A reminder for the upcoming Lenten season

I had the great joy of assisting at Holy Mass today and one of the readings out of the missal reminded me of an important Lenten practice that is often foregone.

Mass of the Holy Cross (Votive Mass)

Tract (as translated in Baronius Press 1962 Roman Missal)

We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee: because by Thy Cross Thou hast redeemed the World. We Adore Thy Cross, O Lord, we commemorate Thy glorious Passion: have have mercy upon us, Thou who didst suffer for us. O blessed Cross, which alone wast worthy to bear the King of heaven and the Lord.

After this was said, immediately it struck me that the practice of Friday Stations of the Cross should play a greater role in my Lenten exorcises.  Perhaps you should take the time to partake in the Stations at your local Parish if possible.

I'm sure Fr. Z will take up this as well.  His recording of then Cardinal Ratzinger's stations from Easter 2005 are excellent.

So get to it!

+ JMJ +

A couple thoughts on the "Son of God" film

Post was edited... was too long and quite frankly stupid (as most of my stuff is)

I don't know... Cardinal Wuerl and Gomez gave their blessings to it... for what its worth....thats all I'm going to say there

If you go have a good time, but I cant watch it, especially after having seen "The Bible" mini series which this is just a big screen showing of.

Dont trust me, you do the leg work and decide

+JMJ+

EF mass at Holy Hill March 13th!!!!

PLEASE SPREAD THIS ACROSS THE INTERNET!!!!!

Please come!

Its the difference between Ham and Shem

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A while ago I heard a sermon that was presented by the priest from Audio Sancto in the midst of the crazyness of the Popes multiple interviews that kicked off his pontificate.  I cant remember which it was, but if I ever find it again I will post it later.

The important point made was that no matter how frustrating things can seem in the Church, Christ is in charge.  The most Blessed Trinity both allows chastisements to the Church, and chastises her directly for Her own good.  Yet the way that we respond in such situations is important.

In Genesis we read about Noah as an old man, and how he would become drunk abusing his life and family in so much.  Yet his sons took different approaches to the matter.  Ham chastised his father with mockery and belittled him.  Shem, on the other-hand, recognized his Fathers state of nakedness and clothed him with gentleness and charity because he was a man under the authority of another (as the Gospels will later speak to).

Ham was thrown out of his Fathers house and cursed him. While Shem, as Jewish tradition says, was made king and reigned most likely till Abraham presented him with sacrificial gifts of bread and wine.

As Father Z says relax with the Holy Father (I am guilty as well). He is a man formed by and after the council and has some odd views.  Yet he holds authority justly.  Let us be calm with our critiques, yet firm when necessary; always recognizing that it is better to give as Shem did, than to take as Ham did.

+JMJ+

+Pray for Francis P.P.+

+Pray for Syria and Egypt+

What does it profit a man...

that was a reminder that I saw on Abby-roads today.. and, dang nab it he is so balanced on his approach to blogging.

So my post last week on the word fashion was... well provocative... well, thick headed and lacking a calm see it through attitude.

The word fashion does not mean fad... that was purely self pity type rhetoric from me... so Mea Culpa

RC later posted a more positive piece relating that the Holy Father saw the ancient right as a treasure... quite frankly just like when I stopped reading each of his daily homilies I think im just going to stop anything reading or watching of the Holy Father... give it a few days to clear up, and think only about official things, because thats the only thing ultimatly that matters from the Pope

I think im also going to give up the internet for Lent... might just get off the grid in general to boot

I love to continually tell myself im going to be more positive on this blog... Lord willing I will work on this from now on. 

Im thinking about my next post.... maybe thinking my bad post over and putting a better twist on it.

We'll its a thought... im bound to screw up again.  Lord willing I wont.  Off to hunt possums

A guest at the consistory

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Cardinal Arenzie to boot!

On Kung, and the lunar light of a "happy suicide"

Last night I came across an article I saw on PewSitter by a Protestant author that explored the coming suicide of the Modernist theologian Hans Kung.  Before I go any farther this is not an endorsement of First Things, for this online magazine is just as guilty as Patheos in putting forth the indifferentist mentality. 

 However the title and the article was interesting and you can read the whole thing here

The article takes up the self-destructive attitude of Kung, who has, in the past, (and perhaps to this day) been handled with kid gloves in matters related to the various heresies he engages in and endorses.  During the reign of Paul VI there was no correction of his teachings by the Holy Office or by the supreme pontiff himself, and once Pope John Paul II finally found it necessary to remove the ability of Kung to call himself a "Catholic" theologian at the school he was spreading his madness at the pontiff was compared to the so-called "Grand-Inquisitors" of the so called "dark-ages", and supposedly against the Second Vatican Council (a note: JPII was instrumental in putting forth the documents that came out of the council like Guadem et Spes, and was not exactly happy when such things came under criticism). To this day Hans Kung represents himself as a Catholic, though admittedly dissenting, and has never been reprimanded for his heresies in any way other than getting "Catholic" ripped from his title.  

He has been a light to the gentiles that wished to remain gentiles, but his light, like lucifer (thats right, under-case, take that ya goomba) was not his own, and in his forgetfulness he has become prideful.  He now wishes to end his so called 'suffering life' via assisted suicide.  Now doesn't that sound nice, its assisted and hes suffering... lets be clear he is a coward, a heretic and a Pharaoh in his own right.  How many times did Pharaoh get signs to turn him to the light, but he focused on his lunar light (a false light of magic and philosophy of his day) taking shelter in his own mind for his pride was to great to break.  How long has the Church played patty cake with his soul, inviting him to speak with the Pope and talk nicely?  His mind is now so riddled with error and rot that he gleefully wishes to kill himself freely (is the poison subsidized?  Perhaps government funded in the Swiss alps) so as to give his freely given life back to God, as if that's his choice when to die.  

He goes on to joke about possibly dying the same way as Socrates drinking the potion, rather than having it injected.  The man needs his Bishop actively calling out his behavior, and calling him to repentance.  Has he?  I know of no Bishop that has called him out on his errors.  Stop playing tiddly-winks with heretics and set them in line.  Even the smallest error offends the Most High infinitly.  

To this point I now wish to remind the reader of what Chesterton said on the man who commits suicide:

I put these things not in their mature logical sequence, but as they came: and this view was cleared and sharpened by an accident of the time. Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, an argument arose whether it was not a very nice thing to murder one's self. Grave moderns told us that we must not even say "poor fellow," of a man who had blown his brains out, since he was an enviable person, and had only blown them out because of their exceptional excellence. Mr. William Archer even suggested that in the golden age there would be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man could kill himself for a penny. In all this I found myself utterly hostile to many who called themselves liberal and humane. Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence; the refusal to take the oath of loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world. His act is worse (symbolically considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. For it destroys all buildings: it insults all women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds; but the suicide is not: that is his crime. He cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of the Celestial City. The thief compliments the things he steals, if not the owner of them. But the suicide insults everything on earth by not stealing it. He defiles every flower by refusing to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature in the cosmos at whom his death is not a sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, the leaves might fall off in anger and the birds fly away in fury: for each has received a personal affront. Of course there may be pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There often are for rape, and there almost always are for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas and the intelligent meaning of things, then there is much more rational and philosophic truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the stake driven through the body, than in Mr. Archer's suicidal automatic machines. There is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The man's crime is different from other crimes—for it makes even crimes impossible.
About the same time I read a solemn flippancy by some free thinker: he said that a suicide was only the same as a martyr. The open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, exactly because (however he renounces the world or execrates all humanity) he confesses this ultimate link with life; he sets his heart outside himself: he dies that something may live. The suicide is ignoble because he has not this link with being: he is a mere destroyer; spiritually, he destroys the universe. And then I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, and the queer fact that Christianity had shown this weird harshness to the suicide. For Christianity had shown a wild encouragement of the martyr. Historic Christianity was accused, not entirely without reason, of carrying martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate and pessimistic. The early Christian martyrs talked of death with a horrible happiness. They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the body: they smelt the grave afar off like a field of flowers. All this has seemed to many the very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the stake at the crossroads to show what Christianity thought of the pessimist.
This was the first of the long train of enigmas with which Christianity entered the discussion. And there went with it a peculiarity of which I shall have to speak more markedly, as a note of all Christian notions, but which distinctly began in this one. The Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide was not what is so often affirmed in modern morals. It was not a matter of degree. It was not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and that the self-slayer in exaltation fell within the line, the self-slayer in sadness just beyond it. The Christian feeling evidently was not merely that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too far. The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends of heaven and hell. One man flung away his life; he was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence. Another man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would pollute his brethren's. I am not saying this fierceness was right; but why was it so fierce?
Here it was that I first found that my wandering feet were in some beaten track. Christianity had also felt this opposition of the martyr to the suicide: had it perhaps felt it for the same reason? Had Christianity felt what I felt, but could not (and cannot) express—this need for a first loyalty to things, and then for a ruinous reform of things? Then I remembered that it was actually the charge against Christianity that it combined these two things which I was wildly trying to combine. Christianity was accused, at one and the same time, of being too optimistic about the universe and of being too pessimistic about the world. The coincidence made me suddenly stand still.

 +JMJ+

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+Pray for the Holy Father+

Tolkien Round 3: Doesn't this just say it all?

From the why are the non reactionaries [?] acting like such a bunch of over-reactinaries file:

As New Catholic put it in a Tweet the other day, the Patheos inquisition (a funny reference to Zmrick's smear) is at hand, and when the indifferentists over there (if you want me to state why I call them that just ask) continue to throw a tizzy.

Now step in a new voice at Patheos to shame the Audio Sancto priest:

Apparently there is an audio lecture going the rounds slamming Tolkien. I haven’t listened to the lecture, but I understand it is along the lines of “Nobody ever came to faith and was baptized by reading fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings and there’s no myth or fantasy literature in the Bible so what good is it?” Whether I am over simplifying the lecturer’s point or not doesn’t matter, because he does raise an interesting question: Is J.R.R.Tolkien an evangelist or not?

I guess I should be grateful that he doesn't attack RC as being neo-pelagian rad trad reactionaries but still why is so hard for these people to get the point of the talk?

The main thrust of the talk was not whether Tolkien is or is not an evangelist.  For that matter Dante in his Divine Comedy is guilty of putting a now canonized pope in the eternal fires so there is a problem there.  But the difference is that people recognize the problems in the comedy and dont hide them thinking the work sacrosanct.

First if you he admits to not listening to the talk, but taking his cues from hearsay.

Second from this hearsay he then connects supposed dots that this is an attack on Tolkien.  (A note here there is a logical fallicy here that the homosexuals fall into as well not being able to seperate their person from the things they do)

Third the priest mentioned that he knew of no one that came to the faith through the Lord of the Rings.  He is speaking about how the story does not directly bring people to the faith until others show the good points then they can play off these things, but they then ignore the problematic aspects.

If the book helps people come into the faith great.  But for those that are not familiar with the audio sancto sermons the priest has been focusing on the inability of some to directly call out error even in inconvienent situations.  In the sermon called "Hatred of Heresy"he calls out Fulton Sheen indirectly for promoting heretical bible commentaries.  The point is that we have become so focused since the council on showing the positive aspects of things that we have lost the zeal to point out the troubling aspects.

A person is not his work.  Whether there are people that come to the faith by the works of Tolkien directly or indirectly is not the point of the sermon when you trace the theme over the last few months.

The point is whether or not we are willing to recognize problems then they come up, or whether we will side step the issues out of comfort.

Why is this so complicated?

Why the fear?

I dont get why the one blogger, who is throwing a tizzy over the priests conference about Tolkien's books, can't comprehend that New Catholic disagreed with the priest on the matter but still allowed the talk to be heard because disagreements help to clarify things.  People claim that the book is just a book and the talk about the troubling aspects was wrong because the focus of the book is not about Catholicism, but then they double back and want us to recognize every seemingly Catholic aspect immediately. Why cant we recognize the good and bad aspects?  Pray tell blogger?  Is Tolkiens work sacrosanct?  Is Pierce's, Kreeft's and others works on the matter the only thing that matters to begin with, and anything critical evil?

Why the fear?  Who's the reactionary again?

What does this do?

edited for bad grammar

On the Tolkien Controversy...

So a week or so ago Audio Sancto released a two part critical talk on JRR Tolkien's books like the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and the Simarilion.  You can find these conference talks below:

First I wanted to say that I enjoy JRR Tolkien's works and the movies that have come out recently.  So too I have found the works of Peter Kreeft, Michael Coren and Joseph Pierce to be extremely helpful in bringing to light the Cathlicity of his books.  For such things I am extremely grateful and would encourage other's to take such things in consideration before or after viewing the conference.

Now, having said that, I do think that the priest that gave this conference did a genuinely great service to the church in exposing some of the problematic aspects of Tolkien's literature.  I, along with New Catholic at Rorate-Caeli, disagreed with the talk, but I do believe that he made some interesting points that should be taken into account and not brushed aside as Rad Trad reactionary non sense which you might guess the normalist who himself over reacted and trashed the priest... need i really say his name, I think it suffices to say he didn't listen to the talk, but  went mad that anyone would question the efforts to over emphasis the Cathlicity of Tolkien's work.

I also found it interesting, seeing from the reactions to the post and those on Rorate's twitter, that people are defending Tolkien's work as if it were sacrosanct.

Seriously, there are good things to Tolkien's books and they should be applauded, but for crying out loud dont defend what Tolkien didn't attempt to put forth.  There are issues with the books and with Tolkien's attitude towards allegory which go unquestioned until this talk shook up the preconceived notions that all Tolkien is orthodox and therefore unquestionable.

Please listen to the talks, take them into account and make your own decision.  The goal of the talks was not to condemn Tolkien, but to bring balance to the current discourse.

Have a great weekend!

What say You?

+Pray for Francis P.P.+