Rome Reports: Pope celebrates Mass in Rome to honor St. Ignatius of Loyola


Edit. The text of his homily.
Pope Francis: Once a Jesuit, Always a Jesuit
Pope highlights “the centrality” of Christ and of the Church for all Jesuits

Catholic World Report: World Youth Day, Liturgy, and the New Evangelization by Leroy Huizenga
Well-formed disciples are shaped and taught through good liturgy: lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi

(via Insight Scoop)

Risu: VIKTOR YELENSKY: ‘STATE PROGRAM OF CELEBRATIONS OF 1025TH ANNIVERSARY IS A HUMILIATION FOR MILLIONS OF UKRAINIAN CHRISTIANS AND IT FURTHER DIVIDES THE COUNTRY’

Related:
Thanksgiving Celebrated on St. Vladimir's Hill in Kiev
The Day of St. Vladimir Equal-to-the-Apostles marked by Divine Liturgy celebrated by heads and and hierarchs of local Orthodox churches at Kiev Monastery of the Caves
Homily delivered by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia in Kiev Laura of the Caves on the Commemoration Day of St. Vladimir Equal to the Apostles
Kyiv and Moscow Patriarchates to Unite

First Things: The Thomistic Institute Presents the Art of the Beautiful

Now available: A Service of Love: Papal Primacy, the Eucharist, and Church Unity by Paul McPartlan

Byzantine Beauty by Joseph Pronechen, Staff Writer
Eastern-Rite Churches Reflect Eternal Truths of Heaven and Earth

Both Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk and Bishop Borys Gudziak will be unable to attend the Napa Institute Conference. I hope they will be able to visit the Bay Area some time, though the Ukrainian Catholic presence here is not so big.

Byzantine Rite - Good Guys Wear Black: Minor Orders: Subdeacon

Putin visits Ukraine to mark region's conversion to Christianity

Vatican Insider: Those words Pope Luciani pronounced about Lefebvre

Picture of the Day: The Pope's Chotki by Greg Kandra (cross-posted at his blog)

Mystagogy: The Theotokos and Ancestral Sin

One Orthodox perspective?

Related:
THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AS PERCEIVED FROM THE CHRISTIAN EAST
Four Things We Lost in the Fall Besides Sanctity

Time: Revealed: How Mars Lost Its Atmosphere by Jeffrey Kluger

The Red Planet lost its protective blanket of air billions of years ago. Now astronomers are certain why

Scientific American: Sex with Other Human Species Might Have Been Secret of Homo Sapiens’s Success

SVS Press Releases Book by "The Opinionated Tailor," Kh. Krista West - The Garments of Salvation

Les fondamentaux de la culture chrétienne

Also from KTOTV: La liturgie des heures

Fr. Z: REVIEW: The book on Augustine which Pope Benedict would have wanted to write.

Added this to my wish list as well.

St Augustine of Hippo, An Intellectual Biography, by Miles Hollingsworth

Rorate Caeli: Fr. Chad Ripperger's "The Binding Force of Tradition" - Book review

Pravmir: Archbishop Mark (Arndt): Advice to Potential Monastics

Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos

A post at Rorate Caeli reminded me of its existence: Summer Book Suggestions - 2nd Post: What book was important for your conversion or discovery of Tradition?

Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos published books by Dominicans like Fr. Santiago Ramirez, as well as Fr. Carlos Soria and Fr. Alberto Colunga, who are mentioned in that post. How is the publisher faring in the Spanish economy?

Some ideas for conferences and such... not that I would have the resources or standing or credentials to put one on my own, but maybe it is possible to find some sponsors for something less than academic. (Or more than academic, depending on your perspective and the ultimate end of such gatherings.) While the 20th century disputants may have passed on, what about revisiting the debate between the neo-scholastics (neo-Thomists) and the new theologians? Are there any today who would acknowledge being the successors to neo-Thomism? Or would they, like many Dominicans, see themselves as restoring or reviving a Thomism? How is each school to be distinguished from the other?


For the needs of "modern man," how are we to explain God and His saving work? Render scripture more intelligible? Understand God better?

Related:
"Uniting Faith and Culture: Hans Urs von Balthasar" by J. Peter Pham (via Insight Scoop)

Revue Thomiste - books

Présentation de la Revue Thomiste (le fr Serge Thomas Bonino)


Aquinas on the Spirit's Gift of Understanding and Dionysius Mystical Theology by Bernard Blackenhorn

Gilles Emery: "The Thomistic Doctrine of God and Dominican Spiritual Life"

First Things: Five Myths About Pope Francis by William Doino Jr.

The author does not touch upon liturgy.

Відеозвернення Блаженнішого Святослава до молоді

Live from Mumford Road: Episode 4 (Deacon Sabatino Carnazzo)

The Deacon went to Christendom; I believe he was more of a traditionalist while he was there, so I'm interested in his "journey to the East." He is a deacon at Holy Transfiguration (still one of my favorites) and heads the Institute of Catholic Culture.

Christ the Bridegroom Monastery

Should pick up an copy of the recent The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly - could be useful.

The Latest in the Hart Debate over Natural Law

Ed Feser links to some of the posts and writes his response: Hart stopping.

Byzantine Discalced Carmelites of Holy Annunciation Monastery, Sugarloaf, PA

Their website.

Zenit: Focolare Youth in Rio Will Teach Peers About Blessed Chiara
Also Leading Interreligious Dialogue Project

Sandro Magister: The Prelate of the Gay Lobby

Facts and personages of the scandalous past of the man whom Francis, unaware, delegated to represent him at the IOR. Here's how a parallel power lives and thrives at the Vatican, plotting to the harm of the pope

John Cavidini reviews George Weigel's Evangelical Catholicism: Church as Sacrament

Is Cavidini making too much of Weigel's use of friendship?

For example: “Evangelical Catholics know that friendship with the Lord Jesus and the communion that arises from that friendship is an anticipation of the City of God in the city of this world.” Despite the echo of Augustinian language, the theological syntax is foreign to the ­Augustine of the City of God and to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which invokes his ecclesiology of the totus Christus. The communion of the Church does not arise from personal friendship with the Lord Jesus, but from Christ’s undeserved, atoning love which, mediated by the sacraments, makes the Church. The Church is the bond of communion, whether it is consciously known in a subjective friendship or not.

Do Protestant Evangelicals talk about friendship with Christ? Or a personal relationship? Friendship with God can also be a way of understanding caritas (Aquinas's definition, after all) - which is itself a gift of God and the Church can be understood as the social dimension of caritas.

It is significant that Weigel claims Dei Verbum, not Lumen Gentium, is “the key Vatican II document for the deep reform of the Catholic Church.”He never mentions the doctrine, prominent in Lumen Gentium and emphatically repeated in the Catechism, that the Church is the sacrament of communion with God and of unity among human beings.

I don't plan on reading Weigel's book in the near future; but what if his "friendship" with Christ is equivalent to "communion"? What is the relationship of the Church to this? Does Christ save individuals as individuals? Or as members of a new people? It could be that Weigel is not sufficiently precise in his writing and that the book is as problematic as Cavidini suggests.

John Burger on Orientale Lumen

CWR: Grassroots Ecumenism of Friendship Keeps Orthodox-Catholic Hopes Alive by John Burger
Orientale Lumen Conferences Boost Participants’ Knowledge of Issues, Forge Ties

Related:
Pope in a Minefield by Tim Kelleher

Ancient Faith Radio: Searching for the Sacred Symposium (mp3)

Chiesa: Vatican Diary / Those saints made as he commands

For Romero, Francis loosens the restraints of the Holy Office. For John XXIII and for a Jesuit to whom he is devoted, he goes ahead without waiting for the miracle required by the norms. In beatifications and canonizations, the pope is acting as an absolute monarch

What happened to a more humble papacy?

Recent Theological Opinion on Infused Contemplation (from the last century)

One Bishop Per City or Region

Ancient Faith Radio Correcting a Canonical Anomaly - mp3

Autocephaly problem: history and present

Ukrainian Catholic University: International Biblical Conference “Biblical Studies, West and East: Trends, Challenges and Prospects”

Fr. Thomas White's Presentation

Thomism After Vatican II

Br. Charles Shonk on Fra Angelico

A Pale Light

Archimandrite Boniface Luykx on the Sacrament of Confirmation

Originally published in HPR - On Confirmation

The Most Reverend Bishop Athanasius Schneider - "Vatican II Must be Clarified" (June 27, 2013)

I don't follow Michael Voris and generally avoid his stuff, but I learned of this video from another blog (which has taken the post down for some reason) and since it features Bishop Athanasius, I am posting the interview.

John Creech's Summary of a Lecture by Robert George

The Imaginative Conservative: The Persuasiveness of Natural Law by John Creech

Fr. Brian W. Harrison on Saints Cyril and Methodius

RT Forum: SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS: ICONS OF EAST-WEST CHRISTIAN UNITY

Even though no formal rupture had yet occurred between East and West, the two brothers’ determination to maintain in practice the unity that still existed in principle proved very difficult and costly for them. The harassment and suffering they had to endure resulted partly from political expansionism of German princes seeking dominion over the Slavic peoples, but it was due even more to a heretical aberration that was then circulating among quite a few highly-placed German and Latin churchmen. This was the theory that became known as ‘Trilingualism’. (If you have never heard of this early heresy, don’t feel bad, because hardly anyone else today has heard of it either – probably because it was rather easily refuted and so quite short-lived.) Trilingualists exhibited a classic example of the pharisaical mentality that our Lord reproved so severely in the religious leaders of first-century Israel. But now it re-surfaced in Christian rather than Jewish garb. Elevating merely human, and in this case, geographically local, traditions to the level of divine revelation, they insisted vehemently that only three of the world’s innumerable languages were noble and ‘sacred’ enough to be used for divine worship or for translating the Sacred Scriptures: Hebrew, Greek and Latin. Some extreme Trilingualists apparently even insisted that all teaching and preaching be done in one or other of these languages. (Their God, it would seem, was imposing some pretty stiff linguistic requirements on most of the world’s inhabitants as a condition for citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven.) Rather curiously, for people who appealed loudly to Sacred Tradition, the Trilingualists’ favourite authority was a gentleman whom few would have included among the holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church: none other than Pontius Pilate! After all, had not the Roman procurator himself ordered the words above the crucified Saviour’s head to be written in these three languages, and no other?

I see this sentiment on the internet from time to time - the author may not limit the language of sacred scripture exclusively to these three, but there is a preference for one of them to be used, either as the language of scripture or the language of the liturgy. Should these three languages be privileged above all others?

Georges de Nantes. The Mystical Doctor of the Catholic Faith.
8. FIRST CONTROVERSIES

IT WAS WITH FATHER CALLON THAT “ THE GREAT AFFAIR OF MY LIFE ” BEGAN

1946-1947 : “ Having almost reached my destination, my little boat came close to sinking. It all began in the first class of dogmatic theology ” taught by Fr. Callon, “ an experienced and universally esteemed professor, who had to teach us the difficult treatises on Grace, on Predestination, on the Supernatural, on Hell and on the Demon, all of which are dogmas that we must believe without seeking too much to understand, but which raise so many questions, so many objections. ”

As director of conscience of the “ late vocations, ” he preached to them renunciation of their right-wing convictions.

“ In two years the damage was done, and it was irremediable. He had raised them so high, so high that, when the wind blew towards the left, our mystical aeronauts, who had lost sight of the earth, let themselves all be carried, without the slightest attention or malice, to the furthest point from their conservative or reactionary ideas, into the left-wing follies and other Christian Democratic utopias that were in vogue at the time.

“ Later on, in the agitation of the purge in 1945, I learned that our Fr. Callon was a rabid old Christian Democrat, a disciple of Marc Sangnier, an enthusiastic admirer of Aristide Briand, a friend of Francisque Gay whose son had just left the seminary, and a participant in the Franco-German meetings of Bierville before the war. The dreadful thing was that this passion for Germany had persisted through the war and through France’s defeat and her occupation, which was only enveloped in silence. It so happened that, in June 1941, he even showed new issues of the German review Signal, taken from a cupboard at the bottom of his bookcase, to certain seminarians under his spiritual direction. In them, they saw magnificent colour photos of the young army of the great Reich in long columns of ochre tanks, plunging into the immense fields of ripened wheat in the invaded Ukraine. He was jubilant ! He had his spiritual sons admire this Teutonic chivalry of our magnificent new Europe !

“ Obviously, his tone changed at the Liberation, but he transferred his Sillonist fervour to Georges Bidault’s party in which all his Christian Democratic friends were surfacing, sharing power with the Socialists and the Communists, in a furious rage to take vengeance on the nationalist, Maurrassian and Pétanist right-wing that had plotted against the Republic, established its loathed ‘ National Revolution ’ and dominated the country by force for four years. The blood and tears of those people were flowing now. That was only right and proper !

“ Fr. Callon was, as I was to understand too late, a man of influence rather than of words. ” In other words : one could not trust a word he said ! Here is a gripping description :

“ A word, ordinarily dreadful but which in my head only had an entomological value, sprang to my mind after observing him. He was a big, black spider, huddled up in his hidden lair, with one foot on some strand of his web through which arrived information and from which his impulses were sent off towards all the vital organs of the seminary [...]. It was he, always playing secondary roles, who held and retained the essence, the secret tradition, the obscure and inviolable soul of the Society of Saint-Sulpice. If he was swarthy, hunchbacked, with a disquieting gaze, face and voice, that was how fifty years of Jansenist, Gallican, Mennaisian, Dreyfusard and Sillonist, and finally semi-Modernist passion had sculpted and jig-sawed him.

“ Was I going to attack this bastille, no, this temple, this influence ? Had I known, I would have been wary. I, however, imagined the spider to be without venom and I entered into his web like an innocent fly, curious about what I would learn there. ”

THE TREATISE ON GRACE

“ The introduction of his first lecture made us admire the importance of the immense subject matter that we had to study in this single year. It was brief. All of us, with fountain or ball-point pen held over new thick notebooks, were ready for this race and did not want to overlook anything. The first treatise was that on ‘ Grace. ’ The pens traced the title in big letters while Fr. Callon began his subject with a hazy voice, at a meditative pace. I heard him there, at that moment. He punctuated all-the-syl-la-bles, separating one-from-the-o-thers ; it was not disagreeable, it allowed for reflection, and we had the time to note everything leisurely :

“ ‘ Grace, ’ these were the first words, ‘ is-some-thing-or-some-one. It is not something like a knife that one might have in his pocket. Thus it is some-one. ’

“ I will spare you the rest of this speech that initiated us into the depths of the mystery of grace. It can be summed up in a few words. If grace is not an object set there, that is possessed, that can be lost and found again, it is therefore someone, someone invisible, elusive, who cannot be appropriated. This someone, obviously cannot be a man or an angel ; it is God. ‘ Grace ’, we wrote at his dictation, without astonishment or murmur, ‘ is God within us. ’

“ Then, he entered into the theological debate, taking us along, still copying his statements as though they were Holy Writ. This explanation of grace was that of the Greek Fathers, whom he admired with infectious fervour, while the Latin Fathers and, in their school, St. Thomas Aquinas, – oh, he said it regretfully, sorry for having to upset them ! – considered grace as an object, yes a thing, that they referred to by the abstract expression : the ‘ created gift. ’ In fact, for them, this thing was necessary and preliminary to the welcoming of God into ourselves, which they referred to as : the ‘ uncreated gift. ’ We had to accustom ourselves to these scholastic distinctions if we wanted to understand all the disputes, and finally the divisions, that would be caused in the West on these questions. From the Latin perspective, the main thing is to know whether one is ‘ in a state of grace ’ or not, if one has ‘ the created gift ’ or if he has lost it, for the divine life in us depends on it ! The Greeks did not enter into these insoluble quibbles and controversies. For them, grace is quite-sim-ply God. It is God-in-us, un-con-di-tion-al-ly ! Man becomes God. Perhaps scholasticism achieves greater clarity and infinite precisions, ‘ but I think, ’ he admitted to us with a tone of trusting abandon, almost of complicity, ‘ for me, the view of the Greeks is more beautiful and consoling. ’

“ Thus the first class went by peacefully, and others followed likewise. We copied down, then learned ; we recited and were graded accordingly. For the thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year, Fr. Callon would have once again led his sixty or so students to the subdiaconate and to the happy end of their stay at Issy-les-Moulineaux, had I not, unfortunately, stumbled over his first words that I would have really liked to understand : ‘ Grace is some-thing or-some-one. ’ What goddess Reason or what rebellious spirit had whispered to me, as we went along, this mocking counterpoint that would put the course off the track : No, it is not something, but it is not someone either, and above all it is not God ! For if I am in a state of grace, – easy does it, my dear fellow ! – I am not for all that in a ‘ state of God ! ’ The Greeks were undoubtedly right. God is not far from a man in a state of grace, but we know that God is everywhere [...].

“ For a good fifteen days I ruminated over it. Finally, I had the idea of going to verify Fr. Callon’s teaching in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Theological Summa, and the light was cast on me in words so simple that, first, I was brought back forever to the Angelic Doctor, and secondly, I was filled with the most total contempt, not affective but intellectual, towards this pathetic Callon who was abusing our ingenuous imbecility. Grace, St. Thomas taught, is obviously neither a thing nor a person. In philosophical terms : it is not of the order of substance ; thus it is of the order of accident. It is a manner of being added to our natural being, and furthermore, it has this peculiarity, that it is not only a perfection that fortifies or enhances some specific power or faculty of the spiritual being, but it is an ‘ entitative ’ gift, i.e. a perfecting of the very substance of the being, which affects it in its nature, in its radical principle of action, in its roots. Thus, in the end, by means of this ‘ created gift, ’ the man or the angel finds himself even capable of taking advantage of and enjoying God Himself (uti et frui), Who has become for him in this way such a mysterious and magnificent ‘ uncreated gift, ’ to be known and loved by him in time and in eternity.

“ These streams of light were too much happiness for me alone ! I said it and it was repeated. Before the month of October was over, it had thrown the seminary into quartan or quintan fever, the development of which no one was able to foresee. The tragedy had opened and, at the account of this first scene, I shudder with anxiety at the thought of what I must now relive. May God forgive me ! I was twenty-two years old and totally rash. ” 6

NRO: Letter from Ukraine by George Weigel
A Church of martyrs confronts the cultural iron curtain.

Dominican Friars: Dominicans and the Renewal of Thomism by Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, O.P.

The post has a link to some photos on flickr. No summary of the talks/presentations from the conference, though.

Thomistica.net: The evolution of Maritain's later political thought by Joseph G. Trabbic

A reference to his review of Jacques Maritain e i diritti umani: Fra totalitarismo, antisemitismo e decmocrazia (1936–1951). Italian book; maybe I'll ask someone to pick it up for me if he is happening to visit Rome.

Christopher Smith on Traditionalism

His original essay, at Chant Cafe (posted at NLM): Sacra Liturgia 2013 and the Transformation of Traditionalism

And the follow-up (also posted at NLM): Has Traditionalism Really Been Transformed

But now there are many people, who are perhaps a bit more open to certain insights outside of the pre-conciliar manualist theological tradition, such as those of Ratzinger, who now find themselves engaging the same critiques of the traditionalists, but from within the desire of a hermeneutic of continuity. Such a school of tradition is no mere reincarnation of Ultramontanism in its neoconservative Amerophilic form. It is embued with the classical liturgical movement, with an eye to the Patristic age, the East, as well as certain insights of the nouvelle théologie. One thinks of a Ratzinger scholar like Tracey Rowland as perhaps more of an example of this type of thought.

They may be more willing to renew sacramental theology; for example, in light of current discussions and decisions on the Liturgy of Addai and Mari. But would they re-evaluate the magisterial standing of certain council documents and of the councils themselves?

Sacra Liturgia 2013

Images - flickr, Recordings, and Lectures.

Jeremiah Hackett Article on Duns Scotus

Medievalists.net: Duns Scotus: A Brief Introduction to his Life and Thought

Off the grid until the weekend

A short respite from virtual reality.

Jeffrey Tucker Interview

Vatican Radio: Sacra Liturgia Conference: the liturgy in the internet age (mp3)