And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.
When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”
In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.
It’s not just about the filioque or the Immaculate Conception, folks. Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI have encouraged Catholics to reach out to Orthodox Christians, to respect them and learn their traditions. Catholics by and large have accepted that the Orthodox really are very close to Catholicism in many areas. But many would be surprised to learn that Orthodoxy is soft, even permissive on the issue of abortion–soft like Anglicans.
His Holiness, Patriarch Karekin I of Etchmiadzin of Armenia who came on a pastoral visit to the US had this to say about the Orthodox Church’s position on abortion- Read the rest of this entry »
As I have long suspected, (December 10, and January 4) the evangelical vote is not moving toward Obama as the MSM has been reporting since last November. In fact, support for Obama among Evangelicals at this point in the election cycle (25%) is slightly less than it was for John Kerry (26%) four years ago! GetReligion.org reports this media hoax based on Pew research figures. Read the rest of this entry »
I know the music is contemporary and many traditionalists will not like it. Still, it captures the Spirit of modern youth and fits with the Holy Father’s them of the Holy Spirit for WYD 2008. When I saw these images I was truly moved.
Having been to two WYD’s (Toronto and Cologne) I can attest that they are supremely powerful experiences. To have the gospel sifted for its specific message for today’s youth by the greatest spiritual authorities on earth is just impossible to express. It is overwhelming.
But, it can be hard to convey that experience to those who were not there.
However, Benedict’s words in themselves, even without all the experiencial props to heighten the experience, have a power to clear ones thinking and set ones heart aright. He seamlessly weaves together concerns for the environment, sexual exploitation, materialism and secularism all in light of the universal spiritual hunger for the Gospel. Powerful!
Here are some of his words at Sydney Harbor on Thursday:
“…Dear friends, life is not governed by chance; it is not random. Your very existence has been willed by God, blessed and given a purpose (cf. Gen 1:28)! Life is not just a succession of events or experiences, helpful though many of them are. It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this – in truth, in goodness, and in beauty – that we find happiness and joy. Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth.
Dr. Robert S. Munday, Dean of the conservative Anglican seminary, Nashotah House, in an extraordinary moment of frankness admits that the Anglican Communion is riddled with political bribery as wealthy Western liberals threaten to withdraw humanitarian funding from conservative African bishops or promise them preferments if they withhold their support of GAFCON. This is the height of corruption and moral bankruptcy. He states: Read the rest of this entry »
John William Plessington, Priest of the Apostolic Vicariate of England
Born: 1637 in Dimples, Lancashire, England (United Kingdom)
Martyred: 19 July 1679 in Chester, Cheshire, England (United Kingdom)
One of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He was born at Dimples, Lancashire, England, the son of a Royalist Catholic. Educated at Valladolid, Spain, and St. Omer’s in France. he was ordained in Segovia in 1662. John returned to England after ordination and served as a missionary in Cheshire. He became a tutor at Puddington Hall near Chester until his arrest and martyrdom by hanging at Barrowshill, Boughton. near Chester. Pope Paul VI canonized him in 1970.
Former Anglican Bishop Jeffrey Steenson is widely revered among Anglicans as a man of profound integrity and service in the Lord’s vineyard. Last week he spoke at the Anglican Use Conference. He spoke with his usual clarity and Anglican eloquence. Welcome home, Jeffery.
It all begins with the conviction that the Catholic Church simply is. She is not one option amongst many. People who become alienated from their own churches will sometimes think that the next step is to go down to the marketplace and see what is on offer: which church is going to give me the best deal? Those people seldom find the Catholic Church because they have missed the essential point – the fullness of Christ’s blessings is not distributed across the ecclesial landscape but flows from the one Church.
According to a friend, among the Anglicans now considering a corporate leap to Rome is a group of religious sisters called the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, who are located near Catonsville, Mayland about 10 miles from Baltimore.
All Saints is a traditional Community desiring to uphold orthodox Christian faith and morality and to support the Apostolic tradition in ministry and practice. We are united by our common commitment to the One Lord Jesus Christ, and by the desire to live for Him.
With that unity, and made possible by it, there is great diversity both in our personalities and in our talents. In giving these as an offering to the Lord our communal life is enhanced and the skills and talents of each are used for the benefit of all.
The All Saints Sisters of the Poor are the American Branch of a Society founded in England, and which came to Baltimore in 1872. We are a traditional religious community, living under the evangelical vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. A mixed Life of Prayer and Work enables us to be flexible in meeting whatever needs and ministries present themselves.
I have not always been a fan of Rev. Matt Kennedy. But, lately my estimation of him, a conservative Anglican cleric, has risen significantly. First, he changed his mind on WO and is now opposed. Second, he led his parish out of TEC. Both, are very good moves for this evangelical Anglican who has now written enough on Catholic theology at Stand Firm to make me wonder if he is edging toward becoming a crypto-Catholic.
Anyway, here is his very lucid explanation of what may come of GAFCON:
The brighter vision is that of a “Communion within a Communion.”
If we might leave here with at least the foundations laid for a new confessional and conciliar entity with its own leadership, its own “instruments of communion”, its own process of decision-making and discipline distinct from Canterbury then we will have created, or be well along the path to creating, a cohesive entity capable of gathering, growing, and empowering orthodox Anglicans that is not dependent upon the invitational decisions of one man. Read the rest of this entry »
This past weekend at the parish where I help out we had a visiting priest make an appeal for a development organization, Cross International. It raised some red flags:
To Catholic audiences, Cross International presents itself as a Catholic ministry.The term “Catholic Outreach” is all over their literature complete with pictures of the pope, religious sisters, priests and bishop. But, I suspect that “Catholic Outreach” does not refer to Catholics reaching out to the poor as it may appear, but refers to that organization’s outreach to Catholics to fund their ministries. On the phone, once I had identified myself as a Catholic priest, the spokeswoman claimed that the organization was founded by Catholic lay people some 8 years ago.
Their website indicates that they are a ministry of the Kielar Family Foundation.Some further research online revealed that the organization is, in fact, a Baptist organization. See this web link:http://www.crosstv.com/crossint.htm and then click on the “Statement of Faith” link.
I have long thought that the prayer of the priest in the Penitential Rite at the opening of the Mass to be a form of absolution–albeit an absolution “lite.” The Church teaches that the Mass removes venial sin, does it not?
Then I discovered something a few months ago that floored me–the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar from the ancient rite. In that form of the Roman Rite, these prayers begin the Mass as Penitential Rite does in the newer form. That is, the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar are the antecedent of the Penitential Rite. Here is a portion of them in English in the form used (then known as the dialog Mass) in the 1960’s until 1971: Read the rest of this entry »
In the past 5 years two bitterly opposed camps on issues like scripture and sexuality have rent the fabric of the Episcopal Church (TEC) into two very unequal parts–the liberals having almost complete say and the power of the courts to crush the self proclaimed “orthodox.” At least this is the point of view of the so called “orthodox” Episcopalians/Anglicans, who bleat on and on about their victim status in TEC and in the Anglican Communion. Theologically, as a Catholic, I am on the side of the “orthodox.” Their moral position on homosexuality is the right one. But, I don’t agree entirely that they are either victims or orthodox.
What has happened to TEC since the 2003 ordination of practicing gay bishop is clearly the fault of the “orthodox” who have stood by with hands on hips for decades while their church has been swirling down the toilet. Read the rest of this entry »
Many educated Catholics know that the Church bases her moral teaching on Natural Law, but few educated after the 60’s know what that means. It all begins with Romans 1:18-21:
“The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse…”
In a Nutshell
Despite our fallen nature, man can by his intelligence can determine right from wrong (though many fail to do so). This is very important in that while moral principles are revealed in scripture, they have a natural basis which allows for a common language for dialogue between believers and non believers. In other words, morality is reasonable and not only a matter of faith. Thus, unlike the Protestants, Catholics can discuss morality without pointing the non-believe to scripture which would be unconvincing.
Moral teaching is discernable from the way we are physically made. That is, it is grounded in biology and common sense (which is less and less common these days, to be sure). Again, this is common ground with non-believers.
A sense of moral good and evil, that is conscience, is written in the hearts of men and therefore imposes moral obligations.
Probably the most powerful scene in BR, Julia suffers a temendous prick of conscience which eventually leads to her full conversion of life. In this scene we see a combination of plot elements tumbled together, her Catholic upbringing at the knee of her Irish nanny, the childhood crucifix, the “penny Catechism” of the era, the death of her newborn, her bad marriage, her affair with Charlies–all are ultimately vehicles for communicating the paschal mystery concretely into her own experience. Read the rest of this entry »
As a member of a religion community (the Holy Cross Fathers) that has always attracted a small but steady flow of new seminarians, I can say a couple of things are important to attract vocations:
Flexibility. What enthuses one generation does not so much the next. If a community gets frozen in the thoughts, interests, vocabulary, spirituality, and ministries of one generation only, it is virtually doomed.
Hard work at Vocational Ministry. Youth attract youth. Nobody wants to be left alone. So a steady flow without a hiatus is critical.
Gianna Jessen came into the world as a surprise. Her 17-year-old mother knew she was pregnant. She also knew she didn’t want to be. She underwent an abortion procedure, having toxic saline solution injected into the womb during the third trimester.
I have been carrying around this thought for over a decade:
As a result of this hard teaching [just pick one], many of the Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans and Evangelicals returned to their former pagan way of life and no longer accompanied him.
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?”
Dennis Prager has written the best explanation of the essential theological-sociological nature of Catholic-Jewish teachings on human sexuality. Starting with a description of male sexuality and implicitly the necessity of social mores/boundaries on the male, he demonstrates the connections between the dignity of the human person, particularly women and children, and the sublimation of male sexuality into exclusively heterosexual outlets. In Catholic terms there is a continuum between the consistent ethic of life and heterosexual family building. It’s an absolute must read!
To a world which divided human sexuality between penetrator and penetrated, Judaism said, “You are wrong — sexuality is to be divided between male and female.” To a world which saw women as baby producers unworthy of romantic and sexual attention, Judaism said “You are wrong — women must be the sole focus of men’s erotic love.” To a world which said that sensual feelings and physical beauty were life’s supreme goods, Judaism said, “You are wrong — ethics and holiness are the supreme goods.” A thousand years before Roman emperors kept naked boys, Jewish kings were commanded to write and keep a sefer torah, a book of the Torah.
While studying at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley much was made of a Wesleyan Quadrilateral theory of sources for theology. The theory, utterly unsupported by scripture or tradition, goes that there are four sources, particularly in moral theology:
William Witt, a lay Anglican theologian, has a PhD from Notre Dame and now currently is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Historical Theology at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. His comment is found here:
Yesterday my students and I finished an entire semester of studying Contemporary Theology. We began with Schleiermacher and Barth, then covered everyone from Brunner, Bonhoeffer, the Niebuhrs, the Catholic Resourcement movement (DeLubac, Congar, Danielou), Orthodoxy (Bulgakof, Schmemann, Lossky), post-Vatican II theology (Rahner, Lonergan, von Balthasar), theology of hope/revelation history (Moltmann, Pannenberg) post-Liberalism (Lindbeck, Hauerwas), Evangelicals (Packer, Henry),(post-conservative)Evangelicals (N.T. Wright, Vanhoozer), “Scientific” theology (T. F. Torrance, Alister McGrath). We finished with Anglican theology–Ramsey and Sykes. All of these fairly clearly lined up with Barth.
In 1900, one could not have guessed where Anglicanism and Catholicism would be today. Anglicanism was the chaplain to the British Empire and Catholicism was the religion of the failed Spanish Empire. Britannia ruled the waves and held a fifth of the world under its yoke. The sun never set on her majesty, Queen Victoria’s realm. What had remained of the Spanish Empire had finally just collapsed two years prior.
In 1900 the pope was still the prisoner of the Vatican, still reigning in the aftergloom of the Kulturkampf and Italian unification which “stole” the papal states. Catholics were second class citizens in English speaking countries and Anglicanism was the religion of the power elite in the most advanced society the earth had ever known. Anglicanism was busy baptizing the “white man’s burden.” Catholic countries were known to be the poorest and least educated in Europe and the Americas. No one could then have guessed the remarkable turns of affairs that would lead us to this present moment in which Catholicism would appear to all the Christian world as the bulwark of Christian morality and the last hope of a Christian West.
As I followed the pastoral visit of the Holy Father on television, switching between EWTN and FoxNews, I could not help but contemplate how far we have come. I remember the coverage of the visits to the United States of John Paul the Great in 1979 and 1987. Then the coverage focused on dissenters. The commentators wanted to know when the Church would change its teachings of life, sexuality, marriage and women. When would the Church come into the modern age and cease to cling to ideas that everyone knew were outdated? To the media it was clear, the Church was not attracting new vocations to the priesthood and religious life; it was not engaging the younger generation and if the Church didn’t come around quickly it would soon sink into irrelevance. The dissenters assured us change would come; it was only a matter of time.
By John Paul’s third visit in 1995, the critics recognized that things would not change under his pontificate, but they still held out the hope that he was a passing phenomenon. He was ill. His death was expected and then there would be a new pope who would bring the Church into the 20th century. By 1995, the pundits grudgingly admitted that John Paul had achieved rock star status, he had stopped the decline of vocations and he had attracted the young, but they consoled themselves with the belief that his successor would not be able to match his appeal. The critics were, however, less confident than they had been.
I do feel for her predicament but not in the way she argues her point:
initially i just felt my heart racing and i got so angry, the adrenline rushing to my brain and images flashing of punching the driver while yelling at him about his ignorance and sense of entitlement…
i certainly don’t regret abortion, i am thankful i was able to make that choice. i am sick of being told i should be ashamed of it, or regret it, or how to feel about it by people in the street with grotesque pictures of aborted fetuses, media pundits and now even disembodied messages in traffic.
I feel for her situation in that she has been reminded of something that she would prefer not to be. And, she was caught off guard. That would make me uncomfortable. But she was not accosted by a gruesome image, a judgment of her by others, but rather the judgment of others upon themselves. Perhaps the owner of the car regretted her own abortion or the abortion of his girlfriend. And, if the person has regretted the abortion he or she participated in, isn’t there a moral duty to warn others?
However, our blogger’s claim that she has nothing to regret, is what I find regrettable. If there is nothing to regret about abortion, then she nor anyone should have any qualms about being reminded of it. If I dont regret having eaten a chocolate sundae, then being reminded of it should be either pleasant or neutral. Only if I regret having eaten the whole thing would a bumper sticker associating the sundae with my spare tire cause me any uneasiness.
If there is nothing regrettable about abortion, one should have no problems being reminded of it. However, if reminders of it cause anger, arouse violent thoughts, etc. then perhaps this is the first sign of the regret one is working so hard to deny. That regret is the first step toward healing, which I wish for our dear blogger. Keep her in your prayers.
As with everything in this novel and series there are two things going on in this scene–the sunbathing is a sign of the growing friendship between Charles and Sebastian. But the dialogue has nothing to do with sunbathing. It is all about how Catholicism turns the world upside down from the way “everybody else” sees it. To be Catholic is to live half on this earth and half in the spiritual realm which has its own unique logic and meaning. To be a Catholic is to live a the world imbued with invisible action of grace which subtly and constantly conspires to coax the soul into the embrace of God.
Philosophically bankrupt evangelicalism is no match for either modernism or post-modernism. Without the epistemological insights of a Bernard Lonergan or foundations in Aquinas or any pillar of Western thought, the evangelical’s world implodes with one intro class in modern philosophy. Enter the Emergent Church.
Brad Cecil has started blogging in defense of the Emergent church. He has a list of points that the Emergent church is founded on. I’m copying them here for discussion.
The Nine Foundational Pillars of the Emergent church
1. Post modern refers to the period after modernity. It appears to “us” that a significant epistemological shift is occurring - the likes of which we haven’t seen in 400 years.
2. Language is limited
3. Human concepts are limited
4. There is no place of irreducible certainty (foundation)
5. Considering the above it would be very difficult to convey absolute meaning using language and human concepts
6. Christian theology has become enslaved to the 1st order assumptions of modernity and is far more Cartesian than Christian and has become ashamed of faith
7. A Reformation of recognition and repentance is needed
8. New theological thought is needed to free Christian theology from the enslavement of modernity and enlightenment assumptions and conversation and friendships would be more productive than developing imperatives.
9. This is just the beginning of the transition and a great deal of work and theological thought lay ahead for those who desire to join the conversation
Catholicism has been dealing with these problems for over a century.
The insistence of many emergents that this is all something new and that it is “post modern” simply underscores the fact that evangelicals have been absent from the intellectual and academic developments of Western Civilization since Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason 221 years ago in 1787. If evangelicals are going to get educated, they will have to engage Catholicism’s answers to these “new” epistemological quandaries, or they will lose their faith entirely. If the above is what is emergent, then “church” will soon be a complete misnomer.
Evangelicals would do well to read Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth where he addresses modernity and biblical interpretation with aplomb.
The Islamo Fascism Awareness Week II got under way yesterday at universities across the nation in what amounted to a two front offensive against the unholy alliance between radical and p
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