginidad)

En el momento en el que las mujeres prescindimos del velo para acudir al Templo, abrimos una puerta que estaba cerrada, la profanación de la casa de Dios con nuestra ropa o con la ausencia de la misma. Una sola prenda que cubría la cabeza de la mujer, era capaz de preservar el alma de la entrada del maligno y al tiempo, guardaba la vista del hombre. Quitado el velo, la desnudez queda a la vista. ¿Puede un catequista hablar de la virginidad cuando el público al que se dirige , muestra sus carnes sin ningún tipo de pudor? ¿Cómo hablarle a alguien de las bondades de la castidad, cuando su cuerpo se muestra como si fuera un trozo de carne barata?

No lo duden, la virginidad y la pureza pasaron a la historia con la apertura de las ventanas de Juan XXIII, la corriente fue tan potente que todo salió volando, las sotanas, los hábitos, los velos, el magisterio y sin ninguna duda, la cordura, nunca el pueblo de Dios estuvo tan absolutamente tarado, como en los tiempos actuales.

Oficiar la Misa frente a una mesa, en lugar de cara a Dios, vació de contenido lo que era un Sacrificio y lo convirtió en una cena, en un banquete, en una reunión de amigos, por lo tanto, cobra sentido que se vaya vestido como si fuéramos a un baile, que llenemos el Altar de plantas, cual si fuera el Edén y por supuesto, para reafirmar todo este sacrilegio, el ejemplo de como van vestidos la mayoría de los Presbíteros en la Santa Misa o fuera de ella. Los aplausos en la Iglesia sirvieron de confirmación de que el espectáculo empezaba y rememorando a Queen en su “show must go on”, se pegó un machetazo a los órganos de tubos, se censuró el canto gregoriano y se dio paso a los ritmos más cañeros y cutres, que guitarra en mano, nos confirman que nada de lo que allí sucede, tiene que ver con el Calvario. Lo repito, ¿Cómo hablar de castidad y pureza en medio de este ambiente? ¿Cómo explicar que en la Santa Misa, nuestro Señor derrama su preciosísima Sangre por nosotros y que antes de ser Crucificado, lo desnudaron, lo golpearon y lo torturaron? Al Señor le arrancaron sus ropas y nosotros regalamos lo que debería ser nuestro mayor tesoro, nuestra castidad.

¿Cómo hablar de conceptos como la virginidad, cuando personas que viven en pareja, en adulterio, salen a leer las lecturas? ¿Cómo hablar de pureza cuando la Santa Comunión es profanada por almas que viven en pecado mortal?

Vuelvan al principio del artículo y enlácenlo con lo que les acabo de decir. Vivimos en un mundo sin Fe, se desconocen los mandamientos de la Ley de Dios, ya no hay temor al pecado, al contrario, nos regocijamos en él, nos bañamos en el lodo. Las jóvenes pierden su virginidad sin ser conscientes de que es algo que no se puede recuperar y sin conciencia de haber cometido pecado, esto es muy grave, les estamos ocultando el camino de la salvación y los estamos llevando a la condenación. No obstante, si se puede volver a una vida de pureza, con un arrepentimiento de corazón y acudiendo al Sacramento de la Confesión, pero ¿Cuántos lo hacen? Y ¿Cuántos Sacerdotes les dicen que es pecado mortal unirse a otra persona sin estar casados? Pero no sólo eso, dentro de los matrimonios, ¿Se respeta nuestro cuerpo como Templo del Espíritu Santo o más bien se trata como un mero instrumento de placer? ¿Por qué no se predica hoy en día la castidad?

Nos hemos puesto al nivel de los animales, el sexo ya no es una respuesta ordenada al plan de Dios y que tiene su sentido en el Sacramento del matrimonio, hoy en día, es un mero placer y así sucede que muchos matrimonios cuando dejan, literalmente, de “disfrutar”, consideran esta relación finalizada y buscan ese gozo con otra persona. No hay más que observar, casi siempre, tras una separación, hay una relación oculta, o inmediatamente surge otra. Así de vacíos estamos los seres humanos. ¿Nuestro matrimonio se sustenta en las relaciones sexuales o en Dios? La unión de los cuerpos tiene una finalidad: la procreación.

Nuestros Pastores se han mundanizado, tienen miedo a hablar en sus homilías del sexto y del noveno mandamientos, pero es comprensible, ¿Cómo pueden predicar la pureza, si a muchos los vemos en las redes sociales en bañador, luciendo sus cuerpos semi desnudos, sin ningún tipo de pudor? Y alguno dirá, ¿Esto es pecado? Por supuesto, si alguien tiene dudas al respecto sobre este punto, es que en su Parroquia no lo han formado, lo han deformado, cosa muy habitual en nuestros tiempos. ¿Cómo un Sacerdote que va con pantalón corto puede decirle a los jóvenes que nuestra ropa indecente ofende a Dios y a su Santísima Madre? Díganme Vds. cómo…daría la risa, ¿no?

Escuchaba en una homilía como nos decían que Jesucristo era un hombre normal, como nosotros, que se divertía, que salía por ahí…Miren, déjense de verborrea progresista barata y absurda, Nuestro Señor es la pureza personificada, todo en el es Inmaculado, Jesús estaba todo el día a lo que tenía que estar, a predicar, a enseñar, a anunciar el Reino de Dios y cómo llegar a él y si volviera como hombre en este siglo XXI, no se engañen, no se presentaría con un pantalón de moda, con rastas, con media barbita y no estaría tomando “copas” o de bares o en las redes sociales… ¿Qué cuento es este, a quién quieren engañar? ¿Vds. creen que María Magdalena una vez que se convirtió y que siguió al Señor que iba vestida como una mujerzuela de vida licenciosa? Se revistió de pureza, dejó sus antiguos vestidos e inició una nueva andadura que la llevó a los pies de la Cruz. Cubiertas, así iban las mujeres que estaban con Jesús.

Esta semana circulaba por Internet una falsa noticia que decía que el Vaticano exigiría un “certificado de virginidad” para aquellas personas que quisieran contraer matrimonio. Me llamó la atención que hubo gente muy preocupada por esto, la noticia colapsó algunas páginas e incluso algunas personas solicitaron respuesta en la página de la Santa Sede. Obviamente si esto fuera cierto, creo que habría más solteros que casados a día de hoy y no es ninguna temeridad lo que digo, es la realidad palpable de una sociedad que vive emponzoñada en la carne. Como les comentaba anteriormente, la virginidad perdida es irrecuperable, no obstante, el estado matrimonial, aunque puede conllevar la pérdida de la misma para ajustarse al plan de Dios, no implica que no se viva con pureza de obra y de intención. Es importante que ofrezcamos al Señor una vida ordenada, alejada de la esclavitud carnal. El fin del Matrimonio es la procreación, no la satisfacción del deseo puramente sexual, las relaciones tienen que estar ordenadas al plan de Dios, no somos animales irracionales. Causó cierto escándalo el día que les dije que los papás de Teresita de Liseaux, no contaban días en un calendario. Queridos, no seamos hipócritas, no busquemos un cura que satisfaga nuestros oídos con lo que queremos escuchar, ajustémonos al Magisterio, ¿Cómo podemos fomentar en nuestros hijos estos valores, si ni siquiera nosotros mismos, los tenemos claros?

Recuerdo una conversación que tuve con un Sacerdote, cuando le mostré mi asombro por los libros que había comprado para sus catequistas,  me dijo que “hay que ir con los tiempos, estas cosas ya no se pueden ocultar“. Desde que el mundo es mundo, existe el sexo, la impureza y en contraposición, la pureza. Aquí lo único que se oculta son las bondades de la castidad. ¿Cuántos hombres y mujeres, llegan al matrimonio sin haber tenido antes relaciones sexuales?

Les decía al principio que todo esto, está interrelacionado con la Misa y así es. Cuando uno acude a la Santa Misa Tradicional, sólo sale pensando en lo que acaba de vivir, la Crucifixión de Jesús… ¿Cómo pensar en satisfacer un deseo carnal, cuando acabamos de estar entregados al Amado al pie de la Cruz? Cuántas vocaciones al Sacerdocio y a la vida Consagrada perdidas hoy en día por la adulteración de nuestras Misas. ¡Increíble pero cierto! ¡Cuántos jóvenes distrayéndose con el alcohol y con sus cuerpos porque nadie les ha enseñado nuestro gran tesoro: La Santa Misa Tradicional.

La vuelta a la pureza del hombre pasa por el restablecimiento de la Liturgia, por la restauración de la Santa Misa Tradicional, que debería dejar de llamarse Rito Extraordinario para llamarse Ordinario. La formación de nuestros Sacerdotes implicaría el respeto por la Tradición y conllevaría el cumplimiento del Magisterio de la Iglesia, lo que implicaría la vuelta del pudor, la decencia, el cuidado del vocabulario, el uso del Latín, que tanto desagrada al maligno, no desearíamos más que ser Santos, los jóvenes lucharían por conservar su virginidad como un tesoro, los matrimonios serían Santos en sus intenciones y se recuperaría el orden mundial, nuestro único deseo sería la Santidad y para alcanzar la Santidad sólo se puede hacer de una manera, viviendo el cielo en la tierra, ¿Cómo? Con la Santa Misa Tradicional, no lo duden, aquí está la clave de todo.

“Ite Missa est”. Todo lo que se ha dicho y hecho y actuado durante la Santa Misa ha sido para que nos lo llevemos, vivamos, practiquemos y apropiemos a todas las circunstancias y condiciones de nuestro vivir diario. Su Sacrificio se ha hecho nuestro sacrificio al juntar nuestra oblación a la suya; su Vida, dada por nosotros, se convierte en nuestra vida dada por Él. Así volveremos de la Misa como quienes han tomado su determinación, vuelta la espalda al mundo, y convertidos para la sociedad en que vivimos en otros Cristo vivientes, testimonios poderosos dados al Amor, que murió para que nosotros pudiésemos vivir el Amor. (El calvario y la Misa-Arzobispo Mons. Fulton J. Sheen)

Sonia Vázquez

La entrada La primavera conciliar que marchitó la virginidad y la pureza aparece primero en Adelante la Fe.

06:58

Dos Iglesias, un Papa [Adelante la Fe]

Luego de haber visto el escandaloso video del Sumo Pontífice, y junto con el video innumerables actitudes suyas que más que confirmar en la fe hacen dudar a los católicos, no puedo dejar de pensar en este famoso texto del sacerdote argentino p. Meinvielle:

«Como se hayan de cumplir, en esta edad cabalística, las promesas de asistencia del Divino Espíritu a la Iglesia y cómo se haya de verificar el portae inferi non prevalebunt, las puertas del infierno no han de prevalecer, no cabe en la mente humana. Pero así como la Iglesia comenzó siendo una semilla pequeñísima[1], y se hizo árbol y árbol frondoso, así puede reducirse en su frondosidad y tener una realidad mucho más modesta. Sabemos que el mysterium iniquitatis ya está obrando[2]; pero no sabemos los límites de su poder. Sin embargo, no hay dificultad en admitir que la Iglesia de la publicidad pueda ser ganada por el enemigo y convertirse de Iglesia Católica en Iglesia gnóstica. Puede haber dos Iglesias, con obispos, sacerdotes y teólogos publicitados, y aun con un Pontífice de actitudes ambiguas; y otra, Iglesia del silencio, con un Papa fiel a Jesucristo en su enseñanza y con algunos sacerdotes, obispos y fieles que le sean adictos, esparcidos como “pusillus grex” por toda la tierra. Esta segunda sería la Iglesia de las promesas, y no aquella primera, que pudiera defeccionar. Un mismo Papa presidiría ambas Iglesias, que aparente y exteriormente no sería sino una. El Papa, con sus actitudes ambiguas, daría pie para mantener el equívoco. Porque, por una parte, profesando una doctrina intachable sería cabeza de la Iglesia de las Promesas. Por otra parte, produciendo hechos equívocos y aun reprobables, aparecería como alentando la subversión y manteniendo la Iglesia gnóstica de la Publicidad.»

Meinvielle, De la cábala al progresismo, Editorial Calchaquí, 1970, Salta, p. 461 – 462.

Aunque algunos tildaron esta afirmación de falsa eclesiología y de incluso de “síntoma de arrogancia”, la verdad es que estas palabras, escritas en 1970, fueron proféticas.

asis1
Lo primero que debe observarse es que esta actitud de confusión no ha comenzado con Francisco, sino que viene desde hace muchos años. Este video no lo podría haber realizado el Sumo Pontífice reinante si no hubiese existido el Asís I y el II bajo el pontificado de Juan Pablo II y el Asís III bajo Benedicto XVI, donde ya se había colocado a la religión verdadera al lado de cualquier esperpento, bajo la capa de “pluralismo religioso”.

Tampoco este video podría haberse realizado si la Iglesia hubiese actuado con rapidez frente a los errores, por ejemplo, de Karl Rahner, en donde desalentaba la predicación misionera como consecuencia de aplicar su famoso “cristianismo anónimo”, por querer conciliar la doctrina tradicional con la filosofía contemporánea (Kant – Hegel – Heidegger). Y Rahner no está condenado, ni por Juan XXIII, ni por el Pablo VI, ni por Juan Pablo II, ni por Benedicto XVI. No sólo no está condenado, sino que sus discípulos fueron promovidos por los supuestos Papas santos anteriormente nombrados a las principales cátedras universitarias y a las principales sedes episcopales del mundo.

Por lo tanto, el Papa Francisco es el último colofón de un estado de descomposición de la Iglesia jerárquica que no ha comenzado hoy, sino que ahora se nota más palmariamente.

A pesar de todo, el Papa no puede defeccionar en la doctrina, esto es, en el anuncio de la verdad católica en los documentos magisteriales (por ejemplo, la encíclica Lumen Fidei, no la exhortación apostólica Evangelii Gaudium, que es un discurso parenético, y que no creo que se lo pueda considerar parte del Magisterio). Sólo con sus hechos, esto es, con sus videos, con su modo de gobierno (por ejemplo, al desdibujar la indisolubilidad del matrimonio con el Motu Proprio Mitis Iudex) e incluso con sus gestos y palabras equívocos puede alentar la subversión. Esto es lo que está definido en el Concilio Vaticano por inspiración divina, y no por falsa hidrocefalia. El mito a desmontar es la impecabilidad de los Sumos Pontífices, y su canonización inmediata. O darle a su palabra más autoridad de la que tiene, como el darle a su palabra sobre el cambio climático en la encíclica Laudato Sì la misma autoridad que al juicio moral sobre el aborto, o al parangonarla con la histórica encíclica Rerum Novarum, de León XIII… Aun así, los Papas nombrados no han errado en materia doctrinal, esto es, cuando han hablado como Sumo Pontífice, en materia de fe y moral, con intención de definir, y para toda la Iglesia. No han cometido herejía, que es lo que no pueden. Pero no sólo se ataca la fe cometiendo herejías.

Nosotros debemos seguir perteneciendo a la Iglesia de las promesas, las que realizó Jesucristo y los Apóstoles, y no Rahner, Francisco o los modernistas. Debemos seguir rezando y haciendo penitencia por la confusión que están generando los malos Pastores. Y debemos seguir gritando como en el desierto, como san Juan Bautista. ¡Es imposible permanecer callados! De otro modo, nuestro silencio ya se transformaría en complicidad.

Fr. Esteban Kriegerisch, op.

[1] Mt. 13, 32.

[2] 2 Tes. 2, 7.

La entrada Dos Iglesias, un Papa aparece primero en Adelante la Fe.

06:57

Aprobado el odio: aboliendo a Dios, la familia y el género [Adelante la Fe]

Desde las catacumbas, Michael Matt nos habla del último frente en la guerra contra Dios: la guerra de género.

Hace cincuenta años, los católicos tradicionales hablaban en contra de las mujeres que vestían como hombres. ¿Deliraban, estaban locos de atar?

Hoy en día, semejante discurso sería tildado de peligrosamente fundamentalista, por supuesto; pero, dado el hecho de que ahora viendo que tenemos un intento masivo de desdibujar la línea entre mujeres y hombres, niños y niñas, quizá los tradicionalistas estaban en  lo cierto.

Este breve Discurso desde las catacumbas, nuevamente, prende la chispa de la discusión. Después de todo, los católicos tradicionalistas estaban en lo cierto sobre la guerra contra la liturgia; tenían razón acerca de las horribles consecuencias sociales y morales de los anticonceptivos; y quizá, ¡sólo quizá!, tenían razón al preocuparse por las mujeres que visten como hombres. ¿Qué piensan ustedes?

Por favor compartan este vídeo.

A continuación, les transcribimos la traducción al castellano del audio del vídeo original en inglés.

Aprobado el odio: aboliendo a Dios, la familia y el género

 

«M.: Hola nuevamente, señoras y señores. Aquí Michael Mando, desde las catacumbas. ¿Saben?, ni siquiera tenía intención de grabar un programa esta noche, pero encontré una historia que, uf, creo que es tan desconcertante que pensé en bajar a las catacumbas. ¿Verdad Rob?

R.: Sí.

M.: Eres tan bueno al acomodarme aquí que, no sé. Estoy más que furioso aunque ya no hace ningún bien enfadarse. De lo que estoy hablando, es de este nuevo “transgénero”, esto que, ¿cómo de llama? Tontería. Saben, es una especie de legalismo, de totalitarismo de transgénero, que está alrededor de nosotros. Pueden verlo por todas partes, de cualquier modo, y lo recordé mientras leía esta historia que ahora, nos llega desde Carisma News de Michael Brown. Trata sobre el hecho de que, en la ciudad de Nueva York o en el estado de Washington, el término y las leyes transgénero se han salido completamente de madre. Ahora, en Nueva York, te pueden multar con 250.000 dolares si violas estas nuevas leyes transgénero. Y podría contarte aún más cosas en la línea de esta historia, así que… Pongamos que, en la ciudad de Nueva York, estás en el gimnasio haciendo deporte; entras en las duchas y algo parecido a una mujer entra también, Rob, y quiere ducharse allí mismo, en el cubículo de al lado. Si lo cuestionas, si te quejas de ello, puedes ser acusados de violación de la ley y ser multado con 250.000 dólares. En el estado de Washington tienen las mismas leyes. ¿Eras consciente de ello?

R.: (…)[1]

M.: Sí, puede parecer agradable… y puede parecer raro y espantoso, muy espantoso si te sucede a ti en la escuela, un restaurante o donde sea y una niña de 10 años va al servicio, al designado para las damas y un barbudo de 110 kilos entra tras ella: lo mismo. No puedes cuestionarle, no puedes pedirle al gerente que haga algo al respecto. Ni siquiera puedes presentar justificantes demostrando que ese individuo ha sido diagnosticado de transgenerismo, lo que sea que eso signifique.

»Entonces, Rob, lo que pasó es que empecé a pensar que algo más está sucediendo aquí; realmente, no se trata de los derechos de los transgénero. De lo que se trata, es de una guerra contra el género. Y creo que el problema es que hay demasiadas personas tomándose esta discusión en serio, tomándolo como si fuera un derecho, un tema de derecho civil y no lo es, señoras y señores. Pienso que, rápidamente, la mayoría de nosotros hemos de reconocer que esto es lo que es: una guerra contra el género, es decir, una guerra contra todo tal y como Dios lo creó.

»A nivel de calle, estamos tratando con una guerra entre Cristo y el Anticristo, entre el reino de Cristo y el reino de satanás[2], y sé cómo suena esto, Rob. Tú sabes como suena. Parecen tonterías de viejecitas de iglesia. Suena un poco loco, un poco paranoico, un poco tonto y no es eso; pero no puedo encontrar ninguna otra razón de porqué estarán haciendo esto. No pueden tener baños asignados a mujeres y hombres porque eso, de alguna manera, viola los derechos de alguien en alguna parte.

»¡Es una locura! Es la receta de la locura completa. Se lo están haciendo a los militares, realmente ya se lo han hecho: están desmoralizando a los militares con el mismo proceso: mujeres y hombres mezclados.

»Un tema que aún no han tratado es el sistema penitenciario. Tengo curiosidad por ver si esta porquería liberal funciona si deciden poner a hombres y mujeres juntos en la prisión estatal. Me pregunto cuan bien funcionaría. Pienso que, de hecho, todos sabemos que no funcionaría, lo que nos da alguna indicación de que esto es una patraña, según todos. Por lo tanto, hay alguna ideología dirigiendo la agenda, que tiene que ver con la guerra contra el género; y esto me hizo retroceder un poco en el tiempo. Sabemos que tengo edad suficiente y puedo reflexionar sobre el pasado, y recuerdo el antiguo tradicionalismo. Me acuerdo de mi padre, por ejemplo. Bien, tengo siete hermanas; mi padre tuvo siete hijas. Y me acuerdo que, por aquellos entonces, en mi hogar católico, estaba prohibido que mis hermanas llevaran pantalones.

»Puede que recuerdes algo similar, Rob.

R.: Sí.

M.: En aquel entonces, allá en los primeros días del movimiento tradicionalista, esto no era un tema de controversia: todos estaban en contra de que las mujeres llevaran pantalones. Entonces, ¿por qué era? El error era que muchas personas pensaban que tenía que ver con la modestia. Pero, primeramente, no tenía nada que ver con la modestia y sino con que los pantalones pueden hacer bolsas en una mujer; realmente, un par de pantalones no es una cuestión de modestia. Así es que, los primeros tradicionalistas, con lo que estaban realmente molestos y preocupados -y por lo que luchaban en contra-, era lo mismo por lo cual luchamos ahora, por casos como el de Bruce Jenner. Transgenerismo y todas estas cosas. Los primeros tradicionalistas entendieron que había una guerra contra todo lo que Dios había creado, bien sea un niño o un niño en el vientre, es decir, lo natural: la vida y la muerte. Así es que estamos hablando sobre el aborto, sobre la eutanasia, el patrón que Dios ha dispuesto para la vida, bien sea que hablemos de los roles de mujeres y hombres, de la familia, de la madre como el corazón y el padre como cabeza del hogar.

»Ser un tradicionalista, significa todas estas cosas. Desgraciadamente, se reduce a hasta…[3] La idea equivocada es pensar que se reduce a las misas en latín y que eso es todo lo que es. Bueno, les puedo decir que, desde mi experiencia personal, en los viejos tiempos no se hablaba de las misas en latín: se hablaba en un asalto en toda regla, frontal, completo, en contra del orden natural, como Dios lo creó, en todos los niveles. Así es que, un tradicionalista, se oponía a la idea del travestismo; a esto se oponían, contra esto luchaban: las mujeres vistiendo como hombres, porque ellos lo entendieron desde la historia: lo vimos en Augusta, en Tomás, en Assuma: vemos que toda esta idea del transgenerismo está reconociéndose o manifestándose a través del travestismo.

»La idea, la rampante guerra es acerca de qué es el sexo, de que es una sexualidad apropiada; y creo que quizá necesitamos dar un grito a los viejos pioneros del movimiento tradicionalistas, tan reivindicados en muchos temas. Ahora, por favor, no me malinterpreten. No estoy diciendo que si su esposa se pone pantalones hoy día, en 2016, para hacer jardinería o montar a caballo, eso sea un pecado mortal. Vamos, vayamos más allá de eso. Hablemos acerca de la filosofía que estaba en peligro, lo que estaba motivando a los tradicionalistas. Vieron la guerra contra la Iglesia, una guerra contra la misa, contra la familia, contra la familia, contra los no-nacidos, y la lucharon.

»Así que ahora, nosotros, con nuestra visión 20/20 podemos mirar hacia atrás. Tenemos a esa pequeña niña que entra en el baño y el hombre que quiere entrar tras ella porque cree que es una mujer y supone que debemos olvidarnos de los derechos de la pequeña. Digo que, esto, es el caos, el eso lo que ellos [los antiguos tradicionalistas] querían decir: cuando expulsas a Cristo, cuando rompes con el orden natural del mundo y de la Iglesia como Dios lo ordenó, termina en un caos como el que tenemos. Y pienso que es muy importante que nos demos cuenta de qué significa ser un católico de mente tradicional. De lo que estamos hablando es de todas estas cosas, no sólo de la misa en latín. Eso es sólo un elemento, otro aspecto de ello.

»Nuestra forma de culto también está siendo atacada. Es muy importante darnos cuenta de que la familia, los no-nacidos, los niños, la inocencia, todo esto, está siendo atacado desde hace mucho tiempo y si piensas que, de alguna manera, se puede evitar… Tengo una historia de aquí, de un colegio local llamado  Nova Clasica Academy. Ahora no es un colegio tradicional católico, pero hizo algo que muchos católicos tradicionales hacen: encerrarse en un colegio pequeño para evitar la tontería y la locura del sistema escolar público.

»Bien, estuvo bajo el punto de mira, porque había un grupo de padres diciendo que sus hijos son transgénero. Y, por tanto, requiriendo a la Nova Academy que ponga clases especiales, lecturas de poesías especiales y que su niños vista como el género opuesto, con la vestimenta apropiada. Los padres estaban indignados y, como pueden ver, se están acercando más y más a nosotros, pero no creen que puedan evitarlo. Porque no quieren que nadie –y cuando digo “ellos” estoy hablando de los poderes que hay detrás de los medios de comunicación y del gobierno-, no quieren que nadie les identifique con estas posturas clásicas, como Dios ordenó estas cosas, ya sea acerca de la familia o el género. Y, por tanto, vamos a ver más sobre este tema, incluso en las pequeñas escuelas. Esta escuela, Nova Academy, tuvo que pedir disculpas e hicieron caso porque, ¿qué más podían hacer? No podemos eludir esto.

»Déjame hacer una predicción justo ahora, Rob. Cuando el tema del transgenerismo afecta a los baños públicos no funciona. Así es que, en pocos años, veremos desaparecer los baños para hombres y para mujeres. Vamos a perder los pequeños dibujos de falditas y hombrecillos con pantalones. Esto va a desaparecer y vamos a tener hombres y mujeres entrando en el mismo cuarto; probablemente, harán cubículos para los individuos y cosas parecidas. Pero, nuevamente, incluso va a cambiar cómo utilizar los baños, como evacuamos. Esto es así de revolucionario, es así de fundamental y pienso que es muy importante que nos demos cuenta de que el tiempo se está acabando, el tiempo es muy corto. Esto está en su agenda en estos momentos y quieren hacer creer que nosotros sólo estamos motivados, que lo único que nos motiva es el orden litúrgico, la misa en latín y que hacemos la vista gorda sobre todo lo que está sucediendo…

»Sé que tenemos poco tiempo, pero me acuerdo de la situación acerca del control de armas. La otra noche, tuvimos a Obama diciéndonos como va a poner más tropas ATF en las calles, que van a hacer más leyes y todo esto, acerca del tema de las armas. Estamos hartos de los tiroteos, ustedes ya lo saben, los tiroteos masivos. Algo se tiene que hacer, lo entiendo. Pero la solución es un gobierno más grande. Me acuerdo, me acuerdo de esto. No se queden colgados de la idea de: “Quiero quedarme con mis armas, ¡caramba! Soy un tipo de la segunda enmienda”. No pierdan de vista el panorama total. El panorama más grande es que quieren asegurarse de que, su seguridad incluso cuando está en la cama y de noche, esté total y completamente pendiente del gobierno federal. Todo  se resume en “papá estado”.

»Como pueden ver, están en todos los niveles, sea el transgenerismo, el aborto, la educación sexual o el derecho a protegerse a usted y a su familia; están en guerra contra una forma de vida y una ideología. Y pienso que, si empezamos a entender esto…, no se dejen convencer por sus argumentos: “Puede conservar sus armas de caza y poco más; eso es todo lo que el gobierno necesita enseñarle acerca de cómo protegerse a sí mismo. El gobierno va a protegerle, no le enseñará como protegerse a sí mismo. Es el gobierno quién le protegerá”.

»Este es el tipo de argumentos que necesitamos. Por eso nos reunimos en los sótanos siempre que podemos, para tener este tipo de conversaciones. Bien. Necesitamos despertar. Ciertamente, se está llevando a cabo una batalla entre el bien y el mal. No lo conviertan en algo que no es. No la hagan más pequeña de lo que es. Es fundamental, es grande, se sale de los límites; es global, es universal. Lo que necesitamos hacer es dejar esto de neo-católico versus católico tradicional y otras cosas sin importancia y reconocer al enemigo por lo qué es y por quién es. Es demoníaco, es el demonio y hemos de estar de acuerdo para reunirnos y hacer lo que podamos con la ayuda de Nuestro Señor y Salvador Jesucristo y Su Santa Madre, y con todos los santos para luchar contra este enemigo real y para entender que no vamos a eludir el tema, que no nos vamos a salir con la nuestra por ningún otro medio.

»Muchas gracias por escuchar nuestro desvarío de esta noche. Ha sido un placer y les esperamos la próxima semana.

Michael Matt

[Traducción de Tina Scislow. Artículo original]

[1] En el vídeo original la respuesta es ininteligible (N. del T.).

[2] Renuncio a poner este nombre en mayúscula (N. del T.).

[3] Sin continuidad en la transcripción original (N. de la C.).

La entrada Aprobado el odio: aboliendo a Dios, la familia y el género aparece primero en Adelante la Fe.

06:57

La Epifanía según el Beato Abad Marmión: un llamado a las naciones paganas [Adelante la Fe]

Los Padres de la Iglesia ven en el llamado a los Reyes Magos a la cuna de Jesucristo la vocación de las naciones paganas a la fe. Este es el fundamento mismo de este misterio y así lo explicita la Iglesia en la colecta, es ahí donde resume los anhelos de sus hijos en esta solemnidad: Deus qui hodierna die Unigenitum tnum GENTIBUS stella duce revelasti. 

El Verbo Encarnado se manifiesta, primero, a los judíos en la persona de los pastores. ¿A qué se debe esto? Se debe a que los judíos son el Pueblo Escogido, es de este pueblo del que surgiría el Mesías, el Hijo de David. Esta majestuosa promesa, que culminará con el establecimiento del reino mesiánico, había sido hecha a ese pueblo; fue  a ellos a quien Dios había confiado las Sagradas Escrituras y a quienes había entregado la Ley, en todo esto, y en cada uno de sus elemento, está prefigurada la gracia que encarnará Jesucristo. Es justo, entonces, que el Verbo Encarnado se manifestase inicialmente a los judíos.

Los pastores, gente simple y honesta, representaron al pueblo elegido junto al moisés: Evangelizo vobis gaudium magnum… quia natus est vobis hodie Salvator (Lc 2, 10-11).

Posteriormente, en su vida pública, Nuestro Señor se manifestaría de nuevo a los judíos a través de su sabiduría, de su doctrina, de su esplendor y de sus milagros.

Encontraremos, inclusive, que limita sus enseñanzas a los judíos solamente. Véase, por ejemplo, el caso de la mujer cananea de la región pagana de Tiro y Sidón, que le pide a voces que tenga piedad de ella. ¿Qué es lo que responde Jesucristo a sus discípulos cuando estos intervienen en su favor? «No he sido enviado sino a las ovejas perdidas de la casa de Israel» (Mt 15, 24). Fue necesaria la ardiente fe y la profunda humillación de la pobre mujer pagana para poder arrebatarle a Jesucristo, por decirlo así, la gracia por la que imploraba.

Así mismo, durante su vida pública, cuando Nuestro Señor envió a sus apóstoles a predicar la buena nueva, tal como Él mismo lo había hecho, díjoles: «No vayáis hacia los gentiles y no entréis en ninguna ciudad de samaritanos, sino id más bien a las ovejas perdidas de la casa de Israel» (Mt 10, 5-6). ¿A qué se debe este extraño requerimiento? ¿Estaban acaso los paganos excluidos de la gracia de la redención y de la salvación de Jesucristo? De ninguna manera; en la economía divina les estaba reservado a los apóstoles la evangelización de las naciones paganas una vez que los judíos hubiesen rechazado definitivamente al Hijo de Dios, una vez que hubiesen crucificado al Mesías. Al morir Jesucristo en la cruz el velo del templo se rasga en dos para mostrar que la Antigua Alianza con el pueblo hebreo había llegado a su fin.

Ciertamente, muchos judíos no quisieron recibir a Jesucristo. El orgullo de algunos y la sensualidad en otros cegó sus almas y rehusaron recibirlo como el Hijo de Dios. Es a estos a los que San Juan se refiere cunado dice, «Y la luz luce en las tinieblas, y las tinieblas no la recibieron (Jn 1; 5 y 11). Nuestro Señor, por lo tanto, les dice a los judíos no creyentes: «El reino de Dios os será quitado, y dado a gente que rinda sus frutos» (Mt 21, 43).

Las naciones paganas están llamadas a ser la herencia prometida por Dios Padre a su Hijo Jesús: Postula a me, et dabo tibi gentes haereditatem tuam (Sal 11, 8). Él mismo, Nuestro Señor, nos dice: «El buen pastor pone su vida por las ovejas», agregando inmediatamente, «Y tengo otras ovejas que no son de este aprisco». Alias oves habeo, quae non sunt ex hoc ovili. «A ésas también tengo que traer; ellas oirán mi voz, y habrá un solo rebaño y un solo pastor» (Jn 10, 11-16).

Es por esto que, antes de ascender a los cielos, Jesús envía a sus apóstoles a continuar su obra y su misión salvífica, mas ya no entre las ovejas perdidas de Israel, sino a todos los pueblos. «Id, pues», les dice, «enseñándoles a conservar todo cuanto os he mandado…  Y mirad que Yo con vosotros estoy todos los días, hasta la consumación del siglo» (Mt 28, 19-20).

El Verbo Encarnado, sin embargo, no aguardó hasta su Ascensión para asperjar ampliamente la gracia del Evangelio al mundo de los gentiles. Tan pronto como apareció aquí en la tierra invitó a ese mundo, en la persona de los Reyes Magos, a su pesebre. Su Eterna Sabiduría nos muestra que trajo paz , Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis (Lc 2, 14), no solo a aquellos en su entorno —los judíos fieles representados por los pastores— sino también a «los que estabais lejos» —los paganos representados por los Reyes Magos. En las palabras de San Pablo, de los dos pueblos hizo uno: Qui fecit utraque unum, ya que solo Él, en virtud de la unión de su humanidad y su divinidad, es el mediador perfecto «Y así por Él unos y otros tenemos el acceso al Padre, en un mismo Espíritu» (Ef 2; 14, 17-18).

El llamado a los Reyes Magos y su santificación significa la vocación de los gentiles a la fe y a la salvación. Dios envía un ángel a los pastores, ya que el Pueblo Escogido estaba acostumbrados a apariciones de espíritus celestiales; para los Magos en cambio, que estudiaban los astros, causa la aparición de una estrella maravillosa. La estrella es el símbolo de un esclarecimiento interior que ilumina las almas para así llamarlas a Dios.

El alma de toda persona adulta está, de hecho, iluminada, una vez cuando menos, como la de los Magos, por la estrella de la vocación a la salvación eterna. A todos les es dada una luz. Es dogma de nuestra fe que Dios «quiere que todos los hombres sean salvos »: Qui OMNES homines vult salvos fieri, et ad agnitionem veritatis venire (1 Tim 2, 4).

El día del juicio todos, sin excepción, proclamarán con la convicción que resulta de las pruebas, la justicia infinita de Dios y la integridad de sus sentencias: Justus es, Domine, et rectum judicium tuum (Sal 118, 137). Todos aquellos que Dios ordene que se aparten de Él para siempre reconocerán que han sido ellos mismos los arquitectos de su propia ruina.

Ahora, esto no sería posible si los réprobos no hubiesen tenido la oportunidad de conocer y aceptar la luz divina de la fe. De no ser así, condenar a un alma a causa de una ignorancia invencible sería contrario a la bondad infinita de Dios, así como a su justicia.

Sin duda la estrella que llama a los hombres a la fe cristiana no es la misma para todos, brilla de diferentes maneras, mas ese brillo es lo suficientemente visible para que corazones de buena voluntad puedan reconocerla y verla como la señal de un llamado divino. En su Providencia, llena de sabiduría, Dios incesantemente varía sus acciones, tan incomprensibles como Él mismo. Verían de acuerdo con el eternamente activo empeño de su amor y las santas exigencias de su justicia. Es, aquí, necesario alabar la inmensidad insondable de los caminos de Dios, y proclamar que sobrepasan infinitamente  nuestros puntos de vista humanos. «Porque ¿quién ha conocido el pensamiento del Señor? O ¿quién ha sido su consejero?». O altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei! Quam incomprehensibilia sunt judicia ejus et investigabiles viae ejus! (Rm 11, 33).

Hemos ya «visto la estrella» y hemos reconocido al Bebé de Belén como nuestro Dios y Señor, y tenemos la dicha de pertenecer a la Iglesia de la cual los Reyes Magos fueron el primer fruto.

En el oficio de esta festividad, la liturgia celebra esta vocación de toda la humanidad a la fe y a la salvación, en la persona de los Magos, como las nupcias de la Iglesia con su Consorte. Escuchad con cuanta alegría, con cuan magnifico simbolismo tomado del profeta Isaías, la liturgia proclama (en la epístola de la misa) el esplendor de este Jerusalén espiritual que está a punto de recibir en su seno a las naciones que son la herencia de su divino Consorte.

«Álzate y resplandece, porque viene tu lumbrera,
y la gloria de Yahvé brilla sobre ti. Pues mientras las tinieblas cubren la tierra,
y densa oscuridad a las naciones,
se levanta sobre ti Yahvé,
y se deja ver sobre ti su gloria. Los gentiles vendrán hacia tu luz,
y reyes a ver el resplandor de tu nacimiento.  Alza tus ojos y mira en torno tuyo:
todos estos se congregaron y vendrán a ti;
vendrán de lejos tus hijos,
y tus hijas serán traídas al hombro. Entonces lo verás, y te extasiarás;
palpitará tu corazón y se ensanchará; pues te serán traídas las riquezas del mar;
y te llegarán los tesoros de los pueblos (Is 60, 1-5).

Démosle incesantemente gracias a Dios, «Él nos ha arrebatado de la potestad de las tinieblas, y nos ha trasladado al reino del Hijo de su amor» (Col 1, 13), es decir, a los brazos de su Iglesia.

El llamado a la fe es un beneficio extraordinario, porque contiene en germen la vocación a la beatitud eterna de la contemplación Divina. Jamás debemos olvidar que este llamado fue el primer albor de la misericordia de Dios para con nosotros, y que para el hombre todo se reduce a la fidelidad a esa vocación; la fe es la que nos lleva a la Visión Beatifica (colecta de la festividad).

No debemos tan solo agradecer a Dios la gracia de la fe cristiana, sino que debemos hacernos diariamente merecedores de esa dadiva asegurando nuestra fe de todos los peligros de nuestra época —del naturalismo, del escepticismo, de la indiferencia y de la parcialidad a lo humano— y llevando una vida de fe, de constante fidelidad.
Imploremos a Dios, así mismo, para que otorgue el preciado regalo de la fe cristiana a todas las almas, «que en tinieblas y en sombra de muerte yacen»; imploremos a Nuestro Señor para que la estrella los ilumine; que en su dulce misericordia sea Él mismo el sol que los atienda desde lo alto: Per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri in quibus visitavit nos, Oriens ex alto (Lc 1, 78-79).

Esta oración es agradable a Nuestro Señor ya que, en efecto, es buscarlo para conocerlo y exaltarlo como el Salvador de la humanidad y el Rey de Reyes.

Y es, a la vez, agradable también al Padre,  porque este no tiene mayor deseo que la glorificación de su Hijo. Repitamos entonces con frecuencia durante estos benditos días la oración que el mismo Verbo Encarnado puso en nuestros labios: ¡Oh, Padre nuestro! «Padre de la Luz», venga tu reino, ese reino del que Jesucristo tu Hijo es el adalid. Adveniat regnum tuum! Que Vuestro Hijo sea por todos conocido, amado, servido, y glorificado, para que Él, a su vez, os manifieste a los hombres, y os glorifique en unión con el Espíritu Santo.

-Tomado de Jesucristo en sus misterios.

Beato Abad Columba Marmión

[Traducido por Enrique Treviño. Artículo original.]

La entrada La Epifanía según el Beato Abad Marmión: un llamado a las naciones paganas aparece primero en Adelante la Fe.

06:56

De la conversión milagrosa del pan y el vino en el cuerpo y sangre de Cristo [Adelante la Fe]

PUNTO PRIMERO. Considera, como dicen mu­chos santos, en este milagro en que el Salvador convirtió el agua en vino, hizo un bosquejo del que había de obrar después convirtiendo el pan y vino en su cuerpo y sangre preciosísima: contem­pla este misterio, y que fue el primero que obró, porque es el primero de todos sus Milagros. Pon­dera el poder maravilloso que dejó a los hombres en su Iglesia para obrarle cada día, y cómo baja a su voz, y el pan deja de ser pan y el vino, y ambos se convierten en carne y sangre de Cristo como se convirtió el agua fría en aquel vino preciosísimo por virtud de Cristo nuestro Señor, y dale gracias por esta maravilla, y pide a los ángeles y a todas las criaturas que se las den, y no ceses de admirar tan alto misterio y venerarle y adorar­le con los ojos de la fe.

PUNTO II. Considera cómo mandó Cristo luego obrando aquella conversión del agua en vino, que le gustasen, y a todos causó igual estima, dul­zura y admiración: lo mismo manda cuando obra este misterio en el Altísimo Sacramento: Tomad y gustad y comed, mis amigos, y embria­gaos, mis carísimos. ¡Oh alma mal a ti dice estas palabras!, que contigo habla este Señor, siempre que obra este milagro en el altar: llega y gústale, cómele y recíbele, gózale y paladéate con su suavidad, acusa tu tibieza en el acatamiento del Señor, que no le gustas ni admiras, porque no le contemplas ni le recibes como debes, y pide al Señor que te disponga con su gracia para que le gustes, admires y veneres como tienes obligación.

PUNTO III. Considera cómo una vez que obró Cristo aquel milagro causó pasmo a todos cuantos le supieron, y por él reconocieron su deidad, y que obrando este divino Sacramento todos los días tantas veces no causa esta admiración porque no le contemplarnos como se debe contemplar. Pon los ojos en los ángeles y santos de la corte celes­tial y mira cómo le adoran, y el temblor con que le reverencian, y aprende a reverenciarle y ado­rarle, a servirle y respetarle con temor y temblor de todo tu corazón.

PUNTO IV. Considera con cuanta facilidad te sientas a la mesa del mundo, y la hambre que tie­nes de sus manjares, y el gusto que tomas en ellos y en las bebidas del vino de este mundo, y cuan difícilmente llegas a la mesa de Cristo señor nues­tro, y el hastío que padeces de este mana celestial de su santísimo cuerpo y sangre, que tan liberal­mente te ofrece en su altar: llora tu perdición y trata muy de veras de la enmienda para que no envíe Dios el castigo sobre ti que envió en el desierto sobre los que se fastidiaron del mana del cielo y lo trocaron por las cebollas de Egipto. ¡Oh Señor! no caiga sobre mí semejante, dadme gracia para que estime vuestra mesa como debo, y me disponga para recibir vuestro manjar con toda la disposición posible, y para que desprecie todos los de este mundo viles y aparentes, por gozar de este divino sobre sustancial y verdadero.

Padre Alonso de Andrade, S.J

La entrada De la conversión milagrosa del pan y el vino en el cuerpo y sangre de Cristo aparece primero en Adelante la Fe.

06:56

Crisis eclesial, la verdadera batalla y sagrada liturgia (padre Cipola) [Adelante la Fe]

 para Ross Douthat, una afectuosa corrección

Es muy cierto que, como ha sido observado en Rorate Caeli, la clase magistral Erasmo en First Things ha causado resquemor en los círculos católicos tradicionalistas.  El artículo de Monseñor Pope lamentando la falta de crecimiento en la presencia de la misa tradicional en la Iglesia ha llamado la atención de católicos tradicionalistas, pero a este artículo le falta la profundidad y urgencia que están presentes en la clase de Douthat. Muchos hemos admirado sus columnas en el New York Times, muchas veces asombrados de la manera en que ha llegado a esa posición entre el ‘establishment liberal’ que da cuerpo a ese periódico.  Sus escaramuzas con los teólogos católicos (y me he aguantado  poner entre comillas la palabra teólogos en nombre de la objetividad, aun cuando no creo que se puedan seguir llamando teólogo católicos, puesto que un teólogo católico tiene que estar inmerso en la tradición y así no parece haber ninguno hoy en día) es un ejemplo del papel del laicado en la Iglesia tal y como propuso el Concilio Vaticano II.

Douthat ve un número importante de problemas que no son inmediatamente aparentes al católico promedio, ni al clero, especialmente los obispos: el apropiamiento del periodo post Concilio Vaticano II por un fuerte grupo de obispos y teólogos empecinados en la redefinición de la tradición que permitiría la conformidad con el espíritu de los tiempos, los tiempos de los años 1960 y 70; el fracaso, a pesar de los heroicos intentos del papa Juan Pablo II, de cambiar el curso de la Iglesia dirigida por aquellos enamorados del Zeitgeist de finales del s. XX; el fracaso del pontificado de Benedicto XVI no solo en revertir los ímpetus de abrazar el secularismo sino también el fracaso en ‘limpiar los establos de la inmundicia’: los terribles y duraderos efectos de los abusos sexuales por parte del clero en la fe de los laicos y la actitud del mundo hacia la Iglesia.  Todo esto Douthat lo entiende perfectamente. Y entiende también que el problema más grande en la Iglesia, más grande porque es la fuerza principal que mueve a la Iglesia hacia el tibio y flácido anglicanismo, es — como lo quiera llamar — ‘papalatría’, ‘hiper-papalismo’, esa adulación al Papa que no tiene precedentes en la historia de la Iglesia, y el asumir que el poder del Papa no tiene límites, que sus pronunciamientos pueden cambiar doctrina, bajo el disfraz del control del Espíritu Santo supuestamente. Pío Nono sabía de su poder como Papa, pero como he escrito anteriormente, se hubiera sorprendido, tal vez sonrojado, ante el poder que los Papas de finales del siglo XX han tomado como propio, incluso suprimiendo el rito romano tradicional e imponiendo el Novus Ordo  sobre la Iglesia entera.

Aun cuando el beato John Henry Newman asintió completamente a la definición de infalibilidad papal en el primer Concilio Vaticano, su grave vacilación al respecto fue profética.

Douthat puede ver claramente el terrible defecto en aquellos que llama “católicos conservadores”, un término defectuoso en sí mismo, en su constante intento por usar documentos para reafirmar el entendimiento tradicional de la fe católica. Este llamado al uso de documentos oficiales de la Iglesia es un producto de la racionalización del catolicismo que comenzó en Trento (sin duda un gran concilio) y ha continuado desde entonces. La deliberada ambigüedad de los documentos del Vaticano II ha sido usada brillantemente por aquellos que habrían de mover a la Iglesia en una dirección que no es la tradicional, brillante para los estándares del mundo. Aun el apreciado catequismo de la Iglesia católica no se puede comparar con la marcha hegeliana hacia el triunfo del ‘individuo desnudo’ y la inevitable apoteosis de la historia.

Douthat ha llegado a la conclusión de que el papa Francisco, aun plantado en la moralidad cristiana y en el amor al prójimo que es el corolario necesario del amor a Dios, está tratando de llevar a la Iglesia a un punto que niegue lo que es el catolicismo, al menos como debería ser vivido. Cuando el papa Francisco fue elegido, escribí un artículo para Rorate Caeli en el cual describí a Francisco como el inevitable Papa de nuestros tiempos.   Y declaré que los siguientes años serían una ‘vuelta al futuro’.  El papa Bergoglio incorpora todo lo que los jesuitas de los años 60 fueron y siguen siendo. Y dije que tendríamos que volver a pasar por esto otra vez, pero esta vez no como sociedad seglar, sino como Iglesia. Y esto no es odio al Papa, rezo por él todos los días en mi rosario, y lo hago con genuino afecto por su rol en la Iglesia. Y continuaré haciéndolo. Pero no sucumbiré al ‘hiper-papalismo’ que ha tenido un efecto tan negativo en la Iglesia en los últimos cincuenta años, esa ‘papalatría’ que se rehúsa a ver a la historia de la Iglesia y ver con objetividad a los hombres que han ocupado la Cátedra de San Pedro.

Si conversara con Ross Douthat, esto es lo que le diría.

Primeramente, su uso de los términos conservador y liberal en su análisis de la situación de la Iglesia está absolutamente equivocado, garantizando la marcha hacia la conversión del catolicismo en la tonta vaguedad del anglicanismo contemporáneo, donde la Escritura, la tradición y Cristo mismo no son barreras para proclamar la oscuridad como luz del mundo.  El fundamento mismo  del anglicanismo es una ruptura egoísta de un rey con la Iglesia, como Newman finalmente pudo ver, garantizando de esta manera su derrota y apostasía porque el centro no se puede mantener cuando no hay centro. El anglo-catolicismo fue una fuerza dentro del anglicanismo para llevarlo a un entendimiento católico de la fe cristiana, y aun cuando poblado de hombres y mujeres verdaderamente excepcionales en su fe, se volvió una imitación del catolicismo con buen gusto, y fue destruida por el esteticismo y un clero donde la homosexualidad era un elemento demasiado común. Newman vio, al contrario de Pusey, Keble y sus seguidores, que el catolicismo es imposible excepto dentro de la Iglesia católica.

Lo de hoy en la Iglesia no es una batalla entre conservadores y liberales. Esos términos políticos han cambiado su significado muchas veces en los últimos dos siglos. La batalla es entre la tradición católica (que incluye el primado de la Escritura como su fuerza unitaria) y el egoísmo y obscuridad del mundo disfrazados en el sentimentalismo del ‘amor’. La batalla es lo que dicta la primera carta de san Juan. No ha cambiado en dos mil años.

Pero sobre todo, Mr. Douthat, no entiende usted que el problema más profundo del estado actual de la Iglesia es la destrucción de su vida litúrgica. La ceguera que comparte con los neoconservadores, que han estado ciegos por tantos años y que se rehúsan a ver esto porque no pueden concebir que la Iglesia pueda cometer graves equivocaciones.  La actitud sobre los efectos del Vaticano II en la liturgia por parte de aquellos que se dicen católicos conservadores es no solamente una afrenta a la realidad, sino que ha contribuido al escandaloso (y nunca admitido por los obispos) declive en la participación en misa donde menos del 25% de los católicos asisten a la misa dominical regularmente. Cualquier persona racional se sentaría a discutir cómo llegamos a este punto y al menos reconsiderar cuáles fueron las malas decisiones  en la implementación de Sacrosanctum Concilium por el consejo encargado de la renovación litúrgica. Es impresionante el hecho de que el papa Pablo VI, haya pensado que tenía el poder de cambiar la liturgia de la misa. Como dije antes, aun Pío Nono se hubiera asombrado de tener tal poder. Pero cuando Benedicto XVI declara que lo que era sagrado antes es sagrado ahora y que la misa tradicional jamás fue suprimida. Ejem… Debe de haber una contradicción en todo esto.

Aquellos que amamos la ‘Tradición de la Iglesia católica’ nos regocijamos en el Motu Propio de Benedicto — Summorum Pontificum que liberó la misa tradicional de la tiranía del ‘establishment’ post Vaticano II. Pero Benedicto hizo esto creando la ficción de que hay dos formas del rito: la ordinaria y la extraordinaria. Lo que esto significa es, por decir menos, poco claro, no coherente. Pero no pudo decir explícitamente que lo que hizo Pablo VI al imponer el Novus Ordo en la Iglesia estuvo equivocado — porque los Papas no cometen errores serios. Y por tanto esta nueva ficción acerca de que si un pequeño grupo  parroquial quieren ‘la misa vieja’ pueden pedirlo a su pastor, y que si este se rehúsa pueden pedirlo a su obispo, ¿qué significa? La gran mayoría de los obispos son hostiles a la misa tradicional, y esta animosidad es mayor aun en parroquias y en las cabezas de los seminarios. Aquellos de cierta edad tienen un interés especial en la de-sacralización de la liturgia que ocurrió después del Concilio Vaticano II. Y, Mr. Douthat, lo que ve ocurriendo en la vida doctrinal de la Iglesia es una consecuencia directa de dejar a la deriva la vida litúrgica de la Iglesia al desvincularla de la tradición. Esto no es conservadurismo. Esto es ‘fundacionalismo’, cimentado en la tradición de los Apóstoles.

Pero estos no son tiempos de llorar, ni tiempos de hablar mal del Papa, ni tiempos de tomar posiciones defensivas.  No.  El siguiente domingo en la ‘forma extraordinaria’, el Evangelio habla del primer milagro de Cristo: convertir el agua en vino en las bodas de Caná, como parte de la Epifanía de nuestro Señor.  Y, mirabile  dictu, porque este es “el año C de la forma ordinaria”, nuestra gente en las misas celebradas de esta forma también oirán el mismo Evangelio.

¡Y qué maravilloso es esto! Porque este primer milagro de Nuestro Señor es un milagro de pura generosidad, un milagro no de curación, o de exorcismo, o para traer a alguien de entre los muertos. Su primer milagro fue hacer feliz a la gente que acudía a la celebración de esperanza y amor que es una boda.  Así que alcemos nuestras copas felices y dando gracias de que hemos sido benditos por nuestra fe católica. Y brindemos por el Papa, pero primero la conciencia. Y brindemos entre nosotros, quien fuera que seamos, y brindemos por este completamente caótico mundo en el cual vivimos en el cual, lo sepamos o no, hemos sido redimidos por Jesucristo. Y con una sonrisa en el rostro agradezcamos a Dios que nos haya amado tanto que nos haya enviado a su Hijo para morir por nosotros; y porque continua amándonos tanto a pesar de nuestra ingratitud y pecados — y demos gracias a Dios por darnos a conocer la belleza y verdad de la fe católica.

Padre Richard Cipola

[Traducción de Hieronymus. Artículo original]

La entrada Crisis eclesial, la verdadera batalla y sagrada liturgia (padre Cipola) aparece primero en Adelante la Fe.

06:56

Review of Coyne [Edward Feser]

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06:12

The Great Spiritual and Economic Value of Small Family Farms; Aquinas and Homosexuality, and More! [The Daily Register]

By TITO EDWARDS | St. Thomas Aquinas and Homosexuality: Five Dominicans Respond to Adriano Oliva by Fr. Blankenhorn O.P. et al, of First Things - Big Pulpit After Making a Commitment to Give God 1% of My Life, My Spiritual Life Flourished – Gary...

05:50

Sainte Agnès [Le blog d'Yves Daoudal]

Le bienheureux cardinal Schuster :

La messe en l’honneur de sainte Agnès a été le prototype de celle qui est devenue par la suite commune à toutes les vierges. Elle a un caractère d’antiquité, solennel et fort sobre, à la différence de l’office qui est d’une époque plus tardive, et se fonde sur des textes apocryphes. A cet éloge liturgique fait un magnifique écho l’épigraphe du pape Damase en l’honneur d’Agnès. Aujourd’hui encore, dans son marbre originel, elle orne l’escalier monumental qui, de la voie Nomentane, descend à la basilique de la martyre.

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La renommée rapporte ce que les pieux parents d’Agnès ont narré, c’est-à-dire comment celle-ci, encore enfant, dès que la trompette du héraut eut annoncé le funeste édit de persécution, tout de suite s’arrache aux bras de sa nourrice pour affronter, intrépide, la fureur du féroce tyran et en mépriser les menaces. Alors que celui-ci tenta de livrer aux flammes son corps délicat, Agnès, avec ses forces débiles d’enfant, réussit à vaincre l’horrible crainte qu’inspirait ce supplice. Découverte, pour qu’un œil humain ne se posât pas sur le temple consacré au Seigneur, elle couvrit son corps de sa chevelure. O magnanime, ô digne de toute ma vénération, ô splendeur de la pudeur chrétienne, je te supplie, illustre martyre, d’accueillir avec bienveillance les prières de Damase.

05:30

The Councils of the Orthodox Churches [Eastern Christian Books]

Some publishers have the luck of timing on their sides. In this year leading up (one hopes!) to the much-promised and much-delayed "great and holy synod" of Orthodoxy, we will see published in April a hefty edited collection, part of the Corpus Christianorum Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta (CCCOGD 4) series from Brepols Press: Alberto Melloni, ed.,The Councils of the Orthodox Churches in the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Era (approx. 900 pp.).

About this volume the publisher tells us:

This volume comprises the critical edition – sometimes the very first critical edition – of the Councils of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, namely those sharing the professoin of faith defined in the first seven Ecumenical Councils (COGD 1). Among them one may find the Protodeutera (861), the Council of Constantinople of 879, the Tomos Unionis (920), the Local Synods of Constantinople against the Syro-Jacobites (1030) and against John Italos (1082), the Council on ‘My Father is greater than me’ (1166), on the Filioque (1285) and on Palamas (1341-1351), the Synod of 1484, annulling the so-called union of Florence (COGD 2), the Synods about Lucaris, the Panorthodox Synods of Jerusalem (1672) and Constantinople (1872), the Local Synods of Constantinople (1691 and 1755), and additional materials, like the Patriarchal decision of annullment of the Excommunications between Rome and Constantinople (paralleled in COGD 3).

It also includes the first publication of five synodika of Orthodoxy: Georgian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian and the Greek synodikon with a new edition of the oldest surviving version of the latter (eleventh century), which was the basis for the subsequent translations. Moreover the volume will represent the Conciliar tradition of the Patriarchate of Moscow and of all Russias, including the Stoglav (1551), and the Councils of Moscow of 1666/7 and 1917/8 and more recent Councils of the 21st Century.
Among the editors of the critical editions Hilarion Alfeeev (Moscow), Frederick Lauritzen (Venice), Bernadette Martin Hisard (Paris-Rome), Giovanni Guaita (Moscow), Vassa Kontouma (Paris), Kirill Maksimovič (Moscow), Riccardo Saccenti (Bologna), Michel Stavrou (Paris), Tatijana Subotin Golubović (Belgrade), Anna Maria Totomanova (Sofia). The editorial staff includes Frederick Lauritzen, Georghios Vlantis, Cyril Hovorun, Davide Dainese.


Melloni is no stranger to editing such collections of this. I have on my shelf his invaluable 2005 collection which he co-edited with Silvia Scatena, Synod and Synodality: Theology, History, Canon Law and Ecumenism in New Contact.

That collection was very useful when I was giving no little thought to the questions of synodality and patriarchal structures in the life of the Church, East and West, in my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity.

05:04

Raised With Love: An In-Flight Conversation Plants a Seed [Aleteia.org]

In short, the mercy of God is not an abstract ideal but a concrete reality with which he reveals his love as that of a father or a mother, moved to the very depths out of the love for their child. —Pope Francis, Miseracordiae Vultus, para. 6. The only desire I had when I boarded Read More…

05:03

A Pro-Life Leader Who Wasn’t Always Pro-Life Reflects on the Power of Conversion [Aleteia.org]

The Susan B. Anthony List was the pro-life answer to Emily’s List. While Emily’s List raises money to back pro-choice women’s political campaigns, the SBA List supports women who will work in public office on behalf of the unborn. Its founder and leader never envisioned herself working professionally for the pro-life cause, but a conversion in Read More…

05:02

Caring for My Soul and Its Tabernacle Is a Labor of Love [Aleteia.org]

The beginning of 2016 saw me 10 pounds heavier despite having gone to the gym on a semi-regular basis last year. At first, I went with vigor, but my body told me with every step on the treadmill how much it hated moving. Afterward, my brain would call out, “You did your part, that’s great. Let’s Read More…

05:01

Planned Parenthood and the New Hillary [The Catholic Thing]

BN-MD665_MCGURN_G_20160118111737The Clinton refrain used to be “ safe,  legal, and rare.” The new Hillary has moved to the absolutist position of the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. Today Mrs. Clinton’s formula is safe, legal, unlimited—and federally subsidized.

The post Planned Parenthood and the New Hillary appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

Shun False Paths to Power [The Catholic Thing]

A great statesman offers an attractive vision that can transform friendless strangers into strange friends, appealing to what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” This is not to say that even the most skilled political leader may not say things with which others may disagree, even vehemently. Rather, it means that a great statesman does not intentionally sow seeds of discord for the sake of political power.

He procures political power for the sake of advancing the common good, though he is aware that some of his detractors may quarrel with how he understands that good. Because he respects his critics, and wants to make them his allies, he offers – with charity and grace – the sorts of reasons that he believes any fair-minded citizen would find compelling, though conceding that even the most fair-minded adversary may still walk away unconvinced.

For this reason, in argument and in victory he will never denigrate his opponents’ character or suggest that they are less than full members of the political community. Conversely, the leader who speaks to provoke rather than to inspire, who employs language to make virtue more difficult and vice second nature, would rather win with Machiavelli than lose with Socrates.

For political conservatives, especially those who are observant religious believers, this prescription for political leadership is a very difficult pill to swallow. These citizens have, for nearly a decade, not experienced the sort of civic friendship with their adversaries that I am suggesting is one result of the work of a true statesman.

When they raise serious questions about illegal immigration, they are called xenophobes.

When they pursue religious liberty legislation to ensure they are not coerced to participate in liturgical events prohibited by their moral theology, they are labeled bigots trying to “weaponize religious liberty.”

When they try to form non-profit corporate entities to advance their own civic beliefs in the public square, they are targeted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for “special evaluation.”

When they appeal to principles of justice, once widely-thought to be the antidote to racial, gender, and ethnic discrimination and prejudice, in their opposition to policies that require that race, gender, and ethnicity be taken into consideration in hiring and school admissions, they are accused of advancing a culture of discrimination and prejudice.

“I'm the bad guy?”
“I’m the bad guy?”

When they want to protect and nurture their own institutions – their colleges, charitable organizations, civic groups, etc. – in ways that can resist cultural trends that they believe are deleterious to the integrity of those entities, they are not only sneered at, but become the subject of calls to remove their tax-exempt status.

They are confused by a political leadership that praises the virtues of diversity, but at the same time seems to want to use cultural and governmental power to make sure that everyone thinks alike, every institution looks the same, and that encourages the view that dissenters are to be marginalized and denied social respect.

They can no longer trust an educated political elite that rejects the transparent rules of governance outlined in the Constitution while outsourcing unaccountable administrative agencies to do their legislative and executive dirty work, e.g., IRS, EPA, HHS, DOA, DOJ, etc.

Like Bill Foster, Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down (1993), these voters are asking, “I’m the bad guy?…. How did that happen?” This explains why Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are in ascendancy among religious conservatives, especially Evangelicals.

It also explains why Trump (who recently spoke at Liberty University) and Cruz (who never misses an opportunity to display his Evangelical street cred) campaign with the sort of edge and biting rhetoric that is meant to attract a constituency that believes it has nothing left to lose and who are not going to take it anymore.

Although this is totally understandable, it is unwise for religious conservatives to acquiesce to the temptation to cooperate with this sort of electoral strategy. This is the time to lead by example, to rise above the urge to poke back, and not to follow some of our progressive friends in engaging in a politics of ridicule, insult, and marginalization.

On the one hand, the frustrations and complaints of religious conservatives – as I have already noted – are real, substantial, and should not be disparaged. On the other hand, political leadership, true statesmanship, is not just about electoral victory and subsequent payback to yesterday’s sore winners on the other side. It is about offering a vision that is attractive and intelligent, and can unite a wide coalition of citizens around a candidate who can do the most good given the reality of the nation’s demography.

For serious religious conservatives this at least means not emulating the worst political habits of your partisan opponents. For, at the end of the day, it is more important to be good than it is to be elected. “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Mt 16:26)

The post Shun False Paths to Power appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

05:01

A model for Christian refugees [The Catholic Thing]

Slovakia-255x287Scores of Iraqi Christians will be moving into their new homes in Slovakia this month, far from the crowded camp in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where they found refuge after fleeing the brutal advance of the Islamic State in 2014, providing a model for future private initiatives.

The post A model for Christian refugees appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

05:01

Muslim Bus Passenger Who Stood up for Christians During Attack Has Died [Aleteia.org]

A Muslim in Kenya has reportedly made the ultimate sacrifice for religious freedom. Salah Farah, a teacher who shielded Christian fellow passengers when their bus was attacked by Islamist militants last month, has died in surgery to treat his bullet wound, the BBC reported. Farah was on a bus traveling through Mandera in Kenya when it Read More…

05:01

05:01

05:01

Civility defined [The Catholic Thing]

The post Civility defined appeared first on The Catholic Thing.

05:01

Photo of the Day: January 21, 2016 [Aleteia.org]

  See more photos here.  

05:00

The 2016 March for Life Song and the Artist Behind It [Aleteia.org]

“Hear our voice, we are one, we will fight until we’ve won.” It’s that time of year again, when people of all ages from every part of the U.S. travel to Washington and other locations to stand up and be a voice for the dignity of human life. This year, one of our favorite artists Read More…

05:00

Atheist Michael Newdow Takes New Legal Swipe at “In God We Trust” [Aleteia.org]

Steven Spielberg’s new movie Bridge of Spies is based on a 1950s-era spy case involving a hollow nickel. The five-cent piece, which contained an encrypted message, could be opened by sticking a pin through a tiny hole drilled in the R in the phrase “In God We Trust” and pushing away the back of the coin. Michael Read More…

05:00

Saint Agnes, Virgin Martyr [Vultus Christi]

Saint AgnesA Winter Constellation
The wintertime liturgy sparkles with a constellation of virgin martyrs and holy women. The Roman Canon enshrines their names: Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia and Anastasia. On January 18th we also had little Saint Prisca; although she does not figure in the Roman Canon, she is one of the Rome’s beloved virgin martyrs.

In the darkest months of the year, these brides of Christ shine like so many little flames taken from the Paschal Candle in the great and holy night of the Resurrection. Today, we fix our gaze on Agnes.

If I Love Him
The Office of Saint Agnes is one of the most beautiful in the Roman Liturgy. It has inspired many souls to give themselves over to the love of Christ. Today’s Office expresses all the sentiments of the little virgin martyr’s pure and passionate heart. “Christ is my Lover,” she sings in the Third Responsory at Matins, “and I am entering with Him into the marriage-chamber. . . . The instruments of His music sound sweetly in my ears. If I love Him I shall be chaste; if I touch Him I shall be clean; if I embrace Him I shall be a virgin indeed.”

A Christian Child
Agnes was a mere child, a little girl of twelve. The year was 304, during the persecution of Diocletian. According to Roman law, a child of twelve was not held responsible for her choices and could not therefore be subject to trial and judgment. But Christians fell outside the pale of Roman law, and Agnes was a Christian.

What are we to make of these child saints and of others like them? Our Lord places them before us, saying, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:2). “To the boastful, I say: ‘Do not boast,’ to the wicked: ‘Do not flaunt your strength, do not flaunt your strength on high. Do not speak with insolent pride’” (Ps 74:5-6).

The Child Teacher
It is with little ones, “foolish in the eyes of the world” (1 Cor 1:27) that God shames the wise. It is with these little ones, “the weak in the world” (1 Cor 1:27) that God shames the strong. It is with these little ones, “low and despised in the world” (1 Cor 1:28) that God silences the boasting of the high and mighty. Saint Ambrose puts all his eloquence into praising Agnes: “She is not grown of stature to fight the battle, but she is ripe for the triumph; too weak to run in the race, and yet clearly entitled to the prize; unable from her age to be aught but a learner, she is found a teacher.”

The Shepherd and the Lamb
The name Agnes is derived both from the Greek for “pure” and the Latin for “lamb.” Agnes is the pure lamb; Christ is the Shepherd. The familiar Psalm 22, that we chant every Thursday at Prime, thus becomes Saint Agnes’s song. Agnes the lamb sings the psalm of Christ the Shepherd in the midst of the Church. The fourth verse of the psalm evokes the passion and martyrdom of the saint. “For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me” (Ps 22:4).

Perfect Charity Casteth Out Fear
In his treatise On Virginity, Saint Ambrose says: “Girls of her age tend to wilt under the slightest frown from a parent. Pricked by a needle, they cry as if given a mortal wound. But little Agnes showed no fear of the blood-stained hands of her executioners.” He tells us that while the executioner shook as though he himself were the criminal, and the faces of bystanders turned white at the sight, Agnes all the while remained without fear. “I will fear no evils” (Ps 22:4). Saint John gives the explanation: “Fear is not in charity: but perfect charity casteth out fear” (1 Jn 4:18).

Chosen in Love
“Abide, remain, make thy home in my love,” says the Lord to the virgin child Agnes; “whoever abides, remains, makes his home in me and I in him will bear much fruit” (cf. Jn 15:9b, 5b).  Manete in dilectione mea. Dilectio is that love by which one distinguishes another by selecting him from others. Dilectio is the love that chooses another. Jesus is, in fact, saying in today’s Alleluia Verse, “Abide in my choice of thee.” Saint Agnes understood that she was chosen. She sings, “My Lord Jesus Christ hath espoused me with His ring, and hath set on my head a crown as the crown of the bride.” The ring and the crown are the traditional symbols of the virgin consecrated to Christ. They represent Our Lord’s election of a particular soul, the choice of His love. The secret of consecrated virginity is one’s assent to the choice made by Jesus, who says, “You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you” (Jn 15:16). The consecrated virgin elects to abide forever in the Divine Bridegroom’s election of her.

Stability
The notion of abiding is akin to dwelling, to stability, and to permanence. Agnes, while yet a child, found her home, her stability, her unshakable permanence in Christ’s choice of her. The liturgy of virgins applies to them the word of the psalm: “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved” (Ps 45:6). Agnes, abiding in Christ’s choice of her, became the abode of charity — agápe, sacrificial love — and charity abiding in her drove out fear.

Purchasing the Treasure
Stability in Christ’s choice of us, and freedom from fear, are not bought cheaply. Both are costly. Both demand a total investment, an investment deemed foolish by the worldly-wise: all that one has. Consider the costliness of the treasure in the field (Mt 13:44) and the pearl of great price purchased by nothing less than all that one has (Mt 13:45).

The Spendthrift Virgin
Agnes, a little child, took a foolish risk. She gave all that she had. “The crowds,” says Saint Ambrose, “marvelled at her spendthrift attitude to life, discarding it untasted, but as if she had lived it to the full.” Unlike the daughter of Jephthah who asked of her father two months to wander on the mountains and bewail her virginity (cf. Jg 11:37), Agnes went with willing and joyful steps to the place of her execution.

Toward the Banquet of Love Crucified
Agnes, pure lamb of the Shepherd-Christ, child-bride of the Lamb without stain, obtain for us who, at least, share thy weakness, a like share in the wisdom of thy folly. Lead us to the Banquet prepared by charity upon the altar, to the Banquet of Love Crucified, that we, like thee, may abide in Love’s choice of us.

05:00

St. Agnes [CNA - Saint of the Day]

On Jan. 21, the Roman Catholic Church honors the virgin and martyr St. Agnes, who suffered death for her consecration to Christ. Eastern Catholics of the Byzantine tradition celebrate her feast day Jan. 14.Although the details of Agnes' life are mostly unknown, the story of her martyrdom has been passed on with reverence since the fourth century. On the feast day of the young martyr – whose name means “lamb� in Latin – the Pope traditionally blesses lambs, whose wool will be used to make the white pallium worn by archbishops. Born into a wealthy family during the last decade of the third century, Agnes lived in Rome during the last major persecution of the early Church under the Emperor Diocletian. Though he was lenient toward believers for much of his rule, Diocletian changed course in 302, resolving to wipe out the Church in the empire. Agnes came of age as the Church was beginning to suffer under a set of new laws decreed by Diocletian, and his co-ruler Galerius, in 303. The emperor and his subordinate called for churches to be destroyed and their books burned. Subsequent orders led to the imprisonment and torture of clergy and laypersons, for the sake of compelling them to worship the emperor instead of Christ.Meanwhile, Agnes had become a young woman of great beauty and charm, drawing the attention of suitors from the first ranks of the Roman aristocracy. But in keeping with the words of Christ and Saint Paul, she had already decided on a life of celibacy for the sake of God's kingdom. To all interested men, she explained that she had already promised herself to a heavenly and unseen spouse.These suitors both understood Agnes' meaning, and resented her resolution. Some of the men, possibly looking to change her mind, reported her to the state as a believer in Christ. Agnes was brought before a judge who tried first to persuade her, and then to threaten her, into renouncing her choice not to marry for the Lord's sake. When the judge showed her the various punishments he could inflict – including fire, iron hooks, or the rack that destroyed the limbs by stretching – Agnes smiled and indicated she would suffer them willingly. But she was brought before a pagan altar instead, and asked to make an act of worship in accordance with the Roman state religion.When Agnes refused, the judge ordered that she should be sent to a house of prostitution, where the virginity she had offered to God would be violated. Agnes predicted that God would not allow this to occur, and her statement proved true. The first man to approach her in the brothel was struck blind by a sudden flash of light, and others opted not to repeat his mistake. But one of the men who had at first sought to make Agnes his own, now lobbied the judge for her execution. In this respect, the suitor obtained his desire, when the public official sentenced her to die by beheading. The executioner gave her one last chance to spare her life, by renouncing her consecration to Christ – but Agnes refused, made a short prayer, and courageously submitted to death.St. Agnes, who died in 304, was venerated as a holy martyr from the fourth century onward. She is mentioned in the Latin Church's most traditional Eucharistic prayer, the Roman Canon.

The Skelligs and Star Wars [Tea at Trianon]

From the National Catholic Register:

There are two St. Finnians, both remembered as holy abbots, the first ordaining St. Columba as a deacon and the other (the great Irish monastic St. Finnian of Clonard) ordaining him as a priest and serving as his teacher. The latter was involved in one of the stranger incidents in the life of Columba. During a visit to Finnian, Columba copied his mentor's psalter, and Finnian insisted the copy was his possession and demanded it back. Columba's cousin, the Irish Over-King Diarmid, sided with Finnian. Outraged by this, and possibly angered by a violation of sanctuary by the king, Columba stirred the people against Diarmid, leading to a battle with significant loss of life and the flight of the king. The Synod of Teilte, in progress at the time, excommunicated Columba, but restored him when he presented himself at the Synod and agreed to convert as many pagans as he could. And there you have Irish monasticism in a nutshell: mad, volatile, and feverishly passionate about the faith. Is it any wonder they retreated to impossible locations?

For several centuries the retreat drew a steady stream of hermits seeking a deeper encounter with Christ away from the distractions and vanities of the world. These were the hardcore spiritual athletes: ascetics on the order of the great desert fathers trapped on a wind-scoured rock inaccessible to land for months at a time.

Using a dry-stone walling technique that has withstood the elements for 1400 years, they built two oratories and six beehive cells, each cell with an ambry (niche) for storing their meagre possessions and supplies. Small stone fingers on the roof probably held turf or some other kind of insulating roofing material. A pair of wells, eggs from the large seabird population, pollock, and possibly goats and goat milk provided their sustenance. There's just enough soil to support a small flock of livestock. They probably brought the soil with them. (Read more.)

04:59

A life lived and a request for prayers [Fr. Z's Blog]

In December, while I was leaving NYC, I asked you to pray for MaryAnn Hassan, mother of 8, battling cancer for many years. At that time I wrote:

I ran into [MaryAnn’s] husband at the rectory before I left for the airport. He told me about their latest challenges… and triumphs. I am deeply impressed with their faith. They’ve fought cancer and asked God for just one more year so that all their children could know their mother.

Tonight I received a note from her husband:

It was so very, very nice to see you at Fr. Murray’s several weeks ago. I am writing to you to let you know, my beloved MaryAnn passed away today.

God bless you, thank you for your prayers and kindness during our encounters over the years in NY at ___ rectories.

She received the Sacraments: Confession with in the last week, anointing, Eucharist (Viaticum), and Apostolic Pardon.

So I believe she had a happy death. She was in her own bed, she was at home, the family was here, all the kids. She simply stopped breathing, and was gone at 12:20 pm.

I hope I was worthy of her and that I served her well.

God Bless you, and again thanks,

To which I responded:

Oh my! Matthew, accept my simultaneous condolences and congratulations. As MaryAnn’s husband you fulfilled your vocation of helping her to heaven. With the suffering and the sacraments, I am confident in her present bliss.

That said, I will not fail to pray for you all.

Blessings and best,

Fr. Z

Dear readers who are married…

Your vocation is to help your spouse get to heaven, and by doing so, get to heaven yourself.

You and your better half shall die one day, perhaps easily, perhaps with difficulties. You are in it for the good and for the bad, with the promise of the Kingdom of God.

Love God even more than you love your spouse so that you can love your spouse rightly and so that you can live with sacrificial love, always seeking the good of the other.

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04:09

Finally, worms [Charlotte was Both]

Homeschool Daily Report

03:42

He flunked NPR's religious neutrality test. "Neutrality"??? How idiotic! [Musings of a Pertinacious Papist]

Gerold McDermott, "I flunked NPR's test" (January 20, 2016):

Last week I was invited by NPR (national) to participate in an on-air discussion of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God. First, they said, I needed to have a pre-interview....

I thought things had gone swimmingly.

Until I got an email two days ago from her boss, the producer, who said I was not “neutral” enough. They would proceed without me...."
Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

03:39

How Divorce Killed Scott Weiland (And Made Grunge Rock) [Ethika Politika]

chalk2

Scott Weiland, the lead singer of the nineties grunge rock band Stone Temple Pilots, died in early December. His off-and-on crack addiction—something that had plagued him for decades—appears to have been the immediate cause. Yet a more hidden factor also bears some responsibility and is also indirectly responsible for grunge rock's mainstream popularity. It may surprise the reader to know I am speaking of divorce. Weiland was both the product and perpetuator of America's divorce culture. The singer came from a broken home and was married three times. His second wife in the days following his death penned a poignant reflection on her late husband, noting the dark spiral of drugs, alcohol, and prison sentences that ruined his life. But her eulogy suggests also that his life was made more miserable by his aversion to commitment, something he struggled to provide both for her and for their children. She notes that he was photographed with his kids only “a handful of times in fifteen years of fatherhood.” She mourns that her ex-husband won't be “with his children barbecuing in the backyard and waiting for a Notre Dame game to come on.” And she pleads with her readers to help children suffering at the hands of their parent's broken relationships, to give them some sort of “normalcy.” Grunge’s Sentimental Ethos Children exposed to divorce are two to three times more likely than their peers in intact marriages to suffer from serious social or psychological pathologies. Adolescents with divorced parents are more than twice as likely to drop out of high school when compared to children from intact families. Adolescent girls with divorced parents are three times more likely to become teen mothers, while their male counterparts are twice as likely to spend time in prison. If the United States enjoyed the same level of family stability today as it did in 1960, one sociologist estimates that the nation would have 750,000 fewer children repeating grades, 1.2 million fewer school suspensions, approximately 500,000 fewer acts of teenage delinquency, about 600,000 fewer kids receiving therapy, and about 70,000 fewer suicide attempts every year. Interestingly, the deep feelings of despondency, disconnection, and isolation that divorce delivers to America's youth are the same sentiments that define much of the sentimental ethos of grunge rock. Grunge was the most popular rock for the first half of the 1990s; Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, and Stone Temple Pilots being the most famous bands. It typically features slower tempos and dissonant harmonies, offering angst-ridden lyrics reflecting social alienation, apathy, and confinement. The members of all the most popular grunge bands were born between 1964 and 1970, at the origins of an era where divorce, and particularly no-fault divorce, became a culturally and legally acceptable decision for many Americans. In 1969, then-California Governor Ronald Reagan signed America's first no-fault divorce legislation. Within fifteen years, virtually every state in the Union had followed suit. From 1960 to 1980, the American divorce rate more than doubled. Five of the six lead singer/songwriters in the bands mentioned grew up in broken homes. The themes of grunge rock are incongruous with other events that defined the era. All these bands released their most popular work after the Berlin Wall fell and the stagnant American economy of the 1980s began to take off. These frontmen were all middle-class white males living in the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. Why wouldn't they be happy or hopeful for the opportunities of a post-Cold War world? The stories and lyrics of these lead singers suggest divorce holds part of the answer. The Frontman’s Stories Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder was born in 1964, and his parents divorced when he was only one year old. His mother remarried, and he grew up believing his stepfather was his biological father. His mother divorced his stepfather when he was in his late teens and  only at this time did he learn the truth about his biological father, who by that time had died of multiple sclerosis. Pearl Jam created one of the most iconic of grunge's albums: “Ten,” released in 1991. The band catapulted to national stardom, with its angst-ridden songs. “Jeremy,” for example, written prior to Columbine, tells the story of an isolated, unpopular student who finally “speaks” in school by blowing up a bomb. Vedder's lyrics frequently evince a powerful level of darkness. In the song “Black,” he cries:
And now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything; All the pictures have all been washed in black, tattooed everything. . . . All the love gone bad, turned my world to black; Tattooed all I see, all that I am, all I'll be.
Listening to the album “Ten” will transport the listener to the dark, heartsick world Vedder often inhabited. Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan's story is notably similar. Born in Illinois in 1967, his parents divorced when he was three years old, and his father subsequently remarried. He claims that his stepmother physically and emotionally abused him. His father and stepmother also divorced during his childhood. Corgan formed Smashing Pumpkins in 1988, many music critics claiming the group to be the most musically versatile of all the grunge-era bands. It certainly had its share of radio hits throughout the 1990s, including “Today,” “Disarm,” “1979,” and “Tonight, Tonight.” Like Vedder, Corgan's lyrics are frequently depressing, and at times even nihilistic. He muses in “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”:
The world is a vampire, sent to drain, secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames; and what do I get, for my pain? Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game. . . . Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage; then someone will say what is lost can never be saved.
Corgan's lyrics were so notoriously dismal that when the band appeared on an episode of The Simpsons, Homer tells the frontman: “Thanks to your gloomy, depressing music, my children no longer hope for the future I cannot afford to give them." Corgan's character humbly replies: "Yeah, we try to make a difference." Cobain and Weiland Kurt Cobain of Nirvana—perhaps the most famous of the grunge stars—was born in Washington State in 1967, and his parents divorced when he was nine. He acknowledged that this made him “ashamed,” and that he “desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that.” Compounding this tragedy, Cobain witnessed his mother being physically abused by a boyfriend. Cobain formed Nirvana in 1987, and within a few years came to represent the heights of grunge's celebrity-status, with such hits as “Smells like Teen Spirit,” “Heart-Shaped Box,” and “Come As You Are.” His artistry is most evident in the band's 1993 MTV “Unplugged” album, especially in the beautiful and almost otherworldly cover of David Bowie's “The Man Who Sold the World.” One song on that album, “Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam,” though not personally written by Cobain, is suggestive of Cobain's personal feelings of emptiness:
Jesus, don't want me for a sunbeam; Sunbeams are never made like me; Don't expect me to cry for all the reasons you had to die; Don't ever ask your love of me.
Cobain increasingly struggled with drug abuse, depression, and hatred of his own fame. After a brief stint in rehab, he committed suicide on April 5, 1994. Finally, there is Weiland, who was born Scott Kline in California in 1967. His parents divorced early, he assuming his adoptive stepfather’s last name when he was five. He grew up Catholic—a connection he retained for most of his adult life—and developed an affinity for Notre Dame football, even playing quarterback on his high school team, in addition to singing in the school choir. He helped form Stone Temple Pilots in 1989, and the band soon became an international success with radio hits such “Plush,” “Interstate Lovesong,” and “Big Bang Baby.” Weiland's frequently bizarre lyrics—when they are able to be interpreted—point to a life of solitary grief. In the early hit “Creep,” the chorus goes: “I'm half the man I used to be; This I feel as the dawn; It fades to gray.” In 2007 he acknowledged the darkness of his years living drugs, sex, and rock and roll:
I believe in the Devil: I experienced some very bizarre things when I was in the height of my addiction—popped a cork in the genie bottle and felt the Devil—not, like, literally Satan, but energy from that side of the spectrum.
Weiland’s demons never left him, and he left two broken marriages and two teenage children behind. Rejecting the Catholicism of his youth, he relapsed into his old habits of substance abuse, dying on a tour bus full of drugs in Minnesota. Vedder, Corgan, Kobain and Weiland. All monumental musical successes in the grunge genre. Yet all tortured by inner demons. And all products of divorce. The terribly sad stories of Scott Weiland, Kurt Cobain, and grunge music isn't just about catchy guitar riffs, social isolation, and drug addictions. It's about divorce and its devastating, indelible mark.

The post How Divorce Killed Scott Weiland (And Made Grunge Rock) appeared first on Ethika Politika.

03:36

Whewell on Analytic Mathematics in Liberal Education [Siris]

Analytical operations in Mathematics do not discipline the reason; they do not familiarize the student with a chain of syllogisms connected by a manifest necessity at every link: they do not show that many kinds of subjects may be held by such chains: and at the same time, that the possibility of so reasoning on any subject must depend upon our conceiving the subject so distinctly as to be able to lay down axiomatic principles as the basis of our reasoning.

52 With reference to analytical mathematics, the argument in favour of the use of Mathematics as a permanent educational study, loses all its force. If we can only have analytical mathematics in our system of education, we have little reason to wish to have in it any mathematics at all. Our education will be very imperfect without Mathematics, or some substitute for that element; but mere analytical mathematics does not remedy the imperfection. If we can only have analytical mathematics, it is well worth considering whether we may not find a much better educational study to supply its place in Logic, or Jurisprudence. The general belief, for undoubtedly it is a general belief, that Mathematics is a valuable element in education, has arisen through the use of Geometrical Mathematics. If Mathematics had only been presented to men in an analytical form, such a belief could not have arisen. If, in any place of education, Mathematics is studied only in an analytical form, such a belief must soon fade away.

William Whewell, Of a Liberal Education in General, pp. 49-50.

This can be easily misread if one is not familiar with the whole of Whewell's argument. He is not claiming that analytical mathematics -- algebra and calculus -- are inferior mathematics, or that they are ill-suited to discovery of mathematical truths; in fact, he thinks the opposite is true. He is also not saying that they should not be part of education at all. His argument is rather that they are not good as foundations -- education, insofar as it is mathematical, should build up to them, not take them as basic. It's the perfection of analytical mathematics, its capacity for extremely abstract representation, that makes it poorly suited for getting people used to thinking mathematically and rationally. And this is because in analytical mathematics, as such, you don't actually think about problems -- you think about formulas and abstract relations that can be interpreted in many different ways for many different kinds of problems. If people get started too early on this, it is easy for them to start using these x's and y's and formulas concerning them as nothing but a crutch. In geometry, however, which Whewell argues should be a major and foundational part of education, thinking about this particular problem, and what this particular problem requires, and going through it step by step, is an immense part of what you do.

I think it's interesting that our educational systems have generally done what Whewell says they should not do -- focus on analytic mathematics rather than geometry, in both mathematics and the sciences -- and that the result he predicts has in fact come about -- people in general often don't see the point of their mathematics education. Whether the one is caused directly by the other is a trickier question, but it is worth thinking about.

02:00

“Everyone Is Looking for You” – A Meditation on a Short Sentence from Scripture [Community in Mission]

prayer-888757_1920There is a brief line in the first chapter of Mark’s Gospel that simply and completely sums up what we all are doing, even if we’re not aware of it. The setting of the passage is the outskirts of Capernaum in the early morning.

The prior day Jesus had healed a great many people at the house of Simon Peter. As the new day dawned there was already a multitude gathered in hopes of seeing this healer. Word must have spread quickly about Jesus.

But where was He? The text says that Jesus had slipped away to a deserted place to pray.

In seeming irritation, Peter and the others went looking for Him. When they found Jesus, Peter uttered a line that well describes and decodes all human hearts. Peter said, likely in an exasperated tone,

“Everyone is looking for you” (Mark 1:37).

Indeed, they are. Everyone is looking for Jesus. There are no exceptions here. Even those who insist that they are not looking for Jesus, and that He is the last one they would ever seek, are looking for Jesus.

Yes, Lord Jesus, everyone is looking for you.

There is in all of our hearts a “God-size” hole. Only God can fill it. There is a yearning, a longing that is infinite. The world could not have given this to us. Our nature alone could not have caused it; finite realities cannot give anything infinite. Nemo dat quod non habet (No one can give what he does not have).

Only the One who is infinite could have put this infinite longing there.

Yes, Lord Jesus, everyone is looking for you; even those of us who forever run after worldly things to satisfy our infinite longing. Yes, we are all looking for you even if many of us do not know it.

  • The consumer who looks for the latest thing, the most recent upgrade, the bigger car, or the fancier house is really seeking you and the wealth that is you.
  • The sports fan or hobbyist who spends enormous amounts of time and money on such pursuits is really seeking fulfillment and thrill in you.
  • The discouraged or angry divorced person looking for the perfect marriage and the priest who wants a “better” parish are really seeking you and your perfection.
  • The young girl applying her makeup and the actor seeking applause and fame are really seeking you and the warm embrace of your love and acceptance.
  • The alcoholic or addict who tries to find relief at the bottom of a glass of wine or the end of a joint is really seeking the peace that only you can give.
  • Even the atheist who denies you because he cannot see you and the atheist who is angry at suffering and evil in the world are actually confessing their desire for your justice and solace.

Yes, Lord Jesus, everyone is looking for you.

Even creation yearns for you, though less consciously. Your own scriptures call you the desire of the everlasting hills (Gen 49:29). And you inspired St. Paul to say that creation is groaning in all its parts waiting to be restored and set free by you (Rom 8:22).

Yes, Lord Jesus, everyone and everything is looking for you. I am looking for you. The one who reads your Scripture is looking for you. My loved ones and enemies alike are looking for you. Help us to find you; show us your face.

Everyone is looking for you!

Nothing truer has ever been said.

The post “Everyone Is Looking for You” – A Meditation on a Short Sentence from Scripture appeared first on Community in Mission.

01:01

St. Agnes Virgin And Martyr Jan 21 [Traditional Catholic Priest]

St. Agnes of Rome Of all the virgin martyrs of Rome none was held in such high honour by the primitive church, since the fourth century, as St. Agnes. In the ancient Roman calendar of the feasts of the martyrs (Depositio Martyrum), incorporated into the collection of Furius Dionysius Philocalus, dating from 354 and often …

The post St. Agnes Virgin And Martyr Jan 21 appeared first on Traditional Catholic Priest.

01:00

Jean-Baptiste Olaf Fallize, Apostolischer Präfekt von Norwegen, Titularbischof von Elusa [et nunc]

Normal 0 21 false false false DE X-NONE X-NONE (9.11.1844 Betlingen (BEL) - 23.10.1933 Luxemburg)


Jean-Baptiste Fallize ist der Sohn eines Gerbers. Er verbrachte seine Kindheit in Harlingen und besuchte ab 1858 bis zum Abitur das Athenäum. Auf Wunsch von Bischof Adames studierteJean-Baptiste Fallize am Collegium Germanicum in Rom Philosophie und Theologie. 1871 wurde er in der Laterankirche zum Priester geweiht. Nach dem Doktorat kehrte er 1872 nach Luxemburg zurück, wo er zum Subrektor und Wirtschaftsverwalter des neu errichteten bischöflichen Knabenkonvikts ernannt wurde. 1876 übernahm er die Pfarrei in Pintsch. 1881 wurde Jean-Baptiste Fallize, Verfasser des Traktats in Dialogform über das Wahlsystem, die Regierung und den Kulturkampf (Die Kammerwahlen), in die Abgeordnetenkammer berufen, wo er wie auch Johann Knaff Deutsch sprach. Als er von Bischof Koppes 1884 zum Präsidenten der bischöflichen Rechnungskammer und mit den Aufgaben eines Generalvikars betraut wurde, gründete er die Sankt Paulus-Druckerei, wo bistumsabhängige oder -nahe Periodika erschienen. Im gleichen Jahr wurde er Chefredakteur des Luxemburger Wort. 

In Anerkennung seiner publizistischen Propagandaerfolge wurde er auf ausdrücklichen Wunsch Roms 1887 Apostolischer Präfekt von Norwegen und Apostolischer Protonotar und päpstlicher Hausprälat. Von Christiana aus organisierte Jean-Baptiste Fallize unter Zuhilfenahme zahlreicher luxemburgischer Priester den landesweiten Aufbau der katholischen Gemeinde und führte die römische Liturgie und den gregorianischen Gesang ein. Er gründete zudem Kirchen, Schulen und Krankenhäuser in Norwegen. Ob seiner Erfolge wurde er 1892 Apostolischer Vikar und zum Titularbischof von Elusa ernannt, 1912 zum päpstlichen Thronassistenten und römischen Grafen. Nachdem er sein Amt niedergelegt hatte, zog er zuerst nach Bergen, wo er zum Titularerzbischof von Chalcis ernannt wurde, dann nach Luxemburg ins Sankt Zitha-Kloster.

Jean-Baptiste Fallize schrieb Gedichte, Reiseberichte und Erinnerungen in deutscher, französischer, norwegischer, lateinischer und niederländischer Sprache. Bereits als Student verfasste er zwischen 1864 und 1869 ca. 100 Gedichte. Nebst lateinischen Erbauungs- und Gelegenheitsgedichten thematisierte er verschiedene Aspekte seiner Heimat: die Mosel, Vianden oder die Auswanderung nach Amerika. Auffällig dabei war die Vielfalt der verwandten Versformen vom Ghasel bis zur Sestine. Seit den 1870ern schrieb er im Rahmen seiner publizistischen Tätigkeit Reiseliteratur. So hielt er seine Erinnerungen an seine Studentenzeit in der Reise nach Rom als ersten Band der von ihm 1876 begründeten Luxemburger Volksbibliothek fest, mit der er eine populäre Reihe christlicher Literatur für den Hausgebrauch ins Leben rief. In Norwegen schrieb er groß angelegte Reiseberichte, die ins Deutsche, Polnische und Norwegische übersetzt wurden und Tier-, Stadt-, Dorf- und Landschaftsbeschreibungen sowie Schilderungen der Sitten und des Alltags umfassen.

Jean-Baptiste Fallize entwickelte sich infolge seiner politischen und kirchlichen Aufgaben zu einer zentralen Figur in der Presselandschaft der 1870er und 1880er Jahre. Er übernahm die Herausgeberschaft des Luxemburger Sonntagsblättchen (1873), das er zwei Jahre später unter dem Namen Luxemburger Sonntagsblatt (bis 1887) etablierte. Nachdem er bereits 1874 den Luxemburger Hauskalender redigiert hatte, gründete er 1877 den Luxemburger Marienkalender, dessen redaktionelle Verantwortung er bis 1887 übernahm. Jean-Baptiste Fallize, der in der liberalen Politik eine Bedrohung der kirchlichen Wirkungskraft befürchtete, griff immer stärker in die politischen Bewegungen ein und gründete zu diesem Zweck das Wochenblatt Luxemburger Volksblatt (1880-1885). Wegen seiner publizistischen Angriffe auf Staatsminister de Blochhausen wurde er 1880 zu 30 Tagen Haft verurteilt.

In Norwegen sollte Jean-Baptiste Fallize später seine missionarischen Tätigkeiten wie bereits zuvor mit großem publizistischen Aufwand unterstützen, Druckereien gründen und katholische Wochenblätter, Verordnungsblätter (Kirkelige Bekjendtgjørelser) sowie Erbauungs- und Schulbücher herausgeben, insgesamt mehr als 50 Schriften. Er war zudem Beiträger für die Zeitschrift Katholische Missionen (Freiburg/Breisgau), die Missions Catholiques (Lyon) und das norwegische Wochenblatt St. Olav. Hervorzuheben bleibt das Festspiel für Ordenshäuser Der kleine Jesus als Postulant, das Jean-Baptiste Fallize in norwegischer (1895) und deutscher Sprache (1898) zu dem Zwecke schrieb, junge Gläubige zum Eintritt in die Klöster zu bestärken.

Claude D. Conter, Quelle – autorenlexikon.lu



00:39

Work In Progress [Loved As If]

Over the next few days, LovedAsIf.com might be glitchy or down. I’m making a few changes. Please bear with me. Thanks.

The post Work In Progress appeared first on Loved As If.

00:08

Once Stated []

I have never liked Ted Cruz.  He is dangerous.

Here is one reason why.

http://www.politicususa.com/2013/10/30/left-accept-ted-cruz-dominionist-messiah.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology

He, unlike Trump, actually believes what he says.

He is abysmal on foreign policy as well.

I do not like Trump or Bush or anyone else, but I do like Rand Paul.

He is the smartest one of the lot, he is humble, and he is a servant type of politician.

He has no messianic delusions.

 

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Biblical Evidence for Catholicism XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
BRUNONIS XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Called to Communion XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Cardinal Newman Society All Posts XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Catholic Answers XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Catholic Faith and Reason - Our Blog XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Catholic Sacristan XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CatholicCulture.org - Commentary on Catholic News and World Affairs XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CatholicCulture.org - In Depth Analysis of Catholic Issues XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CatholicHerald.co.uk » CatholicHerald.co.uk XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Charlotte was Both XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Chiesa - XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CNA - Daily Readings XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CNA - Saint of the Day XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CNA Daily News XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CNA Daily News - Vatican XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CNS Movie Reviews XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CNS Top Stories XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CNS Vatican News XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Commentary - thomistica XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Community in Mission XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Comunión Tradicionalista XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Corpus Christi Watershed news XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Creative Minority Report XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
CRISTIANDAD XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Cum Lazaro XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
David Scott Writings XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Denzinger-Katholik XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Diligite iustitiam XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Dom Donald's Blog XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Dominicana XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Dominus mihi adjutor XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Dyspeptic Mutterings XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Eastern Christian Books XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Edinburgh Housewife XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Edward Feser XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
et nunc XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Ethika Politika XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
EUCist News XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Faithful Answers XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
For the Queen XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Fr Ray Blake's Blog XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Fr. Z's Blog XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Galileo Was Wrong XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Gratia Super Naturam XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
History of Interpretation XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
https://creamcitycatholic.com/feed/ XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
I Have to Sit Down XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
iBenedictines XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
IDLE SPECULATIONS XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
ignatius his conclave XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Il Blog di Raffaella. Riflessioni e commenti fra gli Amici di Benedetto XVI XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
In Campo Aperto XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
In the Light of the Law XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Incarnation and Modernity XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Infallible Catholic XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Instaurare Omnia in Christo - The Blog XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Jimmy Akin XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
John G. Brungardt, Ph.L. XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
John V. Gerardi XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Just Thomism XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
katholon XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Korrektiv XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Laodicea XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Laudator Temporis Acti XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Le blog d'Yves Daoudal XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Lectio Divina Notes XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
LES FEMMES - THE TRUTH XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Lex Christianorum XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Ley Natural XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Little Flower Farm XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
LMS Chairman XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Loved As If XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
marcpuck XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Mary Victrix XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Mathias von Gersdorff XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Musings of a Pertinacious Papist XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
New Liturgical Movement XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
New Sherwood XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
New Song XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
News - thomistica XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
NICK'S CATHOLIC BLOG XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
One Mad Mom XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
OnePeterFive XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Opus Publicum XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Over the Rhine and Into the Tiber XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Oz Conservative XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Paths of Love XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Psallam Domino XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
RORATE CÆLI XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
RSS XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Sancrucensis XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Scholastiker XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Semiduplex XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Siris XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Spirit of Teuchtar II XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
St. Peter's List XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Steeple and State XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Symposium XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Tęsknota XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Taylor Marshall XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Tea at Trianon XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
That The Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The American Catholic XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Badger Catholic XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Catholic Dormitory XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Catholic Thing XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The City and the World XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Daily Register XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Deacon's Bench XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Divine Lamp XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Eponymous Flower XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The hermeneutic of continuity XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Jesuit Post XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Josias XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Lepanto Institute XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Low Churchman's Guide to the Solemn High Mass XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Paraphasic XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Prosblogion XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Rad Trad XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Remnant Newspaper - The Remnant Newspaper - Remnant Articles XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Sacred Page XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The Sensible Bond XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
The TOF Spot XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Theological Flint XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
totaliter aliter XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Traditional Catholic Priest XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Transalpine Redemptorists at home XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Unam Sanctam Catholicam XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Unequally Yoked XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Voice of the Family XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Vox Cantoris XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Vultus Christi XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Whispers in the Loggia XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
Zippy Catholic XML 22:00, Thursday, 21 January 23:00, Thursday, 21 January
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