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 Death is still there, and yet it has been superseded.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”.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Church Life Journal: Easter: We Walked Where There Was No Path by Hans Urs von Balthasar
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
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