Blueprint by Robert Plomin

The MIT Press

Nature’s Egg and Seed Plan by James Thompson
ggose: generalist genes of small effect

The Proper of Time in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms

Sacrifice?

OrthoChristian: JEWISH EVANGELISM: THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL AS PREPARATORY, NOT FINAL by Fr. Lawrence Farley

This difference is difficult to exaggerate. The religion described in the Hebrew Bible took it for granted that God’s presence, forgiveness, and blessing were accessed through the offering of sacrifice, at first on the altar which was part of the portable shrine carried by the Levites, and then at the immovable Temple built in Jerusalem.

Not Sola Scriptura

Pravmir: Why Do Orthodox Christians Need Holy Fathers? Isn't the Bible Enough?

The Public Face of the NuChurch

another vid

LifeSite: Fr. James Martin: Pope appoints ‘gay-friendly’ bishops, cardinals to change Church on LGBT

More Polemics?

THE IRON STANCE OF ST. JOB OF POCHAEV by Stanislav Minakov

But St. Job of Pochaev, the abbot of the Pochaev Lavra, stood unwavering in the faith, and with iron steadfastness struggled against the Uniates who had left Orthodoxy for the protection of the Roman pope. St. Job was strong in spirit and faith, and it is not in vain that such multitudes of people from all over the world come today to his holy relics, which lie in a reliquary near the cave where he prayed on the Pochaev hill.

And as for the Uniates (Greek Catholics), it’s the same now as it was four hundred or so years ago—don’t trust them any further than you can throw them.[1] As if it were not not enough that they raided and seized the churches and parishes of our canonical Church, which after the far-reaching Bishops’ Council in Kharkov of 1992 began to be called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, but in an unprecedented act, the first in history, under Ukrainian president Yushchenko, they built their cathedral church on the left bank of the Dniepr, in Darnitsa. During the “Euro-Maidan” revolution they actively carried out their “prayer protest” in the Maidan square, to the point that certain Uniate “priests” called for the murder of “Moskals” [anyone associated with Moscow, i.e., Russians], Communists, and others. Apparently the Greek Catholics took part in a neo-Nazi, neo-Banderite [followers of Stepan Bandera] coupe in Ukraine as if the whole country belonged to them, allowing them to sharply increase their expansion into Eastern Ukraine, to the canonical territory of Orthodoxy, where they had previously been only during the German fascist occupation.

More on Liberalism and Integralism

Semiduplex: The Legends of Liberalism

What would Malachi Martin say?

Sandro Magister: From Martini To Bergoglio. Toward a Vatican Council III

Stuff for St. Martin of Tours

What Are the Consequences of This Bad Latin Pastoral Practice?

Namely, delaying Confirmation until after First Communion...

What are the consequences of administering Confirmation to non-adults after they have already received "First Eucharist" years earlier and have been receiving Eucharist regularly up to the point of receiving Confirmation? There were bishops who were aware of this problem and raised the alarm in the 19th ce according to Maxwell Johnson, but it seems little has been done to address this problem.

First, it does seem incongruous for Christians who have not completed Christian initiation to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit if they have already been receiving the Holy Spirit through the Eucharist (assuming that it is correct to characterize one of the effects of the sacrament thusly). Moreover, that also assumes that it is possible for those who have not received Confirmation to nonetheless derive the full benefit from receiving from the Eucharist. But is there any evidence that God "compensates" for what is lacking in the Catholic Christian who has not been fully initiated, so that the Eucharist is fully efficacious for the Christian? Or is the reception of Eucharist for a Catholic Christian who has not been fully-initiated fruitless, as it would be for someone in the state of mortal sin or a non-believer? Is it the case that the Church does not actually have the authority to admit a Christian who has not been fully initiated to (the reception of) the Eucharist? That is to say, that not only is it sacramentally not possible for someone not fully initiated to receive the Eucharist, but there is actually a Divine Law that only one who has been fully initiated cannot receive the Eucharist? Or is this merely a Ecclesial Law (of Apostolic origin)? Or if a Divine Law, is it possible for it to be mitigated or abrogated by the (actions of the) Church? Does God Himself dispense from the necessity of the first two sacraments of initiation to make the reception of the Eucharist fruitful? (If He does, has he revealed this to the Church?)

Let's bring up another concrete example from Latin pastoral practice: Would a dying non-Christian be allowed to receive the Eucharist by a Latin priest before being baptized? I don't think so; if there is only sufficient time for one sacrament, I would think that the preference would be given to Baptism rather than the Eucharist. Couldn't the dying non-Christian just be given the Eucharist if it simply conveys the same grace (e.g. life in Christ) of Baptism? (That they convey the same grace but in different modalities or instantiations or moments of salvation history is is an assumption with which Latin theologians would disagree.) It would seem from Latin pastoral practice that no, a dying non-Christian would not receive the Eucharist unless he had been first baptized. If that is the case, then why should Confirmation be skipped over, except because of Latin custom? The question is whether this is legitimte or not.

What sort of Latin view?

CWR: The Conversion of the Papacy and the Present Church Crisis by Dr. Douglas Farrow
The reform we need is in the direction of simplicity, transparency, and integrity – what many thought we were getting in Francis, before discovering otherwise – and whatever does not serve directly the task of the successor of Peter should be marginalized or eliminated.

The author lists seven features of the current crisis, including:

seventh, a deliberate plan to use the papacy to dissolve what is left of the centralized, authoritarian Tridentine Church and to overcome the synthesis of Vatican I and II that was attempted, with limited success, by the previous four popes – that is, to generate a decentralized, morally and doctrinally flexible, post-modern Church that is open both to Protestant and to pagan elements, with a vast and welcoming Courtyard of the Gentiles.

The author also responds to Roberto de Mattei. Farrow's view of the papacy appears to be more balanced than De Mattei's (or that of many ultramontanists and Tridentine Roman Catholics) but he nevertheless accepts the definitions of the Council of Florence as dogma, and the status of the Council of Florence as an ecumenical council.

Exactly

Chastek on Feser's defense of retribution

John Allen on Fr. Taft

Church’s leading scholar on the East was, from beginning to end, his own man by John L. Allen Jr.

Center for Ethics and Culture 2018 Fall Conference Closing Colloquy: "Higher Powers: Catholicism and the American Project"

(via MoJ)

Related:
Gelasian Dyarchy at Notre Dame by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

Who Among the USCCB Will Heed This?

First Things: TO THE BISHOPS, BEFORE THEIR GENERAL ASSEMBLY by Jayd Henricks

CNA: Pope and Assyrian Patriarch: Blood of Middle East martyrs is ‘seed Christian unity’

Agni Parthene

Holy Nektarios of Aegina, pray for us!

Adam DeVille Reviews Ecumenism of Blood

CWR Dispatch: Ecumenism of Blood skillfully addresses questions about martyrs-saints, Western-Eastern relations by Dr. Adam A. J. DeVille
Hugh Somerville Knapman, OP, takes on complicated ecumenical issues, while also tracing Catholic understandings of martyrdom, canonization, and Christology.

Church Life: Benedict XVI Beyond the Liturgy Wars by Carolyn Pirtle

For Ratzinger, this process of “rediscovering ourselves” necessitates a setting aside the battles of the current liturgy wars surrounding liturgical music and the discussions it has generated—scholarly and otherwise. Doing so will facilitate a return to “the original source” in exploring connection between faith and music, as well as the role of music in worship: the Bible. In turning to the Psalms in particular, Ratzinger establishes a theology of liturgical music in one verse: “Sing hymns of praise” (Ps 47:8). True to his roots as a theologian who takes the biblical narrative seriously, Ratzinger engages this text in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in order to arrive at a richer translation. Suffice it to say that singing hymns of praise well entails more than making pleasant-sounding music.

For the psalmist, offering sung praise to God entails singing with an understanding that surpasses mere rationality and transcends into the realm of sapientia, or wisdom, which “denotes an integration of the entire person who not only understands and is understandable from the perspective of pure thought, but with all the dimensions of his or her existence” (Ibid., 98). Ratzinger goes on to say that “there is an affinity between wisdom and music, since in it such an integration of humanness occurs and the entire person becomes a being in accordance with logos [with “reason”]” (Ibid.). It is in singing that the senses and the spirit are integrated into one being, and in singing to God that the being is incorporated into logos.

Christianity takes this understanding one step farther by understanding the Psalms not merely as hymns written by King David, but as hymns that “had risen from the heart of the real David, Christ” (Ibid., 97). Thus, singing “hymns of praise” not only harmonizes the senses with the spirit, but when Christians understand those hymns as having their source in Christ, they are also drawn out of themselves into harmony with the Logos, the Word-made-flesh, as they offer sung praise in and through Christ himself. With this mindset, “Christ himself becomes the choir director who teaches us the new song and gives the Church the tone and way in which she can praise God appropriately and blend into the heavenly liturgy” (Ibid.). In order to offer fitting praise, one must conform one’s song to that of Christ, “who did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped; rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:6–7).

Metropolitan Seraphim of Glastonbury: Pharaisaical Legalism alive and well in contemporary Orthodoxy

(via Byz Tx)