Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

A BBC “Jack Chick” type documentary aired this evening accusing Pope Benedict of taking the leadership role in covering up the sex abuse scandal. It was reported that about five years ago he sent out a document called The Crime of Solicitation - “which laid down the Vatican’s strict instructions on covering up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe at all times.”

Patrick Wall, former priest and Benedictine Monk, who now makes a living suing the Catholic Church; and, Fr. Tom Doyle, a canon lawyer who claims, “he was sacked for criticizing the Church’s handling of child abuse claims (one excuse is a good as any other)”, both take shots at the Church and Pope Benedict.

The investigation could not come at a worse time for Pope Benedict, who is desperately trying to mend the Church’s relations with the Muslim world after a speech in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said that Islam was spread by holy war and had brought only evil to the world.

The Panorama programme is presented by Colm O’Gorman, who was raped by a priest when he was 14. He said: “What gets me is that it’s the same story every time and every place. Bishops appoint priests who they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens.”

Since when did responsible reporting stop requiring any burden of proof? Needless to say, this type of conspiracy theory slander is common place now-a-days, because truth doesn’t matter anymore when the prime objective is to inflict damage on the intended target.

An undercover investigation has found compelling evidence that physicians in China are harvesting and selling the organs from executed prisoners. It’s estimated that about 95% of the human organs transplanted in China come from prisoners, some of which are suspected to be taken while the prisoner is still alive.

Officials at the hospital in Northern China openly admitted where the organs came from. ‘It’s true we use a lot of organs from executed prisoners,’ one official admitted.

‘The prisoners on death row have done many bad things and before they die they give their organs as a present to society.’

He even advised the reporter to try to get his sick father to the clinic in time for China’s National Day on October 1 as there would be an increase of executions in the run up to the event, which would lead to an abundance of available organs.

Human rights groups said execution dates are being made to fit in with the needs of wealthy foreigners who want the prisoner’s organs.

Chinese officials insist that all of the organs are legitimately harvested with prisoner consent, but ‘An accumulating body of evidence suggests that the organs of executed prisoners are being removed for transplantation without the prior consent of either the prisoner or their family.’

This godless country is as evil as they come, and who knows how many innocent and undesireable people are murdered soley for their body parts? As atrocious as this whole industry sounds, it’s no more barbaric than embryonic stem cell research, abortion or involuntary euthanasia.

In a culture that is so thoroughly imbued with Cartesian dualism, reductive materialism, and the perverse notion that equality means sameness even faithful Catholics can be led to miss the importance of symbolism in determining the appropriate roles for laity in the liturgy based upon their sex. What I am getting at is this. The other day at Mass we had two extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion who both happened to be Franciscan sisters. I had not really thought about it before, but in this case what began as a subliminal sense of dissonance eventually became explicit. I was seeing a clash of symbols.

This is what I mean. Here we have two heroic women who have selflessly dedicated their lives to witnessing to the reality of the Church as the Bride of Christ in our marriage communion with God, which is of course a feminine relational reality. They have dedicated themselves, in their femininity, to furthering the Kingdom by proleptically living the eschatological Kingdom on earth. However, here is the dissonance. The sisters were assisting in a role that symbolizes (and effects) the Bridegroom giving Himself in this most perfect love of initiative, which is a masculine relational reality (for more on this see an earlier post here and here and especially read the Kreeft article). In other words, we have the feminine attempting to symbolize the masculine.

The Mass is a participation in the heavenly banquet; the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. In this feast the Second Adam consummates His marriage through His Sacrifice of the Cross in which He draws His Bride from His opened side in an act of re-creation as the anti-type of the first Adam. In the Mass we celebrate God marrying His people by entering into an ineffable one flesh union. In a Trinitarian paradox though, we eat the Host of the wedding feast. However, unlike a normal meal we do not consume what we eat. Rather, He consumes us. This mind-blowing encounter with Christ is made possible through the alter Christus, the priest. That is why the priest (or deacon) is the proper person to give to us this gift of Christ Himself, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. It is only because of the limitation of circumstances that Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion are permitted and perhaps too readily employed. So much so, that it is not unusual to see a priest sit down if one too many EMHCs happen to come to the altar.

Any way, as the liturgy teaches, it seems to me that this clash of symbols further attenuates our already dilute understanding of what is happening at Mass. This same logic applies to those assisting at the altar and mediating God’s Word during the Liturgy of the Word. While I admit this to be a very controversial and easily misunderstood suggestion, it seems to me that extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, lectors and altar servers ought be a male, preferably those contemplating a vocation as a priest or deacon. However, the importance of the Mass militates in favor of even a very difficult proposition. Careful and complete catechesis and gentle pastoral application, both in reducing the use of EMHCs and in moving to the appropriate symbolism, could make something like this achievable.

I can only think of utilitarian arguments to the contrary, which even on a utilitarian basis would not be compelling. Anyone have any compelling theological arguments in the other direction?

This is according to a study done at Florida State University which will be published in an upcoming edition of The Journal of Law Economics and Organization.

The researchers found that teen gonorrhea rates dropped by an average of 20 percent for Hispanic girls and 12 percent for white girls in states where parental notification laws were in effect. The results were not statistically significant for black girls. The study will be published in an upcoming edition of The Journal of Law Economics and Organization.

“Incentives matter,” Klick said. “They matter even in activities as primal as sex, and they matter even among teenagers, who are conventionally thought to be short-sighted. If the expected costs of risky sex are raised, teens will substitute less risky activities such as protected sex or abstinence.”

In this case, the incentive for teens is to avoid having to tell their parents about a pregnancy by substituting less risky sex activities. In doing so, the researchers say, the rates of gonorrhea among girls under the age of 20 went down.

Consequences for one’s behavior? Unfortunately, accountability or taking responsibility for one’s action is a lost concept that contribute to self-victimization, hopelessness and the blaming of others for self-induced misery. Of course, kids (and adults, alike) are more likely to think twice about taking chances, if there is a potential of getting caught.

What has happened to this girl? The temptations of the world has tendency to lure us away from what is good and pure and lead us down the very dark road of destruction. I myself, have not always been the poster child for humility and piety, as I am today. Being raised as a Catholic, deep down inside, I knew the difference between right and wrong, and more times than not, chose a path of sin and personal destruction. Through God’s mercy and the prayers of others, I am slowly but surely, struggling to become the person I am meant to be. In order that I might feel better about my self and my past, I wanted to place the focus on Miss Charlotte Church.

 I just wonder what has led her to this point in her life. A girl whose prize possession was once the rosary blessed by John Paul II now blasphemes the Eucharist and the Crucifixon of Christ. Was it fame? Parenting? Being a spoiled brat? Quoting one of the thousands of complaints her show has received, ‘This woman may have had the voice of an angel in the past but now she has the foul mouth of a sewer rat.’ Her new (’coarse, crude and filthy) series has lost approximately 25% of it’s audience after the first show! Her series had just completed it’s forth show with complaints of Miss Church doing a Madonna crucifixon stunt.

After doing this post, I actually feel much holier than I did before I started! I am just so thankful I’m not like Charlotte Church, I was smart and disciplined enough to turn my life around time. (it’s called sarcasm)

Finally, a legal “loop hole” used to violate parental rights by the abortion industry advocates will soon be slammed shut. Transporting a minor across state lines to obtain an abortion in order to avoid parental notification in the minor’s home state will soon become a federal crime. The 264-153 vote on Tuesday now returns some sense of control and involvement back to parents, at least when it comes to their pregnant daughters who are considering an abortion. Any person who transports a minor across state lines could be fined $100,000 or one year in jail or both. Abortionists will also be held accountable for any illegal abortions.

The abortion bill, and a similar measure passed by the Senate in July, make it a federal crime to take a pregnant girl across state lines for an abortion without her parent’s knowledge.

“It protects minors from exploitation from the abortion industry, it promotes strong family ties and it helps foster respect for state laws,” said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. Bill supporters argued that it made no sense that minors who need parental permission to get an aspirin at school or go on field trips can get an abortion without telling their parents.

The House bill also makes it a crime if the abortion provider in the second state fails to give one of the minor’s parents, or a legal guardian, 24 hours notice before an abortion is performed.

The person transporting the minor across state lines, or the doctor who fails to provide notification, would be subject to a $100,000 fine or one year in jail or both. About half the states have some kind of parental involvement law.

It’s encoraging to see that parents are now being allowed some level of participation in the development of morality in their children. I have a feeling there is still a long fight ahead for us, as we attempt to pry the children of America from the tight death grip of the abortion industry.

Source

Michael Higgins, president of New Brunswick’s St. Thomas University and a regular columnist in The Catholic Register [not the National Catholic Register but a local Toronto weekly], offered his explanation on why Pope Benedict said what he did at Regensberg saying, “the only possible answer is gross stupidity.” He has publicly said that, “Pope Benedict XVI lacked either the intelligence or the moral awareness to avoid offending Muslims in his Regensberg Germany speech”.

A common theme among liberal critics of Benedict’s speech was also echoed by Higgins who told Maclean’s that as Pope, Benedict must be more responsible, no longer having the freedom to make “airy theological speculations.”

Higgins’ holds a prominent position as a leader within Canada’s left-leaning “liberal” academic elite which Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, has criticized for decades. Before his appointment as president of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Higgins was President and Vice-Chancellor of St. Jerome’s University at the University of Waterloo, a school notorious for its promotion of a secularized, dissident Catholicism that has dominated Canadian Church institutions for decades.

Higgins sounds like the type of guy who typically trips over cordless phones and turns off the AM radio in the evenings!

Be Here Mondays gives his take on this October’s “First Things” review by Stephen M. Barr on Creation and the book by the Harvard scientist Edward O. Wilson Ed, who is first and foremost an ant man, but also has a profound admiration for scarab beetles.

The shy and modest Jessica Simpson has apparently been victimized and criticized by Christians because she is just too darn sexy. Poor thing apparently suffers from the same syndrome as “Right Said Fred“.

She tells Allure magazine, “I was always criticised for my looks in the Christian world. They said I was too sexy to sing Christian music. “Judgemental is the absolute worst thing about Christianity, I believe.”

Simpson claims her breasts were even bigger when she was a teen adding, “But I was always so shy about them because I felt they disabled me from achieving what I wanted to do. They would never let me sing solos in church, because they said I made the men in the congregation lust!”

A bit of advice to Jessica; nobody will ever know what you have in your pocket if you don’t show ‘em!

Not to pile on, BUT she’s also SO sick of men flirting with her; does anybody besides me see a trend here?

In reality, those “nasty boys” probably give her a sense of power and control, which are probably lacking in so many other aspects of her life.

OR

It may all just be the marketing of THE Jessica Simpson product, she still has to eat you know.

Source

A man is suing a hospital based fertility clinic for inseminating a woman who had purchased his sperm by error. For whatever reason, this guy donated his sperm so his fiancee could be inseminated. He wants 2 million dollars and has also filed a separate suit to find out if the woman gave birth to a child.

After it was discovered by the hospital that the woman was given the wrong sperm, her husband describes the procedures used by the fertility clinic to undo the screw up.

“We had to return to the hospital so that my wife could be given some medicine to make sure she did not become pregnant.”

“We were not permitted to leave OHSU’s fertility clinic until my wife swallowed the medicine under the watchful eye of a nurse,” the documents said. He also said the OHSU fertility clinic offered a free abortion if she became pregnant “and two free artificial inseminations” if she didn’t.

It is suspected that a child was born but the woman’s lawyer refused to say whether or not it was true.

Given this logic of abortion being used to fix our “mistakes” or avoid future suffering, would it then not be justified killing the baby if it is indeed found to be alive? If abortion is the right “thing to do”, prior to birth, than logically speaking, the birth alone cannot not invalidate the previous concerns. If we abort children because they may starve or suffer, than how much more should we be justified in mercifully killing all the children who are currently starving and suffering? Women choose abortion rather than give them up for adoption, because of the concern of abuse by the adoptive parents or abandonment, than shouldn’t it be our responsiblity to kill all of the children who are abandoned or living in abusive situations? Yeah, it sounds good, all the reasons given for the need of abortions, but it’s all a bunch of window dressing for self-serving needs and desires.

SOURCE

The three Catholic men who were singled out in the violence between Christians and Muslims were executed today. These three men were the only ones charged in the violence, despite the fact, that a majority of the violence and murder being done by the hands Muslim extremists. Pray for the repose of their souls please. There were reports of riots after news of the execution got out.

The violence doesn’t only occur inside the clinic:

Deadly pro-abortion violence has been reported at least since 1965 and is escalating rapidly, with an incredible 269 homicides and other killings committed in just the last six years (since 2000). 2005 was the bloodiest year, with pro-abortionists murdering 77 people, including 28 pregnant women (and their 28 wanted preborn babies), two baby boys, one little boy and five little girls, four men and two women, and seven other wanted preborn babies.

(source)

As so eloquently stated by a national news executive:

“NBC News does not use the term “prolife,” which it regards as loaded, but if someone wanted to use “pro-choice,” I’d say that was fine.” - NBC News Editor Gilbert Millstein

What more need to be said. The only way to add dignighty to abortion is to focus on the pro-life nut cases, as it has nothing on which to stand on it’s own merit. God forbid, a pro-abortionish seeing a poster of an aborted child - ouch! cryptonite.

LifeSite

Prochoiceviolence.com

St. Stephens Community House, a registered Canadian charity, has produced a sex education program which The Ministry of Education in Manitoba is making available to children in grades 9 - 12 with a similar education project in Alberta. The homosexual proganda program called “The Little Black Book–A Book on Healthy Sexuality“, encourages the practice of homosexual behavior among teen girls. For example it reports that approximately 10% of the population is “gay”, 10% is heterosexual and the remaining 80% is bisexual, and goes on to suggest that girls can kiss other girls, but this does not committ them to lesbianism. A theme through out the book makes it perfectly normal for a girl to date both boys and girls.

The following is additional content of the “black book”:

“The guide does not just endorse homosexual practice – it virtually promotes it, and portrays those who object to such practices, particularly parents, as being homophobes, stating that ‘A lot of parents are homophobic, and so are their children until the get minds of their own.’

“One section devoted to lesbian sex is entitled ‘My First Time ****ing a Girl.’

“The guide promotes the use of devices to reduce the risk of contracting disease and infection through sexual activity, referring to this as safe-sex. No meaningful attempt is made to warn the reader of the failure rate of these devices. The result is that young girls are being led to believe, wrongly, that they are not at risk of unwanted pregnancies and infection.

“In another section entitled ‘How to use a Dental Dam’ the guide actually includes the following option: ‘for extra fun – cut out the crotch of your undies and sew on a dental dam.’ This advice, if followed, could lead to the complete failure of the device and infection of its unsuspecting users.

“Finally, in a swipe at religious Canadians, the guide includes the gratuitous observation that ‘(i)f you need someone to represent God The Holiness, then for me, it’s a fat black dyke.’ What this statement has to do with healthy emotional and sexual development is beyond us.

The St. Stephens Community house has removed all traces of this on-line sex manual from the website as of today. Like some in the psychiatric industry, I am convinced that many who are drawn to the sexual education of the young have more than their share of sexual disorders and confusion and consequently, pass on their delusional thoughts to impressionable kids.

Sources: Institute for Canadian Values , Defend Marriage, LifeSite

Links to chapters of the book (Warning - May Be Offensive to Some Adults)

UPDATE (09/22/06) - The Little Black Book produced by St. Stephen’s Community House in Toronto, and correctly described in the report, is in fact not the same Little Black Book being considered for distribution to students in Manitoba schools. Parents have also complained about the latter item but details are not available. A follow up news report will provide further details.

The three Catholic men who retaliated with violence against the Indonesian, “Lasker Jihad” movement will be executed on Thursday (executions are typically done without any announcements). The execution by firing squald was originally “stayed indefinitely”, last month, but now appears to be “on” again, in retaliation for the benign comments made by the Pope last week, and a means to “balance justice”. It’s believed that the local and regional Indonesian officials “aided and abetted years of attacks against Christians by the Islamic murderers, who vowed to “to sweep ALL christians out of the area”. These three men were the only ones charged in the violence, despite the fact, that a majority of the violence and murder being done by the hands Muslim extremists.

Source

It seems that I can’t even get away from the inane commentators on this issue in the peacefulness of noon Mass. Unfortunately at the Newman Center on the U of I campus the Prayer of the Faithful is often opened up to the congregation.

We have a well known dingbat who often uses this opportunity to sew discord by espousing his strange and combative political views. Today, immediately after the celebrant had prayed for the soul of the sister killed in the Sudan, this person asks for the same thing but tacks on “because of the Pope’s assault on Islam.” His asking me to join him in sin by unfairly calumnizing our Holy Father, the very antithesis of what we were supposed to be doing at Mass, was too much. I debated with myself for quite a while over whether I was in the correct spiritual condition to go to Communion.

I went over to Amy’s blog to see what the blogosphere has been saying today and I was sad to see that blogger’s whose opinions I normally respect were suggesting that B16 blundered by including a quote that was not even fundamental to his point. While I respect these guys, I have a much higher estimation of Benedict’s intellectual prowess and after studying his address, I find that his choice of quotes to be quite instrumental to his point.

Surely he did not expect the insane response we are seeing…how could he, he is not insane. However, I have been very encouraged to hear (thanks mostly to Fr. Stephanos’ work) some very insightful responses to the furor:

From Feminist, Muslim commentator Irshad Manji:

As a faithful Muslim, I do not believe the pope should have apologized. I’ve read what’s been described as his inflammatory speech. Actually, he called for dialogue with the Muslim world. To ignore that larger context and to focus on a mere few words of the speech is like reducing the Koran, Islam’s holy book, to its most bloodthirsty passages. We Muslims hate it when people do that. The hypocrisy of doing this to the pope stinks to high heaven.

Yet some Muslims have gone further. In the West Bank, churches have been firebombed. During a big protest in London, placards proclaimed “Islam will take Rome.” In Somalia, a Catholic nun was murdered shortly after a Muslim cleric urged violence against the Vatican.

Coincidence? I think not.

And thinking is what the Quran encourages. It asks Muslims to reflect far more than to retaliate. Even if someone mocks your religion, the Koran says, walk away. Later, engage in dialogue. Wasn’t that the pope’s point?

We Muslims should remember that God told the Prophet Muhammad to “read.” My advice to fellow Muslims: Read the pope’s speech — in its entirety — and you’ll see that his message of reason, reconciliation, and conversation would make him a better Muslim than most of us.

From a leading Italian Muslim (translated by Fr. Stephanos):

It is desolating and preoccupying to see Muslims who have given life to a unified international front to attack the Pope and demand public apologies. From Bin Laden to the Muslim Brotherhood, from Pakistan to Turkey, from Al Jazeera to Al Arabiya, there has risen anew the widespread and universal alliance that first emerged on the occasion of the events surrounding the cartoons about Mohammed.

It testifies, in an unequivocal manner, that the root of the evil is a blind ideology of imperious hatred among Muslims, one that violates the faith and darkens the mind. Why is it that Muslims, especially the so-called moderates, never stand up with similar and as much enthusiasm against the true and perpetual profaners of Islam, the Islamic terrorists who massacre Muslims themselves in the name of the same God, the Islamic extremists who legitimize the destruction of Israel and inculcate faith in the so-called Islamic “martyrdom”, while in the meantime they feel themselves dutybound to promote a sort of Islamic “holy war” against the head of the Catholic Church who legitimately expresses his evaluations concerning Islam, with respect but with just as much clarity about the diversity that naturally exists between the two religions? …

[snip]

The ideology of hatred is an ancestral reality that exists in the heart of Islam from its very beginnings, because of the refusal to recognize and respect the plurality of the physiological religious communities, and given the subjectivity of the relationship between the believer and God, and the absence of a single spiritual reference point that embodies the absoluteness of the dogmas of faith. …

And finally, Fr. Stephanos provided a link to perhaps the best analysis of B16’s speech I have seen by Justin Raimondo. Though I do not agree with everything this atheist/pacifist thinker says in his analysis, I think that his general understanding of what B16 was trying to accomplish is superb (again, thanks to Fr. Stephanos for pointing us to this):

[snip]

Out of a complicated and thoroughly delightful narrative on the relationship between faith and reason – intended to illustrate his point that Catholicism is the only authentic alternative to the “primitive” irrationalism of Protestant and Islamic mystics, on the one hand, and godless rationalism on the other – the fanatics (egged on by the media) have latched on to a few paragraphs, which are citations and not even the words of this pope. What is fascinating is his point that the long-term trend within Christian circles, Catholic as well as Protestant, has amounted to a process of “de-Hellenization,” i.e., an attempt to divorce Christianity from what the “reformers” regard as alien accretions of the Hellenistic period. Yet the gospels were written in Greek, notes Benedict, and he goes on to explain, in so many words, how the Christian concept of the logos – in the beginning, writes Saint John, was the Logos – assumes a rational, benevolent God.

[snip]

It doesn’t matter to the pope’s critics – not all of them Muslims, by any means – that this is a citation, and, taken in context, clearly doesn’t reflect the pope’s personal views. And it surely doesn’t matter that Manuel was speaking from the bitterest of experiences: that he personally lived through and witnessed the Turkish invasion of the medieval Balkans, where many thousands were faced with the choice recently offered to those two Fox News employees by their captors in occupied Palestine – convert or die. The pope’s accusers could care less that Benedict is here concerned chiefly with rescuing the Hellenistic spirit of theology as philosophical inquiry from the assault of various fundamentalists, both Christian and Muslim. To the Catholics, both Greek and Roman, not to act in accordance with reason is alien to God’s nature. To the devout Muslim, however – and, the pope would doubtless aver, to Protestant sects as well – God is utterly transcendent. To buttress this point, Benedict cites the leaders of the Reformation as well as “the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practice idolatry.”

This nightmare universe ruled over by a malevolent God, where reason is overthrown, is a Bizarro World, where good is evil, godliness is mass murder, and anything is permitted. All wars, in such a world, are “just” wars.

[snip]

The current controversy is being compared to the tasteless caricatures of Muhammad that appeared in many European newspapers, but the reality is quite different, almost the complete opposite: the cartoons were a deliberate provocation, whereas the pope’s comments were not intended to give offense. Indeed, in its defense of reason and dialogue as the alternative to violence, the pope’s lecture was and is a valuable contribution to the cause of peace.

That extremists of every stripe – including Western secularists, who hate the Catholic Church – are rejecting the Vatican’s explanations and condemning the pope’s remarks as “insensitive” is hardly surprising. These people disdain the restraints imposed on their actions by the logos, or the rule of reason, and prefer to believe that their ideological and religious views transcend the need for rational or moral justification. As long as the Vatican stands against this worrying modern trend, it opposes the War Party of every nation. Apologize? This pope has had to face a veritable storm of demands for apologies from the beginning of his tenure, but has yet to have any cause for contrition.

At the end of his Regensburg talk, B16 makes an invitation to reasoned dialogue with modernity and presumably with Islam:

“Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of God,” said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures.

It seems to me that the response to his invitation has been heard from those who make the headlines (both in the newsroom and in the streets).  It is a resounding affirmation that reason is beyond the pale of those holding the most threatening positions as far as cultural stability is concerned.  I can only hope that the sane and rational voices that seem open to the Holy Father’s invitation (such as the few that I have posted above) are still around to dialogue after the cataclysmic clash that some radical agitators in Islam are hanker’in for and the mass media seems eager to foment.

After a 19 year old woman told her parents she was pregnant, they allegedly bound her with rope and duct tape, and attempted to transport her out of state to get an emergency abortion. The parents were eventually caught and are currently in jail on $100,000 bail apiece. Inspection of the car involvled in the kidnapping contained rope, duct tape, and scissors, and the father was found in possession of a loaded .22 caliber clip in his pants pocket.

So, why were the parents so adimate about their daughter getting an abortion? Well, the situational irony of this true story, is the “pro-choice” parents were upset that the father of the child was in jail.

Source

This has been an extremely busy week so I have not been plugged into much that has been happening; nor has there been much time to blog. However, it has been hard to miss the almost incomprehensible uproar over Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg allocution.

Amy is doing a nice summary of world reaction and some of St. Blog’s Parish commentary on said reaction to Regensburg. Most of the latter recognize that B16 was using a book that he had been recently reading as a point of departure for his discussion about the intellectual path that has led to the separation of faith and reason and subsequently to the relativism of Western thought.

They also point out that the book quotations were simply the point of departure for his discussion not its focus and most rightly show that the reaction is, both by some in Islam and by much of the popular press, ridiculous. In other words, the Pope quotes from an old debate and he is recklessly insensitive to Islam. Madonna directly attacks the most solemn event in Christianity and she is simply artistically expressing herself using the moral absolute of free speech (an absolute that seems only to apply to those things which the media agrees). Infuriating, but not surprising.

So what else is there to add? Not much I suppose to this issue but to perhaps ask: I wonder if the Franciscans will also mount a public campaign of outrage for B16’s having diss’ed Duns Scotus and his succumbing to and propagating into Christian thought, William of Ockham’s Nominalist voluntarism.

I haven’t read but are the present day communities descended from the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions also up in arms over the part B16 shows they played in the devolution of Western thought? Kantian philosophers are no doubt standing side by side with the disaffected Muslims and burning the Pope in effigy. Surely, Harnackian historicists are plotting their violent response as we speak. As Hierothee said already in an earlier post, the response is an unintended testament to the truth of what the Holy Father has been saying about a mistaken view of God and its relationship to violence in the name of religion.

However, if the article were to be read closely for what the Pope did say rather than reading it in an attempt to impose upon his words that which inflames Islamic passions, I think that one will find a brilliant, in its concision, history of the devolution of popular Western thought and how we have arrived at a widespread relativism. I also found a few other points that I thought were interesting:

Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria — the Septuagint — is more than a simple (and in that sense perhaps less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: It is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of Revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act “with logos” is contrary to God’s nature.

Now there are several ways to take this statement I suppose. His focus is certainly on the integration of Greek metaphysics with divine revelation but his reference to the Septuagint as “more than a simple translation” but “an independent textual witness” and “a distinct and important step in the history of Revelation” could be taken to mean something I think is new.

What I mean by new is that if one understands the last phrase, “a distinct and important step in the history of Revelation,” to mean that the Septuagint translation was part of the (final) redaction process of the Old Testament, then it could be seen as a movement away from the general understanding of Hebrew as the definitive language of the Old Testament. I have not found any Magisterial assertions which would contradict such a movement by the way.

I recognize that it is possible in this passage that he is simply referring to the fact that the Septuagint is the oldest textual witness to the Old Testament and is an important corrective tool for fixing textual corruptions in the Masoretic text but the last phrase seems to me to go beyond this. Any way, this reflection is not Magisterial so it doesn’t carry any weight, but it is still interesting.

Another very interesting text is his explication of the relationship between reason and faith as it relates to love and logos in the divine essence:

God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love “transcends” knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Ephesians 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is logos. Consequently, Christian worship is “logic latreía” — worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Romans 12:1).

Here Benedict shows the problem of annihilating the analogia entis (the analogy of being) in a mistaken attempt to protect God’s transcendence, in this case, ends in voluntarism. Here he shows how reason and faith must be integrated. In fact, B16 seems to suggest that faith and love can be considered convertible (i.e. faith is love and love is faith) to some degree. Both require trust followed by a personal response of self gift. Furthermore, faith ought to reflect something of the divine and so it seems reasonable to see faith as a human manifestation of the intra-Trinitarian total self gift (i.e. the Processions) which is convertible with love.

In any case, B16 shows here that the relationship between human reason and faith, because it reflects (via the anologia entis) the divine relationship between Logos and Love, is one that results in the Christian worship of God through the use of human reason (which itself is a participation in the divine Logos). In other words, truly human worship must engage the reason but it also transcends reason by means of love.

Here is perhaps a bold proposal that certainly will not sit well with many secular academics:

We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Here B16 points to the illogical limitation that Western thought places on knowledge, to that knowledge which is empirically based. Often, Western thinkers today do not realize that modern science is parasitic on philosophical truths. Benedict’s bold statement about theology belonging in the university arises from his commitment to reason’s analogical participation in the divine Logos and so reason’s capacity to investigate divine revelation with the tools of reason and arrive at valid insights that open minds can accept for its rational clarity.

Benedict calls on the Western academy to get some backbone and stop rejecting those questions as unintelligible simply because one cannot apply to them the only tools with which they feel comfortable (i.e. empirical methods).

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur — this is the program with which a theology grounded in biblical faith enters into the debates of our time.

I agree with Hierothee. Benedict’s allocution is a masterful exposition of one of the biggest problems of our times, a defective understanding of knowledge. This enables a relativist morality and so an inability to acknowledge and deal with the social ills that are dragging Western culture in the direction of the ancient civilizations that imploded from moral corruption. I suspect that this is the great harm to which Benedict refers. As did Hierothee, I urge you to read Benedict’s address if you haven’t already.

True to its nature, the western press has, in the last couple of days, stupidly and dangerously mischaracterized the Holy Father. They have, with a crudeness that surpasses credulity, tried to portray Benedict’s brilliant, recent lecture at Regensburg, to a group of scientists, as an attack on Islam. Clearly, the speech surpasses the intellectual ken of the typical journalist. It is one of the clearest, pithiest, most forceful expositions of the path that led to the separation of faith and reason in the West that I have ever read. For those who have not read it, here it is.

That the pope’s erudite lecture should have led to this headline is maddening. That the New York Times should be calling for him to apologize is infuriating.

That the “Muslim street” is burning him in effigy is confirmation of the words of Emperor Manuel II that Benedict had quoted in the lecture.

My outrage at this situation is directed largely at the western media, who incited this whole mess. Western journalists continue to fan the flames. The unconscious voluntarism and subtle nihilism that informs western journalists (who are, of course, a reflection of us all) demonstrates itself in this case to be even more destructive than the conscious voluntarism and violent nihilism of the ‘Muslim street.’ But more on that later…

In Scotland, despite the assurance by “experts”, that emergency contraception would cut down on the amount of abortions. When the sin of sexual promiscuity is seen as pregnancy as opposed to impurity, it’s no wonder the incidences of promiscuity is on the rise.

Cases have emerged in Scotland of health workers arranging for schoolgirls to receive the pill in nearby clinics, although the Executive has said it is not handed out in schools.

Surveys of UK women having abortions in 1984 showed that 1 per cent had recently taken the morning-after pill. By 2002, this had risen to 12 per cent. But at the same time, rates of abortion in the UK have increased from 11 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 in 1984 to 17.8 per 1,000 in 2004.

Past studies, including one involving 18,000 Lothian women, have shown that getting emergency contraception to keep at home increased its use by two or three times - but with no measurable effect on abortion rates.

Now that the “plan B” abortion pill will be available OTC, you can bet it will be on the top of the “wish list” for countless adolescent boys and men.

Source/Photo:News.scotsman.com

The play, “The Pope and the Witch”, written by communist, Noble Prize winning (1997 - literature), atheist, Dario Fo is planned to be opening at the University of Minnesota in March of 2007. Fo’s also one of those creepy mime things that pretend to be stuck in an invisible box. This play is pretty much what can be expected from a Nobel Prize winning, communist mime, and the usually subdued Catholic League president, Bill Donahue, is calling for the U of M to cancel the play.

“The Pope and the Witch”, which will debut at U of M, March 1, 2007 has provoked outrage from the Catholic League for its sacrilegious and bigoted display, which Newsday describes as starring “a heroin-addicted, paranoid Pope called John Paul II, along with scheming priests, bumbling nuns and monks.” The play also describes “thousands of hungry children, the fruits of the Pope’s birth control doctrine” crying for food – an irony, since the rejection by many European Catholic countries of the Church’s teaching on contraception has produced a severe dearth of children and a looming de-population catastrophe.

Here is a little more from an older New York Times article:

At the outset, the nameless pope, with 100,000 orphans waiting in St. Peter’s Square and the world’s press assembled for a news conference in the Vatican, is in the throes of paranoia, believing that the appearance of the children is sponsored by manufacturers of condoms in a plot to embarrass the Church.

The witch, in nun’s habit, turns up as an aide to the doctor summoned to treat the pope, and before long the Holy Father is seized with a paralytic affliction that, among other names, is known as ”a crucifixion stroke,” leaving him with his arms outstretched.

And who besides the little witch, who favors abortion and legalization of drugs, can alleviate his distress? By the time matters play themselves out, the pope, in mufti, will have paid a visit to the little witch’s clinic, where she dispenses free heroin from clean needles, all courtesy of a mysterious benefactor. And she and the pope will encounter a couple of gun-toting Mafiosi trying to learn who has been hijacking their drugs.

With the aid of some injections, the pope will be induced to dispense information, and by the finish back at the Vatican, evil machinations in the church hierarchy will be exposed.

Since great minds think alike, I’ll quote a couple:

Plato: “Atheism is a disease of the soul before it becomes an error of understanding…..”

Alexander Pope: “Atheists put on false courage in the midst of their darkness and misaprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing or whistle to keep their courage….”

Source: LifeSite