We said this would happen. They said it wouldn't. And here we are. Fortnight for Freedom got here just in time.
‘Get in line’ or ‘resign’ Admiral tells military chaplain | LifeSiteNews.com
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
A Journey Home
This is my last post for the Patheos Atheist Portal
For several years, a lot of my friends have been telling me I had an inconsistent and unsustainable philosophy. ”A virtue ethicist atheist whose transhumanism seems to be rooted in dualism? Who won’t shut up about moral lapses as wounds to the soul and keeps trying to convince us it’s better to be sinned against than sinning? Who has started talking about mortifying her pride and keeps pulling out Lewis and Chesterton quotes? C’mon, convert already.”
I could see where they were coming from, but I stayed put. I was ready to admit that there were parts of Christianity and Catholicism that seemed like a pretty good match for the bits of my moral system that I was most sure of, while meanwhile my own philosophy was pretty kludged together and not particularly satisfactory. But I couldn’t pick consistency over my construction project as long as I didn’t believe it was true.
While I kept working, I tried to keep my eyes open for ways I could test which world I was in, but a lot of the evidence for Christianity was only compelling to me if I at least presupposed Deism.
Meanwhile, on the other side, I kept running into moral philosophers who seemed really helpful, until I discovered that their study of virtue ethics has led them to take a tumble into the Tiber. (I’m looking at you, MacIntyre!).
Then, the night before Palm Sunday (I have excellent liturgical timing), I was up at my alma mater for an alumni debate. I had another round of translating a lot of principles out of Catholic in order to use them in my speech, which prompted the now traditional heckling from my friends. After the debate, I buttonholed a Christian friend for another argument. During the discussion, he prodded me on where I thought moral law came from in my metaphysics. I talked about morality as though it were some kind of Platonic form, remote from the plane that humans existed on. He wanted to know where the connection was.
I could hypothesize how a Forms-material world link would work in the case of mathematics (a little long and off topic for this post, but pretty much the canonical idea of recognizing Two-ness as the quality that’s shared by two chairs and two houses, etc. Once you get the natural numbers, the rest of mathematics is in your grasp). But I didn’t have an analogue for how humans got bootstrap up to get even a partial understanding of objective moral law.
I’ve heard some explanations that try to bake morality into the natural world by reaching for evolutionary psychology. They argue that moral dispositions are evolutionarily triumphant over selfishness, or they talk about group selection, or something else. Usually, these proposed solutions radically misunderstand a) evolution b) moral philosophy or c) both. I didn’t think the answer was there. My friend pressed me to stop beating up on other people’s explanations and offer one of my own.
“I don’t know,” I said. ”I’ve got bupkis.”
“Your best guess.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“You must have some idea.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got nothing. I guess Morality just loves me or something.”
“…”
“Ok, ok, yes, I heard what I just said. Give me a second and let me decide if I believe it.”
It turns out I did.
I believed that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant. It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth. And there was one religion that seemed like the most promising way to reach back to that living Truth. I asked my friend what he suggest we do now, and we prayed the night office of the Liturgy of the Hours together (I’ve kept up with that since). Then I suggested hugs and playing Mumford and Sons really, really loudly.
After I changed my mind, I decided to take a little time to make sure I really believed what I thought I believed, before telling my friends, family, and, now, all of you. That left me with the question of what to do about my atheism blog. My solution was to just not write anything I disagreed with. Enough of my friends had accused me of writing in a crypto-Catholic style that I figured no one would notice if I were actually crypto-Catholic for a month and a half (i.e. everything from “Upon this ROC…” on) . That means you already have a bit of a preview of what has and hasn’t changed. I’m still confused about the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, I still need to do a lot of work to accept gifts graciously, and I still love steam engines.
Starting tomorrow, this blog is moving to the the Patheos Catholic channel (the url and RSS will remain unchanged). Meanwhile, I’m in RCIA classes at a DC parish, so you can look forward to more Parsing Catholicism tags (and after the discussion of universalism we had last week, I think it will be prudent to add a “Possibly Heretical” category).
This post isn’t the final word on my conversion. I’m sure there’s a lot more explaining and arguing to do, so be a little charitable in your read of this post and try to give me a little time to expand my ideas over the next few weeks. (Based on my in-person arguments to date, it seems like most of my atheist friends disagree two or three steps back from my deciding Morality is actually God. They usually diverge back around the bit where I assert morality, like math, is objective and independent of humans. As one of my friends said, “Well, I guess if I were a weird quasi-Platonist virtue ethicist, this would probably convince me”).
And how am I doing? Well, I’m baking now (cracking eggs is pretty much the least gnostic thing I can do, since it’s so, so disgusting to touch, and putting effort into food as more than the ransom my body demands for continued function is the second least gnostic). I’ve been using the Liturgy of the Hours and St. Patrick’s Breastplate for most of my prayer attempts. and, over all, I feel a bit like Valentine in this speech from Arcadia.
While I kept working, I tried to keep my eyes open for ways I could test which world I was in, but a lot of the evidence for Christianity was only compelling to me if I at least presupposed Deism.
Meanwhile, on the other side, I kept running into moral philosophers who seemed really helpful, until I discovered that their study of virtue ethics has led them to take a tumble into the Tiber. (I’m looking at you, MacIntyre!).
Then, the night before Palm Sunday (I have excellent liturgical timing), I was up at my alma mater for an alumni debate. I had another round of translating a lot of principles out of Catholic in order to use them in my speech, which prompted the now traditional heckling from my friends. After the debate, I buttonholed a Christian friend for another argument. During the discussion, he prodded me on where I thought moral law came from in my metaphysics. I talked about morality as though it were some kind of Platonic form, remote from the plane that humans existed on. He wanted to know where the connection was.
I could hypothesize how a Forms-material world link would work in the case of mathematics (a little long and off topic for this post, but pretty much the canonical idea of recognizing Two-ness as the quality that’s shared by two chairs and two houses, etc. Once you get the natural numbers, the rest of mathematics is in your grasp). But I didn’t have an analogue for how humans got bootstrap up to get even a partial understanding of objective moral law.
I’ve heard some explanations that try to bake morality into the natural world by reaching for evolutionary psychology. They argue that moral dispositions are evolutionarily triumphant over selfishness, or they talk about group selection, or something else. Usually, these proposed solutions radically misunderstand a) evolution b) moral philosophy or c) both. I didn’t think the answer was there. My friend pressed me to stop beating up on other people’s explanations and offer one of my own.
“I don’t know,” I said. ”I’ve got bupkis.”
“Your best guess.”
“I haven’t got one.”
“You must have some idea.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got nothing. I guess Morality just loves me or something.”
“…”
“Ok, ok, yes, I heard what I just said. Give me a second and let me decide if I believe it.”
It turns out I did.
I believed that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant. It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth. And there was one religion that seemed like the most promising way to reach back to that living Truth. I asked my friend what he suggest we do now, and we prayed the night office of the Liturgy of the Hours together (I’ve kept up with that since). Then I suggested hugs and playing Mumford and Sons really, really loudly.
After I changed my mind, I decided to take a little time to make sure I really believed what I thought I believed, before telling my friends, family, and, now, all of you. That left me with the question of what to do about my atheism blog. My solution was to just not write anything I disagreed with. Enough of my friends had accused me of writing in a crypto-Catholic style that I figured no one would notice if I were actually crypto-Catholic for a month and a half (i.e. everything from “Upon this ROC…” on) . That means you already have a bit of a preview of what has and hasn’t changed. I’m still confused about the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, I still need to do a lot of work to accept gifts graciously, and I still love steam engines.
Starting tomorrow, this blog is moving to the the Patheos Catholic channel (the url and RSS will remain unchanged). Meanwhile, I’m in RCIA classes at a DC parish, so you can look forward to more Parsing Catholicism tags (and after the discussion of universalism we had last week, I think it will be prudent to add a “Possibly Heretical” category).
This post isn’t the final word on my conversion. I’m sure there’s a lot more explaining and arguing to do, so be a little charitable in your read of this post and try to give me a little time to expand my ideas over the next few weeks. (Based on my in-person arguments to date, it seems like most of my atheist friends disagree two or three steps back from my deciding Morality is actually God. They usually diverge back around the bit where I assert morality, like math, is objective and independent of humans. As one of my friends said, “Well, I guess if I were a weird quasi-Platonist virtue ethicist, this would probably convince me”).
And how am I doing? Well, I’m baking now (cracking eggs is pretty much the least gnostic thing I can do, since it’s so, so disgusting to touch, and putting effort into food as more than the ransom my body demands for continued function is the second least gnostic). I’ve been using the Liturgy of the Hours and St. Patrick’s Breastplate for most of my prayer attempts. and, over all, I feel a bit like Valentine in this speech from Arcadia.
It makes me so happy… A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
A Word or Few from Fr. Longenecker
The Smoke of Satan
There are many problems in the Catholic Church that might be thought to be the ‘smoke of Satan’ entering the church, but for my money one thing, above all others, has been the successful work of Satan, which has undermined the church, emasculated her ministry, sabotaged the aims of the Holy Spirit and captured a multitude of souls.
It is the modernist re-interpretation of the Catholic faith. The reductionist results of modern Biblical scholarship and the infiltration of a modernist, rationalistic and materialistic mindset meant that the supernatural was assumed to be impossible, and therefore the Bible stories (and also any supernatural elements of the faith) had to be ‘de-mythologized.’ Everything supernatural within the Biblical account and within the lives of the saints and within the teaching of the church were assumed to be impossible and had to be ‘re-interpreted’ so they would make sense to modern, scientifically minded people.
So the feeding of the five thousand wasn’t a miracle. Instead the ‘real miracle’ was that everyone shared their lunch. Everything had to be questioned and ‘re-interpreted’ in such a way that it could be accepted and understood by modern people. So when we call Jesus Christ “God Incarnate” what we really mean was that he was so fully human, and that as he reached his potential as a man that he shows us what divinity looks like. When we speak of the Blessed Virgin we mean she was ‘a very good and holy Jewish young woman.’ When we speak of the ‘Real Presence’ we mean that we see the ‘Christ that is within each one of us.”
I hate this crap.
It’s the smoke of Satan, and it’s virtually triumphant within the mainstream Protestant churches, and sadly, the modern Catholic Church in the USA is riddled through with the same noxious heresy. The reason it is so obnoxious and disgusting is because priests and clergy of all sorts still use all the traditional language of the liturgy, the Scriptures and the creeds, but they have changed the meaning of it altogether. They never actually stand up and say that they have changed the meaning, and that they no longer believe the faith once delivered to the saints. They don’t discuss the fact that they have not only changed the meaning, but robbed it of meaning altogether. Instead they still stand up week by week and recite the creed as if they think it is true, but what they mean by ‘true’ is totally different from what their people mean.
So Father Flannel stands up on Easter Day and says, “Alleluia! Today we rejoice in the glorious resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.” His people think he really believes that Jesus’ dead body came back to life by the power of God and that he went on to live forever. In fact what Father Flannel really means is that “in some way the beautiful teachings of Jesus were remembered and continued by his followers long after his tragic death.” The people don’t know why Father Flannel’s Catholic life is so lightweight and limp and they don’t know why his style is so lacking in substance, and they go on in their muddled way thinking that he really does believe the Catholic faith when, in fact, he doesn’t at all.
Consequently, Fr Flannel doesn’t really have much of a message at all. He doesn’t believe any of the gospel except as some sort of beautiful story which inspires people to be nicer to each other. All that is left of his priesthood, therefore, is to be a nice guy to entertain people with inspirational thoughts and get everyone to be nicer to one another and try to save the planet.
The poor faithful have swallowed this stuff for two or three generations now, and they don’t even know what poison they’re swallowing because the lies are all dressed up in the same traditional language the church has always used. It’s like someone has put battery acid into a milk bottle and given it to a baby, and never imagined that there was anything wrong with doing so–indeed thought it was the best thing for baby.
The faithful don’t know why their church has become like a cross between a Joan Baez concert and a political activism meeting. They don’t understand why they never hear the need for confession or repentance or hear about old fashioned terms like ‘the precious blood’ or ‘ the body, blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord and Savior” The fact of the matter is Father Flannel doesn’t really think that sort of thing is ‘helpful’.
This is why evangelization of the American Catholics in the pew is probably the most difficult task of all. They don’t know what they don’t know. For three generations now they have been given watered down milk and been told it was wine. They actually think that Catholic lite is what it’s all about, and are astounded to think that there are some of us who think that they have actually been fed a version of Christianity that is scarcely Christianity at all.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Gay Brits Come to U.S. for Sex Selection
Gay Brits Come to U.S. for Sex Selection
Well aren't we just the lucky duckies. Less than one month after our gutless wonder elected officials in Washington D.C. refused to ban abortion based on sex selection, we are now seeing what will no doubt become the new popular reason to visit our country. Wow. It will redefine and give a whole new sub-meaning to our tourist industry.
Gay, straight, single female or single male - ya'll come and get it. We are here to serve up whatever you want.
I am so DAMN mad.
Well aren't we just the lucky duckies. Less than one month after our gutless wonder elected officials in Washington D.C. refused to ban abortion based on sex selection, we are now seeing what will no doubt become the new popular reason to visit our country. Wow. It will redefine and give a whole new sub-meaning to our tourist industry.
Gay, straight, single female or single male - ya'll come and get it. We are here to serve up whatever you want.
I am so DAMN mad.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Catholics Could Help Elect a Mormon President - Meridian Magazine - LDS, Mormon and Latter-day Saint News and Views
This is a seriously good article of the powerful vs the powerful.
Catholics Could Help Elect a Mormon President - Meridian Magazine - LDS, Mormon and Latter-day Saint News and Views
Catholics Could Help Elect a Mormon President - Meridian Magazine - LDS, Mormon and Latter-day Saint News and Views
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Reflection from Holy Father
Pope Reflects on the Power of Prayer
The Holy Father reminded the faithful May 9 to trust God like Peter did and thanks everyone for their prayers for him as the Successor of Peter.
BY EWTN NEWS
| Posted 5/9/12 at 2:42 PM
 |
“From the first moment of my election as the Successor of St. Peter, I have always felt supported by the prayers of you all, by the prayer of the Church, especially by your prayers at moments of greatest difficulty, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he told pilgrims in St. Peter's Square during his May 9 general audience.
“Unanimous and constant prayer is a precious instrument in overcoming all of the trials that may arise in the path of life, because it is our being deeply united with God that allows us to also be deeply united to others,” the Pope said before thanking everyone again.
Pope Benedict’s prepared remarks for the day focused on the prayer life of the early Church, continuing a series of teachings he has been giving. This morning, along with approximately 10,000 pilgrims, he examined the episode in the life of his predecessor, St. Peter, who was released from imprisonment by an angel on the eve of his trial in Jerusalem.
“The strength of the unceasing prayer of the Church rises to God, and the Lord hears and carries out an unthinkable and unhoped-for deliverance, sending his angel,” he said.
The liberation of Peter has overtones of both the Jewish exodus from slavery in Egypt and the resurrection of Christ, the Pope noted. It also highlights “a pressing invitation” to follow Christ, since “only by coming out of yourself in order to start walking with the Lord and doing his will will you experience true freedom.”
Pope Benedict also noted that even though Peter was in “such a critical and dangerous situation,” the Acts of the Apostles informs us that he was asleep and had to be woken by the angel.
“This attitude may seem odd, but it denotes trust and confidence: He trusts in God; he knows he is surrounded by the solidarity and support of his followers and abandons himself totally into the hands of Lord,” the Pope said. “This is how our prayer must be: assiduous, united with others, an expression of complete trust in God, who knows us in our most intimate selves and looks after us.”
Pope Benedict concluded by saying that the story of the liberation of Peter “tells us that the Church, each of us, goes through the night of trial, but it is the unceasing vigilance of prayer that sustains us.”
For this reason, he taught, every believer should cultivate a “constant and trusting” prayer in the Lord, who “frees us from our chains and guides us. ... He gives us serenity of heart to face the difficulties of life, even rejection, opposition and persecution.”
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Fr. Longenecker has it right
The teenaged guys are down in the basement on X-box and when I go down I realize they are playing some horrible game where they have to slaughter everybody in sight. When I remonstrate they call out cheerfully, “It’s okay Dad. They’re Nazi Zombies.”
Have you ever thought about the meaning behind horror movies and games? Why do we like to hate the Nazi Zombies? Why does Count Dracula turn into a blood sucking monster? Why do werewolves transmogrify? What is it about the living dead? The movies are, of course, make believe (although there are some pretty creepy stories from exorcists of people who do actually transmogrify and become like beasts) but I like stories that make me believe, and what I believe from the horror movies is that real, ordinary people can be transformed into monsters. They really can be transformed into the “living dead”. They really can become mere shells of human beings with their humanity extinguished. They can become Nazi Zombies.I can’t help thinking of these truths as I witness the gathering storm clouds in our society. The extreme, radical feminists, abortionists, homoexualists and perverts are starting to roam about in our society seeking whom they may devour. We mustn’t forget the greedy corporate executives, the bankers who earn obscene amounts of money from crooked deals, get government buy outs and then reward themselves with million dollar bonuses. We can’t forget the drug barons, the pushers and pimps, the thieves–the gang members who roam our streets or who lurk just beyond our borders. They are out there, and they are growing more and more relentless in their rage.
Click the link below for the whole story
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Debunking an Urban Legend
Isn't it funny how stories get created out of nothing? I dare say that Ryan's critics have all read Ayn Rand in their youth. I suppose that makes them all uber-capitalists and Objectivist, and, oh yes, let's not forget, atheists.
Click on title of post got story.
Click on title of post got story.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Why I'm Catholic
On page xx of the Introduction, Allen completely encapsulates why I remain Catholic in a secular and increasingly antagonistic world. These are his words and I am making them mine.
"When I say 'faith', what I mean instead is that at some level, most Catholics really do believe that there's something supernatural about the Church, that it's where God calls them to be despite the well-documented failures to live up to its lofty ideals. As a result, most Catholics, most of the time, don't make decisions about the Church based primarily on ideological considerations -- i.e., that they happen to agree with the political priorities of the current leadership class -- or on the consumerist logic that the Catholic Church meets their perceived needs better than its competitors in the dynamic American religious marketplace. Instead, with eyes wide open, they still believe the Catholic Church is their spiritual home. Given that frame, they see the Church not as a debating society or a multinational enterprise, but a family -- with all the flaws and dysfunction, but also all the joy and life, of families everywhere."
Friday, March 30, 2012
Vanderbilt University policy forces Catholic group off campus :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Sadly, we will be seeing more and more of this sort of thing. We are facing hard time but we are up to the challenge.
Vanderbilt University policy forces Catholic group off campus :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Vanderbilt University policy forces Catholic group off campus :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Former atheist promises encounter with God through saints' relics :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
A truly inspiring story of the journey back to Fair as we approach Holy Week.
Former atheist promises encounter with God through saints' relics :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Former atheist promises encounter with God through saints' relics :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Monday, March 05, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Ash Wednesday - Concern
Holy Father reminds us that Lent is an opportunity to reflect on the heart of Christian life - Charity. We reflect on charity both as an individual and as a community. Our journey to charity is a journey of prayer, sharing, silence, and fasting.
Today Holy Father reflects, in part, on v. 24 of the Letter to the Hebrews - "Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works” (Heb 10:24). The focus is concern for others, reciprocity, and personal holiness. My post today will focus on his discussion of concern for others.
The Greek verb, katanoien, is used in these writings. Its deep meaning is to scrutinize, be attentive, to observe carefully, and take stock of something.
We are reminded in Lk: 6:41 to observe the plank in our own eye before looking at the splinter in the eye of our brother.
In Heb 3:1 we are told to turn our minds to Jesus. Then to concern for others, and not to be indifferent to the needs of others.
Gen. 4:9 tells us to be guardians of our brothers and sisters.
God's greatest commandment of loving one another demands we acknowledge our responsibility towards others. As we see others as our brothers and sisters, we experience solidarity, justice, mercy and compassion. In populorum Progressia, 66, Paul VI states, "Human society is sorely ill. The cause is not so much the depletion of natural resources, nor their monopolistic control by a privileged few; it is rather the weakening of brotherly ties between individuals and nations."
Concern entails desiring what is good for others, physical, moral, and spiritual. Contemporary culture seems to have lost it sense of good and evil. In Ps 119:68 we read You are generous and act generously, teach me your will. We are guided to reaffirm our generosity, to act generously. It affairs that good exists.
Concern for others means being aware of the needs of others. But often we fail because of our attachment to material possessions, or a sense of self-sufficiency, or perhaps, we put our self-interest above all. But by nurturing our capacity for showing mercy towards others, we humble ourselves. Our own experience of suffering can awaken within us a sense of compassion and empathy.
Our call to show concern for others also applies to their spiritual well-being. We are commanded to not be silent before evil. We must recover our capacity to not remain silent before the evil we see in an individual, a community, or in those who govern us. Spiritual well-being demands that we reject adapting to the prevailing mentality of society if evil is its direction. We are told to warn our brothers and sisters against actions that are contrary to the truth and do not follow the path of goodness.
We do this, not in a spirit of accusation, but rather be moved by love and mercy, a desire for the genuine good of others. (Gal 6:1) Brothers, even if a person is caught in some transgression, you who are spiritual should correct that one in a gentle spirit, looking to yourself, so that you also may not be tempted.
In the closing of Benedict XVI's message on Ash Wednesday, he says - Scripture tells us that even “the upright falls seven times” (Prov 24:16); all of us are weak and imperfect (cf. 1 Jn 1:8). It is a great service, then, to help others and allow them to help us, so that we can be open to the whole truth about ourselves, improve our lives and walk more uprightly in the Lord’s ways. There will always be a need for a gaze which loves and admonishes, which knows and understands, which discerns and forgives (cf. Lk 22:61), as God has done and continues to do with each of us.
Today Holy Father reflects, in part, on v. 24 of the Letter to the Hebrews - "Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works” (Heb 10:24). The focus is concern for others, reciprocity, and personal holiness. My post today will focus on his discussion of concern for others.
The Greek verb, katanoien, is used in these writings. Its deep meaning is to scrutinize, be attentive, to observe carefully, and take stock of something.
We are reminded in Lk: 6:41 to observe the plank in our own eye before looking at the splinter in the eye of our brother.
In Heb 3:1 we are told to turn our minds to Jesus. Then to concern for others, and not to be indifferent to the needs of others.
Gen. 4:9 tells us to be guardians of our brothers and sisters.
God's greatest commandment of loving one another demands we acknowledge our responsibility towards others. As we see others as our brothers and sisters, we experience solidarity, justice, mercy and compassion. In populorum Progressia, 66, Paul VI states, "Human society is sorely ill. The cause is not so much the depletion of natural resources, nor their monopolistic control by a privileged few; it is rather the weakening of brotherly ties between individuals and nations."
Concern entails desiring what is good for others, physical, moral, and spiritual. Contemporary culture seems to have lost it sense of good and evil. In Ps 119:68 we read You are generous and act generously, teach me your will. We are guided to reaffirm our generosity, to act generously. It affairs that good exists.
Concern for others means being aware of the needs of others. But often we fail because of our attachment to material possessions, or a sense of self-sufficiency, or perhaps, we put our self-interest above all. But by nurturing our capacity for showing mercy towards others, we humble ourselves. Our own experience of suffering can awaken within us a sense of compassion and empathy.
Our call to show concern for others also applies to their spiritual well-being. We are commanded to not be silent before evil. We must recover our capacity to not remain silent before the evil we see in an individual, a community, or in those who govern us. Spiritual well-being demands that we reject adapting to the prevailing mentality of society if evil is its direction. We are told to warn our brothers and sisters against actions that are contrary to the truth and do not follow the path of goodness.
We do this, not in a spirit of accusation, but rather be moved by love and mercy, a desire for the genuine good of others. (Gal 6:1) Brothers, even if a person is caught in some transgression, you who are spiritual should correct that one in a gentle spirit, looking to yourself, so that you also may not be tempted.
In the closing of Benedict XVI's message on Ash Wednesday, he says - Scripture tells us that even “the upright falls seven times” (Prov 24:16); all of us are weak and imperfect (cf. 1 Jn 1:8). It is a great service, then, to help others and allow them to help us, so that we can be open to the whole truth about ourselves, improve our lives and walk more uprightly in the Lord’s ways. There will always be a need for a gaze which loves and admonishes, which knows and understands, which discerns and forgives (cf. Lk 22:61), as God has done and continues to do with each of us.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Denver Theology on Tap inspires controversy, venue change
Denver Theology on Tap inspires controversy, venue change
And so it goes. Speak OUT on discrimination.
And so it goes. Speak OUT on discrimination.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
I Knew it Would Be hard but . . .
I knew it would get progressively harder to be a faithful Catholic, not to say that it would be too hard to remain Catholic, but, to keep up the strength to stay on my feet. Between the "entertainment" industry and what passes for government these days in our country, it's amazing we Catholics don't get knocked out for the count. Oh, but wait! This is the era of tolerance and respect. We all have a right to live our lives openly and freely without criticism or mockery or violence done upon us. Uhuh.
That is, unless you are Catholic. How embarrassing for Mr. Obama that his little assault of religious freedom backfired. Nothing like an irreligious President to united Catholics in a way that no Catholic leader in recent memory has been able to. We may fight amongst ourselves but you were not invited to the fight and except for your lackeys, we, as a united group along with our religious brethren, are turning against you.
And Nicki, Nicki . . . you may have found the front seat howlers at the Grammy's reassuring but have you read or listened to the news since Sunday? I predict you are going to have a career crisis very soon. A little personal reflection might be helpful to you eventually. In fact, to the industry at large - are you paying attention? Buying records and going to movies is optional.
Yeah, I knew it would be hard to continue being a faithful Catholic, but, you know what? I'm up for the fight. Bring it on.
That is, unless you are Catholic. How embarrassing for Mr. Obama that his little assault of religious freedom backfired. Nothing like an irreligious President to united Catholics in a way that no Catholic leader in recent memory has been able to. We may fight amongst ourselves but you were not invited to the fight and except for your lackeys, we, as a united group along with our religious brethren, are turning against you.
And Nicki, Nicki . . . you may have found the front seat howlers at the Grammy's reassuring but have you read or listened to the news since Sunday? I predict you are going to have a career crisis very soon. A little personal reflection might be helpful to you eventually. In fact, to the industry at large - are you paying attention? Buying records and going to movies is optional.
Yeah, I knew it would be hard to continue being a faithful Catholic, but, you know what? I'm up for the fight. Bring it on.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Origianally reading in the National Catholic Register
Secularism's Toll on Catholic Americans
Father Robert Barron on HHS mandate: 'I would hope that American Catholics would argue against the Obama administration move, not only because they are Catholics, but also because they are Americans.'
BY FATHER ROBERT BARRON
Some years ago, Holy Cross Father James Burtchaell published a seminal book entitled The Dying of the Light. The central thesis of this study was that hundreds of universities that began under religious auspices and for religious purposes —the University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, to name just some of the most prominent —have undergone so thorough an erosion of their original identities that now they are utterly secular in orientation.
A particularly interesting feature of Burtchaell’s book was his analysis of the slow, subtle process by which the change from fervently religious to blandly secular took place: slight changes, little adjustments, tiny concessions barely noticed at the time, but all of them conducing finally toward the inevitable secularization. The Dying of the Light was meant to be a sobering lesson and a wake-up call to many Catholic universities today, which find themselves on a similar path to compromise.
I won’t follow that part of Burtchaell’s argument now (perhaps another time), but I bring up his book because it sheds a good deal of light on an analogous situation today. Decades ago, priests, religious brothers and religious sisters were colorfully visible features of Catholic hospitals, serving as nurses, chaplains, business officers and chief administrators. With the decline in vocations, this obviously religious leadership largely disappeared, but Catholic values, for the most part, still animated these institutions.
What has begun to concern a number of observers is that, as today’s medical personnel, staffers and administrators at Catholic hospitals have accommodated themselves more and more to secularist assumptions, even those values are in danger of disappearing. And what exacerbates the situation is that the leaders of many Catholic health-care facilities feel obligated not to overstress their religious distinctiveness, precisely because they are so reliant upon government funding.
In short, the slow but steady creep toward secularization of Catholic health-care has already been, for some time, a reality. But now the process has been given a massive push by the Obama administration’s recent mandate that all health-care agencies and institutions must pay for insurance that covers contraception, sterilization and certain kinds of abortifacient drugs —all of which are repugnant to Catholic teaching.
Here is what is particularly worrisome: The state seems no longer satisfied with a slow but steady evolution toward secularity; it is aggressively forcing Catholic hospitals off the stage, for it is creating for them an impossible situation. If they cave in and provide insurance for these verboten procedures, they have effectively de-Catholicized themselves; and if they refuse to provide such insurance, they will be met with fines of millions of dollars, which they cannot possibly pay. In either case, they are forced out of business as Catholic.
And this seems, sadly, to be precisely what the Obama administration wants. At the University of Notre Dame, on the occasion of his receiving (controversially enough) an honorary degree of laws, President Obama publicly and vociferously pledged that he would provide for a “conscience clause” for those who wanted, for religious reasons, to opt out of a policy they find objectionable. But with this recent mandate, he has utterly gone back on his word.
The secularist state recognizes that its principle enemy is the Church Catholic. Accordingly, it wants Catholicism off the public stage and relegated to a private realm where it cannot interfere with secularism’s totalitarian agenda. I realize that in using that particular term, I’m dropping a rhetorical bomb, but I am not doing so casually.
There is a modality of secular liberalism that is not aggressive toward religion, but rather recognizes that religion makes an indispensable contribution to civil society. This more tolerant liberalism allows, not only for freedom of worship, but also for real freedom of religion, which is to say, the expression of religious values in the public square and the free play of religious ideas in the public conversation.
Most of our Founding Fathers advocated just this type of liberalism. But there is another modality of secularism —sadly on display in the current administration —that is actively aggressive toward religion, precisely because it sees religion as its primary rival in the public arena. Appreciating certain moral convictions as disvalues —think here especially of Catholic teachings concerning sexuality —it seeks to eliminate religion or at the very least to privatize and hence marginalize it. In doing so, it indeed reveals itself as totalitarian, for it allows no room in the public space for anything but itself.
The reason that the Bill of Rights —the first 10 amendments to the Constitution —is so important is that it holds off the tendency, inherent in any government, toward totalitarianism, even if that means the totalitarianism of the majority.
The very first amendment, of course, guarantees the free exercise of religion in our country. Our founders obviously feared that even a democratic system, predicated upon a repudiation of tyranny, could become so tyrannical itself that it would seek to intrude upon the sacred realm of the religious conscience. As Jefferson, Toqueville, Lincoln and many others have seen, our democracy is especially healthy when it disallows a concentration of power —political, economic or cultural —in any one place.
I would hope that American Catholics would argue against the Obama administration move, not only because they are Catholics, but also because they are Americans.
Father Robert Barron on HHS mandate: 'I would hope that American Catholics would argue against the Obama administration move, not only because they are Catholics, but also because they are Americans.'
BY FATHER ROBERT BARRON
Some years ago, Holy Cross Father James Burtchaell published a seminal book entitled The Dying of the Light. The central thesis of this study was that hundreds of universities that began under religious auspices and for religious purposes —the University of Chicago, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, to name just some of the most prominent —have undergone so thorough an erosion of their original identities that now they are utterly secular in orientation.
A particularly interesting feature of Burtchaell’s book was his analysis of the slow, subtle process by which the change from fervently religious to blandly secular took place: slight changes, little adjustments, tiny concessions barely noticed at the time, but all of them conducing finally toward the inevitable secularization. The Dying of the Light was meant to be a sobering lesson and a wake-up call to many Catholic universities today, which find themselves on a similar path to compromise.
I won’t follow that part of Burtchaell’s argument now (perhaps another time), but I bring up his book because it sheds a good deal of light on an analogous situation today. Decades ago, priests, religious brothers and religious sisters were colorfully visible features of Catholic hospitals, serving as nurses, chaplains, business officers and chief administrators. With the decline in vocations, this obviously religious leadership largely disappeared, but Catholic values, for the most part, still animated these institutions.
What has begun to concern a number of observers is that, as today’s medical personnel, staffers and administrators at Catholic hospitals have accommodated themselves more and more to secularist assumptions, even those values are in danger of disappearing. And what exacerbates the situation is that the leaders of many Catholic health-care facilities feel obligated not to overstress their religious distinctiveness, precisely because they are so reliant upon government funding.
In short, the slow but steady creep toward secularization of Catholic health-care has already been, for some time, a reality. But now the process has been given a massive push by the Obama administration’s recent mandate that all health-care agencies and institutions must pay for insurance that covers contraception, sterilization and certain kinds of abortifacient drugs —all of which are repugnant to Catholic teaching.
Here is what is particularly worrisome: The state seems no longer satisfied with a slow but steady evolution toward secularity; it is aggressively forcing Catholic hospitals off the stage, for it is creating for them an impossible situation. If they cave in and provide insurance for these verboten procedures, they have effectively de-Catholicized themselves; and if they refuse to provide such insurance, they will be met with fines of millions of dollars, which they cannot possibly pay. In either case, they are forced out of business as Catholic.
And this seems, sadly, to be precisely what the Obama administration wants. At the University of Notre Dame, on the occasion of his receiving (controversially enough) an honorary degree of laws, President Obama publicly and vociferously pledged that he would provide for a “conscience clause” for those who wanted, for religious reasons, to opt out of a policy they find objectionable. But with this recent mandate, he has utterly gone back on his word.
The secularist state recognizes that its principle enemy is the Church Catholic. Accordingly, it wants Catholicism off the public stage and relegated to a private realm where it cannot interfere with secularism’s totalitarian agenda. I realize that in using that particular term, I’m dropping a rhetorical bomb, but I am not doing so casually.
There is a modality of secular liberalism that is not aggressive toward religion, but rather recognizes that religion makes an indispensable contribution to civil society. This more tolerant liberalism allows, not only for freedom of worship, but also for real freedom of religion, which is to say, the expression of religious values in the public square and the free play of religious ideas in the public conversation.
Most of our Founding Fathers advocated just this type of liberalism. But there is another modality of secularism —sadly on display in the current administration —that is actively aggressive toward religion, precisely because it sees religion as its primary rival in the public arena. Appreciating certain moral convictions as disvalues —think here especially of Catholic teachings concerning sexuality —it seeks to eliminate religion or at the very least to privatize and hence marginalize it. In doing so, it indeed reveals itself as totalitarian, for it allows no room in the public space for anything but itself.
The reason that the Bill of Rights —the first 10 amendments to the Constitution —is so important is that it holds off the tendency, inherent in any government, toward totalitarianism, even if that means the totalitarianism of the majority.
The very first amendment, of course, guarantees the free exercise of religion in our country. Our founders obviously feared that even a democratic system, predicated upon a repudiation of tyranny, could become so tyrannical itself that it would seek to intrude upon the sacred realm of the religious conscience. As Jefferson, Toqueville, Lincoln and many others have seen, our democracy is especially healthy when it disallows a concentration of power —political, economic or cultural —in any one place.
I would hope that American Catholics would argue against the Obama administration move, not only because they are Catholics, but also because they are Americans.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Friday, November 04, 2011
Yet more proof of the goodness of Pope Pius XII
The article below is very important to me personally. I have always believed that Pius XII was not guilty of Nazi collaboration. I've clung to this belief through my faith and the historic testimony of Jewish survivors who were not listened to. Since the Vatican archives have been open to this matter, I can only believe that if anyone continues to spread this lie, than they are doing so willfully. I hope to see Pope Pius XII canonized in my lifetime or, at the least, formally recognised, to the world, for the lives he was able to save.
Researcher thinks Pius XII went undercover to save Jews
“It is an unusual letter, written by a woman who is alive today in northern Italy, who said she was with her mother, her uncle, and a few other relatives in an audience with Pius XII in 1947.” Next to Pope Pius during the meeting was his Assistant Secretary of State, Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the future Pope Paul VI.
“Her uncle immediately looks at the Pope and he says, ‘You were dressed as a Franciscan,’ and looked at Montini who was standing next to him, ‘and you as a regular priest. You took me out of the ghetto into the Vatican.’ Montini immediately said, ‘Silence, do not ever repeat that story.’”
Krupp believes the claim to be true because the personality of the wartime Pope was such that he “needed to see things with his own eyes.” “He used to take the car out into bombed areas in Rome, and he certainly wasn't afraid of that. I can see him going into the ghetto and seeing what was happening,” says Krupp.
But when he started looking at the documents from the time, he was shocked. And “then it went from shock to anger. I was lied to,” says Krupp.
“In Judaism, one of the most important character traits one must have is gratitude, this is very important, it is part of Jewish law. Ingratitude is one of the most terrible traits, and this was ingratitude as far as I was concerned.”
Krupp now firmly agrees with the conclusions of Pinchas Lapide, the late Jewish historian and Israeli diplomat who said the direct actions of Pope Pius XII and the Vatican saved approximately 897,000 Jewish lives during the war. Pave the Way has over 46,000 pages of historical documentation supporting that proposition, which it has posted on its website along with numerous interviews with eye-witnesses and historians.
“I believe that it is a moral responsibility, this has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church,” says Krupp, “it has only to do with the Jewish responsibility to come to recognize a man who actually acted to save a huge number of Jewish lives throughout the entire world while being surrounded by hostile forces, infiltrated by spies and under the threat of death.”
Krupp explained that Pope Pius used the Holy See’s global network of embassies to help smuggle Jews out of occupied Europe. In one such instance, the Vatican secretly asked for visas to the Dominican Republic– 800 at a time – to aid Jewish rescue efforts. This one initiative alone is estimated to have saved over 11,000 Jewish lives between 1939 and 1945.
Closer to home, the convents and monasteries of Rome—neutral territory during the war—were used as hiding places for Jews. Krupp speculates that the wartime actions of Pope Pius XII, whose birth name was Eugenio Pacelli, can be further understood in the light of his own personal history. His great boyhood friend was Guido Mendes who hailed from a well-known Jewish family in Rome. Together they learned the Hebrew language and shared Shabbat dinners on the Jewish Sabbath.
Later, upon his election to the papacy in 1939, A.W. Klieforth, the American consul general in Cologne, sent a secret telegram to the U.S. Department of State explaining Pope Pius’s attitude towards Nazism in Germany.
The new Pope “opposed unalterably every compromise with National Socialism,” Klieforth wrote, after a private chat with the pontiff in the Vatican. The two men had got to know each other during Archbishop Pacelli’s 12 years as nuncio in Germany.
Pope Pius, explained Klieforth, “regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person,” and “did not believe Hitler capable of moderation.” Hence he “fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand.”
Krupp describes the reputation of the wartime Pope as both glowing and intact until 1963, when German writer Rolf Hochhuth penned his play “The Deputy.” It portrayed Pope Pius as a hypocrite who remained silent about Jewish persecution.
The Pave the Way website carries evidence from a former high-ranking KGB officer, Ion Mihai Pacepa, who claims that the tarnishing of the Pope’s reputation was a Soviet plot.
But he also firmly believes that a fundamental revision of Pope Pius’s wartime record is now well underway. “The dam is cracking now, without question,” he says.
Ironically, perhaps, Krupp says he meets more resistance when he speaks at Catholic parishes than in Jewish synagogues. “Many Jews,” he explains, “have been extremely grateful, saying, ‘I’m very happy to hear that. I never wanted to believe this about him,’ especially those of us who knew him, who were old enough to know him.”
Researcher thinks Pius XII went undercover to save Jews
By David Kerr
Rome, Italy, Nov 4, 2011 / 06:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).
The Jewish New Yorker who has made it his life’s work to clear the name of Pope Pius XII of being anti-Semitic believes the wartime pontiff actually went undercover to save the lives of Jews in Rome.
Gary Krupp came across the evidence in a letter from a Jewish woman whose family was rescued thanks to direct Vatican intervention.
Gary Krupp came across the evidence in a letter from a Jewish woman whose family was rescued thanks to direct Vatican intervention.
“It is an unusual letter, written by a woman who is alive today in northern Italy, who said she was with her mother, her uncle, and a few other relatives in an audience with Pius XII in 1947.” Next to Pope Pius during the meeting was his Assistant Secretary of State, Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the future Pope Paul VI.
“Her uncle immediately looks at the Pope and he says, ‘You were dressed as a Franciscan,’ and looked at Montini who was standing next to him, ‘and you as a regular priest. You took me out of the ghetto into the Vatican.’ Montini immediately said, ‘Silence, do not ever repeat that story.’”
Krupp believes the claim to be true because the personality of the wartime Pope was such that he “needed to see things with his own eyes.” “He used to take the car out into bombed areas in Rome, and he certainly wasn't afraid of that. I can see him going into the ghetto and seeing what was happening,” says Krupp.
Krupp and his wife Meredith founded the Pave the Way Foundation in 2002 to “identify and eliminate the non-theological obstacles between religions.” In 2006 he was asked by both Jewish and Catholic leaders to investigate the “stumbling block” of Pope Pius XII’s wartime reputation.
Krupp, a very optimistic 64-year-old from Long Island, N.Y., thought he had finally hit a wall. “We are Jewish. We grew up hating the name Pius XII,” he says. “We believed that he was anti-Semitic, we believed that he was a Nazi collaborator—all of the statements that have been made about him, we believed.”
But when he started looking at the documents from the time, he was shocked. And “then it went from shock to anger. I was lied to,” says Krupp.
“In Judaism, one of the most important character traits one must have is gratitude, this is very important, it is part of Jewish law. Ingratitude is one of the most terrible traits, and this was ingratitude as far as I was concerned.”
Krupp now firmly agrees with the conclusions of Pinchas Lapide, the late Jewish historian and Israeli diplomat who said the direct actions of Pope Pius XII and the Vatican saved approximately 897,000 Jewish lives during the war. Pave the Way has over 46,000 pages of historical documentation supporting that proposition, which it has posted on its website along with numerous interviews with eye-witnesses and historians.
“I believe that it is a moral responsibility, this has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church,” says Krupp, “it has only to do with the Jewish responsibility to come to recognize a man who actually acted to save a huge number of Jewish lives throughout the entire world while being surrounded by hostile forces, infiltrated by spies and under the threat of death.”
Krupp explained that Pope Pius used the Holy See’s global network of embassies to help smuggle Jews out of occupied Europe. In one such instance, the Vatican secretly asked for visas to the Dominican Republic– 800 at a time – to aid Jewish rescue efforts. This one initiative alone is estimated to have saved over 11,000 Jewish lives between 1939 and 1945.
Closer to home, the convents and monasteries of Rome—neutral territory during the war—were used as hiding places for Jews. Krupp speculates that the wartime actions of Pope Pius XII, whose birth name was Eugenio Pacelli, can be further understood in the light of his own personal history. His great boyhood friend was Guido Mendes who hailed from a well-known Jewish family in Rome. Together they learned the Hebrew language and shared Shabbat dinners on the Jewish Sabbath.
Later, upon his election to the papacy in 1939, A.W. Klieforth, the American consul general in Cologne, sent a secret telegram to the U.S. Department of State explaining Pope Pius’s attitude towards Nazism in Germany.
The new Pope “opposed unalterably every compromise with National Socialism,” Klieforth wrote, after a private chat with the pontiff in the Vatican. The two men had got to know each other during Archbishop Pacelli’s 12 years as nuncio in Germany.
Pope Pius, explained Klieforth, “regarded Hitler not only as an untrustworthy scoundrel but as a fundamentally wicked person,” and “did not believe Hitler capable of moderation.” Hence he “fully supported the German bishops in their anti-Nazi stand.”
Krupp describes the reputation of the wartime Pope as both glowing and intact until 1963, when German writer Rolf Hochhuth penned his play “The Deputy.” It portrayed Pope Pius as a hypocrite who remained silent about Jewish persecution.
The Pave the Way website carries evidence from a former high-ranking KGB officer, Ion Mihai Pacepa, who claims that the tarnishing of the Pope’s reputation was a Soviet plot.
Krupp explains how the communists wanted to “discredit the Pope after his death, to destroy the reputation of the Catholic Church and, more significantly to us, to isolate the Jews from the Catholics. It succeeded very well in all three areas.”
But he also firmly believes that a fundamental revision of Pope Pius’s wartime record is now well underway. “The dam is cracking now, without question,” he says.
Ironically, perhaps, Krupp says he meets more resistance when he speaks at Catholic parishes than in Jewish synagogues. “Many Jews,” he explains, “have been extremely grateful, saying, ‘I’m very happy to hear that. I never wanted to believe this about him,’ especially those of us who knew him, who were old enough to know him.”
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