Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

“Among thousands of people, there are not a hundred who will arrive at their salvation, and I am not even certain of that number, so much perversity is there among the young and so much negligence among the old.” - St John Chrysostom

Fr. Kimel of pontifications did an interesting piece on questions surrounding how many souls will be saved and how many will be damned.

I have omitted one important fact: as decent as most people I know may be, I have to admit that every person I know is also selfish, even the nicest ones. My experience, in other words, confirms a fundamental teaching of the Catholic Church—the doctrine of original sin. … Every human being is born into a world dominated by Satan and corrupted by death and sin. And in a mysterious way which I at least cannot explain, these three elements—spiritual alienation from God, oppression by Satan, and deformation by a sinful world—coincide….

A couple of years ago, I came across a piece called, Cry of A Lost Soul , which is a powerful record of events that led a young woman to ultimately lose her soul. The sobering document has been previously printed with imprimatur, and describes the vision of a young, single catholic woman after learning of her friend from work who had recently died as a result of an automobile accident. Right from the beginning of the ghoulish narrative, it was evident how many times I took on the nature of the damned.

When I was jealous of others, wanting them to share in a misery of failure.

“I should like to see you to come to this state where I must remain forever.”

When I did things for others based not in the spirit of charity, but with self centered motivations - doing it out of obligation or out of fear of rejection by saying no.

“Our wills are hardened in evil - in what you call evil. Even when we do something ‘good’, as I do now, opening your eyes about hell, it is not because of a good intention”.

When life seemed so unfair, and I found solace in a state of self-pity and anger.

“We look appalled at our ruined life, hating and suffering. Do you hear? We here drink hatred like water.”

When deep down inside, I secretly took delight in the misfortunes of others of whom I was either jealous of or held in disdain.

“I hate the devil too. And yet I am pleased about him, because he tries to ruin all of you; In truth every time they drag down here to hell a human soul their own torture is increased. But what does one not do for hatred?”

We never know when our time will end, but be assured that God is a the perfect judge.

“Deep down I was rebelling against God. You did not understand it; you thought me still a Catholic. I wanted, in fact, to be called one; The lost Catholics suffer more than those of other religions, because they, mostly, received and despised more graces and more light. He who knew more suffers more cruelly than he who knew less. He who sinned out of malice suffers more keenly than he who sinned out of weakness. But nobody suffers more than he deserves.”

For he even has mercy on those whose souls are eternally destined for hell.

“God was merciful to us by not allowing our wicked wills to exhaust themselves on earth, as we should have been prepared to do. This would have increased our faults and our pains. He caused us to die before our time, as in my case, or had other mitigating circumstances intervene. Now He shows Himself merciful towards us by not compelling a closer approach than that afforded in this remote inferno.”

Humbling.

“Enter by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter that way. How narrow the gate and close the way that leads to life! And few there are who find it.” (Matt. 7:13, 14)

Sincere apology by author/perplexed prophet of a website predicting a 2007 Rapture -

THE ONLY THING I CAN THINK OF IS THAT I RELEASED THE DREAM AT THE WRONG TIME AND GOT THE BOOK PUBLISHED TOO EARLY. MAYBE THE DREAM HAD SOME KIND OF SYMBOLIC MEANING INSTEAD OF A LITERAL MEANING THAT I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIGURE OUT YET. I STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT I HAVE DONE WRONG AND WHY THE PROPHECY FAILED. I PROMISE ALL OF YOU THAT I DID NOT INTENTIONALLY MEAN TO HURT OR MISLEAD ANYBODY. I PROMISE I DID NOT MAKE UP THE DREAM. I KNOW MANY OF YOU ARE VERY DISAPPOINTED, BUT I ASSURE YOU NO ONE IS AS DISAPPOINTED AS I AM. PLEASE FORGIVE ME IF I HAVE SHAKENED ANYONE’S FAITH WITH THIS PROPHECY.

Fullness of Truth, just another reason to be eternally thankful that we’re Catholic !!

A brand new Web site through the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy provides open access to Biblical verses with exegesis from doctors of the Church AND cross reference liturgical texts with commentaries from Church Fathers. The site offers six categories in nine languages in addition to the option of downloading the site’s content. The nine translations of the Bible, including Hebrew and Greek, can be read side-by-side, as can the Eastern and Latin Codes of Canon Law. A down-loadable version allows us to connect Sacred Scripture to the complete works of many Doctors of the Church, Councils, Encyclicals, teachings of the Popes, Catechisms, as well as commentaries from secular literature, etc…

Might want to bookmark this one. Fair warning if you plan to down-load a version onto your hard drive, it’s excruciatingly slow.

Update: E-mail support for documents and articles of interest for Bishops and Priests.

Zenit

Historian Sergio Luzzatto’s latest book The Other Christ: Padre Pio and 19th Century Italy has deduced that Padre Pio faked his stigmata through pouring carbolic acid on his hands. A secret Vatican document found by Luzzatto revealed how a pharmacist remembered a young Padre Pio buying four grams of carbolic acid in 1919. The testimony was originally presented to the Vatican by the Archbishop of Manfredonia, Pasquale Gagliardi, as proof that Padre Pio caused his own stigmata with acid.

What I suspect is conveniently omitted from Luzatto’s novel is a fair disclosure on the truth surrounding Archbishop Gagliardi’s “veritable satanic war” waged against Padre Pio. For what ever reason, the Archbishop was bent on sabotaging St. Pio’s ministry through baseless accusations of sexual and monetary improprieties and soliciting falsified letters which were then forwarded to the Vatican. When in truth, it was the archbishop himself who was the center of controversy which included public accusations of sexual molestation, unchastity and faulty accounting errors, in addition to his diocese being infected with continued and habitual pederasty as well as acts of cleric sodomy. The Vatican eventually removed him from his diocese.

Saint Pio never retaliated nor ever criticized Archbishop Gagliardi and immediately said Mass for him after his death. It is said that the angriest he was ever seen about the archbishop’s attacks was against one of his own supporters who had verbally attacked Gagliardi - another fact that will most likely never come to light in Luzzatto’s book which has the stench of anti-catholicism which far exceeds that of carbolic acid.

As quoted by the Living Church Foundation:

Regarding his move to the Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Steenson said, “I believe that the Lord now calls me in this direction. It amazes me, after all of these years, what a radical journey of faith this must necessarily be. To some it seems foolish; to others disloyal; to others an abandonment.”

Bishop Steenson will be the third bishop to convert to the Catholic faith in 2007. Bishop Dan Herzog of Albany converted shortly after his retirement and retired Bishop Clarence C. Pope returned to the Church in August.

I got an e-mail the other day, forwarding a link to an article from an on-line North Carolinian newspaper. It was a commentary on the CDF’s recent ecclesiological clarification that we posted on back in early/mid July. I found the article interesting for the simple fact that it contains, in one convenient place, almost every logical fallacy and erroneous form of thought that I have seen hurled at the Church for this document–and all of this in just over 800 words.

The author, Lauren R. Stanley, is a former Catholic who is now ordained in the Episcopalian ecclesial communion. As a literary device, she repeatedly uses a southern phrase of disagreement/disbelief:

Well, spit. I guess I’m not a real Christian after all. I thought I was. Truly. I’ve devoted my life - my body and my soul - to being a Christian, to trying to live as one. But apparently, I’m not. At least, not as far as Pope Benedict XVI is concerned. The Vatican, under his leadership, recently announced that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true Church, and that those of us who worship in other “churches” aren’t worshipping in real churches after all.

The “real Christian” assertion is a non-sequitur. The Catholic Church explicitly teaches that everyone who is validly baptized is a Christian (see CCC 1271). The claim of not being a real Christian then is Stanley’s interpolation and not that of the Church. Now if Stanley wants to argue that the Church is wrong about this and assert that everyone must be in a “real church” to be a “real Christian” then she must make the case for her assertion. Otherwise, to claim that Pope Benedict or the Catholic Church is asserting something that he/She is not is, at the very least negligent but more probably, disingenuous.

But of course, in distorting the meaning of the document, which is euphemistically called “spin” but more honestly called a lie, she is in good company with a majority of the reporting on this. This type of behavior seems to be reminiscent of that which one sees from rebellious teenagers who are not yet able to argue logically and so they emote by accusation. But of course, this is not all she had to say. Stanley goes on:

The Vatican even had the audacity to proclaim that while Orthodox churches could be considered “churches” in some ways, they aren’t really because they suffer from a “wound” that comes from not recognizing the primacy of the papacy.

Stanley accuses the Catholic Church of “audacity” for daring to have an understanding of Christianity and of the Catholic Church at variance with her own. In accusing the Church of arrogance what she does is to conflate a subjective attitude with a truth claim and in so doing, she falls into the trap of relativism by assuming that either there is no absolute truth or assuming at least that no one can have access to it.

The fact is though, that a truth claim is either true or false. If it is false then one simply need to demonstrate its falsity. However, what she does here is to assume its falsity, a priori, and then goes on to make an assessment of the subjective state of all of those involved with making this proclamation. In other words, she has looked into all of their souls and summarily found them all guilty of having an arrogant attitude. Quite a feat, huh?

The interesting thing about falling into relativism is that you automatically become self-contradictory–and that is what happens here. In assuming that the Catholic Church is wrong about the nature of the Church, and that she is right, without even making an argument for her position, she is becoming dogmatic in the pejorative sense of the term. Dogmatism is never tolerant and so it is not surprising to find that neither is Rev. Stanley.

She assumes that her ecclesiology is the correct one and seems to have no tolerance for those who would disagree with her. If tolerance is openness to hearing and discussing others’ views without personal condemnation, then Rev. Stanley must be characterized as being intolerant.

She is also self-contradictory in assuming that her position is right and the Catholic teaching is wrong. Later she will imply that anything that a Christian wants to call a church is one by definition in giving the advice to her readers to continue to go to the church of their choice. One might ask by what authority does she claim to know infallibly (or at least with sufficient confidence so as to authoritatively teach others) what God has taught and what He has not. Here she is making the logical fallacy of special pleading. She asserts that the Catholic Church does not have authority to teach on Christ’s behalf (she says later of B16: “You don’t get to decide these things!”– presumably this is because He didn’t give anyone this authority?) but then she immediately assumes this authority for herself in order to condemn the Church for assuming this authority for itself–an authority that apparently does not exist except momentarily when she needs to make use of it. Did you follow that? But the good Rev. is not done with Catholics yet. She will return to the old canards of caricature and ad hominem:

I must admit, there is a part of me that says, “Oh, ignore him. Benedict is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but he’s not my spiritual leader.” This is the part of me that recognizes that Benedict is the former cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger, who always has been a strict interpreter of the Roman Church’s stances. That this is the man who in 2000 wrote the document Dominus Iesus, in which these current views were promulgated. That this is the man who was feared by some in the Roman Church for his unwavering conviction that he was right, the rest of the world was wrong, and that was that.

This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. As an Episcopal clergyman who has chosen to speak out about the Catholic Church she has some obligation to understand the Catholic Church and what it teaches if she is going to criticize it. Her reference to “the current views” of the Church assumes that the Church sometime had taught something else, but this is exactly the purpose of the document–to affirm the continuity of the teaching about the Catholic Church as the fullness of the one Church that Christ founded.

Further, she ought to know that Magisterial teaching is not a matter of the individual opinions of those comprising the Magisterium weighed against others. But I forgot, the Catholic Church has no right to Her own ecclesiology. The Church must submit to Stanley’s ecclesiology or be dismissed as arrogant. If I were the type to posit the attitude of another, I might say that she is arrogant. After ranting a bit, she gets in one more of the favorite canards of vague thinkers, before returning to her apparently favorite approach–caricatured distortions:

And then there is the part of me, the one that after my initial reactions is gaining ascendancy, which is bemused and asks, “Is this really the way to proclaim the Gospel? Is this how we work to proclaim the love of Christ? Are we really called, as beloved children of God, to be this exclusionary? Did Jesus really tell me to say, ‘My faith is better than your faith!’?”

Here she throws in the old stand by of modern religiosity: namely, that any faith that makes demands on its adherents is by definition, exclusionary. There is much that could be said about this: for example, this is not a document meant for initial proclamation of the gospel but a clarification of a truth for Catholics who may have been confused by theological discussions of this issue. Regardless, her implication is that any truths of faith that could in any way be taken in a negative way by those who are not part of that faith must be expunged. This fits very well with a relativist mindset but as I said, relativism is inherently self-contradictory.

One might ask her, isn’t proclaiming the love of Christ exclusionary in itself? Why proclaim it at all? Is it necessary or just a heart warming thing to do? If necessary, then doesn’t this mean that those who have not accepted Him are excluded from the Church until accepting His truth? If proclaiming the gospel is just something nice to let people know about it, then why proclaim it at all and risk offending some who do not want to hear it? There is no justification for proclaiming the gospel if Christianity is not by definition exclusionary–it excludes those who have not heard or do not want to accede to the truth it proclaims. Well, perhaps she had a sense that this was an implication of her thinking because she immediately goes back to caricatures in her last sentence and in the next paragraph:

And in part, I realize that every time someone comes along - be it the pope or one of my neighbors - proclaiming that he or she alone knows the mind of Christ, and the rest of us are damned, I cringe. Because that sort of exclusionary theology ensures that many, many people - people who are starved for spiritual nourishment - are going to turn their backs on churches and church politics and say, “No way. I refuse to be involved in any church that tells me I’m not good enough.” Which basically is what Benedict is saying: Those of us who are not, or who no longer are, Roman Catholics, quite simply are not good enough.

I suppose that I need not point out that the Pope does not proclaim that he alone knows the mind of Christ. He does not say that everyone who is not Catholic, or even Christian, is damned. He did not say that non-Catholics are not good enough. I suppose it is appropriate for the good Rev. Stanley to end her longer rant with her favorite tactic of impersonating an emoting teenager. After all, if one is not prepared to dialog with authentic tolerance, without caricaturing or condemning the other because one disagrees then I suppose all that is left to do is–well, spit!

The Church will survive the sex abuse scandal. Not abandoning Jesus based on the actions of Judas pretty much sums up the actions of most faithful Catholics who are Catholic because they believe it to be the one true Church established by Christ. One’s Faith in the Catholic Church has never been, nor will ever be dependent on individuals within the Church. Fortunately, unlike the Church, organizations such as the Voice of the Faithful which attempt to exploit weaknesses within the Church (i.e. the sex abuse scandal) to further their own scandalous agenda eventually sink into oblivion. In this case, the VOTF is fading fast with dwindling donations and a leadership crisis of their own.

Hear why Fr. Philip N. Powell is sick of love: (If you prefer to listen, there’s also an audio link).

Love is always true. Never a lie. Love is always the glory of God. Never the glorification of man. Love always carries us to goodness. Never to evil. Love always binds us in obedience. Love never frees us to be disobedient. Love always heals, always cleans, sometimes hurts, sometimes casts out. Love never winks at sin, shrugs at injustice, or ignores the poor. Love always looks to Christ, his church, and his Mother.

For those of us who prefer syrup with our love don’t often like to hear, “when necessary, love will kick your butt, take your name, and call your mama!”

 Thanks Father.

Jimmy Akin wrote on confronting evil this morning which I found helpful in deaing with the disgust and anger from what I saw in the above picture and others like it. I usually try to remember my own sinfulness when I feel the need to judge other’s intentions, but in this case, I wasn’t very successful. Where much is given, much is expected; and I have been blessed so far beyond what I ever deserved, but I can’t help but wonder what has happened to these people that made them turn their hearts to stone. I think this would be a great opportunity for me to recall the saying - hate the sin, but love the sinner.

So, in comes Jimmy’s article on evil and how we should address it:

First, evil is a real. Some people commit horrible evil against other people, and we have to remember that.

God has promised that he will deal with such people. No matter what evil someone like this does, God will not let them get away with it. God will right all of the wrongs that have been done, he will heal those who have been hurt, he will make it up to the innocent who have suffered, and he will hold the evildoer to account for his deeds.

…we must also pray for (their) souls, because (they) need to repent and seek God’s mercy. God’s mercy is something we all need, and Jesus loved all of us enough that he took our sins upon himself so that we might be saved.

…God will make sure that justice is done and that mercy will be shown to those who seek it. So let us all seek God in prayer and trust him to help us in this horrible situation.

May God have mercy on us all.

H/T to Kris for the disturbing photos.

In preparing for a lecture this afternoon, I was reading through Familiaris consortio again and for some reason paragraph 8 struck me as so pressingly important right now. Perhaps it was my recent conversations with Monica over the “Ashley Treatment.” It says:

The whole Church is obliged to a deep reflection and commitment, so that the new culture now emerging may be evangelized in depth, true values acknowledged, the rights of men and women defended, and justice promoted in the very structures of society. In this way the “new humanism” will not distract people from their relationship with God, but will lead them to it more fully.

Science and its technical applications offer new and immense possibilities in the construction of such a humanism. Still, as a consequence of political choices that decide the direction of research and its applications, science is often used against its original purpose, which is the advancement of the human person.

It becomes necessary, therefore, on the part of all, to recover an awareness of the primacy of moral values, which are the values of the human person as such. The great task that has to be faced today for the renewal of society is that of recapturing the ultimate meaning of life and its fundamental values. Only an awareness of the primacy of these values enables man to use the immense possibilities given him by science in such a way as to bring about the true advancement of the human person in his or her whole truth, in his or her freedom and dignity. Science is called to ally itself with wisdom.

And here is the kicker!:

The following words of the Second Vatican Council can therefore be applied to the problems of the family: “Our era needs such wisdom more than bygone ages if the discoveries made by man are to be further humanized. For the future of the world stands in peril unless wiser people are forthcoming (Gaudium et spes, 15).

The paragraph ends with a call to education of moral conscience:

The education of the moral conscience, which makes every human being capable of judging and of discerning the proper ways to achieve self-realization according to his or her original truth, thus becomes a pressing requirement that cannot be renounced.

Modern culture must be led to a more profoundly restored covenant with divine Wisdom. Every man is given a share of such Wisdom through the creating action of God. And it is only in faithfulness to this covenant that the families of today will be in a position to influence positively the building of a more just and fraternal world.

The fact that “ethicists” can justify the “Ashley Treatment” is the logical consequence of that perversion of thought which began with Descartes and now seems to be reaching its postmodern, nihilistic finality. Nature no longer has any meaning but that to which we give it. If we can manipulate it to our desires then let’s do it. Since we get to define nature as we please, we have carte blanche “moral” authority to run roughshod over the weakest who have no voice of their own. We now kill the unborn and harvest their corpses, and we further maim the disabled and justify ourselves in emotional appeals to the good that these misguided actions will bring.

I pray that we do indeed have wiser women and men forthcoming!

I have been reading a lot lately works by the Eastern Orthodox lay theologian and poet Philip Sherrard (1922-1995), who, in several books (see The Rape of Man and Nature and Human Image: World Image), issued a radical theological critique of modern scientism. Sherrard was a masterful “deconstructor” of the heretical theological and misguided metaphysical presuppositions that underlay modern science. Influenced in part by the philosophy of René Guénon and his followers – disciples of the so-called Sophia Perennis – Sherrard was able to show that modern materialism, naturalism or scientism has its roots in the distorted image of the human self that was inculcated by bad theology in the modern period. As Sherrard poignantly notes throughout his writings, it is always the case that our human “self-image” generates our “world-image.” This is true of all civilizations and cultures, and our modern techno-scientific society is no exception (despite the silly pretensions of Enlightenment-influenced rationalists to the contrary). However, according to Sherrard, there is one big difference between traditional and modern societies in this regard: the self-image exemplified by modern society – formed by a faith-desire to see the world as nothing more than a mathematical grid – rejects the traditional idea that physical nature and the human subject have an essential connection to one another.

Sherrard argues convincingly that it is modern blindness to the essential connection of the human self to physical nature that is responsible for the environmental dilemmas of our age. For Sherrard, the modern environmental crisis is, in sum, the result of bad metaphysics. Viewing the world as nothing more than a mechanism susceptible to mathematical analysis and as detached from any participation in spiritual reality, modern humanity has, according to Sherrard, sought to “rape nature” for the sake of dominance and control. Moreover, in Sherrard’s opinion, it is little use to turn to scientists to seek a way out of this situation. Sherrard thinks that the blindness of many scientists to the metaphysical crisis of the modern age is total and complete:

Modern science has emerged because, knowingly or unknowingly, scientists themselves have accepted and continue to work within a certain framework of metaphysical or philosophical principles that constitute a reality in their own right and quite apart from the phenomenon to which they have given birth. This is to say that modern science, far from being merely a pragmatic, materialist or empirical discipline independent of metaphysics – and it is this which many scientists would want us to believe – in fact presupposes and implements in its every aspect, theoretical and practical, a metaphysical or philosophical view of things that is anything but neutral, self-evident, self-proven or a matter of common sense. It is this view that determines the whole character of modern science as well as the character of the society which is fashioned in its image.

Few contemporary scientists appear to be aware of this. Scientists are specialists, and within the confines of their specialties they are no doubt capable of producing theories and effects consistent with the premises they have adopted. But scientific knowledge itself has no depth and no complexity: it represents the lowest common denominator of the most average kind of mentality. Its authors have never even grasped the crucial distinction between wisdom and speculative hypothesis based on experiment. Hence once they venture outside the confines of their specialties and try to justify their theories and effects in terms of value or to assess their metaphysical or human significance, they produce only nonsense, because the premises which they take as their standards are not comprehensive enough to allow them to do anything else.

Indeed, judged by the normal standards of metaphysical or philosophical discourse, scientists – but for the rarest exceptions – display a total lack of competence in this realm: the thought in this respect of such a highly esteemed scientist as Albert Einstein, for instance, is bewildering in its naiveté (The Rape of Man and Nature, 11).

Sherrard, in typically modern, Eastern Orthodox fashion, lays the blame for our distorted, modern self-image too much at the feet of the acceptance by Western Christianity of Aristotelian philosophy. He calls for a return to a more Neo-Platonically influenced theology, such as was found in the great tradition of the Eastern Church Fathers. We here at C-L-S would not want to countenance all aspects of Sherrard’s analysis of things, least of all his bias against Aristotle. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that some of the best modern Thomists have likewise called for recognition of the more overtly Neo-Platonic themes in Thomas himself, such as the participation of all things in God, or of a greater appreciation for intuition in the realm of knowledge.

At any rate, I find Sherrard’s “eco-conscious” critique of scientism – though extreme at times – quite a refreshing departure from much contemporary Christian discourse about modernity and science. Too often in the last half-century, too many of the great ecclesiastical figures of the Church have evinced a dangerous ambiguity toward the metaphysical distortions of modern thought and culture…

Actor Peter Boyle, who died on Tuesday the 12th, was brought up Catholic and spent three years as a member of the Christian Brothers religious order. He described his time in the monastery as, “living in the Middle Ages.” In his own words, “I felt the call for awhile; then I felt the normal pull of the world and the flesh.” After dropping his vocation, he rejected the teachings of the Catholic faith. One thing is for sure, he now knows the truth of the Church. He was a well known, active member of Planned Parenthood’s celebrity Board of Advocates. Planned Parenthood has not yet released a statement regarding Boyle’s death.

Source

Celebrity Watch - Public figures that support Planned Parenthood’s agenda

As written in the Florida Catholic:

Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, a Baptist college in Birmingham, Ala., wrote recently that “it is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation, and to do so precisely as evangelicals.” George’s comments appeared in the December 2003 issue of Christianity Today and in a 2004 collection of essays by various theologians, “Mary: Mother of God”. We may not be able to recite the rosary or kneel down before statues of Mary, but we need not throw her overboard,”.

John Alden Williams, professor emeritus in the humanities of religion at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, is a Catholic historian who has studied Islamic civilization and religion. He and fellow William and Mary professor James A. Bill published “Roman Catholics and Shi’i Muslims” in 2002. It notes that two sections of the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, are devoted to Mary, known there as Maryam. She is recognized as the purified woman chosen to be the mother of the promised Messiah. Islam considers Jesus an important prophet, but not the incarnation of God.

Williams explained in a phone interview that, like Catholics, Shiite Muslims, who are a minority compared to the vastly more numerous Sunni Muslims, believe in intercessory prayer through saints and other holy people. That includes Mary, who is highly revered as a mediatrix between humans and God, or Allah. Sufis, another Islamic sect, also believe in intercession.

Cardinal George delivered a homily on Sunday at the Catholic Theological Union, which pretty much sums up why we, as Americans, are not trusted in many parts of the world (believe it or not, it was actually long BEFORE the Iraq war).

“The world distrusts us NOT because we are rich and free. Many of us are not rich and some of us aren’t especially free. They distrust us because we are deaf and blind, because too often we don’t understand and make no effort to understand,” he said.

“We have this cultural proclivity that says, ‘We know what is best and if we truly want to do something, whether in church or in society, no one has the right to tell us no.’ That cultural proclivity, which defines us in many ways, has to be surrendered, or we will never be part of God’s kingdom.”

How can you trust someone who is directed by the will of their own feelings, emotions and desires which, more times than not, is a manifestation of disordered pride. Trust is eternal when based on Truth.

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.

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…

Many know that Msgr. Stuart Swetland has been reassigned from St. John’s Catholic Newman Center at the University of Illinois to Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD. One of his last articles he wrote I think is “spot on” so I thought I would share it:

Putting First Things First

Rev. Msgr. Stuart W. Swetland, S.T.D.

Every now and then I will wander around the ‘blogosphere’ to get a sense of the latest concerns of that part of society. For those who do not know, the blogosphere is the internet environment in which people set up web logs (blogs) that are an ongoing series of entries on whatever topic the author chooses to focus. In addition to staying current, one thing I like about blogs is that I sometimes happen upon good insights. This was the case for a blog post discussing C.S. Lewis’ 1942 article, “First and Second Things.”

C. S. Lewis was a brilliant, 20^th century Christian writer who demonstrated uncanny insight into the human condition. In this wartime article, Lewis began by discussing some Nazi errors that boiled down to sacrificing the greater good in pursuit of a lesser good. He showed that the irony in doing this is that both goods are lost. The details of his Nazi focus are not important here but Lewis’ insight into the relationship between first and second things is timeless. His law of first things states:

Every preference of a small good to a great, or partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way. If Esau really got the pottage in return for his birthright, then Esau was a lucky exception. You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.

Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time” is a classic example. In appeasing Hitler, Chamberlain and other European leaders sacrificed justice for the sake of peace; they got neither. Of all the good that modernity has brought, a major fault has been its elevation of freedom to a first thing. Freedom is a necessary condition for human flourishing, but when it comes prior to truth both are lost. I would argue that the pursuit of freedom without reference to moral truth is at the root of many of today’s social problems and leaves mankind without either authentic freedom or life-saving truth.

What then are the things that ought to be sought first? Christians understand the very first thing is right relationship with God. Jesus taught us that the greatest commandment is to love God with one’s whole heart, soul and mind. The second is to love one’s neighbor as oneself (cf. Matt 22:36-39). It is love for God out of which all other love, including authentic self-love, finds its proper ordering. Second things follow from the first.

For those of us in the clergy, this ought never to be forgotten. “First things” for a pastor of souls is their salvation. Helping people to live an intense relationship of love for God must be our first priority. Too often churchmen, including this one, are tempted to treat as first things, very important but still second things such as immigration reform, ecology, and the struggle for social justice. I suppose too that looking back over the years, many of my articles might be criticized as appearing to focus solely on second things. It seems that the more we focus solely on these issues the further we slip behind both in the pursuit of justice as well as in the numbers of believers in our pews. Lewis’ law continues to hold. The more we short shrift first things for second, the more we fail to achieve either.

I suspect C. S. Lewis would admonish us that as pastors of souls, while certainly not ignoring second things, our primary focus ought to be on evangelizing, catechizing, and strengthening the faith of those souls entrusted to us. Love and concern for our brothers and sisters in the human family flows more readily from a strong love of our common Father. I suspect that when we as leaders in the Church focus on first things first, then the faithful will be in better condition to take care of the rest. After all, Jesus himself taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “seek ye first his kingdom…” (Matt 6:33).

Another fascinating post by the SheepCat on sexual sin with self-distrust & humility.

Reactions after falling into the occasion of sexual sin.

How confession after a sexual lapse is used as a sense of ritual and external cleansing.

Mis-use of their spirtual father through their wounded self-love.

Read about how “never have we felt anything like the dead weight of a mortal sin” over at the Sheepcat’s blog:

“Then are there also dreadful times, private times when no one but God sees him, when he is chilled through and through with fear, when he is weary of life because he is so miserable, when the past weighs upon him like a nightmare, and the future terrifies him like a coming wildbeast? When death springs upon him, how will he die?”