tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-189307432024-03-23T11:58:19.756-07:00Theology of the BodyEcclesial and Embodied Catholic TheologyMMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comBlogger1402125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-84764302354616891772012-12-08T12:03:00.001-08:002012-12-08T12:03:21.963-08:00My early morning thoughts, and the ImmaculataOne of the greatest pleasures in my life is watching my baby wake up in the morning. When the light is still dim, she stirs a little next to me, adjusts her little body, breathes a little lighter. Gradually, there is another set of shifts and stretches among the pillows, one arm, then the next, a craning of her little neck, an arching of her little back, perhaps a defiant kick of her little feet. Eventually, we have cognition, open eyes, a still sleepy head held high triumphantly, a lilting "good moooowning mama," before the day's first demands for juice, or a movie, or whatever. <br />
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I love watching these first, early movements of each day because these are the primitive movements she made when she was first born, and before she was born- those aimless little stretches, the unformed reaching. I otherwise don't see those movements anymore. Her daily activity is rapidly becoming that of a coordinated little girl. She dances, and runs, and bounces, and kicks and throws her little balls remarkably well. She helps me scramble eggs. As she would be the first to tell you, she rides horses, because she brave. But in her half- awake, semi conscious state of the early morning, she is for a few moments again tiny, aimless, embryonic. And I treasure that. <br />
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As her mother, I think so often of how God parents us. How, as a merciful parent, He must be amused and calm and endeared when we are not quite collected. How He must sigh in infinite patience when we lose our hard-earned coordination and tumble at His feet, screaming with frustration, with nothing left to need but fatherly consolation. How He must smile when, every now and then, we successfully dance, or toss our balls, or act with the courage and the dignity and skill for which we are made. How He must dream of the day when we will be champions of grace, giving Him the credit that is truly due to His excellent paternal care. And yet how He treasures us even in the early and unformed times too, when our weak souls are embryonic, and when the grace in our lives becomes unformed because of sin. <br />
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So much mercy. Because in the utterly gratuitous beginning, our God made a world fully formed. Everything that was made, was made. Adult Adam, adult Eve. Everything ready and willing for vigorous, effective stewardship, and fruitfulness, and fully intimate fellowship with their Creator and with one another. Our first parents were for a time gorgeous, coordinated, collected champions of grace. It is not surprising that when the dawn of the new creation began to break, God started again with grace fully formed, adult, flourishing, mature, lacking nothing, in the handmaiden who would conceive His Son. In her, everything was ready and willing for stewardship, and fruitfulness, and fully intimate fellowship with her Creator and with us. In the New Eve- as with the first Eve, but better- there would be no embryonic, unformed virtue, no baby days of confused uncollectedness. There was no lacking that remained to be filled by experience and instruction. She is she who is full of grace. God is the Creator who makes things that are fully formed. In the beginning, He did it once; in Mary, He did it again. <br />
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It is fitting that we acknowledge that we are different. We are embryonic, we become infants time and time again. We obviously sin. We undo the full grace of our baptism. In our baby souls, day in and day out, we grow, revert, try again. And because of the fully formed one who once said yes, we are given the mercy of living and moving and being in the One who, in His mercy, gave Himself a mother in order to take on every aspect of our humanity. In His mercy, He gives us His mother too. I imagine they are both watching our craning and stretching and our waking little triumphs together, in the early morning light of Advent. <br />
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MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-72369384242128843922012-11-29T12:36:00.001-08:002012-11-30T01:59:22.199-08:00GenerosityI took a survey today while my little one was napping. The poll, which was attached to an online article offering suggestions on how to foster "generosity and sharing" in children, asked parents to identify the top values that they would like to instill in their tots. Parents were asked to choose between empathy, responsibility, respect, honesty, and yes, generosity. <br />
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I didn't choose responsibility; history's greatest villains have shown us that a person can act in downright evil ways, and still be sure to get the job done expeditiously, with great responsibility. <br />
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Respect? Super important, especially according to Maria Montessori, but my little one is two. I'd rather first cultivate a sense of fearlessness and adventure right now, rather than the prudence, caution and restraint that must come with future social training and a certain loss of innocence. For instance, my baby is slowly learning to behave reverently in Mass (sometimes), but this is mainly because she actually seems to love Jesus and is intrigued by His presence on the altar. It's not because, at two, she has developed great consideration for other worshippers and their cultural norms and expectations- which, for now, is fine with me. Respect involves a degree of healthy fear, and fear is not healthy for expanding toddler sensibilities and intelligence.<br />
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Honesty? That's great too, but my little one will someday learn, with her aforementioned social training, that not everything true must be spoken. One can be very honest and still behave cruelly and without charity. <br />
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I faltered a little at empathy, because that's just a very Christian virtue, but it's our modern context that has over-promoted it as such, and so I moved on. <br />
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I chose generosity. Because my foremost task is to prepare Caeli for Heaven. Secondly, it's to promote her well being and her happiness. She will get to Heaven by pouring her life into God and others, as the saints have shown us, as God incarnate and crucified showed us. And in so doing, she will be happy. Done. Selection made.<br />
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To my surprise, this poll's results showed my selection to be a vastly unpopular one. "Respect" led the way at 38%. "Honesty" ranked in at 20%, and "Empathy" and "Responsibility" were tied at 19% each (forgive me, but that's so very, very, provincially American). My favored "Generosity" staggered in at 4%. Which, perhaps, is why this fun little poll was attached to a ten point article on teaching modern American kids to "share."<br />
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What makes me so sad about this statistic is this: of all the other virtues, real generosity can't really be trained or tutored. You can fake empathy and you can enforce honesty, responsibility, and respect. But generosity has to be experienced. We love because we have been loved first. We share because we have been given something. We reach out because we have been made whole, comforted. <br />
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So is this stat a commentary on modern parenting? I think so. When I was preparing for my baby's birth I was inundated with philosophies of parenting that had much to do with the importance of "drawing boundaries" between the parents and the child, the "dangers" of losing one's self in motherhood, the absolute importance of tiny helpless infants gaining "a sense of self sufficiency and independence" (which, I think, can be ridiculous). The problem is that the prioritization of these proposals does not require the practice of generosity as a parenting style. And little ones learn what they live, as the saying goes. If they are raised among the priorities of self sufficiency and impervious boundary- drawing, we ought not be surprised when they mind their own interests first and refuse to share their stuff, and refuse to behave like givers, sharers, empathizers. We ought not be surprised if, later in life, they draw strong boundaries around their adult interests, "refuse to lose themselves" in caregiving, and, insisting on the independence and self sufficiency of their ailing elderly, they install their forgotten, aging parents in nursing homes (I'll readily admit that a lot of my parenting style has to do with the fact that when I am a very old woman, and frail and dependent, I don't want to be left to cry it out and self-soothe in a crib with a monitor).<br />
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What ultimately saddens me most about this little poll result is that I think it reflects the diminution of our sense of the awesome responsibility and gift of motherhood. Motherhood, of it's very nature, is pure generosity. In the creation, the mother IS the giver par excellence, the paradigm of sharing. Her utterly dependent baby comes from, grows from her body, in utero and without. The child's brain is formed by the intonation and content of her speech and the frequency of her touch. This is, per se, the life of giving. Of its very nature, motherhood has amazingly little to do with drawing boundaries and preserving personal interests and identities, particularly when it is done well. And we fail to honor this and celebrate it when we relegate motherhood and child raising to a set of practices that are understood in terms of "responsibility, honesty, and empathy" rather than the sheer joy of giving. <br />
MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-41741337056369964212011-10-11T14:42:00.001-07:002012-11-30T02:45:25.291-08:00Faithful I have been thinking a lot lately about fidelity. It's not a popular term; there's a reference to the idea in the motto of the United States Marines, "semper fi," and it bears the dull shine of scandal when one speaks of its absence, as in, "there has been an in-fidelity," and then there is an awful sense of wrong doing of some sort that teases the limits of our moral sense. Its root is very simple: Wiki says fidelity is the state of being faithful or loyal. One might think most immediately of vowed monogamy, in the sense of showing up, staying put, avoiding physical or emotional excesses of the wrong kind, looking straight ahead, doggedly avoiding flirtations; a quiet, unchanging custodianship of that which once was desired and prized, now retained in quieter, solidly exclusive bonds.<br />
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When I think about fidelity, I tend to make the grim prognosis that our culture doesn't, can't "do it" any longer (be it as it may, as Cole Porter seemed to intimate, that elephants and certain kinds of swans can). Electronic networks and imaging seduce the eyes, the thought, the heart, the imagination, and then the hours away from their rightful possessors. Our quick modes of communication allow for anonymity and nonchalance in intimate exchanges. We women have so infiltrated the workplace and the academy that each and every well-intentioned husband is daily surrounded by females who are more closely aligned than his wife with the professional interests that most immediately exhilarate and motivate him. We don't even cover our shoulders in church. The clever, mercurial spirit of the age knows exactly how to distract and deter us from the kind of fidelity that merely shows up and waits around. <br />
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Those who make and keep vows in this context have undertaken an unusual and heroic thing; maybe that's why marriage rates in the Catholic Church have fallen in my lifetime by sixty percent, or whatever it is, while our annulment tribunals increasingly recognize in the Church's members the inability to make valid vows in the first place. Perhaps we are a culture so wounded, so underdeveloped in our hearts, so jaded in our sexuality and sensibilities that we ought not to be held responsible for the promises we speak.<br />
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Against this grim little landscape is, of course, the God of Israel, the definitive covenant maker and promise keeper. In the beginning, the great creator and provider dignified His people with a role in the reciprocity which He allowed them; "if you will be faithful to me as your fathers were, do everything I command, and obey my laws...then I will establish you...as I spoke in promise to your fathers." (II Chronicles somewhere) A righteous exchange, for a righteous people. Later, when those righteous people fail to the point of committing a kind of adultery, the divine covenant maker reveals His sorrowful but faithful heart; the bargain is gone, the covenant broken, and there is nothing left for God to say but "I will be faithful to you, and make you mine, and you will know me as the Lord." (Hosea somewhere) And then, at the end, for an uncontrite and uncovenanted people who had not even heard of His offers, the divine covenant maker reveals His very self, clinging to a lashing-post while He is flayed and bled, demonstrating the full extent of divine fidelity, loving them to the end; "herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (I John)<br />
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For God's part, the story of divine fidelity does not merely show up and stand still, containing and maintaining that which was desired. Rather, the story speeds up as it goes, urgently disclosing the full nature of the divine Person who has promised, hastening towards the vowed end, that anticipated bridal banquet. It is to the increasingly needy that He becomes most ardently faithful. It is always in our saddened, weakest state that He will show Himself most strong, in His rushing and passionate and enduring fidelity. <br />
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"Look down upon me, good and gentle Jesus, while before your face I humbly kneel and with burning soul, pray and beseech you to fix in my heart lively sentiments of faith, hope, and love, true contrition for my sins, and a firm purpose of amendment, while I contemplate with great love and tender pity your five most precious wounds..." <br />
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MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-18055820374031264092011-08-10T13:50:00.001-07:002011-08-10T19:50:54.483-07:00Lucy is Enceinte On Sunday we took a picnic to a nearby lake and parked on the shore, where we could watch the water from the interior cool, protected from the ovenlike environment that is north Texas in August. My little one perched on her daddy's lap, peering with great delight over the steering wheel; we tuned into a favorite NPR program. The topic for the day was that dear old sitcom, "I Love Lucy." In particular, the interviewer discussed the program's iconic depiction of mid twentieth century American marriage and family life.<br><br>Of particular interest was the show's depiction of Lucy's modern pregnancy, the first instance of such in the history of American television. The producers and actors had been quite nervous about this; they softened the fact of Lucy's twin-bedded pregnancy by referring to it in French ("inceinte" --that's three syllables); they called in a Catholic priest to consult on the presentation. After all, those were the days in which little girls averted their eyes from pregnant mothers seen in public, as my grandmother tells me.<br><br>I was really struck by the language and postures selected by this 1950's sitcom culture in relating the facts of being in a family way. These weren't just the days of sexual scruples and inhibitions; this was a unique time in the modern world, a situation between the dawn of mass communications on the one hand, and on the other, the changes that would come with the distortions of contraception (at the time, still illegal in many parts of the United States) and the legalized crime of abortions. <br> <br>What most interests me are the smaller changes that have influenced our attitude towards early motherhood and fragile, newly conceived babies since that time. In our times, our mores tend to be shaped by our technologies. Hence in a world where early human life is so easily destroyed and discarded by our machinations, we find ourselves speaking so tentatively about it. We don't say "babies;" rather we say "embryo," or "fetus," or worse, we refer generically to "the pregnancy." We don't announce the fact of a new human life with the ready joy that it deserves; we wait long months until we announce the fact of conception, constrained by sterile medical definitions of "viability."<br><br> (I understand that it may be an act of prudence to refrain from early announcement, if the mother fears the chance of miscarriage and would like to protect her privacy. But a most beautiful mother I know has announced all of her ten pregnancies right away- including the seven that she was able to carry to term- as an act of honor and celebration for each little one, in a gesture that I think very much befits the crazy, courageous generosity of motherhood in general)<br><br>...and finally, our culture has a funny way of treating the mother- in -waiting like an incubator; she is told patronizingly that for the nine painful, emotional, highly involved months of her baby's gestation, she is merely a "mother to be." Give me a break.<br><br>In contrast, the seemingly innocent, constrained culture of the "I Love Lucy" millieu (twin beds, pearls, vacuum cleaners) presents a much, much more robust embrace of little ones, of sexuality, of humanity. In those days, there seemed to be a simpler recognition of the facts of life: a tiny human person was recognized as just that- a tiny human person. He or she was not deemed to be anything else. The baby's mother was also just that- the mother. And the same for the father. Alive and well, a growing, unborn "baby," with "parents" to protect and provide. And so we see in the language of the first scripted announcement of a pregnancy, at the dawn of modern media. <a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UPbOtpM5OQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player' target='_self'>You can watch it here</a>. All so blunt, so uninhibited. Lucy is "having a baby." As soon as she knows, she goes to tell her husband. There's no reticence; she tells Ethel about her urgency to announce, and then the announcement is made in celebratory song, at Ricky Ricardo's nightclub. He exclaims to the crowd of unprivate strangers, "I am a father!" He sings, "we're having a baby, my baby and me." No hedging around with fetal viability. No mincing with the idea of prospective "parents to be." No cordoning off the baby's unborn life, lest it interfere with the privacy of others. Lucy is enceinte; that means there is a "baby," and that baby has jubilant "parents." The little one is "expected" by all, only in the sense that anyone "expected" regarding their arrival, already fully exists, and is already acknowledged, invited, rejoiced over.<br><br>We've come a long way from the culture of that sitcom, the NPR program continued. In one particular regard, the modern wives and mothers that crazy Lucy anticipated have been liberated into a whole new nexus of desires and opportunities. And yet at the same time, the way we think of ourselves has digressed into a strange agnosticism, such that we have come to speak ambivalently, and so very prudishly, about our very selves, even in the midst of our newly available opportunities. We are women, with nuptial and fecund meaning inscribed in our bodies, not workplace agents with a dibilitating susceptibility to fertility. If and when we become pregnant, we are then and there fully engaged *mothers*; we are not warming ovens with morning sickness. And the little ones conceived within and from us are little *babies*, developing onwards from the moment of their conceptions into the bouncing, teething, triumphant little tots they will become. <br><br>...this may all be a study in semantics merely, but I don't really think so. The seemingly prudish and innocent culture of the I Love Lucy era displays a kind of primal freedom that we in our modern "liberation" have lost. Lucy may have had to wear pearls and high heels to do her housework, but she had not been so confused by the modern world as to second guess the facts of life.<br><br>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-10755139677757204382011-07-16T12:07:00.001-07:002011-07-16T12:07:44.787-07:00Carmel My breviary describes Mt. Carmel as "the lovely place where the prophet dwelt in service to the word of God...it expresses a sense of the beauty, prayer, and silence that characterize Mary, the Mother of our Redeemer." <br><br>A few days ago, I pulled an old scrap book off the shelf and recalled that I had once been to Mt. Carmel, on a summer journey when I was sixteen with my mother, and my brother, and an old friend. In my photos we are suntanned and windblown and happy, and distracted; my journal records being under awed with the holy place, and being more enchanted with the pleasures of the company, and the day, and the charms of a rugged countryside. Perhaps there was little of the "beauty, prayer, and silence" of the Redeemer's mother in my heart then...and perhaps there is only a little more now...but the symbol of Carmel remains the same, calling us to the high place where our God takes us as we are, accepts whatever we've got to give to Him; "on my holy mountain...there I will accept them, and I will claim your tributes and the first fruits of your offerings, and all that you dedicate." (Ezekiel 20)<br><br> Those who wear the medieval brown scapular particularly celebrate Mt. Carmel today. In the ancient time, our Lady appeared to a humble monk of the order dedicated to the holiness of Carmel, offering to him a little symbol of faith; "a sign of salvation, a protection in danger, a pledge of peace." The scapular was and is God's gift to us; He is always giving us things. But it is also a potent symbol of our gifts to Him. Worn on the body, it can signify a certain childlike humility, an act of renunciation of one's own merits and strengths, a symbol of the total offering of the self to the Savior. Our ultimate gift, the whole gift of ourselves, signified in a little brown thing. And what dignity is lent to us in this: we teeny, tiny folk have something to give to God.<br><br>I have given some things to God. I have given Him grubby things, small in sacrifice, things diminished by my laziness and inconsistency. I have given Him things rash and ill-advised, more acts of raw and unformed zeal than perfect love. In truth I have never given to Him a gift that is perfect, timely, rounded out with all the contours of the virtues, properly motivated and complete. I'm not capable of it. It is only once in His receiving hands that my gifts are made fit for Him. He is the great Recipient. He makes all things beautiful in His time. <br><br>In this way, the grace and mercy of God is best comprehended not in the facile idea that "Christ has given all, I've got nothing left to offer," nor even in the hope that God might restore and return that which we've given up. I think that God's mercy is most strikingly known in the promise that He will receive what I try to give to Him. "He will accept, He will claim." And therein, He will transform, He will redeem. And all of this for the broken things we offer up, the haphazard works of cooperation, the mistaken selections, the little efforts, the smudged sacrifices, the daily moments that, even in our mistaken judgments and in our zealous foibles, come to signify the giving of our whole selves. <br><br>Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us.<br><br>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-7753121733025081072011-06-30T09:08:00.001-07:002011-06-30T18:55:38.061-07:00The Fellowship of His Suffering "I want to know Christ, and the fellowship of His sufferings." Philippians 3<br><br>There is a whole Catholic lingo surrounding the problem of suffering. As often happens, this lingo refers to a whole, deep, profound theology about the nature of things. But to me in my charmed life it has been a lingo merely- a friend's lighthearted statement of intention "to offer it up" when her children are unruly, for instance. It sounds so economical. And while it has been deeply consoling to believe that there is some meaning, even some redemption behind the experience of my stubbed toe or my hurt feelings- or more profoundly, the hunger of my neighbor's children- I think it has never before fully sunk in that suffering can be a gift. That is to say, I've given this proposal the assent of faith. Really, though, I never believed it; I've felt closest to the Lord in a cool, clean swimming pool. But suffering, I think I am learning, is just as St. Paul puts it, the grace of fellowship with Christ- near, intimate fellowship, the kind that is costly and messy and hugely inconvenient and out of the way. <br><br>It's true that there is also a lovely, robust fellowship in joy, and our Lord is a laughing, risen Lord. When we sing "thine is the glory, risen conquering son," the undercurrent of our sympathy is a hurrah indeed- truly, ours in Him is the glory, the strut of a risen and conquering people. And it's all true- about Him, and about us- He is risen, we are risen with Him in baptism, we wait in hope. And everyone wants to be friends with the winner. <br><br>On the other hand, there is no natural fellowship in suffering. Maybe that's the hardest thing about it. Pain hurts, but it's the disconcerting perplexity and exhaustion that hurts most. Pain tends to disarm and alienate the person from his own thoughts and his own feelings, to the extent that "lovers and friends stand afar off" because the man of sorrows himself is put out of himself by his sorrow. Bewildered and confused by the nerves or the brain chemistry that bid us fight or fly from our pain, we are left with nothing to say, no conversation, nothing to offer. The time when things hurt the most is the time when we must be left alone. For the mother in the labor of childbirth, for the friend with a broken bone, for the daughter mourning a loss...there is no sharing of the deeply, uniquely personal experience of a personal agony.<br><br>This, I think must be the grace of suffering. In His human condition, Christ suffered alone. The ancient fathers insisted that in His purity and perfection, His loneliness and pain became the maximal instances of both. And it is in our own lonely suffering that we touch something of that which He endured alone, and hence, in our own experience, we get to share with Him that which no one else has ever shared. When we rejoice with Him, we stand with the whole joyous throng that He has won; but when I suffer with Him, it is my unique and unrepeatable and lonely pain that I know, and that He as God knows, as no one else can. It is precisely because I must suffer alone that in my suffering I enjoy the richest fellowship with my God, the man of sorrows. He alone is the friend who is nearer than the brother.<br><br> There is a precedent for this. The mother of the One who would suffer was quite closely united to Him already- by the affinity of supernatural grace, by proximity, by physiology. And yet the prophecy goes that even for her there was something more to be shared with Him, the otherwise isolated experience of suffering, which is otherwise impossible to share. The prophecy of Simeon proclaims a novelty, a new thing of intimacy in the human experience, an aspect of the Incarnation: "a sword will pierce your heart also." Here, for Mary, as for all times and all people, the merely human heart is to be united to that of the Trinity, in the shared experience of utter isolation.<br><br><br>"Your heart also." Catholic culture portrays the immaculate heart of Mary having been pierced with little spiky symbols, peeping through her flowers. We recall that she is alone at the Cross, and yet not alone, in the way that it is Christ alone who gives Himself for us, and yet He is not alone either. He is joined by all those who "make up in their bodies that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ," who thereby live nearer to Him, in the ontological nearness that is requisite for our redemption. <br><br>Yes, I "add" my little sufferings to His. If my salvation and that of the whole world is accomplished by union with the Savior, then the union that is realized in my lonely suffering brings about my healing and, by extension, that of the composite brokenness of the world. The cross is not the site of a lonely death; it is the Tree of Life. It is, in the mind of the ancients, a fecund marriage bed. Having been invited into the place where none can otherwise go, in the fellowship of His suffering my suffering becomes the irreplaceable site where I meet Jesus, just the two of us. I am made new by that nearness. And here I maintain and renew fellowship with others through forgiveness, removing a just burden from them, and losing it in that abyss of mercy that was the suffering of God.<br><br>I want to know Him, in the fellowship of His suffering.<br><br>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-46553992842635245742011-05-28T14:19:00.001-07:002011-05-28T14:19:07.758-07:00Caves of Forgotten Dreams My husband and baby daughter and I crept into Werner Herzog's latest film last night, and we were enchanted. Herzog can create and capture magic. It takes a little patience on both ends, but I love that in this film he is willing to teach me how to connect the soulful images left long ago by passionate, drum-beating people, with the passion of the somewhat clumsier modern folk who scan, synthesize, and study the same images on their modern technology, and then go home to dream of lions. When my little one started to sing along with Herzog's kind, lulling voice, we crept out a little early, but every curve of those cave walls, every undulation of the human face in response to quiet brush strokes stays with me...<br><br>I thought of a lot of things while watching this film. How striking that even in a primal subsistence culture that was necessarily more utilitarian than ours, humanity paused to express itself in the leisurely pursuit of beauty for it's own sake. How unsurprising that such a creature can pause, successfully, to reflect upon and worship it's creator. How logical the proposal that we were *meant* to do so. <br><br>And I thought of the secret within every person for that particular participation in and with the Creator, where truth is lived out, where art is made. As a mother, I thought of that place where primal little infant people dance in hidden places to the drum-like rythm of a heartbeat. I remember our first golden little sonograms of our baby in her primal little cave, in the womb; I was struck then by the sheer holiness of that quiet, hidden place where something is made for it's own sake, and for God's. So purely artistic. Such aimless, perfect recreation. <br><br>Herzog's team stoops and grunts gracelessly enough to enter the Chauvet Cave. Once inside, it must have required gymnastics to achieve such beautiful camera work from the awkward crowding on their aluminum platform. But once there, Herzog asks his crew for total silence so they can "hear the cave," and perhaps also their own heartbeats. The silence feels a little stilted at first. For audience and filmmaker alike, it has got to take a lot of work to really enter a space like that, and then to recollect the self enough to really experience it. Because in its own way, it's a holy place.<br><br> May our utilitarian world recall itself to its caves of dreams...all of them.<br><br>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-33541230433418325542011-05-25T14:15:00.001-07:002011-05-25T14:15:53.819-07:00Love and Responsibility: an excellent summary ...I'm not one to deny that I really appreciate a good set of cliff notes; and for a document as crucially needed for our times as Bl. John Paul II's reflections on the body and the marital relationship, <a href='http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/may/summaryofl&r.htm' target='_self'>Prof. May's summary is welcome indeed.</a><br><br><a href='http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/may/summaryofl&r.htm' target='_self'>Here</a>.<br><br><br>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-79993653631535854942011-04-28T01:49:00.001-07:002011-04-28T01:49:49.519-07:00The Royal Wedding...theological notes, etc. The Church of England's Book of Common Prayer (a Protestant liturgical text which, incidentally, is authorized for use by Catholics) explains that William and Kate's wedding will signify to all millions of viewers "the mystery of the union between Christ and His Church." Furthermore, their wedding surrounds "a holy union," intended by God for "mutual joy...help and comfort in prosperity and adversity...and the procreation of children." One of my friends points out that it's at such times that the grand institution of monarchy fulfills it's properly evangelical role by providing for occasions which highlight the proper union of culture and sacraments in the lives of royal persons...excellent, excellent point.<br><br>Since William and Kate are both baptized, and presumptively suited and disposed, their exchange of vows will constitute an indissoluble sacrament, whereby their souls are really united and marked for one another (oh dear..such public intimacy!) Hardline readers of Apostolicae Curae will rejoice in such fullness of sacramental life on William and Kate's side of the Tiber, but that is another issue for another day. What is interesting is that while the Book of Common Prayer makes much of marriage as a "covenanted" union rather than a sacrament, the Windsors' laudably respectful treatment of the indissolubility of marriage reveals something of a kickback to the old ways; for instance, Edward was ousted for marrying a divorcee, Charles refrained from remarry during Diana's lifetime, and the Queen has expressed reservations about her archbishop's flamboyance on point. <br><br>The traditional order of service for Anglican marriages does not require the inclusion of holy communion in the marriage rite. However, the presence or absence of holy communion is quite telling as to the theological leanings of the royal couple; it was Martin Luther who insisted, even before Henry VIII, that Christian marriage should be treated as a civil contract and a creature of the state, ideally enacted outside of church and the Eucharist. Thus the absence of holy communion from this royal wedding might refer to a distinctly bare-bones reading of the Anglicansim which William will one day govern, even more so than the treatment of other issues such as whether there will be lots of candles on the altar (I've heard the Queen doesn't like them) or whether the bride will display bare shoulders in church (ditto).<br><br>A rather thorough sampling of some of the invited heads of state is <a href='http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yvonne-yorke/royal-wedding-guest-list_b_825739.html' target='_self'>offered here </a>. Pope Benedict is not among them; Muammar Gaddafi, Swaziland's King Mswati, and Mr. Bean, are. It is particularly lovely that Cardinal Sean Brady of Armagh will be there. He may be one of the first prelates of Rome to attend a British royal wedding since...June 11, 1509, shortly after Katherine of Aragon arrived in London to wed the Defender of Faith. <br><br>The weekday selected for the royal wedding, Friday, would be highly illicit for any other week of the year, since traditionally Fridays are days of penance, fasting, and recollection of Christ's suffering. However, the royal wedding falls on Easter Friday, the Friday following Easter within the eight-day octave of the Resurrection Feast. Thus it's fitting to feast and to marry. Plus, it's gracious to provide for a national three-day weekend. <br><br>I <a href='http://blogs.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2011/02/09/wedding-music-will-william-and-kate-follow-royal-tradition/' target='_self'>really love the traditional selection of music for royal weddings...can't wait to hear William and Kate's selections:</a><br><br>On that note, I'll conclude with the words to a hymn sung at the royal weddings of Prince William's grandparents and great-grandparents, because it's one of my favorites, and because it's so apropos of good royal manners to acknowledge The Sovereign at these events...<br><br><a href='http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/p/r/a/praisems.htm' target='_self'>Praise My Soul the King of Heaven</a><br><br>Praise my soul the King of Heaven<br>To His feet thy tribute bring<br>Ransomed, healed, restored forgiven<br> Evermore His praises sing<br>Allelujah! Allelujah!<br>Praise the Everlasting King.<br><br><br>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-90390570005453844212010-09-24T09:20:00.000-07:002010-09-24T09:24:44.430-07:00Still a League: Newman on Western Civilization<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" white-space: pre-wrap; font-family:'Lucida Grande';font-size:11px;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42091000/jpg/_42091892_pope_ap_416.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42091000/jpg/_42091892_pope_ap_416.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a> <div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><b>Bl. John Henry Newman </b></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><b>on The Papacy </b></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><b>and the Preservation of Civilization</b></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span style="font-style: italic; "></span> </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> Bl. John Henry Newman has some excellent things to say on point in his 1900 </span></span><a href="http://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/index.html"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Letter to the Duke of Norfolk</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">. This piece is essentially Newman's explication of a political theology based on a Catholic historical construal, and an explanation of the Christian's civic duties in light of his primary duties to Christ and Christ's Vicar. Newman invokes a basic argument in defense of the papacy: ecclesial government by the monarchial papacy is simply most</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> efficient</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">, aesthetically proper, and benevolent. This has been the classical proposal for human government from the beginning. Newman also invokes a striking passage from Dean Milman's </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Latin Christianity</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> to insist that themonarchial papacy was the </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">only</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> means by which Christ's Church could constitute itself as Christ's autonomous society in the earth, and then resist being hijacked by transient medieval states. Consequently, <b>Newman urges that papacy provided the only means by which Western Europe developed into the civilization that we know and love</b>. In fact, Newman here refers to the Roman pontiff as "</span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">the Father of European civilization</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">." </span></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> Read on: </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"> </span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">"<i>The Papacy was the only power which lay not entirely and absolutely prostrate before the disasters of the times—a power which had an inherent strength, and might resume its majesty</i></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i>. It was this power which was most imperatively required to preserve all which was to survive out of the crumbling wreck of Roman civilization. To Western Christianity was absolutely necessary a centre, standing alone, strong in traditionary reverence, and in acknowledged claims to supremacy. Even the perfect organization of the Christian hierarchy might in all human probability have fallen to pieces in perpetual conflict: it might have degenerated into a half-secular feudal caste, with hereditary benefices more and more entirely subservient to the civil authority, a priesthood of each nation or each tribe, gradually sinking to the intellectual or religious level of the nation or tribe. On the rise of a power both controlling and conservative hung, humanly speaking, the life and death of Christianity—of Christianity as a permanent, aggressive, expansive, and, to a certain extent, uniform system. </i></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i>There must be a counter-balance to barbaric force</i></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i>, to the unavoidable anarchy of Teutonism, with its tribal, or at the utmost national independence, forming a host of small, conflicting, antagonistic kingdoms. All Europe would have been what England was under the Octarchy, what Germany was when her emperors were weak; and even her emperors she owed to Rome, to the Church, to Christianity. </i></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i><b>Providence might have otherwise ordained; but it is impossible for man to imagine by what other organizing or consolidating force the commonwealth of the Western nations could have grown up to a discordant, indeed, and conflicting league, but still a league</b>, with that unity and conformity of manners, usages, laws, religion, which have made their rivalries, oppugnancies, and even their long ceaseless wars, on the whole to issue in the noblest, highest, most intellectual form of civilization known to man</i></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i> ... </i></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i>It is impossible to conceive what had been the confusion, the lawlessness, the chaotic state of the middle ages, without the medieval Papacy...</i></span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><i>The right to warn and punish powerful men, to excommunicate kings, to preach aloud truth and justice to the inhabitants of the earth, to denounce immoral doctrines, to strike at rebellion in the garb of heresy, were the very weapons by which Europe was brought into a civilized condition</i>."</span></span></span></div></span>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-25222570576028512672010-09-22T12:46:00.000-07:002010-09-23T06:58:37.307-07:00Blessed John Henry Newman and the Primacy of Peter<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.stphilipsbooks.co.uk/pictures/JHNewman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 295px;" src="http://www.stphilipsbooks.co.uk/pictures/JHNewman.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic;">As many of you know, Cardinal John Henry Newman was beatified this week by Pope Benedict XVI in England. I hope to spend the next few days reflecting on some of Newman's legacy...</span><br /><br /></div> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Papal Infallibility, Papal Error, and the One Church</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>(Edited)</b></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />"For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard…the revelation..."<span style="font-style: italic;">Pastor Aeternus</span> 4.6<br /><br />When John Henry Newman explicates the issues of papal primacy and infallibility, he is aware that these topics pose a major stumbling block to most Protestants, in as much as the ideas defined by the definitive statements of <span style="font-style: italic;">Pastor Aeternus</span> state that “the sentence of the Apostolic See (other than which there is no higher authority) is not subject to revision by anyone, nor may anyone lawfully pass judgment thereupon." The Protestant rejoinder to this doctrine (which Newman admits having once shared) is that it is completely untenable to accept the solemn and infallible declaration that "there is no higher authority" than the Apostolic See, especially where this authority extends over interpretations of Scripture and Ecumenical Councils. Even the Orthodox tradition claims that it is the Church herself that is “the pillar and foundation of the truth,” and that the mind of the Church is therefore expressed ecumenically, and not by a monarchial pope. On such rebuttals, Petrine "primacy" would translate into neither universal and ordinary jurisdiction, nor infallibility. Rather, a college of bishops would retain ultimate jurisdiction, under the primacy of the Apostolic See, who, as a sort of “chairman of the board” would act as a first among equals, setting the agenda and directing discussion as would a significant figure head, but nothing more.<br /><br />As Newman anticipates, such an argument holds that the Church’s infallibility and empirical unity cannot reside in the Pope as head, because that head has historically made doctrinal mistakes: the early Church's Pope Liberius anathematized Athanasius; in another instance, Pope Honorius promulgated monothelatism. History thus problematizes the <i>Pastor Aeternus</i> claim that "in the Apostolic See the Catholic religion has always been preserved unblemished, and sacred doctrine held in honor." Accordingly, detractors have argued that the Catholic religion of the 7th century was only preserved <i>in s</i><i>pite of</i> the best efforts of the Apostolic See.<br /><br />Newman’s responses suggest that the doctrine of papal infallibility proceeds from the conviction that <span style="font-weight: bold;">Christ, the single Author of Truth, does not contradict Himself </span>in any sources of revelation; by extension, Christ does not speak in one way through the episcopal Magisterium, while speaking in another way through its leader. Therefore, the papacy's claims to primacy need not cause scandal to those who are convinced of the unity of truth. Furthermore, Newman’s arguments suggest that the primacy of the popes is not only a necessary epistemic criterion in the life of the Church, <i>vis a’ vis</i> the discerning of God’s revelation, but that the papacy is such an essential feature in the hierarchical constitution of the Church that there can be no such thing as an ecumenical council independent of, nor in opposition to, the pope; and this should be understood in the same way that no body can perform a corporate function without the cooperation of its head.<br /><br />Newman’s proposal is not that the pope should be pitted over and against the Church as a distinct agent; rather, <span style="font-weight: bold;">Newman regards the pope's authority as derived from Christ, the Head of the Church, and from the nature of the infallible Church itself.</span> Newman allows that papal infallibility does not always translate into clear and heroic witness to Christ; however Newman still insists that the papacy is vitally expedient for the mission of the Church in the world. In this regard, there is warrant for finding in Newman the assertion that <span style="font-weight: bold;">the Church cannot be the Church without its head</span>. Newman suggests that because the Catholic faithful were constituted under their pope and bishops, the consensus of the faithful could thereby preserve important doctrines even when the hierarchy's discernment of truth failed; the Church, on the metaphor of a body, has its <i>epistemic </i>voice only in as much as it has its <i>ontological</i> head. Newman provides us with an eloquent description of the pope, who, on the model of Ignatius of Antiochs’ bishops, does not provide for a merely epistemic or juridical unification of Christ’s Church; rather, the Church is united in and under the pope's person, as the visible vicar of Christ.<br /><br />A brief summary of the relevant evidence for this claim follows. In <span style="font-style: italic;">On Consulting the Faithful </span>(1859), Newman notes that “the tradition of the Apostles, committed to the whole Church in its various constituents, functions <i>per modum unius</i>, (and) manifests itself variously at various times: …sometimes by the mouth of the episcopacy.” (<i>Consulting</i> 2) Newman adds that “for myself, I am accustomed to lay great stress on the <i>consensus fidelium</i>,” even to the extent that the <i>sensus communis fidelium</i> can make up for the silence of the Fathers;” furthermore, “the voice of tradition may in certain cases express itself, not by Councils, nor Fathers, nor Bishops, but (by) the "<i>communis fidelium sensus</i>.” </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Newman holds that "the sense of the faithful" is distinct but inseparable from the teaching of the pastors, and is indicative of the judgment or sentiment of the infallible Church, and thus should be taken into account to the utmost; in fact, the sense of the faithful could even be taken to ground the decision of the pontiff. At this point, Newman invokes the metaphor of an organic “body” that reactively expels whatever substances it finds to be foreign to itself and obnoxious to its health; Newman further extends this principle of the vital role of the laity’s faith in the discernment of true doctrine, as was evident in the lay opposition to the heresies of the episcopal hierarchy during the Arian controversies of the early Church.<br /><br />Next, in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Letter to the Duke of Norfolk </span>(1875), Newman describes the voice of the faithful as drawn together and held together in the visible institution of the Church; and here, Newman explicitly describes this Church as constituted under the head that was commissioned by Christ Himself, and secured by historical exigency:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><b>We must either give up the belief in the Church as a divine institution altogether, or we must recognize it at this day in that communion of which the Pope is the head. </b>With him alone and round about him are found the claims, the prerogatives, and duties which we identify with the kingdom set up by Christ. We must take things as they are; to believe in a Church, is to believe in the Pope. And thus this belief in the Pope and his attributes, which seems so monstrous to Protestants, is bound up with our being Catholics at all; as our Catholicism is bound up with our Christianity. I say, we cannot help ourselves…we should not believe in the Church at all, unless we believe in its visible head… the Papacy was the only power which lay not entirely and absolutely prostrate before the disasters of the times—a power which had an inherent strength, and might resume its majesty. It was this power which was most imperatively required preserve all which was to survive out of the crumbling wreck of Roman civilization.</span><br /><br />Having described the Church as an institution united and constituted in, by, and under the pontiff, Newman returns once again to the theme of the “voice of the faithful” that is implicit in the issues of the individual conscience addressed in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Letter IV</span>. Raising various hypothetical situations, Newman considers whether “the case (could) ever occur, in which I should act with the Civil Power, and not with the Pope?” Newman answers this issue by invoking the principles of three authorities: Cardinal Turrecremata, Cardinal Bellarmine, and Archbishop Kenrick:<br /><br />A) Cardinal Turrecremata says, "<span style="font-style: italic;">Although it clearly follows from the circumstance that the Pope can err at times, and command things which must not be done, that we are not to be simply obedient to him in all things, that does not show that he must not be obeyed by all when his commands are good. To know in what cases he is to be obeyed and in what not ... it is said in the Acts of the Apostles, 'One ought to obey God rather than man:' therefore, were the Pope to command anything against Holy Scripture, or the articles of faith, or the truth of the Sacraments, or the commands of the natural or divine law, he ought not to be obeyed, but in such commands is to be passed over (despiciendus)</span>." -<span style="font-style: italic;">Summ. de Eccl., pp. 47, 48.<br /><br /></span>B) Bellarmine, speaking of resisting the Pope, says, "<span style="font-style: italic;">In order to resist and defend oneself no authority is required ... Therefore, as it is lawful to resist the Pope, if he assaulted a man's person, so it is lawful to resist him, if he assaulted souls, or troubled the state (turbanti rempublicam), and much more if he strove to destroy the Church. It is lawful, I say, to resist him, by not doing what he commands, and hindering the execution of his will</span>."—<span style="font-style: italic;">De Rom. Pont., ii. 29.</span><br /><br />Finally, Newman’s invocation of Archbishop Kenrick hearkens clearly to the earlier principles of <span style="font-style: italic;">On Consulting the Faithful</span>: "<span style="font-style: italic;">(the pope’s) power was given for edification, not for destruction. If he uses it from the love of domination scarcely will he meet with obedient populations</span>." Consequently, Newman elaborates on the idea of the seemingly extensive discretion permitted to the individual who is faced with an “emergency” of conscience. In such cases, the person does not owe absolute obedience either to the (potentially conflicting) Church or state, and he would consult available ancillary authorities, resorting in the end to his own judgment and conscience: “<i>it seems, then, that there are extreme cases in which conscience may come into collision with the word of a Pope, and is to be followed in spite of that word</i>.”<br /><br />Despite this allowance, it is clear that Newman thinks that such hypothetical divergence between the <span style="font-style: italic;">de fide </span>statement of a pope and the constraints of the individual conscience are hardly possible, since both conscience and pope are in some sense “the vicars of Christ,” such that the Church is “built on” the foundation of the obedient conscience answering to the will of God.<br /><br />Given these qualifications of papal infallibility in light of “the sense of the faithful” and the prerogatives of the individual conscience, it is at this point that we may see that the role of the pope in Newman’s ecclesiology is not primarily one of epistemological or moral adjudication; rather it is primarily a role of ontological headship, established by Christ to be the given constitutive of His Body in the world. In this regard, Newman explains that the “supreme” human conscience, as itself a vicar of Christ, is itself always to be formed by the principle of charity with regard to the heir of Peter:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">He must have no willful determination to exercise a right of thinking, saying, doing just what he pleases, the question of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, the duty if possible of obedience, the love of speaking as his Head speaks, and of standing in all cases on his Head's side, being simply discarded. If this necessary rule were observed, collisions between the Pope's authority and the authority of conscience would be very rare. </span><br /><br />Finally, Newman explicates the following principles in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Preface to the Third Edition</span> (1877). Though Popes may err, nonetheless, their role as temporal, vicregal heads of the Church, by and in whom the Church is united, remains uncompromised:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Acts simply unjustifiable, such as real betrayals of the truth on the part of Liberius and Honorius, become intelligible, and cease to be shocking, if we consider that those Popes felt themselves to be head rulers of Christendom and their first duty, as such, to be that of securing its peace, union and consolidation.</span><br /><br />Thus although Newman dwells so much on the sense of the faithful and the individual consciences that comprise the one body of the faithful, there is also a strong sense in Newman by which we understand that the corrective voice of the infallible Church entire is, as a body, possible only when the body is aligned to the Head. Recalling Ignatius’ principle that the <i>ecclesia </i>is united in the person of the bishop, and not merely by obedience to his rulings, a reading of Newman’s position can be summarized as follows. In <span style="font-style: italic;">Consulting the Faithful</span>, Newman holds that “the e<i>cclesia docens</i> is not at every time the active instrument of the Church's infallibility,” since historically, the faith has itself been impugned by the Church's bishops. In terms of the expediency of the papacy, which Newman highlights, we recall that even in the debaucle of the Arian debates, the great Council of Nicaea, with its 318 Bishops, was convoked under the authority of the pope; the very council that refuted the pope was convened by the pope. As Newman cites in <span style="font-style: italic;">Letter 3.3.213:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">To Western Christianity was absolutely necessary a centre, standing alone, strong in traditionary reverence, and in acknowledged claims to supremacy. Even the perfect organization of the Christian hierarchy might in all human probability have fallen to pieces in perpetual conflict: it might have dege</span><span style="font-style: italic;">nerated into a half-secular feudal caste, with hereditary benefices more and more entirely subservient to the civil authority, a priesthood of each nation or each tribe, gradually sinking to the intellectual or religious level of the nation or tribe. On the rise of a power both controlling and conservative hung, humanly speaking, the life and death of Christianity—of Christianity as a permanent, aggressive, expansive, and, to a certain extent, uniform system.</span><br /><br />In conclusion: in addition to these considerations of the expediency of the papacy in the life of the Church, Newman is also positing an ontological claim about the metaphysical nature of the Church in his considerations of the papacy. To speak epistemically and coherently, with the voice of the faithful, she must have a head.<br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-86922686054218038892010-09-20T09:17:00.000-07:002010-09-20T09:21:10.587-07:00Getting back to posting... sort of<div style="text-align: justify;">Dear Readers,<br /><br />For those of you who are kind enough to follow this blog, my apologies for all of the contemplative silence around here for the past month. I took a few weeks off to finish writing my dissertation, and I have since succesfully made the transition to "nesting" in preparation for the birth of my daughter in the coming month. In between laundering receiving blankets, I hope to continue this little blog as a small act of cooperation with my honored advisor's mandate to do a little theology every day. Pray for my family, and we will pray for yours! And happy reading!<br /><br />In Christ<br />MM<br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-45918212054733096452010-09-20T09:15:00.000-07:002010-09-20T09:17:36.643-07:00Blessed Angela of Foligno, 13th Century<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.sspx.ca/EucharisticCrusade/2002_December/images/image017.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://www.sspx.ca/EucharisticCrusade/2002_December/images/image017.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic;">A Franciscan tertiary and mystic who was also a wife and mother...</span><br /><br />"At times God comes into the soul without being called; and He instills into her fire, love and sweetness; and the soul believes this comes from God, and she delights in it. But she does not yet know or see that He Himself dwells in her; she perceives His grace, in which she delights. ... And beyond this the soul receives the gift of seeing God. <span style="font-weight: bold;">God says to her, 'Behold me!' and then the soul sees Him </span>dwelling within her; she sees Him more clearly than one man can see another.<br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <div style="text-align: justify;"><br />For the eyes of the soul behold a plenitude of which I cannot speak; a plenitude which is not bodily but spiritual, of which I can say nothing. And the soul rejoices in that sight with an ineffable joy; and this is the manifest and certain sign that God indeed dwells in her."<br /><br /></div></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-5040744842484145442010-08-13T04:55:00.000-07:002010-08-13T05:02:20.212-07:00For Christ Alone: Thinking about Mary 101<a href="http://z.about.com/d/arthistory/1/0/C/5/05_n_VirginOfRocks.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 320px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://z.about.com/d/arthistory/1/0/C/5/05_n_VirginOfRocks.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>Among others, August is her month, and this weekend is the Feast of her Assumption into Heaven by the grace of her Son.<br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />As often happens, <span>I have a lot of explaining to do</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span>around the time of the Feast of Mary's Assumption. And as always, simpler is better. Yes, she is our Queen Mother. She's the mother of the King. And yes, we believe that <span style="font-weight: bold;">her Son once called her to be assumed through the clouds to be in His presence in Heaven.</span> This is what He promised to do for all of us, as He did for Elijah and a few others of His Old Testament servants; and it just makes sense that our courteous Lord would have His mother go first, in the promised resurrection of the body which He alone can provide.<br /><br /><span>I am struck lately by how desperately the Church needs to cling to its Queen these days</span>- not just in terms of gorgeous litanies and personal affection, but in terms of the doctrinal rigor that only she can afford. The heresy of our day is that the Incarnation of God that occured in her womb is negligible. Spiritually, liberalized Christianity has decided to die the easy death of those who follow an unembodied Christ ideal. Our atmosphere is rife with such lovely-sounding, air- headed proposals of uber groundless spiritualities. Politically, a national culture that once generally affirmed that the Body of Jesus saves us now has its future threatened by the irritated Islamic heresy that does not tolerate this truth, while from within, we kill our unborn babies and "euthenize" our infirm because we have forgotten that from the reality of the Incarnation, every human body intrinsically belongs to God. And all the while, the sacred warning of I John rings in the backgound like a distant memory... <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">every spirit that denies that Christ is come in the flesh is the spirit of antichrist</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">...</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">who is the antichrist but he who denies that Christ is come in the flesh...any spirit that denies...</span><br /><br />The Church has not forgotten that we are saved by knowledge of the Son, in the Biblical sense. The Church has not forgotten that we are not saved by a set of well-worded propositions about God, but by the visceral, physical reality of Jesus of Nazereth, who is God united to human flesh. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Church has thus not forgotten that Mary, above and beyond all the human creation, really </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">knows </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">the Son</span>. He is <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span> Son. She knew his stirrings in her own body before His birth. She recognized dominant DNA patterns from her parents and grandparents in His features. She knew Him when He was two. While He grew in wisdom and stature, she knew what He liked to eat and what He did not (look people, this is essential to what Christianity is- the firm conviction that God in Christ probably has favorite foods). It is she who knew that just as much as His human will grew in perfect conformity and union to His divinity, He had eyes of a certan color and pains of a certain sort, and she knew exactly what His excruciating bloody wounds looked like on the day He died for the great love of His life. And it is thus that it is Mary, the mother of our Lord, who can uniquely crush that elegant and sinister lie that God has not come in the flesh, that redeeming Truth is separate from a Person. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Mary wiped His nose and rocked Him to sleep. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">She knows</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span><br /><br />History has proven that <span style="font-weight: bold;">it is the mother of God who protects the essential, precious truth of our salvation: the Word is made flesh and dwelt among us.</span> Several essential aspects of the Church’s worship and confession were expressed around the 4th century in response to the proposals of detractors. The first, at the Council of Nicaea in 325, declared that Christ is fully God. At stake was an understanding of salvation: the Cross can save us only if the Crucified Redeemer is fully divine. Once the Church had expressed that the Son is also fully man at the Council of Constantinople in 381, the third statement, expressed shortly thereafter at the Council of Ephesus in 431, responded to the proposals of Nestorius. </div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Nestorius wanted above all things to evade the harsh implications of the Cross.</span> In sum, Nestorius was convinced that a God who suffered in the flesh could not save us. Surely such a God would have ceased to be God. So, Nestorius invented the sad proposal that I have run into over and over again: Jesus of Nazareth is not fully God because in Him God is not fully united to man. Jesus is only a "temple" in which God dwells; the child born of Mary may be honored as the vessel in which God's power became manifest, but Jesus cannot be worshipped as God. In short, the Nestorian heresy contended then (as it contends now) that the Word has not been made flesh, that God has not united Himself to us.<br /><br />As promised, the Holy Spirit led Christ's Church into all truth, and the conciliar clarification came through loud and clear in the orthodox doctrine that Catholic Christians confess today while we joyfully worship Jesus. Mary's testimony won the day: the Person conceived by the Holy Spirit in her virginal womb is Himself the unity of God and man. He has a rational soul and a human body born of His mother; everything that belongs to a real human is in the divine Christ. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The subject of the whole human reality </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">is</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> the Logos, which He took on from the Virgin in mortal time. With respect to His essential humanity born of Mary, </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">God</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> was born, </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">God</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> suffered, </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">God</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"> did everything that Jesus was doing… the one who was born of the Jewish girl is the same as the one who was begotten of the Father before all worlds.</span> As Athanasius had put it, the whole Christian story must be the story of Jesus’ descent and ascent- of the Logos' descent into our flesh, and of the taking of our flesh into the very heart of God. The story of salvation is the story of the Logos, from the bosom of the Father, to the depths of our flesh, returning to the Father clothed forever in our flesh, fused with it. What Christ has not assumed of our nature and united to His godhead cannot be healed.<br /><br />The conclusion centered on Mary. In the end, in summary of the Church's Christological confession, Mary was declared <span style="font-style: italic;">Theotokos,</span> Mother of God- not mother of a fleshly "vessel," nor mother of an earthly "temple." Rather, <span style="font-weight: bold;">she herself was known to be the Vessel and Temple in whom God Himself had dwelt.</span> In sum, we are left today with the historic Fourth Anathema against Nestorius: <span style="font-style: italic;">i</span><span style="font-style: italic;">f anyone distributes between two persons/subjects of Jesus Christ and attaches some to the man as separated from God, </span><span style="font-style: italic;">let him be anathema</span><span style="font-style: italic;">.</span><br /><br />The lie that the second Person of the Trinity had not come in the flesh and been born of a woman was silenced. At the time, the Church celebrated with processions similar to those that Catholic churches will perform this Sunday. In defeat of the heresies, an image of the mother of God Incarnate is paraded through the towns of the fallen world in public proclamation that the hellish lies about her Son have to stop at her humble feet. The Church recalled prayers from the Fathers Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Origin, and Gregory of Nazianzan then, as we do now: <span style="font-style: italic;">sub tuum presidium, we fly to your patronage, oh holy mother of God. Do not reject our prayers in time of need... you who alone are pure, holy and blessed... if anyone does not believe in Mary as the Mother of God, he is severed from the godhead</span>…<br /><br />(On this Feast of the Assumption, while I am in glad procession against deadly heresies, I will enjoy recalling the prayer of a more modern figure):<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In this work whereby she was made the Mother of God, so many and such great good things were given her that no one can grasp them. ... Not only was Mary the mother of him who is born in Bethlehem, but of him who, before the world, was eternally born of the Father, from a Mother in time and at the same time man and God...She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin- something exceedingly great. <span style="font-weight: bold;">For God's grace fills her</span> with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil...The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart...It is the consolation and the superabundant goodness of God, that man is able to exult in such a treasure. Mary is his true Mother, Christ is his brother, God is his father...Mary is the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all of us even though it was Christ alone who reposed on her knees . . . If he is ours, we ought to be in his situation; there where he is, we ought also to be and all that he has ought to be ours, and his mother is also our mother.</span><br /><br />- <a href="http://www.davidmacd.com/catholic/martin_luther_on_mary.htm">Martin Luther, <span style="font-style: italic;">Little Prayer Book</span>, 1522.</a><br /></div></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-54720064930783744892010-08-09T08:33:00.000-07:002010-08-09T08:39:17.407-07:00Cardinal Mahony on Homosexuality and Marriage<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://douglawrence.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/mahony.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 429px; height: 380px;" src="http://douglawrence.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/mahony.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><a href="http://cardinalrogermahonyblogsla.blogspot.com/2010/08/judge-vaughn-walker-got-it-wrong.html">Here</a>.<br /><br />..."<strong style="font-weight: normal;">There is only one issue before each of us Californians: <em></em><strong></strong>Is Marriage of Divine or of Human Origin?</strong>"MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-4555648969101452302010-08-06T07:48:00.000-07:002010-08-06T07:49:23.311-07:00Bishop Jaime Soto's 2008 Address on Homosexuality and Marriage<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxHpZ9_2s1TJWYslnArpXfQqpkdYW2Cjg6gcYqLA-r9JBZGqpEX7eA2USCXmkFucQxDL14xPRwZHkhibNE3FTRLjLrnJk0EvHKpdn4nYx34Bznr59fT08OiGtIXG92tSPG-YCNcQ/s1600-h/Bishop_Jaime_Soto_web.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxHpZ9_2s1TJWYslnArpXfQqpkdYW2Cjg6gcYqLA-r9JBZGqpEX7eA2USCXmkFucQxDL14xPRwZHkhibNE3FTRLjLrnJk0EvHKpdn4nYx34Bznr59fT08OiGtIXG92tSPG-YCNcQ/s320/Bishop_Jaime_Soto_web.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5251813000123321714" border="0" /></a><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">September 29, 2008<br /></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">"...The nature of love has been distorted. Many popular notions have deviated from its true destiny. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Love for many has come to mean having sex.</span> If you cannot have sex than you cannot love. This is the message. Even more destructive is the prevailing notion that sex is not an expression of love. Sex is love. This <em>reductio ad absurdam</em> deprives sexuality of its true meaning and robs the human person of the possibility of ever knowing real love.</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">Sexual intercourse is a beautiful expression of love, but this is so when intercourse is understood as a unique expression intended to share in the creative, faithful love of God. As the Holy Father, Pope Benedict, elaborated in his first encyclical, <em>Deus Caritas Est</em>, “Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love” - <em>between a man and woman</em> - “becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God’s way of loving becomes the measure of human love.” (DCE, n. 11) Sexual intercourse within the context of the marriage covenant becomes a beautiful icon - a sacrament - of God’s creative, unifying love. <span style="font-weight: bold;">When sexual intercourse is taken out of this iconic, sacramental context of the complementary, procreative covenant between a man and a woman it becomes impoverished and it demeans the human person.</span></p> <div style="text-align: justify; font-weight: bold;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">Sexual intercourse between a man and a woman in the covenant of Marriage is one expression of love to which the human person can aspire, but we are all called to love. It is part of our human nature to love. We all have a desire to love, but this love can deviate from its true calling when it exalts only in the pleasure of the body. Pope Benedict said in the same encyclical, “The contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Eros, reduced to pure ‘sex,’ has become a commodity, a mere ‘thing’ to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man’s great ‘yes’ to the body. </span>On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will.” (DCE, n. 5) This is not our true calling. The human desire to love must lead us to the divine. Looking again to the Holy Father’s encyclical, he says, “True, eros - <em>human desire</em> - tends to rise ‘in ecstasy’ towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” (DCE, n. 5)</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">This path is the path of chastity. This is very true in marriage. It is also true in all of human life because it is the nature of all authentic love. We are all called to love. We are all called to be loved. This can only happen when we choose to love in the manner that God has called us to live. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Love leads us to ecstasy, not as a moment of intoxication but rather as a journey, “an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God</span>: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Lk 17:33).” (DCE n. 6)</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">Sexuality, then, as part of our human nature only dignifies and liberates us when we begin to love in harmony with God’s love and God’s wisdom for us. Chastity as a virtue is the path that brings us to that harmony with God’s wisdom and love. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Chastity moves us beyond one’s desire to what God wills for each one of us.</span> Chastity is love’s journey on the path of “ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.” Chastity is the understanding that it is not all about me or about us. We act always under God’s gaze. Desire tempered and tested by “renunciation, purification, and healing” can lead us to God’s design.</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">This is true for all of us. It is also true for men and women who are homosexual. We are called to live and love in a manner that brings us into respectful, chaste relationships with one another and an intimate relationship with God. We should be an instrument of God’s love for one another. Let me be clear here. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Sexual intercourse, outside of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman, can be alluring and intoxicating but it will not lead to that liberating journey of true self-discovery and an authentic discovery of God. For that reason, it is sinful. </span>Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful.</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify; font-weight: bold;">Married love is a beautiful, heroic expression of faithful, life-giving, life-creating love. It should not be accommodated and manipulated for those who would believe that they can and have a right to mimic its unique expression.</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marriage is also not the sole domain of love as some of the politics would seem to imply.</span> Love is lived and celebrated in so many ways that can lead to a wholesome, earnest, and religious life: the deep and chaste love of committed friends, the untiring love of committed religious and clergy, the profound and charitable bonds among the members of a Christian community, enduring, forgiving, and supportive love among family members. Should we dismiss or demean the human and spiritual significance of these lives given in love?</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">This is a hard message today. It is the still the right message. It will unsettle and disturb many of our brothers and sisters, just as Peter was unsettled and put off by the stern rebuke of his master and good friend, the Lord Jesus. If the story of Peter’s relationship with Jesus had begun and ended there, it would have been a sad tale indeed, but that is not the whole story then nor is it the whole story now. Jesus met Simon Peter on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He said with great love and fondness, “Come, follow me.” Peter would not only continue to follow the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem. Despite his many failings and foibles, he would eventually choose to love as Jesus loved him. He would die as martyr’s death in Rome, giving himself completely for the one who loved him so dearly.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The teaching of the Church regarding the sacred dignity of human sexuality is not a rebuke but an invitation to love as God loves us.</span> The Church’s firm support of Proposition 8 is not a rebuke against homosexuals but a heartfelt affirmation of the nature of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman. We hope and pray that all people, including our brothers and sisters who are homosexuals, will see the reasonableness of our position and the sincerity of our love for them.</p> <div style="text-align: justify;"> </div> <p style="text-align: justify;">For that reason, we should let the words of St. Paul haunt us and unsettle us: “Do not conform yourself to this age.” In so many ways we can allow ourselves to be duped, fooled, by the fads and trends of this age. It is far better that we allow ourselves to be drawn into the ways and the manners of Jesus. The Lord Jesus challenges us as he challenged his friend, Simon Peter, to not conform to what is fashionable and convenient. He has so much more to offer us. Do not think as others do. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Let us think as God does. </span>He shows us the way, the truth, and the life."<br /></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.catholicexchange.com/2008/09/29/114024/">More Here</a>. And <a href="http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/09/at-lgbt-confab-jaimeshock.html">Here</a>.<br /></p>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-26409301891951588022010-08-05T07:51:00.001-07:002010-08-06T15:56:14.109-07:00Proposition 8 and a Good America<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRZAQjHpUH8FJHanVuc7sH_0arrMs9ZMH2kdVwGkHj3kRr868fzbt7yBIyXfSWbVLi4OJ-m6ynAzYGNmlVS5PsGr-emXcN143nzVV9VH-NS7yecsjCZI29LBNVFYm14HMxVVyOAg/s1600/prop8.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 204px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRZAQjHpUH8FJHanVuc7sH_0arrMs9ZMH2kdVwGkHj3kRr868fzbt7yBIyXfSWbVLi4OJ-m6ynAzYGNmlVS5PsGr-emXcN143nzVV9VH-NS7yecsjCZI29LBNVFYm14HMxVVyOAg/s320/prop8.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501953126661226786" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Yesterday, California joined a handful of other states in overturning their ban on same-sex sexual relationships being legally identified as "marriages." Many commentors and I are sure that this means that this controversy will make its way to the Supreme Court.<br /><br />In the interim, lobbyists and lawmakers will be scrambling to preserve the interests of their constituencies. What are these interests? The cool timbre of legal explanations will hold forth various arguments.<br /><br />Proponents of same- sex "marriage" will argue against discrimination with regards to the natural rights of homosexual persons to free expression and association. They will claim the right to privacy, the fact that the choice of a marriage partner and the right to marry is a fundamental human right, and that the interests of adopted children who are involved in such relationships might benefit from the security of a "marital" home. In particular, they will argue the 1993 holding of <span style="font-style: italic;">Baehr v. Lewin,</span> that homosexual persons are entitled to equal protection under the law. They will hold forth the 1999 conclusion of <span style="font-style: italic;">Baker v. VT</span>, that the state cannot exclude same sex couples from the benefits and protections which its laws provide to heterosexual married couples, and that same sex couples are constitutionally entitled to all of the common benefits afforded to married couples. <span style="font-weight: bold;">And they will challenge their opposition to prove a rational basis, given these facts, that can justify the exclusion of same sex couples from "marriage" on reasonable grounds. </span><br /><br />On the other hand, those who fight for the traditional norm of heterosexual marriage will remind this nation that <span style="font-weight: bold;">the legalization of same sex relationships as "marriages" will separate the properly intrinsic link between sexuality, marriage, and procreation.</span> They will argue that such authorization creates an unhealthy environment for the children adopted into the same sex household, as well as for those children who are engineered for the same sex couple in the most cumbersome ways, while also contaminating the moral atmosphere for all young people. They will ask why our society should be forced to endorse that which the larger society holds to be immoral, in as much as the practical affirmation of marriage "costs" our society in terms of tax breaks and benefits; they will propose, in sum, that the United States courts cannot conclude that a right to same sex marriage is so rooted in the traditions or collective conscience of the people that failure to recognize it would violate the fundamental principles of liberty and justice. In other words, such a “right” to the legal recognition of same sex relationships is not so implicit in the concept of ordered liberty that it would become the case that neither liberty nor justice could succeed if that "right" were sacrificed. Declining to recognize gay relationships as "marriage" is not to authorize an unjust deprivation of proper entitlements, nor is a state's refusal to recognize such relationships sufficiently grievous, coercive, or intrusive to amount to the "deprivation" of a natural or legal right.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">...And in response to the traditional arguments against the authorization of same sex relationships, proponents of homosexual "marriage" will reply that our arguments are "all about religion," and the intrinsic link which all religious traditions recognize between sexual intercourse, marriage, and children, and the concurrent recognition of the inherent disorder which distorts every homosexual sexual act. And they will be right.</span><br /><br />This is the sort of juncture where we have to throw the towel in with regards to our highly sterilized and Gnostic presumption of a separation between Church and state, when no such stern dichotomy can actually exist between religious structures and a society of religious people. By definition, a religion is that which proposes a normative truth, ensconced in a normative system, applicable to all of life. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The Catholic Church understands this; and while she gladly acknowledges a nation's claim to civil life, structures, and autonomy, she does not cease to propose the universal norms which she understands to be the truth about the world and about all people. </span>One of these truths which the Church proposes is that not every "right" is to be exercised, if the goal is real freedom, strength, and civic excellence; accordingly, another such truth is that those who are empowered to make and interpret laws will only fulfill their responsibilities when they legislate broadly to affirm the deeper truths that enable and assist persons to be truly free. To authorize sexual license apart from real moral structures is to fail in this responsibility; that's why our laws prohibit statutory rape, incest, polygamy, prostitution.<br /><br />(This is the case even though I have seen some fairly tight arguments to the contrary pop up in family law textbooks- a merely Constitutional case can be made for the legalization of incest, believe me- but here the inevitable question always arises as to what is truly <span style="font-style: italic;">good</span>)<br /><br />And yes, our objections to same sex "marriage" are all about religion. The Church interprets her Scriptures and her own history in such a way that enables her to speak to the current situation with stunning clarity. Writing in 1968, and without direct reference to the issue of homosexual relationships, Pope Paul VI warned in <span style="font-style: italic;">Humanae Vitae</span> that <span style="font-weight: bold;">our culture's gradual and contraceptive dissociation of the intrinsic link between sexuality, marriage, and procreation would lead to the isolation of each, the exploitation of each, and a disordered approach to each.</span> The Pope held forth what the Church undertands to be the truth about marriage, about sexuality, and its fruits:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">(We hold) the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act. The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman. And if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative, is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called. </span><br /><br />Against such a religious definition of the proper ordering of sex and marriage, homosexual partners demand the right to receive national and state benefits and authorization for their decision to have sex with each other, in a stable sort of way. Is this marriage and family, in the way the Church understands it? No. Is it plausible that a compelling Constitutional argument can be made for the rights of homosexual persons to receive legal benefits for their decision to have continuous and monogamous sex with each other? Yes. But in as much as the Church (and all other religious traditions) hold forth what may (to the secular audience) be the actual truth about persons, marriage, and family, then the exercise of a legal right to imitate marriage may lead to our demise as we attempt to enact a new sort of "marital" institution based on a delusion. <b>When our nation ceases to order its life within reality, even in the purported name of justice, we will cease to be an instantiation of sound civic order among the nations of the world; we will become as fragile as another social construct. <span style="font-weight: bold;">It's a risk. The world's religious traditions have millenia on our innovative little USA.</span><br /></b><br />Alexis De Toqueville, one of our colonial statesmen, had this in mind when he remarked that America, and her constitution and legal structures, were great- technically- only because they were good- morally. And he continued that when America ceased to be "good," in the way that religious and moral traditions describe goodness, she would cease to be great. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Yes friends, in that way, we are "all about religion."</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-42545449166579607172010-08-03T08:54:00.000-07:002010-08-03T13:58:47.888-07:00Anne Rice in a Weaker Vein<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID704/images/annerice.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 397px;" src="http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID704/images/annerice.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">There has been a bit of hulabaloo recently about Anne Rice's decision to depart from the Catholic Church and all "organized religion" after her much-touted return to it in 2005; NPR characteristically aired an interview with her yesterday, in their amusing mode of offering only diametric counters to EWTN's "The Journey Home," on which I was a guest last fall (what would be fun is to hear a really good conversion story in Terry Gross' breathy voice). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We can leave aside for now the sterner internal interptation of her choice as a self-conscious act of apostasy and a sin against charity itself; what worries me is the intellectual credibility of this public decision. Anne Rice's list of negations and denials is boringly thin, aimed at a line of straw men who are less robust than her bloodless Undead. Where has the Catholic Church ever self-identified as "anti-feminist," "anti-gay," or "anti- science," as Rice puts it? Is this not the same Church which, in its authoritative statements, identifies itself in the image of a woman and enthusiastically <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_29061995_women_en.html">lauds women's contributions to every sphere of life</a>, <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2358.htm">defends the dignity and rights of homosexual persons</a>, (Catechism 2358), and <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html">affirms the integral roles of faith and science</a>? Anne Rice should know better; she referenced such good scholarship for her first faithful novel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Christ the Lord</span>. Instead, she has chosen to affirm a mere negation, which, apart from being logically impossible, is intensely boring. <span style="font-weight: bold;">She has become another postmodern cliche.' </span><br /><br />On the other hand, <a href="http://vocatum.blogspot.com/2005/12/culture-pop-christ-lord.html">I so well remember stopping by one of Anne Rice’s Manhattan book signings for <span style="font-style: italic;">Christ the Lord</span> when the book first came out</a>, in the wake of Rice’s public return to the faith. I remember a certain warm sense of real fellowship- a community of friends with a common cause. I remember how serene and whole and firmly resolved Rice seemed, how secure. I’d asked her to inscribe my book for a certain priest, and she held that book for an extra second, repeating the priest’s name almost tenderly. If that little sliver of time represents a small part of the graces at work in her return to the faith, she will be back. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The chilly tone of her recent renunciations lacks the compelling tenor of real love and conviction altogether</span>. She was not made to live a negation.<br /><br />For those in the popular media who are applauding Rice's constrained and insipid choice as a sort of clarion call to Christian believers, please. She offers no radical new proposal; she suggests nothing new or positive in terms of constructive change for us awful Catholics and Christians who actually love our organized structures. She is not proposing a reform. She is re-hashing a tired, weary strain which does not do justice to her fairly good literary style. <span style="font-weight: bold;">She can do nothing but make qualifications now. </span>And that is just sad, on so many levels- with regard to her spirituality, and with regard to her brain.<br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-68769390515189549712010-07-21T08:01:00.000-07:002010-07-21T11:43:30.803-07:00Queen Susan's Bow: Woman as model for the role of the laity<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2005/05/03/inside-narnia-susan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px;" src="http://images.usatoday.com/life/_photos/2005/05/03/inside-narnia-susan.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">(Because movie audiences these days are excited about the forthcoming "Voyage of the Dawn Treader," which I love)<br /><br />When the film <span>'The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe"</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span>was first released</span>, various feminists began cooing over one particular moment in C.S. Lewis' adapted story: Susan Pevensie fires a well-aimed shot from her bow and mortally wounds the wicked little dwarf who is about to kill her brother in the Great Battle. This moment is notably absent from The Book, wherein Lewis, that consummate and self-identifying layman, points out that he would rather not have his women fighting in battles, for the mere fact that they are women.<br /><br />As a joyful gender essentialist, I believe that there are intrinsic gifts, responsibilities, and vocations inherently connected with being male or female, and I love being the latter, because it means being a mother and a sister and a daughter to the rest of the world, in a variety of ways. I think that a good solid patriarchy can be wonderfully advantageous to ambitious young women. I trust my father and almost always defer to his wishes; I obey my husband, with God's help. I think that men are naturally inclined to lead and protect women, and I think that women should let them do so. But I am not one to shrink from battles.<br /><br />Queen Susan, the Gentle and Accurate, takes up her weapon and defeats a demon, and with that she joins the generals Deborah and St. Joan of Arc as women who I, purportedly submissive and non-feminist gender essentialist, want to imitate. Why? Because on Lewis' allegory, we all know that Susan has fired her shot in a spiritual battle between an enslaving, death-dealing, and demonic power, and it is on this sort of battlefield, that we truly are all one, neither male nor female, in Christ Jesus. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Having delivered another traditonal household code in Ephesians 5, wherein women obey while men sacrifice, Paul turns immediately in Ephesians 6 to the weapons which </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">all </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">take up in order to deal out death blows to the Enemy of souls.</span> This warfare is the prerogative of every Christian Person. And the offensive is not optional. It is on the battlefield where the Church is attacked by a ruthless enemy that gender is truly relativized in light of the expediency of Christ's Kingdom, such that women as well as men must take up arms to deal death blows to demons. Was there ever a besieged army that cut its ranks in two at the height of a conflict? Why would the Church do such a thing? Why would the Church not promote her daughters in the gender-neutral Christian mandates to evangelize, to chatechize, to do systematic theology... in short, to do warfare? And in this regard, the Church is no civic community. The Church is, in many ways, an army that needs every baptized person to bear arms in the context of its critical, eschataological Battle.<br /><br />At this same time, this does not mean that the Church has the option of counting women in that apostolic succession which adminsters the sacraments and formulates doctrine. <span style="font-weight: bold;">As Kalistos Ware has put it, "</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">to no woman has Jesus said, 'he who hears you hears me...to no woman did He make the promise to ratify in heaven what she has bound or loosed on earth</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">."</span> And, as Thomas Hopko concurs in <span style="font-style: italic;">On the Male Character of Christian Priesthood</span>, to speak of women being "excluded" from the Christian episcopacy is absurd and nonsensical, because "exclusion" supposes a possible and prior "inclusion," which does not in fact exist in the history of the Christian tradition. But neither does the Church have the option of preventing women from passing on the Faith once delivered to the (male) apostles through the teachings of her female doctors and mystics, or engaging in the ministry of an apostolate, or prophecying, or leading and initiating in the Church, in as much as the Church may require. If we are an army under attack, then we need all hands on deck.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">It is in this way that the Church's understanding of women corresponds to her understanding of the laity in general.</span> The sacrament of Holy Orders is not one of those sacraments to which everyone is entitled; the conferring of ordination is simply the Church's obedient acknowledgment of those rare and particular men whom God has called to serve His Church as priests. At the same time, the Church makes it very clear that her ministry, her vocation of taking Christ's light into each and every dark corner of the earth, properly belongs to those women who are not ordained by virtue of their essential vocation to the lay state, and to those men who are not ordained by virtue of having received an alternative calling. The Church's seeming "no" to women who might like to be priestesses is really at the same time the Church's resounding and urgent "yes" to the lay vocation, in which the gift of our Confirmation flourishes in the most radical ways, because God has entrusted the more dangerous responsibilities of non-ordained ministry to all women and to Christian laymen.<br /><br />And this brings me to two conclusions. The Church reminds us that at her very heart there is not an oppressive patriarchal system, but a woman. It makes sense that a Church that is essentially Marian would call to her women to model the patience, surrender, and perfect love that is required of all her people in their original lay state; perhaps it is in this regard that John Paul II stated that "<span>women will be the most fruitful element in the Apostolate</span>." And with this mandate in mind, as women who submit in love to the Catholic tradition, and who, in speaking first to Christ, remain silent or speak very softly in the Church, by all means let us do so wholeheartedly; but let us carry a very big stick.<br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-26202037573049972552010-07-20T09:14:00.000-07:002010-07-20T09:20:47.238-07:00A small tirade against feminism: "now, now dearie, use your feminine pronouns..."<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/910000/images/_913159_wolff150.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; width: 200px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/910000/images/_913159_wolff150.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">I've about had it</span>. The next time a White European Male professor with fewer degrees than I've got tells me that I cannot refer in my extensive writing to "mankind" or the masculine pronoun "he" or "his" for the human being, or the Fatherhood of God, or the Sonship of Christ, etc., I am going to throw a royal fit.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">... actually, no time like the present.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Feminists, God bless them, have exploited the rhetoric of The Oppressed! to revise the way we speak about one another. They have thus distorted the beauty of the English language and the dignity of a woman's right to self-expression in the academy. - We have to refer to "humanity," never use the masculine pronoun (though we <span style="font-style: italic;">can </span>use FEMININE pronouns, which is hilarious when one is speaking about historically male-dominated cultures), and above all, God must be "Mother" and "Nurturer" and "Sustainer," etc. etc. Which makes things very difficult when once wishes to refer to Christ's robust language of His Father. Which makes things difficult when one is <span style="font-weight: bold;">perpetually sick of being patronized for (her) refusal to be a feminist</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Even with references to our predominately male-behaving God aside, I prefer to use masculine pronouns. Why?</span><br /><br />1. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Because I am a Christian</span>. As such, I believe that all of humanity- and especially we baptized- are categorically and really identified by this MAN, Christ the Lord. We are capitulated by this male. We believe that we are from Him, through Him, in Him. We believe that in some sense, every person ever created is from Him, through Him, in Him, even for Him. He is before all persons, and by Him all things consist. We hope, in the end, to be regarded as "in" Him, under His juridical and ontological headship and hence constituted by His very self, safe and flourishing under His protection. Thus- from His masculinity- it becomes perfectly rational to refer to persons in general with the masculine pronoun.<br /><br />2. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Because I am my father's daughter</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">and my husband's wife. </span>Whether modern feminism likes it or not, my life has in a very precious way been lived "through" these amazing men who lay their lives down to promote the women in their lives. My dad was instrumental in my creation. He protected me and trained me and made sure that I had every opportunity that he and I could imagine. He inspires me. He interrupts his meetings to take my calls. He takes me around the world and insists that I never neglect a single dream. Now, I similarly live my life "through" and "in" my husband, who became my husband in order to serve Christ in me. In as much as my whole life is characterized by the gifts, love, and leadership of such men, it makes sense that I would employ... masculine pronouns.<br /><br />With this in mind, I recall that <span style="font-weight: bold;">language is supposed to be an instrument for honoring the other</span>. Language, with its grammatical order and normative clarity, was (and should be) a means of the charity to which we are called in every moment. When <span style="font-style: italic;">this </span>woman refers to the masculine pronoun, I freely honor the men in my life. (If the men in my life were to become so besotted with <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span> that they insisted on always using feminine pronouns in my particular honor, well then, more power to them). As a woman who is willing to use masculine pronouns, I honor all men as fundamentally other than myself, and with whom I stand in loving solidarity as persons nonetheless. It's all about <span style="font-style: italic;">charity</span>, people.<br /><br />All this to say: I am a traditional Catholic woman who regards herself in the man Christ Jesus, and who honors her dad and her husband among men, and I am thus become a voice of the marginalized.<br /></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Off to overthrow the oppressors. </div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-24183305430800576172010-07-19T09:11:00.000-07:002010-07-19T09:14:00.337-07:00Reinhard Huetter and a Marian corrective to feminist theology<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8FnlMT5s_kZiW7iokRaYrlpihSykRWALKke90N-6jcStk45uxLMe04R4baYyKIfyJ5BcMKbJ3dxWS_iM1-2o67HDcpUbDZWhyphenhyphenGdCAyPEb5-Fr_i7U43AoUbUDMFs7PMdPDWY0A/s1600-h/assumption_botticini_456.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ8FnlMT5s_kZiW7iokRaYrlpihSykRWALKke90N-6jcStk45uxLMe04R4baYyKIfyJ5BcMKbJ3dxWS_iM1-2o67HDcpUbDZWhyphenhyphenGdCAyPEb5-Fr_i7U43AoUbUDMFs7PMdPDWY0A/s400/assumption_botticini_456.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254878460989784834" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.divinity.duke.edu/portal_memberdata/rhuetter">Reinhard Huetter</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> is Professor of Christian Theology at Duke University. These are my notes from one of his conference presentations in 2008.</span><br /><br />Professor Huetter describes the enterprise of renewing theology in a Marian key as a project of re-discovering an "abandoned palace" full of particularities that are relevant to ecclesiology and soteriology, in lieu of contemporary theology's less fecund abstractions.<br /><br />In particular, Huetter focused on the doctrine of Mary's Assumption as vivifying the eschatalogical hope of the Church; in Mary we find fulfilled - and already actually anchored in Heaven- what God has promised for all humanity. In this way, the Church's hope for salvation and the particular resurrection of the body is sustained because of Mary, in whom the Church can rejoice that the economy of salvation has been completed.<br /><br />Huetter invoked Louis Bouyer's own renewal of Marian theology in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/seat-wisdom-Virgin-Christian-theology/dp/B0007DSWZK"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Seat of Wisdom</span></a> of the 1960's. Huetter also referred to and the Scriptural significance of Mary's being the only creature ever greeted by an angel as indicative of her excellence above all creatures in grace and consequent familiarity with her Creator, and as indebted above all for the grace which preserves her, unstained, from original sin.<br /><br />My favorite acecdote from this presentation was the suggestive note that the doctrine of Mary's assumption into Heaven reminds the feminist revolt in modern theology that <span style="font-weight: bold;">there is indeed already a woman in Heaven,</span> so they need not worry so much about de-gendering God the Father; we see in Mary that there is a fully, integrated, maternal creaturely life enjoying the Beatific Vision and interceding for the rest of the creation already.<br /><br /><br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-65676017570675092572010-07-16T12:56:00.000-07:002010-07-16T14:36:51.160-07:00The Vatican: Equating the abuse of minors with the attempt to "ordain" women?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXLXB4cHaZYdaafCQiI-tdpbUB9fXi_zM4SgMPZgueyI-gW1O16ylZP1Hg2kIUR25crGcD4XDueaHQwKGqsG7hgmpHpB3grJjHFX3nG0LYKE7d9Om7QzE0Vum5zpw-CjSTFr_Ulg/s1600/ScreamingGirl.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXLXB4cHaZYdaafCQiI-tdpbUB9fXi_zM4SgMPZgueyI-gW1O16ylZP1Hg2kIUR25crGcD4XDueaHQwKGqsG7hgmpHpB3grJjHFX3nG0LYKE7d9Om7QzE0Vum5zpw-CjSTFr_Ulg/s320/ScreamingGirl.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5494599599431801650" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">How is this for some drama? No, I don't mean that the recent promulgation of substantive norms for discipline by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is so hot- it happens regularly, and is generally pretty dry stuff- but the fact that <span style="font-weight: bold;">if NPR says one more time that the "Vatican has equated the ordination of women with the sexual abuse of children," I am going to SCREAM.</span><br /><br />Instead of behaving with such obtuse sloppiness in such honeyed tones, the media would do well to begin simply with the facts: <a href="http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_norme_en.html">the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued revised norms for disciplinary measures in central areas of Church life.</a> The attempt to make priestesses is defined as a "more grave delict" against the life of the Church; (Article 5) the sexual abuse of minors is defined as a "more grave" violation of the moral law itself. (Article 6) These are different categories entirely, which even the New York Times is fair enough to recognize, in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/world/europe/16vatican.html?_r=1">its brief citation of Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna</a>, the Vatican’s internal prosecutor:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">“Sexual abuse and pornography are more grave delicts, they are an egregious violation of moral law,”</span> Monsignor Scicluna said in his first public appearance since the sex abuse crisis hit. “Attempted ordination of women is grave, but on another level, it is a wound that is an attempt against the Catholic faith on the sacramental orders.”<br /><br />These are the facts and the relevant distinctions. That a horde of antsy feminists and dissenting Catholics wish to take this opportunity to propose that a defunct Church revise its foundational tradition with respect to the sacrament of ordination... that is another maelstrom of a different color. Expect some thoughts on feminist revisionism here in the next few days.<br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-49221929427705850662010-07-09T06:51:00.001-07:002010-07-09T06:51:32.733-07:00Aborted Fetal DNA in Children's Vaccines<div style="text-align: justify;">I have been doing some research into the traditional gamut of vaccines administered to infants and toddlers; the <a href="http://www.autism.com/index.asp">Autism Research Institute</a> and the <a href="http://www.nvic.org/">National Vaccine Information Center </a>have been especially helpful. Perhaps one of the most concerning things is the connection between aborted fetal DNA and some traditional vaccines. The Minnesota House of Representatives is currently dealing with legislation on point:<br /><br />"ST. PAUL – Citing studies that suggest stem-cell based vaccines are temporarily linked to rising autism levels across the nation, State Representative Laura Brod (R-New Prague) is authoring legislation requiring product labeling and patient consent before human DNA vaccines are administered to them." <a href="http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/pressrelease.asp?pressid=3875&party=2&memid=10756"><span style="display: block;" id="formatbar_Buttons"><span class="on down" style="display: block;" id="formatbar_CreateLink" title="Link" onmouseover="ButtonHoverOn(this);" onmouseout="ButtonHoverOff(this);" onmouseup="" onmousedown="CheckFormatting(event);FormatbarButton('richeditorframe', this, 8);ButtonMouseDown(this);"><img src="img/blank.gif" alt="Link" class="gl_link" border="0" /></span></span>You can read more here</a>.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.ncbcenter.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=434">National Catholic Bioethics Center</a> confirms that this should be a point of concern for parents who vaccinate their children:<br /><br />"There are a number of vaccines that are made in descendent cells of aborted fetuses. Abortion is a grave crime against innocent human life. We should always ask our physician whether the product he proposes for our use has an historical association with abortion. We should use an alternative vaccine if one is available."<br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-65387026760578281472010-07-06T07:07:00.000-07:002010-07-06T07:17:53.348-07:00Blessed Conchita of Mexico<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnhuObW2dVHdo4niQUtXbGzxux0C7rQ6gsUXWis0GChZUVg_nNJkpaPJHlqDr4sMWnvp3h25IZVcQtlI1NGQQmJfWlj_s66jgLywy-GmzkTnGuPal7IBL-p_oCWOoRSkK41gDIg/s1600/conchita2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 211px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnhuObW2dVHdo4niQUtXbGzxux0C7rQ6gsUXWis0GChZUVg_nNJkpaPJHlqDr4sMWnvp3h25IZVcQtlI1NGQQmJfWlj_s66jgLywy-GmzkTnGuPal7IBL-p_oCWOoRSkK41gDIg/s320/conchita2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5490797119605531618" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">“I did not see there was any other pathway for me to come to God... I am going to seek my perfection and become a saint on carrying out the sacred duties of a mother.” (the latter from<span style="font-style: italic;"> Diary</span>, October 1901)<br /><br />This amazing woman was the wife of one, the mother of nine, and the foundress of the religious community in which she died at the age of seventy-five; "her children all had the same words to say about their mother. She was balanced, simple, fun-loving, always turning the conversation toward Christ without boring anyone. She had a deep love for the poor and those who suffered. She wore a constant serenity that made even the most difficult situations, possible to get through. She (would say) time and again, ‘Everything passes, except having suffered for God out of love.’ The Lord led Conchita to an always-deepening interior life with Him. He led her to prayer. She received visions about the renewal of the Church and about her own mission and vocation as a mother for priests and foundress of communities." <a href="http://www.childrenofmedjugorje.com/content/explore-mainmenu-32/saints-mainmenu-35/blessed-conchita-of-mexico-mainmenu-149">More here</a>.<br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18930743.post-4917005917697889412010-06-29T08:09:00.000-07:002010-07-06T07:21:13.745-07:00Considering Radner- and the alternative<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoY_Q6LDnSCD30E8N66czbp9k9pJjusIGrFC9v6Kv46IfWyMGQMFiieRAHJ7Rr5OOCsBjtFn1sh_s0qW3kw1eVGn16UGe3BqQrh3a3E3Hgbev5SGv2aUQX0UMUmoDrnO28Iv7cfw/s1600/Baroncelli-Polyptych--Coronation-of-the-Virgin-c.-1334.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 227px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoY_Q6LDnSCD30E8N66czbp9k9pJjusIGrFC9v6Kv46IfWyMGQMFiieRAHJ7Rr5OOCsBjtFn1sh_s0qW3kw1eVGn16UGe3BqQrh3a3E3Hgbev5SGv2aUQX0UMUmoDrnO28Iv7cfw/s320/Baroncelli-Polyptych--Coronation-of-the-Virgin-c.-1334.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488216021115405042" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">In considering Radner, we consider one of the most formidable Protestant ecclesiologists of our day; and his proposal that the Church be understood on the model of a broken, dispersed Israel has its compelling features. One alternative, as emphasized by significant contemporary Catholic theologians, is to understood the Church in and by the young Israelite in whom the Church finds Israel's Holy of Holies- Mary of Nazareth, called from among the nations and from among her own to be God's chosen one and bear Him to the Gentiles, as though she were the most radical form of her nation Israel.<br /><br />Protestant ecclesiologies who would converse with Catholic doctrines of the Church need to recall Charles Journet's emphasis in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Church of the Word Incarnate</span> that <span style="font-weight: bold;">the Church enjoys a present consummation with Christ</span>, with regard to the present fecundity and maternity which is already realized in Mary, such that the Church need not be called "broken," but rather, "abundant" in the grace and presence of the Savior:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When (we) speak of fecundity (we) recall that the Holy Spirit…by the mediation and free acquiescence of our Lady, formed Christ to Him to the world… on the day of the Annunciation the Holy Spirit gave a mysterious fecundity to our Lady, making her the mother of Christ and consequently, the mother of all men. This fecundity He now communicates, in a different and analogical manner, to the power of order… so that it may bring the Eucharistic Christ into the world, and generate the Church which is His body.<br /><br /></span>Accordingly, Journet continues:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The collective grace of the whole Church is condense and intensified in the Blessed Virgin… this is the very mystery of the relations between Christ, on the one hand, and the Virgin and the Church on the other, of which St. Thomas speaks when he says at the moment of the Annunciation, the Virgin’s consent was sought in the name of all human nature…all the maternal and virginal dignity of the universal Church, all the joys and sorrows of her childbearing through the ages, are collected and brought to a supreme point in that precise moment of her pilgrimage when she, by the blessed Virgin, gives birth to a Son…(and) at the moment when Christ dies on His cross, it is coredemptive compassion of the entire Church… that is condensed and carried to a supreme point of intensity in the heart of the Blessed Virgin.<br /><br /></span>In this way, Journet continues that in Mary’s unique “nuptial” relationship to the Godhead, the Church finds the pattern of her espousals, such that the Church need not be called "estranged" from her full vocation nor even "scattered" with regards to her integrity; rather, viewed in a Marian key, she has been and is "gathered," in the fullest sense:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Mary is the supreme realization of the Church… more Bride (even) than the Church… she is Mother, Bride and Virgin prior to the Church and for the Church; ... <span style="font-weight: bold;">it is in her, above all, and by her that the Church is Mother, Bride and Virgin.</span> It is by a mysterious excellence that is diffused from Mary that the Church can truly be, in her turn, Mother, Bride, and Virgin. </span><br /></div>MMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14169520137196027425noreply@blogger.com