Saturday, April 25, 2020
Trolling Liberals
Some thoughts on abuse of power, addressed to my fellow classical liberals https://t.co/dGbtsxRiN2— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) April 25, 2020
Having written about one challenge that integralists face, I find today that Adrian Vermeule posted the following over at MOJ: Abuses of Power. He gives a list of abuses of concern, and ends with "Worst of all, the very grave abuse of state power identified by a defender of true liberty," citing Pope Leo XIII's Libertas:
Those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but still more to consult the welfare of mens’ souls in the wisdom of their legislation. But, for the increase of such benefits, nothing more suitable can be conceived than the laws which have God for their author; and, therefore, they who in their government of the State take no account of these laws abuse political power by causing it to deviate from its proper end and from what nature itself prescribes.
Of course those who are secular or anti-Christian would not accept that this is an abuse, nor is it the case that the imposition of a Catholic integralist state by force alone will solve this last abuse or any of the others. Changing the law through raw power is not sufficient. Is Vermeule trolling classical liberals, or is this just an inside joke, if Vermeule knows that serious classical liberals aren't paying attention to what he writes at MOJ?
It is one thing to use rhetoric or even dialectic to discredit intellectuals who are threats to a good political or social order. But I doubt a post like Vermeule's is going to convince someone to convert to Christianity or make Latin integralism more appealing to non-Christians.
There is also the theological issue of using an individual text of a pope of Rome as sufficiently authoritative in itself, but I will write more about that in a different post.
As for this abuse:
* The abuse of power by state and local governments, especially when abusively resisting attempts by the federal government to prevent or remedy abuses;
Liberals who are nationalists with respect to the powers of the Federal Government may agree that this is an abuse. Are there any liberals, other than libertarians and paleolibertarians, who still believe in states rights? Given what I have read of Vermeule's writings on the Constitution, I don't think he accepts the Constitution as it was ratified.
Related:
Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae
Against the New Integralists by Raphael Fernandes
NOR: Dungeons and Dragons and Jurisprudence By Kevin D. Williamson
Fr. Alexander Men on Pascha
Pravmir: The Essential Meaning of the Paschal Feast by Archpriest Alexander Men
LSN on That Survey
Here LifeSite's report on the leaked letter (by @RorateCaeli) of the CDF concerning the Traditional Latin Mass, with responses from several good sources (among them Dr. Kwasniewski, Mr Nardi), some of whom are concerned, and some of whom are not concerned:https://t.co/GynMCIwL4Z— Maike Hickson (@HicksonMaike) April 24, 2020
LSN
Coercive Authority
In which @thomaspink1 discusses the profound differences between the Catholic view of coercive authority (as represented for example by Suárez), and modern theories such as that of Hobbes. https://t.co/upw3Pmp0VV
— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) April 25, 2020
More on the Common Good
Me: “Authority is held in trust for and exercised on behalf of the community ... not for the benefit of individuals taken one by one.”
— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) April 25, 2020
Patheos blogger, just making stuff up: Vermeule argues for aggregative utilitarianism! https://t.co/GYBvijIsMd
“A society constituted by persons who love their private good above the common good, or who identify the common good with the private good, is a society not of free men, but of tyrants.” — @ccpecknold
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) April 25, 2020
Exactly. A host of mini-tyrants is still a tyranny. https://t.co/Vq3Zwe2hs6
Friday, April 24, 2020
L’Islam mis à nu par les siens: Anthologie d’auteurs arabophones post 2001, edited by Maurice Saliba
Riposte Laïque
CWR: Islam Up Close by William Kilpatrick
A new book containing essays by 46 former Muslims joins the ranks of recent works revealing Islam from the inside.
Maurice Saliba
Maurice Saliba : « Qu’ont fait les responsables musulmans pour voir émerger un jour un « islam des lumières ? » [Interview]
Critique de « l’islam mis à nu par les siens » dans « Nous sommes partout »
CWR: Islam Up Close by William Kilpatrick
A new book containing essays by 46 former Muslims joins the ranks of recent works revealing Islam from the inside.
Maurice Saliba
Maurice Saliba : « Qu’ont fait les responsables musulmans pour voir émerger un jour un « islam des lumières ? » [Interview]
Critique de « l’islam mis à nu par les siens » dans « Nous sommes partout »
Thursday, April 23, 2020
The 1955 Reform of Palm Sunday
NLM
First Mr. DiPippo begins with a claim about the 1955 Holy Week reform:
As the Church teaches, or the patriarchate of Rome?
This divorce communicates the Protestant idea that the Last Supper, and the rite which Christ instituted thereby, were merely a commemoration of the Sacrifice of the Cross, rather than the anticipation of the Sacrifice and its perpetuation in time, as the Church believes and teaches. I then explained how the post-Conciliar reform undid this change in some respects.
The rest is useful information, especially the comparison of the Roman rite with other rites with respect to Palm Sunday, and it is probably the case that the texts of the 1955 reform are deficient in comparison with what preceded them.
Renewed Attention to the CDK-Maritain Debate
First Things: False Notions of the Common Good by C. C. Pecknold
But what does an explicit ordination to God require? Not necessarily a version of the Catholic state as the integralists would advocate. Not necessarily the state at all.
Thus De Koninck’s most powerful claim is that human dignity can only be truly defended by embracing the primacy of the common good “expressly ordered to God.” Without an “explicit and public ordination” to God, our debates about the common will devolve into mere debates between tyrants, and “society degenerates into a state which is frozen and closed in upon itself.”
But what does an explicit ordination to God require? Not necessarily a version of the Catholic state as the integralists would advocate. Not necessarily the state at all.
What Checks Against Absolutism?
The integralist understanding of authority is anti-liberal, but it is also against modern state-absolutism and totalitarianism. This is true not only of contemporary integralists, but has been true throughout integralist history.
— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) April 22, 2020
The integralist understanding of authority is anti-liberal, but it is also against modern state-absolutism and totalitarianism. This is true not only of contemporary integralists, but has been true throughout integralist history.
Integralists can say that they are opposed to modern state-absolutism and totalitarianism, but what safeguards would they advocate? What forms of resistance by the Church and citizens (or subjects) are possible, and how are they to be reconciled with integralist claims regarding authority? Where is their development of "just resistance theory"? And to which Latin theory of the origin of authority do they subscribe?
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
James M. Patterson on Roman Catholic Integralism
After Republican Virtue
Too much reliance on Tocqueville for a description and explanation of republican virtues in early America in this essay? But typical of a certain kind of American conservative.
Or tldr?
Too much reliance on Tocqueville for a description and explanation of republican virtues in early America in this essay? But typical of a certain kind of American conservative.
Or tldr?
In the end, this is all integralism really is. It is an internet aesthetic of mostly young men alienated from the public life and consumed with the libido dominandi. In the absence of those institutions that had once made America a place of deep faith and committed to liberty, these young men have had recourse to the Internet and attach themselves to the sublime historical experience of sacramental kingship, Iberian Falangism, or straight-up fascism supported by the general ideas purveyed by Vermeule and the like. The only alternative is for the Church to train and appoint new bishops committed to participating in public life with their congregations and raising them up in the republican virtue that so defined American Catholicism.The author is wrong to identify some of friendship or social virtue as "republican virtue." Republican virtue will include friendship and the social virtues, but it is more than those two, and his example of parish life doesn't even come close to giving a full illustration of what republican virtue involves and requires. He is correct to criticze the Latin integralists but he is ignorant of his own precarious situation vis-a-vis the state.
Repeating a Latin Error
Which is based on ignoring the plain sense of scripture.
CWR Dispatch: Rediscovering baptism in plague time by George Weigel
As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.
(also published at First Things)
Being reborn by water is not the same as being reborn by the Holy Spirit - there are two distinct actions required, the latter being the laying on of hands by the Apostles (or their successors), which act was subsequently replaced by the anointing of oil (though some rites still have the laying upon of hands).
This is just a poor attempt at a theological justification for the continued separation of Baptism and Confirmation, made necessary by the Latin practice of reserving Confirmation to the bishop. Latins should be afraid to ask the question of what is the effect of their infant neophytes not receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit later in life, if ever. Thus there is a psycholigical need to pretend that the Holy Spirit is given at Baptism, even if this is not warranted by Apostolic practice or the Apostolic understanding of our participation in the Mystery of Christ.
CWR Dispatch: Rediscovering baptism in plague time by George Weigel
As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.
(also published at First Things)
As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.
Being born again by water and the Holy Spirit in baptism, we become far more than [fill in the name] of a certain family, address, and nationality. We become living cells in the Mystical Body of Christ: members of the New Israel, the beloved community of the New Covenant, destined for eternal life at the Throne of Grace where the saints celebrate what the Book of Revelation calls the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 19:7, 21:2). We become the people in whom humanity’s greatest hopes, incapable of fulfillment by our own devices, will be realized.
Being reborn by water is not the same as being reborn by the Holy Spirit - there are two distinct actions required, the latter being the laying on of hands by the Apostles (or their successors), which act was subsequently replaced by the anointing of oil (though some rites still have the laying upon of hands).
This is just a poor attempt at a theological justification for the continued separation of Baptism and Confirmation, made necessary by the Latin practice of reserving Confirmation to the bishop. Latins should be afraid to ask the question of what is the effect of their infant neophytes not receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit later in life, if ever. Thus there is a psycholigical need to pretend that the Holy Spirit is given at Baptism, even if this is not warranted by Apostolic practice or the Apostolic understanding of our participation in the Mystery of Christ.
2020 St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture at Villanova University
Mary Hirschfeld, PhD, an associate professor of economics and theology at Villanova, presents the Office for Mission and Ministry's annual St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture, titled St. Thomas’s Views on the Economy and Human Happiness.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
The Recipe for Medieval Blue Ink
Atlas Obscura: The Mystery of a Medieval Blue Ink Has Been Solved by Isaac Schultz
Turns out it was hiding in plain sight by the side of a Portuguese road.
Turns out it was hiding in plain sight by the side of a Portuguese road.
Integralism
Soft-back version of 'Integralism: a manual of political philosophy' now available for pre-order in the US, priced $31. https://t.co/pZ466ZSHfU
— Fr Thomas Crean OP (@crean_fr) April 13, 2020
Monday, April 20, 2020
English Translation of the Vermeule Interview in Le Grand Continent
MOJ: Common-Good Constitutionalism Interview (English Translation)
This is what happens when Catholic intellectuals don't critically examine their own starting premises. They need to be called out on it, even if it doesn't lead to their opening their minds, because the rhetoric isn't for their benefit but for the benefit of the uneducated who know they are not educated.
This is what happens when Catholic intellectuals don't critically examine their own starting premises. They need to be called out on it, even if it doesn't lead to their opening their minds, because the rhetoric isn't for their benefit but for the benefit of the uneducated who know they are not educated.
Paul Airiau , "Louis Bouyer, du centre à la marge?"
A chapter from Liturgie et société, edited by Bruno Dumons, Vincent Petit, Christian Sorrel
Sunday, April 19, 2020
An Interview with Adrian Vermeule
Le Grand Continent: Adrian Vermeule : « L’échelle géographique d’un programme de bien commun devra être celle de l’État administratif » (via MOJ)
Unfortunately it is available only for subscribers.
It is clear from the title though that he is a proponent of a centralized national government and a statist.
Unfortunately it is available only for subscribers.
It is clear from the title though that he is a proponent of a centralized national government and a statist.
Jesse Billett: An Anglican Liturgist Reflects on Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Reunion
His presentation reminded me of the sad events of Church history. In the past some Latin polemicists have faulted the heresy, or laxity, or even their rebelliousness with respect to Rome of Eastern Christians for their being conquered by Muslims. What if the chastisement was not for these reasons but for failures in charity, first in the relations between the Byzantine Christians and the non-Chalcedonian Christians (or Orthodox)? And later, there were failures in charity by those ruling the Eastern Roman, or "Byzantine," Empire and possibly even those holding authority in the Byzantine churches...
An Icon of the Divine Mercy
Silverstream Priory has it on this page -- I don't think is an icon belonging to the community as the photo has been used elsewhere.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Holy Pascha - The Resurrection of Christ
I thought the Byzantine liturgy in English was very well done in this video... one of the few times I didn't think it sounded strange to my American ears.
Here's another:
A Latin Papacy
Sandro Magister: Francis, the Pope Who Does Politics Firsthand. The Analysis of a Church Historian
Sandro Magister publishes an essay by Roberto Pertici, "Primacy of the Spiritual or Primacy of the Political?"
Pertici probably is correct with making such a distinction, but is Pope Francis really exercising his office in a way with which his Renaissance predecessors would disagree?
Sandro Magister publishes an essay by Roberto Pertici, "Primacy of the Spiritual or Primacy of the Political?"
Pertici probably is correct with making such a distinction, but is Pope Francis really exercising his office in a way with which his Renaissance predecessors would disagree?
Valeurs Actuelles Interview with Cardinal Sarah
Sandro Magister has the links: Celibacy, Amazon, Germany. Cardinal Sarah Returns To the Field
Friday, April 17, 2020
A Time to Strengthen One's Personal Prayer Life
“Make Thine House a Church” by Reader Andreas Moran
How Do We Live “The Church at Home”? by Fr Bassam Nassif
How Do We Live “The Church at Home”? by Fr Bassam Nassif
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Church Life Journal: Easter: We Walked Where There Was No Path by Hans Urs von Balthasar
The world’s ultimate destiny—as nature and as the history of mankind—is summed up both really and symbolically in the historical destiny of the man Jesus Christ. Ecce homo: behold man! Behold life destined for death! That is his destination; thither his destiny draws him, to a profound abyss of oblivion. And the shadow cast by this end covers everything with horror and chill, confusing all the threads of reason. But with the Resurrection from the dead, of whom the man Jesus Christ is the firstfruits, man comes forth from God, new, eternal. On the other side of death he begins his immortal life. And thanks to the death on the Cross on the part of the one man Jesus Christ, who was God’s Son, expiating sin and death’s doom on behalf of all, this eternal Resurrection life reflects a brilliant light onto the whole of our doomed existence. “Death, where is thy sting, where is thy victory?” Death is still there, and yet it has been superseded. The Cross is there but has turned into Easter. All the questions that guilty existence is bound to ask are still there, and yet “whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything”.
Part of the Latin Resistance?
Archbishop Viganò's original revelations and criticisms may be valid; I suppose from a Latin theological point of view regarding the papacy, this concern may be justified as well. But at this point does he really have much else to say that would not cause his reputation to be diminished?
The Remnant: Viganò on 2020 Pontifical Yearbook: Did Pope Francis abandon the title 'Vicar of Christ'? by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
The Remnant: Viganò on 2020 Pontifical Yearbook: Did Pope Francis abandon the title 'Vicar of Christ'? by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
James Ceaser Responds to Vermeule
Law and Liberty: Adrian Vermeule’s Sixteenth-Century Constitutionalism by James Ceaser
Ad Multos Annos!
CNA/CWR: Benedict XVI celebrates his 93rd birthday during coronavirus lockdown
Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI
Vatican Foundation Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Eastern Christian Books: Islamic Prophethood Understood Thomistically?
Eastern Christian Books: Islamic Prophethood Understood Thomistically?
UND Press: Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy by Anna Bonta Moreland
How can one ask whether someone is a prophet without first asking whether his message is true? How else is a prophet to be judged?
From the publisher's description:
How does she do this without embracing some form of religious relativism, with indifference as a possible consequence?
And what could a "theology of religious pluralism" possibly mean, except some claims about how non-Christian traditions can nonetheless contain some elements of truth in them? Christians are not followers of a "Book" or a people of a "Book" or of a "Tradition." Christians are those who have been incorporated into Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
UND Press: Muhammad Reconsidered: A Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy by Anna Bonta Moreland
How can one ask whether someone is a prophet without first asking whether his message is true? How else is a prophet to be judged?
From the publisher's description:
Anna Bonta Moreland calls for a retrieval of Thomistic thought on prophecy to view Muhammad within a Christian theology of revelation, without either appropriating the prophet as an unwitting Christian or reducing both Christianity and Islam to a common denominator. This historical recovery leads to a more sophisticated understanding of Islam, one that honors the integrity of the Catholic tradition and, through that integrity, argues for the possibility in principle of Muhammad as a religious prophet.
How does she do this without embracing some form of religious relativism, with indifference as a possible consequence?
Moreland sets the stage for this inquiry through an intertextual reading of the key Vatican II documents on Islam and on Christian revelation. She then uses Aquinas's treatment of prophecy to address the case of whether Muhammad is a prophet in Christian terms. The book examines the work of several Christian theologians, including W. Montgomery Watt, Hans Küng, Kenneth Cragg, David Kerr, and Jacques Jomier, O.P., and then draws upon the practice of analogical reasoning in the theology of religious pluralism to show that a term in one religion—in this case “prophecy”—can have purchase in another religious tradition. Muhammad Reconsidered not only is a constructive contribution to Catholic theology but also has enormous potential to help scholars reframe and comprehend Christian-Muslim relations.Using Vatican II document on Islam (Nostra Aetate) when any positive claims about Islam are by their very nature not infallible as they do not have anything to do with Divine Revelation is typical of a Latin mindset, whether the purpose is to uphold the Latin tradition or to deviate from it. What sort of "Christian-Muslim relations" are possible if Christians do not recognize the message of Muhammad as being an authentic divine revelation?
And what could a "theology of religious pluralism" possibly mean, except some claims about how non-Christian traditions can nonetheless contain some elements of truth in them? Christians are not followers of a "Book" or a people of a "Book" or of a "Tradition." Christians are those who have been incorporated into Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Eastern Christian Books: St Thomas Christians in India
Eastern Christian Books: St Thomas Christians in India
Augsburg Press: St. Thomas and India: Recent Research by K. S. Mathew, Joseph Chacko Chennattuserry, and Antony Bungalowparambil
Augsburg Press: St. Thomas and India: Recent Research by K. S. Mathew, Joseph Chacko Chennattuserry, and Antony Bungalowparambil
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Will He Retire Soon?
CWR Dispatch: ‘The culture wars are real,’ Cardinal Pell says in new interview
“There is a systematic attempt to remove the Judeo-Christian legal foundations [on for example] marriage, life, gender, sex.”
Sandro Magister: The Easter of Cardinal Pell. With Comments From Ruini and Müller
“There is a systematic attempt to remove the Judeo-Christian legal foundations [on for example] marriage, life, gender, sex.”
Sandro Magister: The Easter of Cardinal Pell. With Comments From Ruini and Müller
Latins Should Return to the Ancient Practice
NLM
That it was the universal custom and observed by all Apostolic Churches is sufficient reason for its restoration in the patriarchate of Rome. (The rationale, I believe, was the same as well.)
That there is great confusion about the very essence of the Mass and the meaning of the ministerial priesthood may be gleaned from newspaper articles that interview priests who are now at loose ends because they have no congregation to engage. Having been led to define priesthood as a relation with the people when it is a relation with Christ first and foremost, on behalf of the people, they search in vain, or at least with great difficulty, for an intrinsic and transcendent meaning to the offering of due worship to the Most Holy Trinity, such as animated centuries of so-called “private Masses,” which the Magisterium of the Church encouraged right through Benedict XVI (see my article “The Church encourages priests to say Masses, even without the faithful”).
Has any Latin progressive admitted the force of the psychologically or "subjective" or "phenomenological" arguments against versus populum? Or are they "pro-science" only when it agrees with their opinions?
If ever there was a reductio ad absurdum for the versus populum stance, this, the final outcome of the closed-circle mentality, would be it. If the church in which this priest is standing happened to have a tabernacle behind the altar, the inversion would be complete: a priest praying towards pieces of paper with faces, instead of praying towards the God who dwells with His people as their Head, their King, and their Shepherd, in Person—the Son of God whose bloody sacrifice on the Cross, sacramentally enacted upon the altar, is the reason Mass is said at all, for the profit of the living and the dead, wherever they may be.This objectification of the reserved Eucharistic species in the tabernacle, that was not the rationale of the early Church but it is the dominant within second millennium Latin liturgical piety.
Seeing this photo brought home to me once again the wisdom of the tradition in having the Epistle chanted eastwards and the Gospel chanted northwards: in this way the position of the reader is dictated by theological and symbolic ideas that lead to no weirdness when implemented in an empty church, unlike the scenario depicted above.
Latin customs. For the readings, should the focus be on the reader? The direction in which the reader is facing? What image will help a "viewer" attend to the readings? An image of Christ? Or an image of the specific aspect of the Mystery being remembered?
Related: Eastern Christian Books: Orthodox Liturgy Phenomenologically Understood
Fordham UP: Welcoming Finitude: Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy by Christina M. Gschwandtner
The Eastern Tradition of Married Priesthood, True Light Podcast Episode 10
An interview with Adam DeVille
Shifting Definitions of Masculinity with Respect to the Presbyterate
Written by a feminist so it may not be agenda-free, but it is unlikely that the historical facts are in error.
UPenn: The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300 by Jennifer D. Thibodeaux
(a review)
See also: Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Palgrave).
UPenn: The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300 by Jennifer D. Thibodeaux
(a review)
See also: Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Palgrave).
Thomas Behr, Social Justice and Subsidiarity
Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought
CWR Dispatch: Recovering the historical roots, true meaning of “social justice” by Gerald J. Russello
A review of Thomas Behr’s Social Justice and Subsidiarity, which explores the work of Luigi Taparelli, a Catholic thinker who advocated an approach to politics based in Thomistic natural law argument.
Related: Historian Explores Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought
CWR Dispatch: Recovering the historical roots, true meaning of “social justice” by Gerald J. Russello
A review of Thomas Behr’s Social Justice and Subsidiarity, which explores the work of Luigi Taparelli, a Catholic thinker who advocated an approach to politics based in Thomistic natural law argument.
The Catholic understanding of rights is different because it is based in a different understanding of the person. We do have rights from our nature as human beings, but Catholic thought sees rights as ordered to higher goods. Our entitlement to exercise our rights is bound not just by our historical circumstances and those of our particular society, but also by conscience and “the clarity and utility of a chosen action in relation to the pursuit of the highest good. … The more directly related it is to the highest good, the stronger the claim of right. That is why certain rights are ‘inalienable’ – they are ineluctable requirements of order, of the orientation of the intellect to truth, and of the striving of persons within society for the ultimate good.”In other words, we have rights in order to do something, not simply to exercise those rights in whatever way we subjectively may wish and desire.
Related: Historian Explores Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought
Monday, April 13, 2020
Deification of Man in Christianity
Deification of Man in Christianity by Marcelle Bartolo-Abela (his website?)
Apostolate of the Divine Heart (12 Mar 2014)
ISBN: 978-0615809465
Review in Catholic Medical Quarterly.
Available from Amazon.
Apostolate of the Divine Heart (12 Mar 2014)
ISBN: 978-0615809465
Review in Catholic Medical Quarterly.
Available from Amazon.
Written by a Latin
Rorate Caeli: The Realism of the Resurrection by Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla
But we must remember this: the purpose of his Real Presence in the Eucharist is not only for Holy Communion. We have forgotten that what Jesus did at the Last Supper and what he told his disciples to do—in “memory” of me (that word memory is too weak a word in English to convey what it deeply means)—is the same act as the Sacrifice of the Cross. Holy Thursday and Good Friday commemorate the same act—the saving act of God—in two different ways: one sacramental, one in time and space. It is the offering of the Son to the Father for the forgiveness of sins in the Mass that is the heart of the matter, which then allows us to approach the altar to receive his true Body and Blood. In the Traditional Roman Mass, the bell rings after the priest receives the Sacred Species, for this marks the completion of the Sacrifice. Then comes the invitation to the people to receive Holy Communion.It makes me ask whether an Oriental Orthodox or Assyrian Christian would write something like this?
A Response to COVID-19?
First Things: A Time for Cornerstones
Architecture responds to human needs and aspirations. Throughout history, times of plague and catastrophe have called for serious responses in the form of churches and sacred art.
The "iconoclasm" that passes itself for "noble simplicity" would probably recoil at such suggestions.
It is possible for there to be variety of artistic expression even within the same liturgical rite, but might it be said that the issue for the patriarchate of Rome is that there are few universally agreed upon standards for the use of iconography, art, and space for church design or modification? Moreoever, the norms of urban and suburban temples in mass population centers probably needs to be questioned as well.
Architecture responds to human needs and aspirations. Throughout history, times of plague and catastrophe have called for serious responses in the form of churches and sacred art.
The "iconoclasm" that passes itself for "noble simplicity" would probably recoil at such suggestions.
It is possible for there to be variety of artistic expression even within the same liturgical rite, but might it be said that the issue for the patriarchate of Rome is that there are few universally agreed upon standards for the use of iconography, art, and space for church design or modification? Moreoever, the norms of urban and suburban temples in mass population centers probably needs to be questioned as well.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Well... No.
CWR Dispatch: “They Killed Him”: Deicide and Holy Saturday by Dr. Leroy Huizenga
Why Holy Saturday started to hit me differently a few years ago
Penal substitutionary atonement is not true at all, and worst of the satisfaction explanations of atonement.
Forget the Theotokos, the beloved disciple, the remaining apostles who fled and were in hiding, St. Mary Magdalene, Pilate's wife, Joseph of Arimathea, the women of Jerusalem crying in the streets... and probably there were many others as well. The whole entire world at that point in time, afterwards, and before, stood guilty of deicide? That is a bit of an exaggeration which might comport with certain tendencies in Western Christianity to pile on shame and create unnecessary guilt, but it isn't healthy. Is there any collective guilt because all of humanity is guilty of the crucifixion of Christ? Maybe some were guilty of indifference, others of fear, and so on. But not everyone else is guilty of killing or murdering Christ.
Now, one can say that we caused Christ to die, but not as an efficient cause but as a sort of final cause, in so far as Christ died (and chose to die) for us and our salvation. That is true. But that is not the same as having agency in killing Him.
Who isn't guilty of the sin of pride or disordered love? Only our Lord and the Theotokos are probably exempt from that one, and maybe St. John the Forerunner. With those exceptions, all are guilty of some sin worthy of death as a consequence (or a penalty, if you prefer). But that sin isn't necessarily the murder of Christ.
Who is guilty of killing God? Strictly speaking, maybe no one, as (the Son of) God, as divine, cannot be killed. The communication of idioms in this instance may be a bit tricky. Did those guilty of killing Christ believe He was God? It seems noi. They may have been culpable in rejecting the gift of belief that Christ is God, or culpable in denying that He was the Messiah. Does that make their sin formally "deicide"? I don't think so, even if it could be argued that their sin was materially "deicide." Were they guilty of murdering a man innocent of any crimes against Roman law? Yes.
I don't see any awareness of non-Latin soteriology and theories of atonement in this essay, and I don't think anyone with such an awareness would have written something like this. This seems like the product of a Western Christian, and reveals what is problematic in certain strands of popular Western Christianity.
Why Holy Saturday started to hit me differently a few years ago
Many Christians in modernity, I think, have a conception of the crucifixion restricted to a legal version of penal substitutionary atonement: Our problem is guilt, for which God must punish us, but loving us and desiring to forgive us, God punishes Christ in our place.
True enough as far as it goes, but when compared to classical soteriologies, whether Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant, it doesn’t go very far.
Penal substitutionary atonement is not true at all, and worst of the satisfaction explanations of atonement.
The cross isn’t just a component in the economy of our salvation, something God needed to do to Christ to acquit us. The cross also reveals the hatred of the human race towards God. They killed him: God comes into the World in Jesus Christ, and Jew and Gentile conspire to cooperate in killing God for reasons of convenience.
The World stands guilty of deicide.
And so on Holy Saturday I feel generally sick to my stomach. The one man who could have helped us, we hammered him to a cross. And that means two things: Deep down, I’m capable of murder and I’m liable to being murdered. We mustn’t deceive ourselves about our capacity for sin, and that of others.
Most people have a theologia gloriae, a theology of glory in which we bypass the cross as we affirm ourselves and affirm God for affirming us in a circle of moral therapeutic deist bilge. True theology, as Luther so rightly and so often stressed, is a theologia crucis, a theology of the cross in which God’s murderers are saved by God through the very instrument of His murder. Our salvation cannot consist in self-improvement; our salvation consists in our own crucifixion.
Forget the Theotokos, the beloved disciple, the remaining apostles who fled and were in hiding, St. Mary Magdalene, Pilate's wife, Joseph of Arimathea, the women of Jerusalem crying in the streets... and probably there were many others as well. The whole entire world at that point in time, afterwards, and before, stood guilty of deicide? That is a bit of an exaggeration which might comport with certain tendencies in Western Christianity to pile on shame and create unnecessary guilt, but it isn't healthy. Is there any collective guilt because all of humanity is guilty of the crucifixion of Christ? Maybe some were guilty of indifference, others of fear, and so on. But not everyone else is guilty of killing or murdering Christ.
Now, one can say that we caused Christ to die, but not as an efficient cause but as a sort of final cause, in so far as Christ died (and chose to die) for us and our salvation. That is true. But that is not the same as having agency in killing Him.
Who isn't guilty of the sin of pride or disordered love? Only our Lord and the Theotokos are probably exempt from that one, and maybe St. John the Forerunner. With those exceptions, all are guilty of some sin worthy of death as a consequence (or a penalty, if you prefer). But that sin isn't necessarily the murder of Christ.
Who is guilty of killing God? Strictly speaking, maybe no one, as (the Son of) God, as divine, cannot be killed. The communication of idioms in this instance may be a bit tricky. Did those guilty of killing Christ believe He was God? It seems noi. They may have been culpable in rejecting the gift of belief that Christ is God, or culpable in denying that He was the Messiah. Does that make their sin formally "deicide"? I don't think so, even if it could be argued that their sin was materially "deicide." Were they guilty of murdering a man innocent of any crimes against Roman law? Yes.
I don't see any awareness of non-Latin soteriology and theories of atonement in this essay, and I don't think anyone with such an awareness would have written something like this. This seems like the product of a Western Christian, and reveals what is problematic in certain strands of popular Western Christianity.
A Long Essay for Holy Saturday
CWR: This Holy Saturday: Social Distancing, Solitude, Healing by Brad Bursa, Ph.D.
Msgr. Luigi Giussani claims that “the only condition for being truly and faithfully religious…is to live always the real intensely.”i This line stays with me in these solitary days, when “the real” has become surreal. [...]
The author uses "death as isolation" as the first explanatory key, basing it on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.
The second explanatory principle is the definition of Person within the Trinity as "relation":
Would Byzantine Christians have any difficulty with using the Divine relations to enhance theological anthropology? I don't know.
Msgr. Luigi Giussani claims that “the only condition for being truly and faithfully religious…is to live always the real intensely.”i This line stays with me in these solitary days, when “the real” has become surreal. [...]
The author uses "death as isolation" as the first explanatory key, basing it on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.
Following the Judeo-Christian tradition, Ratzinger does not view death in a one-sided manner, as if it were only an experience of bodily corruption that marks the end of one’s physical life. Instead, “death is present as the nothingness of an empty existence which ends up in a mere semblance of living.”v Ratzinger says, “Death is absolute loneliness…the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is — hell.”
The second explanatory principle is the definition of Person within the Trinity as "relation":
In God, in the Trinity, person is pure relativity, of being turned toward the other. The concept of person does not refer to substance, but to relationality. God’s substance is one, and person, as the “pure relativity of being turned toward the other” does not lie on the level of substance, but on the “level of dialogical reality.” Thus, Ratzinger concludes that relation is recognized as a third fundamental category “between substance and accident.”xvii Therefore, in and through Christian faith, theology manifests “the Christian newness of the personalistic idea in all its sharpness and clarity,” for “it was faith that gave birth to this idea of pure act, of pure relativity…it was faith that thereby brought the personal phenomenon into view.”xviii
Ratzinger argues that the early developments in Trinitarian understanding offer profound insight in the area of anthropology as well. For the human being to be made in God’s “image and likeness,” must, in some way mean that the human being is a personal being. In other words, the human being is “not a substance that closes itself in itself, but the phenomenon of complete relativity, which is, of course, realized in its entirety only in the one who is God, but which indicates the direction of all personal being.”xix The human being exists as a personal being, precisely because the human being is a spiritual being. God takes the basic material of earth and forms the human being, but human being only enters into existence after God breathes into the formed earth the breath of life. Now, “the divine reality enters in,” for “in the human being heaven and earth touch one another….the human being is directly related to God.”xx Based upon what has been developed in the area of Trinitarian theology, to be in God’s image, according to Ratzinger, “implies relationality,” setting “the human being in motion toward the totally Other”….“it means the capacity for relationship…the human capacity for God.”xxi To be in God’s image means to be personal, it means the human being has the capacity for a personal relationship with God and to exist as a personal being, as a social being, in relation to others human beings.Is sociability a participation in the Divine? Can we say that primates participate in the Divine? Yes, but it may be foreign to some of us. All of His creation participates in God in its own way.
Would Byzantine Christians have any difficulty with using the Divine relations to enhance theological anthropology? I don't know.
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