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Monday, April 30, 2007
Blogging's Going to Sparse for the Next Week or So I've got a lot of catch up to do and (Bum ba BUM!) I'm beginning the edits on the Mary book in preparation for breaking it into a trilogy. Only one of me and lots to do, plus we have to get the financial nose above water here at Chez Shea. So writing being a zero sum game, the blog will be sacrificed till we have made sure all the balls in the air are humming in synchronicity. See you when I see you! Labels: Housekeeping Consider it a hostage exchange, Chris. We got Dwight Longenecker and Al Kimel, you got Matt Fox and this guy Labels: Doings on Other Blogs Rats Leave Sinking Ship Tenet is known as the guy who called evidence of Iraqi WMD a "slam dunk." He's mad about this. It's not that he didn't say it, you see, it's that he was taken out of context. Tenet claims that he told the president that he could improve the weak case for Iraqi WMD and make it a "slam dunk" case. Is Tenet's version supposed to make him look any better? One gets less and less of an impression of competence or honesty in All the President's Men. Lucky for him the Congress is run by bumbling nincompoops too. Labels: War Nice Takedown of New Yorker Slash and Burn of Benedict Best paragraph: Finally, Jane Kramer really ought to find herself some new Roman sources. The men she cites remind me of nothing so much as those unfortunate Japanese soldiers found on remote Pacific islands in the 1970s – men who never, somehow, got the word that Emperor Hirohito had packed it in thirty-some years before. One of her-refugees-from-radicalisms-past sighs that Vatican II was “the 1968 of the Catholic Church.” Memo to source: It’s over. Get over it. Labels: The Ever-Falling Religious IQ of the Media Jews Go Ahead and Say What Many Conservative Christians Long to Say But Cannot Because the Lord Forbids It That is, if one is to infer the obvious from the barely concealed (and sometimes open and naked) rejoicing when the death penalty is enforced. All that Thomistic abstraction about satifying justice kind of doesn't persuade when people start waving the frying pans and cheering the death of some major criminal. This is a classic case of where Judaism is right as far as it goes, it simply does not go far enough. The demands of justice are just. But grace requires more than mere justice. Labels: Theology Dangerous Theocratic Christianist Injects His Faith Directly into His Politics But that's great because he's Black and a Democrat. The New York Times observes a time-honored tradition of MSM journalism: the fawning puff piece on the black pol's religious roots, compleat with pictures of his devout granny (who is devoutly Muslim, but that doesn't matter as long as she's cuddly and adorable). Lots of free advertising for the pol's inspirational book too. It's all so predictable. Labels: Evil Party Korrektiv is attempting to stir up interest throughout Blogdom in a reading of Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy Here's your chance to get in on the action. Labels: Book recommendations, PSA The NY Times Continues to Live Up to the Pulitzer-Winning Standards Set by Walter Duranty Labels: Bronze Age Bullies and Media Cowards William F. Buckley is a Cut and Run Cowardly Lose-ocrat Who Hates America and George Bush Or, he's somebody who recognizes the obvious: that we can't win in Iraq. Labels: War Gay Blackshirts on the March Rainbow Fascisti issue death threat against Italian churchman. Just another day in the world of Tolerance and Diversity. Labels: Clash of Civilizations Watch Failure to accept naturalistic explanations of human origins is spreading Darwinism as the All Explaining Theory of everything fails to persuade from here to Turkey to Russia to Rome. Muslims have trouble with it too, which goes to show that one Abrahamic religion is much like another. Speaking of which, the Discovery Institute getd portrayed as a sort of Al Quaeda of intellectual malice, while Benedict gets the standard rhetorical tricks played to make his skepticism about pure materialism look arrogant and obscurantist. Both in his previous role as the chief enforcer of Catholic doctrine and since his enthronement, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has made clear his profound belief that man has a unique, God-given role in the animal kingdom; and that a divine creator has an ongoing role in sustaining the universe, something far more than just “lighting the blue touch paper” for the Big Bang, the event that scientists think set the universe in motion. It will, of course, be noted that all these are theological and philosophical doctrines about which science qua science can say nothing whatsoever, but as is customary in discussions of the Darwinian Mythos, such teachings are treated as though they are "Darwin-bashing", to quote the piece. Of course, there is the Plucky Rebel Alliance trying to keep the absurdly ignorant Pope from going off the deep end. In particularly, there is the heroic Fr. Coyne who appears in the article as the Voice of Reason trying to reel Benedict in and standing tall against nameless "Catholic mystics" who "insist that mystical communion with God is radically different from observation or speculation by the human brain". Will Benedict listen to Reason or will he side with "mystics" in the "Thinking is Hard" camp? The drama! The tension! What is not mentioned, of course, is that Fr. Coyne seems to not know what he is talking about, at least when it comes to theology. Especially fetching is how the reporter undoes all the hard work Stephen Barr did in his First Things exchange with Cdl. Schoenborn, aiming to show that "random" means "uncorelated" and not "purely accidental". Barr wrote: The word “random” as used in science does not mean uncaused, unplanned, or inexplicable; it means uncorrelated. My children like to observe the license plates of the cars that pass us on the highway, to see which states they are from. The sequence of states exhibits a degree of randomness: a car from Kentucky, then New Jersey, then Florida, and so on—because the cars are uncorrelated: Knowing where one car comes from tells us nothing about where the next one comes from. And yet, each car comes to that place at that time for a reason. Each trip is planned, each guided by some map and schedule. Each driver’s trip fits into the story of his life in some intelligible way, though the story of these drivers’ lives are not usually closely correlated with the other drivers’ lives. Now compare and contrast this with the Economist: For Father Coyne, belief in man's unique status is entirely consistent with an evolutionary view of life. “The fact we are at the end of this marvellous process is something that glorifies us,” he says. For the Economist, it's either/or. Either "random selection" (by which the author means "man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind") or else the man is a deliberate creation of God. This, again, is ultimately a philosophical and theological issue, not a scientific one. Yet the apostles of the Darwinian Mythos at the Economist quite nicely succeed in making the average member of the Chattering Classes choke on their lattes at the thought that ignorant religious obscurantists are just about to launch a pan global jihad against the March of Science. Should be entertaining to watch as more people cease to be convinced of the Darwinian All Explaining Theory of Materialist Everythingism, especially as Benedict quietly trains his keen intellect on the question. Labels: All Explaining Theories of Everything, Darwin Mythos As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from carbon-Purgatory springs A new religion apparently is developing a new system of salvation. I just hope Mother Earth forgives us. Labels: Global Warming Can't help but feel affection for ol' Shoutin' Bill He sometimes goes off half-cocked and doesn't know what he's talking about, but his hearts in the right place, and on the main point, he's perfectly right: Anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice. Catholics who wish he'd pipe down could solve their troubles easily, by piping up and making his disappear in a crowd instead letting him stand out as one of the few public Catholics who won't just stand there and take it. Labels: The Last Acceptable Prejudice It would probably help to know what "environmentalism" and "religion" are before attempting an answer But that's asking an awful lot of the media. Labels: The Ever-Falling Religious IQ of the Media Jerry and Barbara Crick Update Barb writes: I feel rather late in putting out another update. Taking care of Jerry is very time consuming and demanding, so I rarely have time to tend to the little stuff in my life - like checking my email or composing updates. Your continued prayers and financial support for this struggling family will really help. Write me privately and I will give you their address. Labels: Prayer Requests, PSA The Hindu sez some guy named William Gray sez the oceans cause Global Warming, Not CO2. Meanwhile, some other guy says that Global Warming will weaken the hurricans some guy named Al Gore said would be strengthened by Global Warming. The Experts Speak! Labels: Global Warming Portrait of a Typical Non-Denom Evangelical Church What many Catholics need to absorb about people like the pastor in this story is that they are often in no meaningful sense "Protestant" (and, accordingly, to refrain from speaking to and about about them as though they are either stupid or in wilful rebellion against the Church). When a couple of dope heads who know from nothing about theology kneel on the carpet and ask Jesus to save them, they are taking a step toward the Church, not away from it, and the proper response of a Catholic is rejoicing, not fault-finding. Sure, they've got a lot to learn, but the basic fact is, they aren't protesting anything: they are trying to follow Jesus according to their best light. Remember Priscilla and Aquila. Labels: Ecumenism Reader Kathleen writes:
May God grant her healing or, if it is not his will, the grace of a happy death in Christ our Lord. Labels: Prayer Requests New Blog! Anything called "The Ride of the Rohirrim" already has my sympathies. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs Fr. Rob Johansen is fine! He just called, greatly amused, to inform me there has been no heart attack. Thanks be to God! Update: Fr. Rob blogs that the rumors of his impending death are greatly exaggerated. Labels: PSA Why I Find On-Line Discussions about Liturgy So Worthless When I say the Mass is the Mass, it means simply this: any Mass Holy Mother Church says is an act of worship worthy of God the Father is good enough for me. My place is to worship and receive, not squint and criticize. I actually *enjoy* going to Mass. And I personally prefer the Paul VI rite (reverently celebrated, of course). In a sane world, none of this would be controversial, just as the preference others have for the Tridentine, Syro-Malabar, or Byzantine rite would be non-controversial. It is, after all, called the Catholic Church. But this is St. Blog's, not the sane world. And so, of course, various liturgical obsessives bear out everything I said last week by putting insulting questions, filling their posts with Spite for Christ, and generally incarnating what I said about why it is I find such discussions, not only dull beyond words, but profoundly toxic and counter-productive. Here are some choice words from the Angelqueen forum, which labor to show that, for Rad Trads, rage about liturgy trumps the fruit of the Spirit: They got it all figgered' out in their work-a-day minds - a Mass, is a Mass, is a Mass. "Duh-um... uhhhh, shouldn't the newbies hear the Mass in their own language? Uh, um ya know, so they can understand it better and uh, follow along." Lesson: People who celebrate the Mass in the vernacular are stupid. So is Holy Church, for promulgating a vernacular Mass. Someone who does not deserve to call himself a Catholic wrote:And finally, this sums up what I think and I appreciate the reader who said it for me, so I don't have to write it:The Mass is the Mass is the Mass. Lesson: If I am content with a reverently celebrated Paul VI Mass, I do not deserve to call myself a Catholic. That's exactly what Msgr. Caulkins told me in Rome. And he's the man you go to in order to try and mediate an indult for your diocese. He said a Mass is a Mass is a Mass verbatim. Lesson: Somebody named Msgr. Caulkins is clearly either a fool or an evil bureaucrat who is too stupid to see the goodness and justice of people like the members of the Angelqueen forum. His contemptible notion that the Mass is the Mass is renders him, at least, suspect in his competence and, quite probably, "Someone who does not deserve to call himself a Catholic". It is inexplicable why he might not instantly acquiesce to the demands of people who routinely talk this way about him. The Novus Ordo is sacrilege and my silence and acceptance of it constitutes approval and makes me an accessory to the sins of those who willingly engage in the sacrilege. Lesson: The Paul VI Mass is a sacrilege. The members of Angelqueen demonstrate this constantly by the contrast of their lives with those who worship in the Paul VI rite. None of this "fruit of the Spirit" stuff for them. Just a focus on the manly virtues of rage, factionalism, contempt, suspicion, bitterness, and fear. Then, there's this fascinating tripartite exchange, in which the question is never, "How can we respect and honor our brother's and sisters in Holy Church who worship God with all their heart, mind and strength?" but is instead a strategy session for dealing with an alleged "ploy" by the "enemy". Trad A sez: The Mass is a Mass argument though forces supporters of the Latin rite into areas which we probably shouldn't go and that is whether the Pauline rite is fundamentally flawed - or worse - invalid. If this were a game of chess we appear to be checkmated by this latest ploy. I certainly am of the opinion that we have to avoid this line of argument in order not to be drawn into the quicksand of valid/invalid. Or toeing a careful line have to endure their glee at the impasse. Trad B replies: There is certainly no "checkmate" here, not anything even close. Nor is this an area where we are treading on shaky ground. There is ample and well-supported argument for avoiding the NO. One does not have to argue invalidity to strongly make the case that the NO is a bad idea at best, and a danger to souls at worst. One might just as well say "a Mass is a Mass is a Mass" as say "a priest is a priest is a priest". You can have a good and holy priest who is a credit to the Church, or you can have a homosexual predator pedophile heretic. Is heeding and supporting one just the same as heeding and supporting another? I don't think so. And Trad C sums things up: She's right, 220. Marybonita bingoed this bad boy. Note that she said "we appear to be checkmated". The faster people understand what she understands here, the less they will fall into traps laid out by the enemy. Lesson: If I attend the Paul VI rite and am content there, I am the Enemy. Also, I am a *cunning* enemy who is using a "ploy" because I don't care if you worship God in any rite Holy Church approves. Oh, and approval of the Paul VI rite is like approval of homosexual predator pedophile heresy. After this comes a recommendation of Some Book by Fr. Blah-di-Blah who has again proven that Holy Church is wrong and so are the Enemy who attend the Paul VI Mass. It concludes: This book explains at length and proves the truth that Catholics who have prided themselves as being faithful and obedient to legitimate authority by going to the New Mass have, in fact, been misled. With the knowledge that this book brings, all Novus Ordo Catholics must reform themselves by going only to the Tridentine Mass from now on. Lesson: If you attend the Paul VI Mass, you are prideful, but your guilt is mitigated by ignorance because you have been misled. However, you are now bound to join True Catholics at the Tridentine Rite because the New Dispensation makes Angelqueen and Fr. Blah-di-Blah the only reliable magisterium. Trad B then replies to Trad C: You always "appear to be checkmated" when you make ill-advised or unfounded arguments. You will neither "appear" to be checkmated, nor be checkmated in reality, when you attack properly armed. You don't really think I was advocating bringing a knife to a gun fight, do you? Lesson: The somebody who does not deserve to call himself Catholic (because of the grave sin of celebrating and being nourished by and worshiping God in the Paul VI rite) is not just a cunning enemy, he is trying to destroy True Catholics like the denizens of Angelqueen, and it is imperative that the *right weapons* be used to destroy the enemy. And finally there is this beautiful coda from Trad C: Most traditional Catholics do, yes, when they don't distinguish properly; the enemy lays out a truth "the Mass is the Mass", and then someone comes along and says the Novus Ordo is harmful, no one takes the time to make the proper distinctions, two camps are formed, and both camps persist in being both right and wrong at the same time. Lesson: Well, the picture says it all, doesn't it? But the sig file is precious too. To give full credit, the authors of the above exchange somewhat mysteriously draw the line at sentiments like this: Looks like there are some people who can't see the traps correctly. It takes time I guess. Grace? Who knows. The traps are the Conciliar Church and BLEEP! By attending the Novus Ordo one is going into the schismatic Conciliar Church which Our Lord said is the inner chambers/closets in Matthew 24. BLEEP! is the desert in Matthew 24-also schism. We're talking about a war between 2 religions. We fall onto the other side in the NO and we don't even bother to enter the battlefield and/or are sabotaging from the Catholic side in BLEEP! But given all the language of "enemies" and the imagery of fighting they employ, it's a little hard to see why. Maybe terms like "schism" spook them. Or maybe the "BLEEP"s of the tinfoil hat wearer gave them that "don't stand so close to me" feeling. I dunno. Now, compare and contrast the fruits of the spirit(s) above with that of this comment: When I travel out of my own diocese, I sometimes attend celebrations of Holy Mass that contain liturgical irregularities that upset me very much. (The "cry room" for parents with wailing babies has sometimes been my refuge, actually. Kind of drowns out the objectionable stuff going on in the liturgy.) I have this notion that the members of Angelqueen will find themselves in heaven because of the intercession of "enemies" like Marion, God bless her. I have this settled and fixed opinion that Tom is perfectly right: online discussions of liturgy (and worse still, online discussions of online discussions of liturgy) are, for the most part, not worth the ASCII they're written in. Oh, and if you are thinking of cluttering my combox with more condemnations for my lack of interest in liturgy wars, or to explain to me my perfidy, sinfulness and general evil for being content with a reverently celebrated Paul VI rite, please know in advance I will delete it. Likewise, if you have an urge to say that celebrants of the Tridentine rite are ipso facto Bad People, your post will be deleted. My sole concern, a la Romans 14 is that everybody do what they do to the glory of God and not waste time judging each others liturgical preferences. Labels: Liturgy stuff Sunday, April 29, 2007
Urgent Prayer Request! A reader writes: Please pray for Fr. Rob Johansen. You may remember that he used to have a blog called "Thrown Back" (long abandoned). I'm told Fr. had a serious heart attack and they're not sure if he'll pull through. Let's storm heaven! Chez Shea will gather the troops to pray in a little bit. Labels: Prayer Requests Friday, April 27, 2007
Kate Schori Takes Up the White Man's Burden Having stooped down to enlighten Catholics who toil in the ignorance of dullards like Aquinas, Augustine, Teresa Benedicta, John Paul II and Benedict, the head of the Episcopal Church now cast her gaze to the Dark Continent and stretches out her merciful porcelain white hand to pull the savages up from their barbaric belief in ordinary Christian moral teaching and theology. Nay! Dry the starting tear! It is the least that a Truly Enlightened (both theologically and dermatologically) race can do! Meanwhile, sane Anglicans continue to try to figure out what to do now that liberal racists have taken over the American branch of their Church. I know of at least one Anglical bishop and a bunch of priests in South Australia who are champing at the bit for reunion with Rome. I'll be delighted if the Ents in Rome and elsewhere finally make a way for it to happen. Labels: Chattering Class Follies Not the least of Hitler's crimes... ...is the fact that he killed a growing interest in Christ among Jewish intelligentsia as diverse as Buber, Einstein, and Chagall. There was some remarkable attempts by Jews to come to grips with Jesus in the years before the war. But a great deal of that was drowned out in the polarization of religious conversation that took place after the war due to the Holocaust. A great "Might Have Been", courtesy of Satan. Labels: Jewish issues When the Prez is willing to go to the mat defending an incompetent boob and liar like Alberto Gonzales (former counsel for that American Success Story, ENRON)... When senators of his own party are saying ""This is the most incompetent White House I've seen since I came to Washington"... What good reason do I have left for believing him when he insists that this disastrous war is winnable and we must just go on going on in saecula seculorum? I reluctantly begin to think that Dreher is right. Labels: Stupid Party, War John Shelby Spong and Co Keep Offering Prescriptions to Save the Dying Church It turns out that... WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNS) - Total membership in U.S. Christian churches continued to rise in 2005, despite ongoing declines in some of the country's largest mainline Protestant churches, according to the 2007 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. It would appear that, at minimum, religious groups that actually believe what they teach have a distinct tendency to persuade more people than groups which spend all their time ridiculing their own beliefs and apologizing for existing. This is not the sine qua non of religious belief, of course. It may well be that, like Spong, you *do* advocate a system of belief that is fundamentally false and that you therefore do well to be filled with regret for it. It may be that, like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you do have a religious system that is demonstrably false. It may be that your religious system is partly right, but has lost track of other truths that are part of the fullness of revealtion. In all such cases, mere self-confidence is not an argument for the truth of a religious belief. But in every case, it does suggest that the notion of a mainstream Protestantism that tries to cozy up to jolly pagans by wringing its damp hands and saying, "You don't have to believe in Christ to be a Christian" is a non-starter. Labels: Chattering Class Follies Gay Brownshirts on the March! Tolerance is not enough. You. Must. Approve! You. Must. Ordain! Coming soon to a country near you. Labels: Clash of Civilizations Watch Good for the bishops! I can think of a couple of "apostolates" they might scrutinize right here at home. Labels: Jewish issues Yes, 200 million is a large number and a very big problem The thing is, a billion is an even larger number and an even bigger problem. So it still seems to me to be sane to try to cultivate relationships with the 75% of Muslims who *don't* like al-Quaeda than to treat Islam as a monolith and wind up needlessly recruiting all one billion into the enemy camp. Labels: Clash of Civilizations Watch Tendentious Scripture Readers for Homosexual Practice! I'm with the spray painter. Every one of these readings of Scripture are so preposterous, so agenda-driven, and so grossly foreign to the text that only a culture as biblically-illiterate as ours could stroke its chin and say, "Gosh! This is deep!" The plain fact is, Paul expresses the normative attitude of the Church when he writes (without any controversy at all from the alleged crowds of homosexual activist who were accepted everywhere in the early church) that one of the many results of of human sin is this: For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. Likewise, he takes it as given that: Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And in this, he is simply reflecting that the teaching of the law--the law that Jesus said he had not come to abolish. So does that mean homosexuals are rejected by Christ? Of course not. It just means (as has been said umpteen times) that homosexual practice is not "affirmed" by Christ any more than any other act of sex outside a valid marriage between a man and a woman. Homosexual *desire* is no more sinful than than the desire to steal that we refuse to act upon. Indeed, such concupiscence, successfully resisted is (particularly in our culture) heroic virtue. But it is a lie to say that Jesus affirms homosexual acts as good. He doesn't. Labels: Theology Good! Rome has taken up the question of Global Warming There is probably no institution on earth more immune to hysteria and ill-considered panic attacks than the Vatican. I will be interested to see how they digest the data. Of course, the merely fact that they had a meeting and some functionary somewhere made a couple of obvious observations about the biblical call for stewardship of the earth is being taken by the Grope and Flail as something akin to a dogmatic endorsement of the entire Panic Agenda of the Left. I'm pretty skeptical that the Church will issue and encyclical on global warming anytime soon. But I am glad that Rome is beginning its typical long slow ent-like process of ruminating on the question. Them I trust. Labels: Global Warming There's a lot of hope here The rising generation wants to undo some of the cultural and familial damage inflicted by Generation Narcissus. May God bless them! Labels: Good News I Prescribe Homeschooling and Killing Your Television Also, constant love, prayer and laughter, coupled with a regular encounter with good art that shows both the darkness of the world and the redemptive power of Christ. These should be administered daily by participants in intact marriages with as many children as possible. Oddly, our civilization think almost everything is more important than that, but especially money, sex, and power. Even more oddly, we are mystified by the predicament in which we find ourselves. Labels: Sin Makes You Stupid New Blog "But Mark! That blog is about the indult and the Rosary in Latin! I thought you hated the Latin Mass and Traditionalists!" This myth, along with the myth that "I refused to ever define torture" is one of the great mysteries of the universe to me. I don't know how many different way I can say I don't care if you go to a Latin Mass, just so long as you don't disparage the majority of the Church that doesn't. I have not problem with people with Trad sensibilities. The only time I have a problem is when somebody insists their Trad sensibility is more important than the unity of the Church, or charity, or the Magisterial office's teaching. Labels: Doings on Other Blogs Nonsense! The Beeb has a deep veneration for Mammon, Dionysius, Moloch... What Christians asking for more "religion" coverage don't seem to realize is that, having denuded the public square of references to Christianity (except hateful ones, of course) the powers of this world will be quite happy to now fill the vacuum with references to "religion". The problem will never be atheism. Atheism is simply the sterilization fluid you spray on the field to kill the indigenous Christian plants. The real goal is to then plant something else. Do recall that the basic narrative of the New Testament indicates, not a final triumph by Islam, but a temporary triumph by anti-christ. That figure is not seen coming from outside the Christian world but from inside. He is not an atheist and he is certainly not a Muslim. He is deeply spiritual. It's just that he Believes in Himself and insists that you do too: Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Quick question: Does such a figure sound more likely to arise in the Islamic world, which has an utter horror of the confusion of creature and Creator--or in the "enlightened post-modern West" which routinely urges us to believe that we are the creators of reality, that is constantly urging us to move past our pathetic humility to God, and that labors to return to a pagan worship of nature and of those special enlightened avatars whom destiny has chosen to free us from the shackles of the God of Abraham and lead us into a future of peaceful prosperous harmony with nature. That may take some sacrifice, as it has in achieving other secular messianic dreams of a Third Reich, or a Triumph of the Proletariat. But then religious visions always require that. Labels: Meditations Why Liturgical Obsessives Don't Have Any Friends Is a so-called Black Mass a Mass also? What I am understanding from the Shea crowd (and I don't mean this in a bad way) is what is important that it be a Mass, and none of the seconday characteristics are important. Why would any sane person dignify that with an answer? Also, tiresome is the "Heads we win, tails you lose" argument which goes as follows: First, one person says something along the lines of: Educated, doctrinally literate Catholics like you and Tom can take the NO because you know what the church's teachings are on the Eucharist, the Sacraments, Heaven and Hell, and so don't mind if these things are not as present in the N.O. as in the TR. But most Catholics today do not get good Catechism instruction and do not read papal encyclicals. They get nearly all their religious instruction from Sunday Mass. So we owe it to them to make sure Sunday Mass is as edifying, instructive and clear in showing forth the principals of the faith as possible. And in my view the Traditional Rite does that a lot better than the NO. Now, prescinding from the notion that it is, I think, fundamentally absurd to say that a clueless, badly catechized Catholic who doesn't understand the Paul VI rite (which does, in fact, engage us in participation in the liturgy in a language we understand) will magically be *more* edified by a liturgy in which the laity are spectators watching people do things up on the altar in a language we don't understand--let us accept this point at face value. The problem is this: when I point out that I find the Paul VI rite quite nourishing, more nourishing, in fact, than the Tridentine, I'm immediately told that "IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU! THE MASS IS ABOUT THE WORSHIP OF GOD!" When I say "The Paul VI Mass is, according to the Church, about the worship of God too" I am immediately told that it's inferior because all the abuses are a distraction to people with Traditional sensibilities and that even a reverently celebrated Paul VI is still so intrinsically "painful" that I ought to acknowledge the intrinsic superiority of the Tridentine rite. When I note that it causes me no pain and I find it helps me put my mind on God, I'm again told it's not about me. Clearly, the message is "It's not about God, it's about the sensibilities of the Traditionalist-minded." The Traditionalist-minded are welcome to their sensibilities and I wish them joy when the motu proprio comes out. But it's just not an issue for me and I would appreciate it if I could get on with my worship without being told I'm a second-class, narcissistic Catholic because I think the Church's reform of the liturgy was, on the whole, a good move. Two final points. Albertus M sums up how this conversation has gone: There seems to be 2 completely different arguments going on here. Just so. Likewise, this observation from Tom Kreitzberg is spot on: And finally, this sums up what I think and I appreciate the reader who said it for me, so I don't have to write it: The Mass is the Mass is the Mass. There are no second-class liturgies and there are no second-class Catholics. Period. End of story. Labels: Liturgy stuff Thursday, April 26, 2007
I think we have an early winner for the "Woody Allen Self-Absorbed Ninny of the Year" Award Read, if you can, this loooong piece of blather from a New York Jewish "feminist science Fiction scholar" who uses the tragedy at VT to tell us that it all reminds her of her: her feelings about VT, her feelings about George Bush, her feelings about being Jewish, her feelings about New York vs. Blackburg, her feeling about her struggle to not take this ocassion to complain about Blackburg for failing to recognize her greatness, her feelings about being a science fiction scholar, her feelings about the murderer as a representative of patriarchy, her feelings about white people, her feelings about being underappreciated, her feelings about her feelings as she works her way toward triumphant emotional breakthrough #9837345938473459487 about her feelings. One seldom sees such a naked inability to view other people as anything but stimuli to one's own emotional and personal tics and obsessions, nor such a steady and reverent devotion to taking one's own emotional pulse, one's own sense of entitlement, and one's own little grudges. Especially fetching is this generous response to the traumatized families and community of the 32 people murdered at Virginia Tech: I forgive all the feminist science fiction criticism haters I closely encountered in Blacksburg.I'm glad we've finally got the right perspective on all that. This is of a piece with her previous words of consolation to a suffering world, written September 17, 2001 and concluding: Even though I have just edited a book about the next new millennium, I know that I can't know the future—even if I am a professional science fiction critic. I reach the end of another sentence and type the period and the plane did not Comforting words indeed! Labels: Generation Narcissus Much kerfuffle over my liturgical disinterest Too many gripes to answer so I will just focus on a couple. One guy writes: I guess I find it strange that you and Tom, among others, are so intent on dismissing the concerns of many good Catholics, and, it seems, those of the pope himself. Tom makes a pretty good reply here: This manages to pack many of the worst traits of discussions on the Mass into a single sentence. There's overstatement (two posts in two months is "so intent"), victimhood("dismissing the concerns," how boorish), moral posturing ("many good Catholics"), and implied charges of dissent ("dismissing...the pope himself"), all wrapped up in an obstinate inability ("I guess I find it strange") to accept that lack of interest does not imply a judgment against those who are interested. To this, I would add the following: There are those of us who are very happy parishioners at parishes which celebrate the Paul VI rite. We don't spend our time fretting that the very rite itself is somehow second-class. We do not telegraph our notion that those who are quite content with the rite are second class Catholics who don't really appreciate the true glory of the Faith which is *really* found in the Tridentine rite. For that *is* what all-too-common statements like this telegraph: I attend the TLM exclusively: the N.O. hurts like a pair of bad shoes and forces you to think about it too much. Note the double whammy. Not only is the Paul VI rite objectively inferior and there's something "off" about those who don't prefer the Tridentine Rite, but the motivation of people who attend it is "It's all about me". If you attend the Tridentine Rite, you are, quite simply, a Better Sort. You worship God, not yourself. Now there are Catholics like me who think the Mass is the Mass. We don't think those who prefer the Tridentine Rite are either better or worse Catholics then we. Nor do we regard the Mass as something we are Commissioned By Christ to weigh in the balance and find wanting. To be sure, we dislike liturgical abuses, whether they be the apocryphal clown Mass or the five minute Tridentine Hunting Masses of European nobility (in which the Mass was sped along at light speed so m'lord could get on with his fox hunting expedition). We don't throw the babe out with the bath and say that because the Paul VI liturgy is often abused, it is therefore almost an abuse itself. We go to parishes where the Mass is reverently celebrated and we find it every bit as nourishing to our souls and a full of praise to God as the Tridentine rite is for others. We have this weird notion that our business is to listen and receive, not compare and contrast. We are quite aware of the existence of liturgical abuse, and we try to do something about it when it arises (thankfully a rare event in my parish), but we also figure if the worst martyrdom we ever suffer is having to sing "Anthem", then we are getting off lightly. Consequently, we lack a lot of interest in the motu proprio. I'm glad Benedict is interested in it. That's his job. I simply don't see why it's my job. My parish is reverently celebrating the Paul VI rite. My job is to receive that gift, not to look it in the mouth and not to suggest that if you like the Tridentine rite instead you are a second class Catholic and a narcissist. It would be nice if enthusiasts for the Tridentine rite could return the favor. Labels: Liturgy stuff Those Damn Catholics on the Supreme Court Have Hindered Truly Progressive Thought in the Past Labels: Culture of Death Watch The Coming Trendiness in Theology ...will be denial of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The argument goes something like this: God is love. Love does not demand atoning sacrifice but just freely forgives. Jesus came to preach the free forgiveness of God, but was, unfortunately put to death, purely by accident and not in accord with the will of God. His death was not a sacrificial offering to God, because that would make God mean and bloodthirsty and we know that God is love. All that stuff in the New Testament about Jesus' death being a propitiation for sins is either just barbaric Jews like Paul trying to understand the tragedy of Jesus' death in terms of his own culture or else it is barbaric Jews like the evangelists putting words into Jesus' mouth. You know, words like "The Son of Man came into the world to give his life as a ransom for many" and "This is the cup my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant". Jesus could not have said these things because they do not fit with what trendy theologians think, and trendy theologicans have never been wrong in the whole history of the world. Happily, there are still sane biblical scholars like N.T. Wright, who suggest that perhaps trendy scholars have no applied adequate thought to this mystery. Look for this trend to infect the preaching and catechesis at your local parish via well-meaning people who sincerely believe the gospel of Niceness is Nice and who are trying to make the baffling teaching of the Church "accessible". Take measures to be educated about the Church's actual doctrine of the atonement so that you can gently point out that Jesus was, in fact, sent by the Father as the atoning sacrifice for our sins and that this shows the mercy, not the bloodthirstiness, of God. Labels: Chattering Class Follies, Theology Due Process for Everybody But Priests! Not a problem though. Not only are these guys just Christians, they are *Catholic* and they are, most despicable of all, priests. So presumption of guilt is just fine. That's the great thing about "Zero Tolerance" policies. They relieve us of the complicated burden of crap like "thinking", "justice", and "common sense". Labels: Zero Tolerance Insanity Why "Progressive" Christianity is Drivel This quote says it all: One press release from TCPC [The Center for Progressive Christianity] states: “one does not need to believe that Jesus is the only way to God in order to be a Christian.”Um, yes. One does. However, if you are dumb enough to think that unbelievers will be interested in a Christianity that does not ask them to believe what it teaches, you are also dumb enough to think a jolly pagan will get out of bed on Sunday mornings in order to come to your Tea Circle for Recycling, your Panel Discussion on Library Funding, and your Symposium of Greying Turtle-Necked Types Babbling About Conflict Resolution. This is the key point which progressives overlook when they see their own dwindling congregations and declare that Christianity is "dying", even as they scratch their heads in bafflement at the continuing growth of Evangelical and Catholic numbers. Labels: Chattering Class Follies When Beans are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Beans Don't fart around with Hugh Grant. Labels: News of the Weird Sun Rises in East, Water Found to Be Wet, Hitchens Hates Religion I'm sorry, but anything titled "How Religion Poisons Everything" is about as ignorant as you can get. Hitchens is absolutely worthless when he gets on his periodic tears about religion. Christians who look to him as some sort of authority in answering the challenge of Islam are, how does one put this gently?--idiots. There are lots of replies to Islams that don't require a simplistic reductionist materialism, a reflexive hatred of God, and an utter refusal to acknowledge anything good ever having emerged from the tradition of Abrahamic theism. Labels: Atheism, The Ever-Falling Religious IQ of the Media CAEI: Bringing people together I wrote below: You also seem to assume the normal fundamentalist notion that a believer in the Holy Spirit must assume that his particular religion is 100% right and everybody else is 100% wrong. And reader "Jeb Protestant" replies: Mark, would you please give the name of a few "fundamentalists" who believeJeb, meet "Ex-Catholic", who cannot read, but who does offer an admirable portrait of the "Everybody who is not on my team is in no way helped by the Holy Spirit" mindset. This God works via false religions nonsense is one reason I am no longer Catholic. The weird thing about these sorts of Fundamentalist complaints is that so often such people cannot make up their minds. When the Church says (exactly like Jesus in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats and Paul in Romans 2) that it is possible for those who have never heard of Jesus to follow the light of conscience and so open themselves to the saving power of the Spirit (who does not depend on our knowing who he is in order to work for good in our lives) you get gripes like this from people who are smarter than Jesus and Paul. But when the Church points out the fact that the work of the Holy Spirit is ultimately to bring us into full union with Christ and his Body, the Church and the fullness of His revelation subsists in the Catholic church, outside of which, no one can be saved, then they scream, not that the Church is universalist, but that the Church is too exclusive and that we say "only Catholics can be saved". What they typically mean by this is that they demand the Church recognize that they and other Protestant teams they happen to prefer will be saved, but that the Church not recognize that any other unpreferred teams will be saved. In fact, the Church makes no prognostications on anybody being saved by team membership: not even Catholics (as a cursory reading of Dante will tell you). This leads to further screams from the "eternal securaity" crowd, but we won't go into that here. Here's the deal: The Church believes that the fullness of Christ's revelation subsists in the Catholic Church and, if you avail yourself of the helps he provides through it, you will certainly be saved. That was the substance of Dominus Iesus in 2000. It was about as far from "All religions are equal" as you can get and many Protestants had hysterics over it. So I'm surprised Ex-Catholic doesn't remember it. Perhaps he/she will go read it and be reconciled with the Church (that is, if he/she is honest when he/she says the Church's alleged universalist teaching was the reason for leaving.) The Church also says that, if you become convinced that the Church is, in fact, the fullness of revelation and then refuse the offer of union with Her, you will certainly be damned. But the Church recognizes that, though we are bound by the sacraments, God is not bound. He can and does work beyond the boundaries of the visible Church, blowing where he wills. This does not mean that non-Catholics will certainly be saved (we're not even certain all Catholics will be saved). It merely means that Jesus meant business when he described the *surprises* of the "nations" when they discovered that it was really him they were serving (or not) in the parable of the sheep and the goats. Our task as Christians and Catholics is to cooperate with the Spirit to bring our neighbor as close as possible to the fullness of Christ's revelation in the Catholic faith. It is not to offer anti-biblical prognostications on the eternal destiny of people about whom we know nothing. What people like Ex-Catholic don't seem to realize is that the first practical result of taking his advice is to declare him doomed to hell, since he is not longer in communion with the Church Christ founded. This curious habit of sawing off the branch one is sitting on in order to make sure that those out on the end of the same branch get the judgment they deserve is one of the more curious features of sectarianism. Happily the Church (and the Spirit) neglect to take their advice and continue to labor toward that Day when "all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." Labels: Theology Wednesday, April 25, 2007
What I'm doing Tonight and Tomorrow Night Tonight, I'll be sitting on a panel of folks discussion "Catholic Moral Decision-making" at Blessed Sacrament (my parish) here in Seattle. Tomorrow night, I'll be introducing Jeffrey Overstreet to the Seattle Chesterton Society and then sitting back for a really great talk. If you live in the Seattle area, I hope to see you at both these events. Labels: PSA The Achilles Heel of the Anti-Christian ...is that his hostility to the faith keeps him from ever trying to find out about it. He is bound and determined to criticize and so asks questions, not with the intent find out anything, but to keep from finding out anything. Consequently, main profit in answering him is to be gained, not by the the critic, but by those who are genuinely curious and standing on the sidelines. For instance, take this exchange: "Only the Holy Spirit can work *within* our freedom to bring us to a place which, oddly, feels as though we were destined to come all along." My reply: The Holy Spirit is a person, not an "it". And, yes, his plans for each person are quite diverse. You seem to think that's a surprise to a Catholic. |
