Fr. Joshua Lallor on St. Maximos

St. Anastasia the Patrician

More on the Novel Consecration to St. Joseph

171: The Straight Goods On Fasting—Father Hezekias Carnazzo

Joseph Ratzinger on Fasting from the Eucharist

Ambrosian Chants for Lent

Some Ambrosian Chants For Lent by Gregory DiPippo

Archbishop Borys on the Coronavirus Pandemic

Archbishop Borys Gudziak about the coronavirus pandemic.





Related:

Braga Missal of 1924

Complete Braga Missal of 1924 Now Online

Eternal Memory!

OCA: Remembering Protopresbyter Thomas Hopko





(via Byz, TX)

Part 2 of an Interview with Georgios Theodoridis

Fr. Lawrence Farley on Universalism

Tchaikovsky's Divine Liturgy

St. Ephraim the Syrian and St. Basil the Great

Christ Pantocrator

Iconoclasm

More on St. Gregory Palamas

A Reflection on the Current Pandemic by C. C. Pecknold

First Things: Creation, Fall, and Coronavirus by C. C. Pecknold

Related:

Written by a Latin

"It is a time for them to challenge themselves and us, their priests and flocks, as to whether the Tabernacle changes who and how we are as human beings. Do we miss Our Lord? Do we long for Him?"

Objectification of the Eucharist.



NLM

Remember that charge against Joseph Ratzinger about denying the Real Presence? Papal Heresies.

Lord Have Mercy

Fr. Thomas Hopko on the Greatest Challenge for Orthodoxy

(via Byz TX)

COVID-19 Adjustments Elsewhere

CNA/CWR: Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Ukraine consider how to distribute Communion

St. Gregory Palamas on Theosis

St. Gregory Deification (Theosis)

We Are Partakers of the Divine: Sermon on the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas
The goal of the striving of fasting, the striving of all our struggles – of repentance, prayer, and our entreaties – is to aspire toward the unveiling in us of the image of God inscribed in our nature and essence by the hand of God the Creator Himself. It becomes easier to breathe, life becomes better, and we become purer when we see where we are going, why we are going, and what we should ask God for.
Archpriest Vsevolod Shpiller (+1984)

The Teaching of St Gregory Palamas: Theosis is Possible Through the Uncreated Energies Of God

St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers by Fr. George Florovsky

An Exaggeration?

The Byzantine emphasis on monasteries is historical. But is it warranted? Prayer is important for all Christians, that is true at least.

I have seen critiques of "gerondism" here and there but I don't know if the critiques are correct.

Don’t Look for New Ideals. The Monastic Life Has Always Been an Example for the Laity

Related:
“Let’s be Christians Twenty-Four Hours a Day”: A Conversation with an Athonite Ascetic by Hieroschemamonk Ștefan Nuțescu

God Is Not Nice

Authenticity

What Is Going on at Bose?

Sandro Magister: Mystery in Bose. Pope’s Inspectors at the Monastery of Br. Enzo Bianchi

What Is an Icon?

Some Latin Traditionalists Would Probably Oppose This Too

"If there is a pastoral need for this, we can have prayers said after Mass by the people."



NLM

What Is Baptism without Chrismation?

The unanswered question Western Christians should be asking.

What Is Baptism? by Peter J. Leithart

Shaun Blanchard on "Jansenism"

Church Life: From Jansenism to Humanae Vitae: The Long History of Catholic Dissent by Shaun Blanchard

The Acta of Vatican II

NLM

What Is Matter?

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son

American Eastern Catholic Bishops

"The Synodal Way"

CWR Dispatch: New President of the German Bishops’ Conference speaks about the “German” Church by Martin Lohmann
Bishop Georg Bätzing makes no secret of his enthusiasm for the so-called Synodal Way. He mentions it repeatedly. Again and again.

"although the day before the Bishops’ Conference met the rumor could be heard that he was the clear favorite, especially of the bishops from Southern Germany."

The churches in Southern Germany must be in worse shape than I thought.

Related:
CNA/CWR: Women deacons possible after ‘Synodal Way,’ says German bishops’ chairman

Eastern Christian Books: Deification Through the Cross

Eastern Christian Books: Deification Through the Cross

Eerdmans: Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation by Khaled Anatolios

Anatolios uses the phrase “doxological contrition” to suggest that the truth of salvation is found both in Jesus’s perfect glorification of God and in his representative repentance for humanity’s sinful rejection of its original calling to participate in the life of the Holy Trinity.

I personally don't see the need to combine Byzantine and Latin views of soteriology in this way but apparently Anatolios does.

50+ Years of the Pauline Reform

Translation of the liturgy into the vernacular, etc. and we still have devotions like this that are gaining to popularity, which have replaced a proper understanding of our adoption by the Father as sons in Christ. The Holy Family has supplanted the Trinity.

CNA/CWR: Why a new consecration to St. Joseph is spreading like wildfire

CHE COSA E' L'UOMO? UN ITINERARIO DI ANTROPOLOGIA BIBLICA

Sandro Magister: The Most Beautiful Document of This Pontificate. Which Almost Nobody Has Read

LEV

A Confusion Regarding the Christian Priesthood

What Catholic clergy and laity have in common: a Gospel mission

There are also important distinctions in the priesthood of all baptized Christians and those who are priests and bishops by virtue of sacramental ordination. The hierarchical priesthood is not simply “more of the same priesthood that the baptized have,” he added. “It’s not a super priesthood somehow completing, displacing or superseding the common priesthood.”

At the same time, there is a “priesthood which marks the whole Church as a priestly people.” This does not imply “that there is an ‘inner Church’ of ‘super Christians’ and that that is the hierarchy,” because that falls into the error of clericalism.

“if baptism confers a priesthood, it means it confers a participation in the sacrifice of Christ which, made present in the Eucharist, makes the Church,” Cavadini said.

“The exercise of this priesthood, then is ordered towards communion, and evangelization, if it is truly an exercise of the baptismal priesthood, is intended to bring people to the encounter with the Risen Lord, which is the incorporation into the eucharistic body, through configuration to Christ’s sacrifice.”

McGrath Center

What would Latins know about synodality at this point?

CNA/CWR: Pope Francis announces a 2022 synod on synodality

Related: Eastern Christian Books: Shaun Blanchard on Jansenism, Pistoia, and Catholic Historiography

Georgios Theodoridis

Agrapha

A Divine Gift

Latins still confusing the Patriarchate of Rome for the Church Universal.

Rorate Caeli: Announcing Tradivox: An International Catechism Restoration Project

Nikolaos Loudoviko: 'What is Ecclesial Unity?'

A Latin Group Issues a Latin Document with a Latin Conclusion Produced from Latin Premises

CNA/CWR: Theologians say there is ‘doubt’ of sacramentality in marriages between ‘baptized non-believers’

"Re Against Zen"

Sandro Magister: Re Against Zen. Divided By a Wall of China

A Patriarchate for Capartho-Rusyns?

Sandro Magister: The Unreal Dream of a “Church of the Ruthenians.” A Clarifying Letter

Real Presence? Or Transubstantiation?

At the L.A. Religious Congress...

More Videos of Bishop Georg Bätzing

Opening the Remaining Archives of Pius XII

CWR: History Redeemed: Justice for Pope Pius XII by William Doino, Jr.
The March 2nd opening of the last remaining archives from Pius XII’s pontificate will likely reinforce what historians already know about the war-time pontiff’s actions on behalf of endangered Jews.

Time to Move the Chairs on the Deck Again

"Younger." Sure.

CNA/CWR: German bishops’ elect new conference chairman





Erstes Pressestatement von Bischof Bätzing nach seiner Wahl zum Vorsitzenden der DBK
Der neue Vorsitzende der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz Bischof Georg Bätzing zu seiner Wahl

Monastère Saint-Benoît

website

via Fr. Z

A Product of Western "Semi-Arianism"?

For contemporary monothelites, by contrast, Jesus’s humanity is firmly in the driver’s seat. To the extent that we may say that Jesus is divine, this is at best a secondary claim, derived from the historical Jesus, the product of a scientific quest.

First Things: Jesus: Less Than Divine by Hans Boersma

Showing of New Men at SVOTS

Matt Fradd: Byzantine Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, & The Schism | Pints With Aquinas Ep.194

Disciplina Arcani

The Sound of Hagia Sophia

NPR: Listen: The Sound Of The Hagia Sophia, More Than 500 Years Ago

Changes in Personnel for the Congregation for the Oriental Churches

Magister: From the East Not Light But Darkness. Strange Shufflings in the Roman Curia

And in fact, rather than a promotion, the new role given to Vasil is a downgrade. His ambition was to return home as the major archbishop of an unprecedented and transnational Church of the Ruthenians, with its metropolitan see in Presov, which would bring together Slovaks, Croats and Hungarians of the Greek-Catholic rite, plus the  the annexation of a Ukrainian diocese, that of Mukachevo, also populated by Ruthenians, for a total of about 200 thousand faithful.

Of course, this project was hardly pleasing to the Greek Catholic Church of Ukraine. It was counting instead on the promotion to Rome, as the new secretary of the congregation, of one of its bishops, Teodor Martynyuk, auxiliary of the Greek Catholic diocese of Ternopil.

But neither aim has hit the mark. Instead of the Ukrainian Martynyuk - or at least another easterner - a Latinizing Italian has been made secretary. While Vasil is for now only temporary administrator of a diocese subordinate to Presov, that of Kosice, whose bishop, Milan Chautur, is still in office, albeit under investigation by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith for allegations of sexual harassment against a minor.

Debating Theological Explanations for the Real Presence

First Things: The Theology of Transubstantiation
From First Thoughts
Brett Salkeld and Mark discuss Reformation-era debates over the Real Presence and what Catholics and Protestants believe about the Eucharist. Continue Reading »

Eastern Christian Books: Jansenism and Other Bogeymen

Eastern Christian Books: Jansenism and Other Bogeymen

OUP: The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II: Jansenism and the Struggle for Catholic Reform

Interview with Fr. Chad Hatfield

The Presentation of Our Lord and Savior in the Tmple

"Offer"

Un'altra libertà

Un'altra libertà by Camillo Ruini, Gaetano Quagliariello
Contro i nuovi profeti del paradiso in terra

Magister: Praise of Freedom, the Real Kind. Dialogue Between a Cardinal and a Lay Thinker

Il cardinal Ruini contro il multiculturalismo: "Non è valore in sé"

In the Foosteps of Marx

CNA/CWR: Secretary of German bishops' conference steps down

Fr. Hans Langendörfer, SJ, has held the position since 1996.
Langendörfer made the announcement Feb. 26, through the official media outlet of the Church in Germany. He said that he is stepping down to make way for someone younger.
“I have come to the conclusion that it is now a good time to hand this position over to younger hands,” he said Feb. 25. Langendörfer is 68.

Martin Earle

"Keeping Eastern Catholic Traditions"

(via Byz, TX: Eastern Catholics make ad limina apostolorum visits to Rome)

The Open Question of Church Polity and Governance: Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II

Erich Fromm

CWR Dispatch: Lent, fear of freedom, and love of slavery
This year, during Lent, I am going to focus on this question: “In which areas am I unfree, and why do I prefer this slavery to freedom?”

Eastern Christian Books: Ivan Illich and Erich Fromm on the Corrupt Church

John Behr: Becoming Human in Light of the Gospel of John

Tom Hibbs on Catholic Liberal Education

Warrior Saints in Iconography

Fr. Luigi Giussani

50 Years of OCA Autocephaly

A Lacuna in the Gospel of St. John

The Epistle to the Hebrews

Reform of the Roman Code of Canon Law

CNA/CWR: Pope Francis: Canon law revision project is concluding

Romanus Cessario, OP: Accompaniment and Moral Development

The End of Education

Church Life: Education Should Aim at God, Not the Job Market by Daniel Drain

The Latin Churches in Germany

Magister: Francis and the Schism of Germany. History of a Nightmare

The Selection of Bishops

Fr. Hunwicke: An oligarchy of mediocrities?

Andrew Hofer, OP: St. Thomas Aquinas on Divinisation

Anthony Andres: Dialectic as a Way to the Principles

TAC: Dialectic as a Way to the Principles by Dr. Anthony Andres

Advertising New Wine New Wineskins

Church Life: How to Do Moral Theology Today by Alessandro Rovati

But what future for Roman Catholic academia in the United States? And for academics living in the ivory tower?

More on Offering and Sacrifice

CWR: Priest diagnosed with brain tumor offers his sufferings for abuse victims by Bree A. Dail

Last week, Father John Hollowell announced to readers of his blog and followers on Twitter that he has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and that he will be offering his sufferings for the victims of the Catholic Church sex abuse crisis.

 ...

CWR: When you announced your diagnosis, you said that after the revelation of clerical sex abuse scandals in the summer of 2018, you asked God to let you share in the sufferings of the victims. This self-offering is not one that is taken lightly—were you afraid of what God would send as a cross?
Father Hollowell: That day I did it, yes. I was in the rectory saying Morning Prayer. It was clear, this calling. There was a part of me that—looking back on it now makes me smile—even then a part of me knew I was in trouble…in a good way. It’s not something to enter into lightly. I guess everything that I have read, and come to know—all the theological studies I was able to take in the seminary, reading St. John of the Cross and being really formed by him, and Mother Teresa’s autobiography—all of these seem to have gotten me to this point, being totally comfortable making that prayer. I said, “Lord, if there is something I can suffer to bring healing to the Church, I would do that willingly with great joy.”

Byzantine Music

OAJ

Latin Notions of Sacrifice

Holy Mass: You Cannot Do Anything to Glorify God More by Peter Kwasniewski

Jesus Christ delivered us from the abyss of sin and death by the mysteries of His life and, above all, by His death on the Cross, when He offered Himself to the Father as an infinitely pleasing sacrifice of love.

Faith and Reason

TAC: Call for Papers: College to Host
First-Ever Thomistic Summer Conference

Joshua Hochschild: True Friendship: Insights from the Classical and Christian Traditions

Pope Francis on Tradition

The pope who is "not a theologian" and apparently it shows.

CWR: The Idea of Tradition in Querida Amazonia by Eduardo Echeverria

Pope Francis leaves unspoken the relation of Tradition to the normative Scriptures, the Sacraments and Liturgy, creeds and confessions, councils, the theological exposition of the Church’s dogmas and doctrine, and the magisterium of the Church.

A Part of Latin Spirituality

Is it found in any of the other ecclesial traditions?

1P5: On Offering It Up

Eastern Christian Books: Russian Thought on Deification

Eastern Christian Books: Russian Thought on Deification

OUP

David Bentley Hart Responds to Michael Pakaluk

First Things: A Pakaluk of Lies by David Bentley Hart

(see also Eclectic Orthodoxy: St Basil and the Hoi Poloi: Side Note on the Hart–Pakaluk Quarrel)

Ed Peters Responds to Adam DeVille

Ignoring law is not remedied by ignoring it even more

The crux:

According to canon law, the Roman Pontiff (nb: a human being) “possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.” 1983 CIC 331. Surely some indication from DeVille that he is aware of this law, and of the doctrinal values behind it, is owed lest he seem to imply that, in establishing Peter as the one Rock, Our Lord invited disaster upon his Church.

Further according to canon law, the College of Bishops (nb: a small group of people) “is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church.” 1983 CIC 336. Again, no indication is given that DeVille sees how Our Lord’s vesting supreme and full power in this tiny group of believers passes muster under DeVille’s supposedly foundational maxim.

But these claims that I have underlined are theological or ecclesial, particular to the patriarchate of Rome, and not "canonical" and certainly not reflecting the canons of the Church Universal.

But the solution to unenforced canon and civil law is not the further and complete ignoring of those laws and the fashioning of new, institutionally unsound procedures resting on fantastical histories and flimsy logic. The solution is the enforcement of laws by Church and State officials and the visitation of harsh penalties on the perpetrators of wicked crimes.

New laws may be necessary. Is the logic flimsy? I don't think so -- more likely than not, they are logically sound with respect to DeVille's ecclesiological principles. One can debate whether those principles are sanctioned by Tradition, but the ecclesiological principles as held by the patriarchate of Rome may be dear to Rome but they are not universally accepted.

Eastern Christian Books: Divine Guidance

Eastern Christian Books: Divine Guidance

OUP: Divine Guidance: Lessons for Today from the World of Early Christianity

Sacred Liturgy Conference

Magister Returns From Hiatus

Sandro Magister: Francis’s Silence, Ratzinger's Tears, and That Never-Published Statement of His

It Would Be in Opposition to Scripture

but I am curious if there is a theological argument to be made that a baptism that is not immediately completed by chrismation is not a complete baptism and therefore not valid. It is unlikely that this is the justification used by some Chalcedonian Orthodox to rebaptize Latins who decide to become Orthodox, but could they make such an argument? (I say it would be in opposition to Scripture because the New Testament records that many were baptized and received the gift of the Holy Spirit only later through the laying on of hands by the Apostles but they did not have to repeat Baptism.


Perhaps it is just incomplete, then, even if the consequences of this cannot be immediately elucidated.

An Interesting Reference

Here:

There is no evidence for the alleged apostolic obligation of perpetual continence until the third century, and that is contradicted by contemporary patristic evidence, e.g., Clement of Alexandria.

Furthermore, as Vogels notes, ‘… present-day canon law teaching has to regard the fourth century law as void, since the Codex Iuris Canonici regards “the conjugal act which by itself is apt to produce offspring” (conjugalis actus per se aptus ad prolis generationem), as belonging to the enduring “essence of marriage” (ad quem natura sua ordinatur matrimonium), which is guaranteed by “divine law” and i co sewuence, cannot be removed by tbe ecclesiastical lawgiver (canons 1061 s 1; 1057 s 2; 1059 CIC/1983)’ Vogels, Celibacy – Gift or Law?, Kansas City, 1993, p. 42.