laodicea

Papist Progress - don't get left behind!

2007-08-04T14:34:00.000Z

You draggers of feet and lazy who have not yet bothered to move your bookmarks and update links ... I know you're out there, I can see you clicking through to our new home from this old page ...

New Home!

2007-06-16T15:30:00.000Z

We are moving, because I say so. I can't be having with the faff of cookie clashes between the login for blogger and my real-life gmail account. Now I've tried it a bit I've found that Wordpress is actually a bit of a pain for posting, but hey, we can always move back. Huge hassle to move the links and so on, but niver mind.

exlaodicea.wordpress.com

Motu Proprio - The Home Straight?

2007-06-14T23:34:00.000Z

Insights into the Papal mind...

2007-06-11T20:58:00.000Z

A Central European friend rang me yesterday. She had been speaking to an learned friend of hers who recently spoke to the Holy Father. The Pope said that the Motu Proprio 'has already been on my desk several times' and that he too is surprised it is all taking so long. I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news or what 'on my desk several times' might mean.

2007-06-06T15:20:00.000Z

My sister emailed me this....

Retitling Austen

2007-06-05T19:52:00.000Z

Ukok tagged us to do this thing where you mix up half of one title and half of another. Um.

Journal of Laodicea

Notices of Books

New edition of Jane Austen's masterful little early piece, Essence and Existence.

Thomas Aquinas werkliste; An opusculum recently confirmed as authentic, its clearly English provenance revolutionising Thomistic biography; De Superbia et Opinio Preiudicata.

Recently published;

Eamonn Alcott's groundbreaking study of '68 in the light of the postwar women's lib movement, drawing on detailed archival domestic documentation and personal reminiscence, The Stripping of the Women.

Louise M. Duffy's account of the religious revolution that began around the same time as it was experienced by the Catholic in the pew, Little Altars.

Not very good, but the best I could come up with.

Exercise. 1) Write some more. 2) Translate Sense and Sensibility into scholasticese.(Just the title, silly.)

Living Scotland - 5pm Saturday 2nd June 2007

2007-06-02T22:29:00.000Z

Philip Robinson

Slippery Slopes

Good or bad arguments against euthanasia?

With Sung Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Celebrant: Fr. Neil Ferguson O.P.

5pm Saturday 2nd June 2007

St Andrew's Catholic Church

Belford Road, Ravelston

Edinburgh

Separated at birth...

2007-05-31T21:14:00.000Z

I was watching the BAFTAs the other day (coz my little sister made me) and I was astounded to discover that Richard Curtis CBE producer of such saccharine classics as Notting Hill and Love Actually and Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus founder of the greatest empire the world has ever known are actually the same person! I'm off to find out if Ben Elton looks like Marcus Agrippa.

The Cardinal says it like it is!

2007-05-31T20:49:00.000Z

'Don't vote for pro-choice MPs, they can't receive communion, abortion is murder, an unspeakable crime....' I'm sure everyone knows about this already but it would be churlish not to applaud.

2007-05-30T11:51:00.001Z

Clarificatory: in response to comments to Living Scotland post - the Mass will be at 5pm, followed by the talk (so 6.15 or so). Drinks to follow around 7/7.30pm. St Andrew's Church is on Belford Road, just past the Dean Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art. It's about fifteen minutes' walk from Haymarket Station.

Map here (NB The red circle here is a bit far to the south east - St Andrew's is in the corner of Belford Road and Ravelston Terrace. If you change to 'arial' view you will see it as terracotta-coloured amidst greenery.)

As the map should make clearer, it is also handy for Queensferry Road. The only bus that goes along Belford Road is the very infrequent 13 (and the free Gallery bus!), whereas lots (37, 41, 47 etc) go along Queensferry Road.

2007-05-29T09:48:00.000Z

FInally added links to Ebomania and Mark's 'Rise and Pray' - in the Scottish blogs section. Also updated link to the Scottish Christian News Monitor and Ukok's (Catholic Mum) blog. But you'll have to look in the sidebar cos I can't be bothered putting links in this post as well.

What happened in Moscow?

2007-05-28T17:48:00.000Z

Can anyone out there work out from the news reports exactly who was throwing the punches in Moscow on Sunday? I should say that I don't think it was as such a good thing that Peter Tatchell and that bloke from Right Said Fred were punched; indeed quite the opposite. It also need hardly be said that it is difficult, given Vladimir Putin's other policies, to see the Russian government's general opposition to homosexual activity as evidence that a moral commonweal is being constructed east of the Urals. I would nonetheless like to know who was responsible for the violence. The BBC rather unhelpfully lumps all the anti-protesters together as 'right-wing and orthodox extremists', or 'Orthodox extremists and nationalists'. (In another report, they're 'ultra-nationalists and members of the Russian Orthodox Church', which is a little clearer.) The Telegraph goes with 'nationalists and extreme Russian Orthodox believers', but if you click on the 'in pictures' bit, you'll note that, while a bloke in a T-shirt punched Mr Tatchell, a wee lady in a headscarf ... threw some water at him. Pravda (no, I don't have that much confidence in full and fair reportage from them, either) omits to mention the violence, but has some amusing lines about 'bellicose babushkas'. In short, fairly obviously - does anyone out there know if the violence was the preserve of the 'nationalists', or did the Orthodox get in on the act? Or do right-wingers identify themselves as orthodox Orthodox in Russia? (And what did the Polish media say about it all?)

Also note the 'funny' headlines on the right of the Pravda page. I'm not quite sure what it is they say about modern Russia, but I'm sure it's significant.

A Call to Liberal Arms

2007-05-28T17:05:00.000Z

I was pootling around the Guardian Education website (the online equivalent of procrastination by flicking through back issues in the library), and found this piece by Mark Ravenhill on the need for liberals to fight to impose their values on the world. The context is distaste at institutions which allow students to opt out of elements of drama courses on grounds of conscience (e.g. a girl, presumably an orthodox Jew or a Muslim, who was excused classes which would involve physical contact with chaps). On the one hand, refreshing honesty. On the other hand, a worrying absence of philosophical underpinnings. Liberals 'had come to see their own values as simply common sense and the inevitable result of human progress'. Well, that indicates a thorough thought process... On a third (Beeblebroxian) hand, Be Scared, Very Very Scared by liberal intolerance revealed and unashamed. Rousing conclusion: 'Liberals are going to have to fight hard. There should be no opt-outs when it comes to culture. We believe in our values.' (Contrast, on a slightly different frontier, Geoffrey Alderman on the proposed academic boycott of Israel. (Which, for the record, is apparently not the sort of thing that Mr Ravenhill is actually that keen on.))

This is particularly interesting given that as far as I know Mr Ravenhill is not as such an aggressive secularist. His plays are apparently full of immorality (but how this is portrayed, I don't know); but I once read quite an interesting article by him about - indeed, encouraging - religious drama. That was also interesting (I'm sorry, I'd use a different adjective if I could think of one more appropriate) given that it revealed a very pagan misapprehension of Our Lord's natures: 'If you are a believer, he is the son of God and therefore half human and half divine.' Ummmm... if God were like Zeus. Which He really, really isn't. (That reminds me that I was going to write to Mr Ravenhill to point this out. Via his literary agent. Is that sensible?) Curious to see this well-intentioned but very first-century fruit of ignorance.

The Political Wing of the British People

2007-05-27T15:10:00.000Z

Blair and Reid will soon be gone. However, they seem to be determined to do as much further harm to the constitution as possible in their last few weeks. I am deeply suspicious of the new 'Ministry of Justice' as are the judiciary it seems. Far more outrageous though is this suggestion of permitting British police to stop and question anyone without demonstrating reasonable suspicion. Everyone thinks new Labour abandoned 'socialism' years ago but, in the sense of believing that all rights are ultimately vested in the state and merely conceded on loan to the subject, New Labour is thoroughly and dangerously socialist. It should not be forgotten that Labour was never officially a Socialist party until Blair changed Clause 4. The old version read:

"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."

The evil Webb who wrote it meant nationalisation by 'common ownership' and 'popular administration and control'. However, it is open (and was possibly designedly open) to an entirely different interpretation. When the worker privately owns his own means of production there is obviously no need to secure for him the full fruits of his labour. If 'common ownership' and 'popular administration and control' are understood to refer to cooperatively owned productive and regulatory guilds independent of the state, then all that is required is to fulfil the terms of Clause 4 would be legislation to insure that when more than one family or individual is required to efficiently execute some economic activity the additional persons employed would have to be given ex-officio some share in the ownership of the enterprise. The paradigm would be something like John Lewis. Better still, if usury were re-criminalised there would be no need for such regulation. No one would long sell their labour to another when they could easily buy their own means of production. There would be no other way to acquire more capital than to labour and so the non-labouring owners of capital would be unable to price the labourer out of the market for the means of production. A cooperative and family based market economy would arise naturally without the need for the dead hand of the state.

Anyway, the new Clause 4 reads,

"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few. Where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe. And where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."

Which is obviously mostly platitudinous tosh but which does contain two positively objectionable phrases. 'Tolerance' is defined by the OED as "The action or practice of enduring or sustaining pain or hardship". If we are talking about the action then of course whether tolerance is a good idea depends on the circumstances in each instance. An evil may be permitted if its proscription would result in a greater evil, not otherwise. A habit of permitting evil of course is a vice. The practice of tolerance is therefore quite unsuitable for elevation to the rank of a general principle. There is no need to tolerate other cultures and races because they are good things and don't need to be tolerated. If a culture has bad elements then there may be a question of tolerance or not depending on the likely side effects of intolerance. Again this is a matter of particular prudential decisions not of a habit or settled practice. Far more scary is the demand for "a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few." As relative power, wealth and opportunity are always by definition in the hands of the few this can only mean that the majority should entirely deprive the minority of any power wealth or opportunity whatever. This might simply be bad drafting but I'm not so sure. Tony Blair once described the Labour Party as 'the political wing of the British people' and Jack Straw while home Secretary criticised a judge because "he has completely ignored the will of the people and public opinion as to what the criminal justice system is all about." Such comments suggest that if this was a draftsman's slip it was a Freudian slip.

National Socialist Self-Discovery

2007-05-23T23:02:00.000Z

Nazi Realisation

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Academic dress envy

2007-05-21T18:33:00.000Z

You get a PhD in Finland, you get a sword. I so did my research in the wrong country!

Ruthless dictator grills

2007-05-21T14:30:00.000Z

Remember Jafar? Well, he's picked himself up, moved on, and is now earning an honest living two tramstops north of the computer at which I am sitting. The only late-night food in the area. Still. Sad to see that the skills of political immigrants are not being fully exploited. I'm surprised the sort-of left wing press, the kind ranting on about endangered democracy and human rights in Poland, calling for UN intervention to protect victims of the dykwakwatura (from dyktatura and kwak, referring, as some of our readers will have already worked out, to the "ducks", or Kaczynski brothers). You may wish to peruse the following EU Parliament resolution.

Para L - whereas the Polish Ombudsman for Children has stated that she is preparing a list of jobs for which homosexuals are unfit,

Shocking, isn't it? It's not like there's any conflict between the psychological and legal/everyday understandings of homosexual attraction, is there? After all, if a bloke were to prove that his attraction to 14-year-old boys was homosexual, and not paedophile, then that would be okay. Neither the courts, nor public opinion, would have a problem with that. Which would be as it ought to be.

Para M whereas in June 2006 the State Prosecutor's office ordered checks on the funding of LGBT organisations in connection with "criminal movements" and their presence in schools, in order to find traces of criminal activities, without any result,

How dare they order checks and then not find ay criminal activity? In this sort of situation they should manufacture results to justify the action.

Para 1 Affirms that the EU institutions and Member States have a duty to ensure that the human rights of people living in Europe are respected, protected and promoted, as provided for by the ECHR, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 6 of the TEU, Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29 June 2000 implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin(5) and Council Directive 2000/78/EC;

I told you, there's a major human rights crisis in Poland. Never mind China, never mind Turkey, look what the Polish clerico-fascist dictatorship is doing to poor little homosexuals who are just trying to get on with living their lives like ordinary people and don't want to cause any hassle to anyone.

Good grief.

Para 13 Asks the Conference of Presidents to authorise the sending of a delegation to Poland on a fact-finding mission, with a view to obtaining a clear picture of the situation and entering into dialogue with all the parties concerned

Paid for by whom? To what end? Same-sex sex is legal in Poland, has been since the 1930s or so (presumably with a break under the friendly German regime in the early 40s), there is no legal discrimination, or discrimination that is legal, against anyone engaging in, or expressing a preference for, this sort of thing. What more do they want? You don't see marches of people demanding approval - let's face it, they are not looking for tolerance, they are demanding approval - for sex with inflatable women, or in black sheets, or contraceptive sex, or ......

This post has evolved spontaneously. No aspersion is being cast on the straightness of the former Grand Vizier.

Motu Proprio Big Fat Juicy Morsels

2007-05-21T14:28:00.000Z

Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos to CELAM:

... the Holy Father has the intention of extending to the whole Latin Church the possibility of celebrating the Holy Mass and the Sacraments according to the liturgical books promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.

The project of the Holy Father has been already partially proved in Campos, where the pacific cohabitation of two forms of the only Roman rite in the Church is a beautiful reality.

Let’s ask the Lord that this project of the Holy Father could be realized soon for the unity of the Church.

Cause of Pius XII moves forward . . .

2007-05-21T14:21:00.000Z

Fr John Zuhlsdorf carried this story some time ago, but as Boeciana, Cleopatra and Aelianus all had more important things to worry about than blogging, and I have a 336b/s connection most of the time and a cookie clash problem (let's get off blogger, friends) I can't be bothered posting. This says something, as I am the biggest internet addict and normally will sit, if not happily, for whole minutes waiting for some pointless page to download. Anyhow, for those who didn't see this story when it was fresh, here it is.

The Sacred Monster of Thomism

2007-05-16T01:47:00.000Z

A nice short biography of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange by Fr. Thomas Crean (a fellow Dominican). I am not happy with his conflation of Garrigou and Maritain's differences over Integral Humanism and their quarrel over Vichy. The men themselves may have confused the issues but we do not need to. In general however an excellent introduction to Garrigou-Lagrange.

'Pope shows more signs of swinging to the right' - 'He also raged with equal fire against Marxism and capitalism alike'

2007-05-14T15:37:00.000Z

A bizarre article from the International Herald and Tribune. It seems that 'left' and 'right' are now defined exclusively in terms of hostility or endorsement of relativism and Catholic personal moral teaching. The Pope can equate Capitalism and Marxism as evils and still 'move to the right' because he says preaching eternal salvation is the Church's central function, paganism is a bad thing and child murder and auto-sterilization are not on.

Doctrinal Infantilism versus Spiritual Childhood

2007-05-14T04:21:00.000Z

Reading an approving summary of a recently published history of late twentieth century ‘Catholic’ theology it struck me that there is something tremendously irresponsible and childish about the ‘new theology’ the movement which has seized control of the Church in its aspect as a human institution since the Council, and which has brought such misery and spiritual destruction to the faithful. Universities are after all places of education for late teens and early twenty somethings, it is hardly surprising that something indefinably juvenile should infect the thought and attitudes of academics who have spent their entire lives in such institutions. The ‘new theology’ is a new gospel for academics. And, unfortunately, because it is the empirical natural sciences with their intrinsic provisionality and not the settled demonstrative sciences of Aristotle which enjoy today the cultural power and prestige which goes with the name of science, novelty has ceased to be a criticism and has become an intellectual virtue. Such an attitude is always a temptation of youth and now the formers of youth are surrounded by it not only because of the presence of youth itself but because of the scholarly air they breath.

God became man in Jesus Christ and the small number of crucial metaphysical concepts which would be necessary for a purely natural theology were greatly augmented by this first and greatest of all miracles. Person, nature, substance, form, species, procession, relation – these terms required irreformable definition if the Church was to fulfil her mission to guarantee for the faithful the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error. In order to teach all nations a substantial metaphysics, physics, psychology and anthropology were required, the identification and terminological stabilisation of the perennial philosophy was revealed as a hypothetical necessity for the proclamation of the self-manifestation of God to man in Christ.

For the followers of the via moderna, the innumerable bastard offspring of Christendom’s decline, the creation of yet another philosophical system, a new philosophy, is the ultimate achievement of an intellectual career. For the Church it cannot be this way, there may be multiple schools which we may choose to call philosophies but there must be one horizon, one core perennial philosophy which ensures that the words with which the Magisterium defines the teaching of Christ retain an unalterable meaning though all generations. This one horizon is inseparable from the via antiqua, it is embodied in Pius X’s twenty four theses without which, as he taught, the “students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church.”

This means that sacred doctrine and theology cannot conform to the model of the empirical sciences and it cannot be the ambition of each (or any) Catholic theological academic to create their own ‘theology’ with which to win a reputation and impress their colleagues. This makes a true theologian a stranger and an illegitimate figure in the eyes of his colleagues in the secular academy. It was too much for the creators of the nouvelle theologie. They strained against the restraints imposed upon them by the Church’s defence of Scholasticism they schemed and lobbied, and to their joy they broke, the anti-modernist apparatus which held them back from conformity to the world. Thus they have procured the ruin of innumerable souls.

The fathers fought and raged to establish a clear vocabulary in which the articles of faith could be unchangingly professed without ambiguity or mutability. Their struggle is the heroic intellectual epic of the early church. Scholasticism is the fruit of their effort as much perhaps more than it is the fruit of the Scholastics themselves. The new theologians looked back at the early church and they saw confusion and perplexity they saw all the things they wanted so much and which the curias of the pre-conciliar popes denied them. They fought to bring confusion and perplexity back to the church and they claimed the patronage of the fathers in doing so. They conveniently ignored the fact that the fathers themselves inhabited that confusion and perplexity only as part of their struggle to bring it to an end, they ignored the fathers’ anger and intolerant zeal for truth. They appealed to the spirit of ecumenism to excuse all this. The true explanation is that any resemblance to the project of the fathers and of the new theology is derived from the fact that the latter are undertaking the same task as the fathers but in reverse. They seek to untie the bonds the fathers made and unshackle the errors the fathers cast into the abyss.

Perhaps the style of scholastic theology in the 1950s was a little desiccated and more appeal to sacred art and to the fathers in addition to the scholastics was needed. Instead, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been transformed into a game for academics and emptied of all meaning and so emptied of all power. This movement does not require development in a new and more fruitful direction. Instead, it must be unmasked for what it is, modernism. Finally, it must be uprooted and destroyed, cast into the fire from whence it came.

Motu proprio news from tomorrow

2007-05-11T18:10:00.000Z

Pretty pointless article; I'm just enjoying the paradoxical date-stamps.

If I Were A Butterfly

2007-05-07T18:02:00.000Z

The ever-interesting Eve Tushnet posts the comments of one James A. (not concerning If I Were A Butterfly):

... This reminded me a lot of Epictetus the Stoic's comments on praising God (from the Moral Discourses of Epictetus): 'For what else can I do, a lame old man, than sing hymns to God? If then I was a nightingale, I would do the part of a nightingale; if I were a swan, I would do like a swan. But now I am a rational creature, and I ought to praise God. This is my work; I do it, nor will I desert this post, so long as I am allowed to keep it, and I exhort you to join in this same song.'

I finally realise that this is the (good) point that If I Were A Butterfly is making. Either I was a stupid child, or it's not making it very well. I suspect a bit of both.

St Triduana

2007-05-05T01:54:00.000Z

Without wishing unduly to perturb the scholar in question (who reads this blog on a regular basis), for anyone who has actually met the world’s foremost expert on St Triduana, the resemblance between her and the Saint herself as depicted in this window from St Magnus’s Cathedral on Orkney is… well… eerie.

Why PR is Evil

2007-05-04T04:42:00.000Z

The Scottish elections are still up for grabs but one thing looks certain, there will be more than 100,000 spoiled ballot papers. There are further problems because of the mismanagement of postal votes and the computerised voting system. The essential problem however is Proportional Representation which created the necessity for computerised voting systems in the first place and has generated the spoilt ballot papers.

Proportional Representation seems appealing because it ‘makes every vote count’ but this is a misleading slogan. By defintion, in any given vote the minority parties' votes in parliament never count and by employing PR we take the decision about whose voice should be heard out of the hands of voters and give it to politicians. In fact, we disproportionately favour the party which comes third in any election, which is absurd. P.R. gives hugely disproportionate power to third parties who are able to keep themselves in power almost indefinitely because their support becomes essential for the formation of a working majority. Politicians should be preoccupied with the common good of the whole people. Thus, they should be able to convince anyone to vote for them. P.R. leads politicians to appeal to classes or ideological groups instead of the whole people. P.R. weakens local party organisation and centralises power in central H.Q. because they are the one’s who decide who belongs to the list and in what place. This in turn breeds a smug and eventually corrupt metropolitan political elite. Finally, as the present elections have made abundantly clear, P.R. hopelessly confuses the electorate and leads to an unacceptable number of spoiled ballot papers.

The use of P.R. is another example of the British, whose system of democracy has been a resounding success for centuries, succumbing to a national loss of nerve and adopting a failed system invented by foreigners which doesn’t even work for them. However bad our political elite may be they look lily white in comparison with our European neighbours. Political corruption is endemic across Europe and P.R. is the most noticeable unifying feature of their political cultures. Let us never forget that P.R.’s greatest contribution to history was bringing Hitler and Mussolini to power.

It's All Worth It

2007-05-02T10:47:00.000Z

A student has actually written 'pheasant' for peasant. My academic life is complete.

Why you shouldn't vote SNP on Thursday

2007-05-02T07:05:00.000Z

1. Scotland has no legitimate grievances against England. James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne not vice versa. Whatever nationalist legend may say the 1707 act was passed quite voluntarily by the Scots Parliament. There were more Scots fighting for Cumberland at Culloden than fought for Charles. The Wars of Independence don't count they were too long ago and the Scots have invaded England plenty of times before and after. (North Sea Oil and the Poll Tax don't count either it was the SNP who put Thatcher in power in the first place by bringing down the Callaghan government).

2. Scotland has profited disproportionately from the Union. Scots have occupied positions of political, economic and cultural power in Britain in far greater numbers than their proportion of the UK population. For example, the present UK Prime Minister and his likely successor (and present Chancellor of the Exchequer) are both Scots, as is the Home Secretary and the leader of the third largest party in Parliament and his predecessor. As part of the United Kingdom Scotland has a seat on the UN security council, is one of the big three in the EU, for more than a century was part of the most powerful state on earth and is still part of the second or third most powerful state on earth.

3. Multi-Ethnic States are a jolly good thing which teach us the difference between the nation and the state and teach us to let our hearts flutter at the sound of another people's anthem as well as our own. Ethnic nationalism and Civic nationalism are good and wholesome things but they go bad when they coincide, such states oppress their minorities and try to unify their volk by invading their neighbours (See the French and the Germans). The Poles, Ukrainians and Jews were particularly loyal to the Hapsburgs because they protected minorities from the bullying majority populations in their territories. When good old Blessed Kaiser Karl encountered a crowd celebrating the outbreak of WWI under his balcony he told them to bugger off and be ashamed of themselves.

4. When Multi-Ethnic states are destroyed the fragments tend to justify their existence by breeding hatred of each other and encouraging terrorist groups and civil wars in each other's territory (See partitions of Ireland, India and Yugoslavia and collapse of Ottoman Empire).

Happy Three Hundredth Birthday United Kingdom!

2007-05-01T00:42:00.000Z

Crux Sacra Sit Mihi Lux - Non Draco Sit Mihi Dux

A Brief Summary of Fundamental Theology

2007-04-30T13:36:00.000Z

I. The Deposit of Faith

Public revelation ended at the death of the last Apostle. The fullness of all revealed truth had thereupon been delivered into the world. Until the end of time, no living human being will ever possess the comprehensive and transparent knowledge and understanding of the deposit of faith that was possessed by the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, this knowledge and understanding was transmitted in its entirety to the whole body of the Catholic Church where it subsists in its entirety and will continue to subsist until the end of time. The Catholic Church on earth consists in the whole body of persons endowed with the supernatural faith of Christ. This faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. That truth consists at least in the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation without which the saving words “Jesus is Lord” either cannot be uttered or have no meaning.

Those persons possessing this supernatural faith are ipso facto (and whether they know it or not) united in communion with the bishop of Rome, the successor of St Peter and are possessed either of the character of sacramental baptism or at least an implicit desire for it. These persons and only these persons constitute the Catholic Church upon earth and those among these persons alone whose faith is at the moment of death animated by supernatural charity will be saved. In this body subsists the deposit of faith in its entirety.

All the doctrines of the faith besides those of the Trinity and the Incarnation are connected to these two by logical or historical necessity because they establish the identity either of Christ or of His Church. However, the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation alone suffice to accept Jesus as Lord and God. The constant and knowing denial of any of the other doctrines is incompatible with the supernatural virtue of faith but their but their unwitting omission is not.

For an adult to receive the theological virtue of faith it is necessary that, moved by grace, he perform an act of faith. For an infant it suffices that the theological virtue is infused into him by the sacrament of baptism. However, if he is to retain this virtue he must make an act of faith by the time he reaches the age of reason, and this he cannot do unless the faith is preached to him.

II. The Magisterium

There is however, unlike in the case of the Apostles between the day of Pentecost and the time of their deaths, conjoined with this deposit of faith a great admixture of error, ignorance and confusion. In order therefore that the deposit of faith should never perish from the earth there is bestowed upon the Bishop of Rome and the Bishops in communion with him the purely negative guarantee that their final decision as to what does and does not belong within the deposit of faith and what is and is not an acceptable expression of it cannot err. Because this guarantee is purely negative it behoves the Bishop of Rome and those Bishops in communion with him, before making such an irrevocable judgement, to have comprehensive recourse to the sources of the faith and to the belief of the entire body of the faithful. Without this recourse the supreme judgement of the Bishop of Rome and those bishops in communion with him and of the Bishop of Rome alone remains undiminished in authority and unimpaired in its content but unless the failure is involuntary he or they have sinned against the Spirit by putting the Lord to the test.

III. Sacred Scripture

Before the death of the last Apostle a portion of the deposit of faith had been set down in 27 books by five of the Apostles and three of their disciples under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit such that every statement of their human authors contained in those books is a statement of God himself and is entirely without any error whatsoever. Together with the revelation made to Moses on Mt Sinai and the recapitulation of it made by the Prophets, Scribes and Historians of the Old Testament (which enjoy the same privilege) these 27 books, making in total 73, constitute the only directly inspired writings in existence. From the moment of the completion of the last book of the New Testament, a moment preceding the death of the last Apostle, there has been and will be no further inspired writing on this earth. This inspiration attaches to the autograph texts of the Sacred Scriptures in their original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The substance of these texts is faithfully contained in the Latin text of the Clementine Vulgate which alone of all versions of Scripture is guaranteed by the supreme authority in the Church to be free of all error in faith and morals.

IV. Sacred Tradition

These 73 books however, do not and were never intended to contain the whole of the deposit of faith, and this for two reasons. First, because no text without its context and interpretation can successfully convey its content and so the Sacred Scriptures in order that they might successfully convey that portion of the deposit of faith consigned to them have need of an infallibly guaranteed context and interpreter. Second, this being the case, that context must itself form a material part of the deposit of faith. This oral tradition of belief, aspiration and practice resides infallibly along with the full content of the scriptures in the whole body of the Catholic Church and this infallible interpreting authority resides in the Bishop of Rome and the Bishops in communion with him in the manner already delineated. Before the end of the first millennium of the Church’s existence the whole of the oral tradition providing the context of the sacred writings and transmitting that portion of the deposit not contained therein had also been confined to writing. Those bishops and other members of Christ’s faithful of the first millennium who died in the odour of sanctity and who consigned to writing the content of the oral tradition, albeit without inspiration and with some admixture of error, are called the Fathers of the Church. Though each capable of error taken singly, the unanimous verdict of the fathers, because it is that of the whole body of the primitive Church, is incapable of error and is binding upon Christ’s faithful in all succeeding ages.

V. The Perennial Philosophy

It was the purpose of Almighty God in taking upon Himself human nature and revealing Himself to the world that He should deliver in principle the whole and in fact a remnant of the human race from the dominion of the fallen angels to which they have subjected themselves by their sins. It is the determination therefore of these enemies of the human race and of those men who remain either in whole or part their instruments to obscure, pervert and were it possible to obliterate the deposit of faith in order to prevent the emancipation of mankind. In this task they have no more effective device than to formulate errors contrary to the deposit of faith in the very language of the deposit itself. Because of the duty incumbent upon the Magisterium – the Church’s infallible doctrinal tribunal – not to put the Lord to the test it is not until such an assault upon the deposit has been attempted that in the general course of events it will make a final decision concerning the manner in which the teachings of the Church must be expressed. The infallible definitions of the Church’s Magisterium must therefore of their nature be expressed in a language other than that of scripture.

Because the revelation of Jesus Christ concerns the manner in which God has saved and is saving His creatures; and because of His assumption of the created nature of mankind; and because the deposit of faith must be communicated to and understood by the minds of men, the terminology in which the Magisterium irreformably defines the articles of faith is and must be common to God and creatures. It is therefore essential, if the deposit of faith is to be transmittable in its entirety and is not to succumb to obscurity and perversion, that the terminology employed by the Magisterium be in harmony with that employed to articulate the body of those necessary truths still available in principle to man in his present bondage. This work of harmonisation by its very nature, and consequent upon the negative guarantees possessed by the Magisterium and lacking to human reason, can be undertaken only by members of Christ’s faithful well versed in the truths of revelation and the definitions of the Magisterium taking these truths and definitions as its rule. Those persons whom the Magisterium has judged to have undertaken this work successfully are called the Doctors of the Church and presently number 33: three women and thirty men. Pre-eminent amongst them is St Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic and Universal Doctor, by the time of whose death this work of harmonisation was on the side of nature substantially complete. This body of natural truths is known as the Perennial Philosophy.

The capital theses in the philosophy of St. Thomas are thus not to be placed in the category of opinions capable of being debated one way or another, but are to be considered as the foundations upon which the whole science of natural and divine things is based; if such principles are once removed or in any way impaired, it must necessarily follow that students of the sacred sciences will ultimately fail to perceive so much as the meaning of the words in which the dogmas of divine revelation are proposed by the magistracy of the Church. Teachers of philosophy and sacred theology therefore who deviate so much as a step, in metaphysics especially, from Aquinas, expose themselves to grave risk of error. Thus, the doctrine of any writer or Saint is approved by the Church only to the extent that it agrees with the principles of Aquinas or is in no way opposed to them.

As of this moment therefore in the progress of history from Pentecost to the consummation of the world the Catholic faithful are possessed of five resources in the assimilation, comprehension and transmission of the deposit of faith. They are possessed of the writings of the Doctors of the Church who are presented to them by the Magisterium as exemplars of the transmission of the deposit of faith. They are possessed of the accumulated definitions of the Popes and Councils to whose terminology they are bound and whose form and content is guaranteed by God to be free of all error. They are possessed of the 73 books of inspired scripture in their surviving manuscripts insofar as these correspond to the autographs and of the Latin text of the Clementine Vulgate which is guaranteed to be free of all error in faith and morals. They are possessed of the monuments of the Fathers of the Church who in their unanimity cannot err. And finally, they are possessed of the Perennial Philosophy by which the unalterable meaning of that deposit is forever preserved from error and corruption.

The purpose of this, then, is not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; but rather, that through the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles, the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed differently, may never be understood in any other way and that we might hold to our dying breath the faith of the Fathers faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard it inviolate, in no way deviating from it in thought, word or deed.

This then is the faith of the Church. It is not proposed to the human race that they might engage in idle speculation or yoke it to alien philosophies but it is proposed to us that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this we may have life in His name.

Goalkeeping Error

2007-04-30T13:25:00.000Z

Kilmarnock's Alan Combe helps Aberdeen's Darren Mackie. The third goal from Aberdeen's 3-0 victory on Saturday. Sent in by one half of the former patter noster team.

Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith on Sacramentum Caritatis

2007-04-29T22:10:00.000Z

More frankness from the Archbishop who tell it like it is!

"A careful look at Sacramentum Caritatis convinces me more and more that it is not only a treasure trove of information, inspiration and a truly pastoral yet deeply theological reflection on the Eucharist but, more so, a document that seeks to bring to completion that which was truly desired by the Second Vatican Council and its document on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The post-conciliar reform of the Liturgy, though laudable in some aspects, had not been all that faithful to the spirit of the Council. "

Article discovered on Fr Finigan's blog and pointed out by Berenike.

The Asymptotic Magisterium

2007-04-28T04:01:00.000Z

It used to be said that Pius X described Modernism in Pascendi better than any actual Modernist could have done himself. Those days are gone. The 'Pontificator' has posted an article by someone called Alvin Kimel whose description of Catholicism is so perfect an account of Modernism as could never be rivalled.

History might go on for ages, we are told, and so we might well still live in the early church. The church progresses in it's knowledge of the truth and so can never really know accurately even the truths necessary for salvation. For two thousand years it has been believed that infant baptism was essential because without it any infant who died would be excluded forever from the beatific vision. But now we are watching 'the development of Catholic doctrine in action' and it turns out all human beings are automatically saved unless they reach the age of reason and commit an actual sin. Doctrines, even doctrines necessary for salvation, shift their meaning by 180 degrees. But don't worry coz this isn't 'a counter-example to the claim of the Catholic Church to be the authoritative and reliable steward of revelation'. After all, 'what is truth' as an early modernist once said. How ignorant the Apostles, Fathers and Doctors were, how wrong Pius X was when he said,

"The absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way."

Fr Kimel (a former anglican vicar and implacable foe of ' St Augustine and his Calvinist and Jansenist followers') tells us that,

"…the paragraph of Laetentus caeli that addresses baptism and original sin is not formulated in the language of solemn definition: it does not call for an irrevocable act of faith ..."

Allow me to quote the text,

Laetentur caeli, Decree of The Ecumenical Council Of Florence (1438-1445)

"In the name of the holy Trinity, Father, Son and holy Spirit, we define, with the approval of this holy universal council of Florence, that the following truth of faith shall be believed and accepted by all Christians and thus shall all profess it: … that the souls of those who depart this life in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, go down straightaway to hell to be punished, but with but with unequal pains. We also define that…."

Not a whiff of the extraordinary magisterium there clearly….

Council of Florence - Baptism only remedy for original sin in infants

2007-04-28T03:55:00.000Z

The Ecumenical Council Of Florence (1438-1445)

"The holy Roman church, founded on the words of our Lord and Saviour, firmly believes, professes and preaches that … With regard to children, since the danger of death is often present and the only remedy available to them is the sacrament of baptism by which they are snatched away from the dominion of the devil and adopted as children of God, it admonishes that sacred baptism is not to be deferred for forty or eighty days or any other period of time in accordance with the usage of some people, but it should be conferred as soon as it conveniently can; and if there is imminent danger of death, the child should be baptized straightaway without any delay, even by a lay man or a woman in the form of the church, if there is no priest, as is contained more fully in the decree on the Armenians. "

Sacrosancta Romana Ecclesia, Domini et Salvatoris nostri voce fundata, firmiter credit, profitetur et praedicat... Circa pueros vero propter periculum mortis, quod potest saepe contingere, cum ipsis non possit alio remedio subveniri, nisi per sacramentum baptismi, per quod eripiuntur a diaboli dominatu et in Dei filios adoptantur, admonet, non esse per quadraginta aut octoginta dies seu aliud tempus iuxta quorundam observantiam sacrum baptisma differendum, sed quamprimum commode fieri potest, debere conferri: ita tamen, quod mortis imminente periculo mox sine ulla dilatione baptizentur, etiam per laicum vel mulierem, in forma Ecclesiae, si desit sacerdos, quemadmodum in decreto Armenorum plenius continetur

Multitracked ?German sings and mimes

2007-04-26T15:05:00.000Z

This is very funny, if you have a reasonable connection and sound and some time to waste go to the link in the title.

The Defined Teaching of the Church on Limbo

2007-04-25T14:17:00.000Z

D493a "The Roman Church teaches [...] that the souls of those who depart in mortal sin or with only original sin descend immediately to hell, nevertheless to be punished with different punishments and in disparate locations..."

John XXII, Nequaquam sine dolore (November 21, 1321)

D693 "...the souls of those who depart this life in actual mortal sin, or in original sin alone, go down straightaway to hell to be punished, but with unequal pains."

Ecumenical Council of Florence, Decree for the Greeks - Laetentur Caeli (July 6, 1439)

So it is definitely not ok to say Limbo does not exist. It is ok to argue how comfortable it is. But is it ok to say it is empty?

It is clear from scripture that Hell is not empty and that 'many' go there and 'few' do not.

"For many are called, but few are chosen." Matthew 22:14

The majority of human beings who have ever lived may well be un-baptised infants. If they are all automatically saved then the majority of the human race are saved. Nice thought but contrary to scripture.

"And the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day; just as Sodom and Gomor'rah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire." Jude 1:6-7

Were there no infants in Sodom? Were there less than nine? It seems unlikely. Yet, God promised he would not destroy Sodom if there were ten just men there. If all un-baptised infants are saved then they must be justified prior to death. Yet God destroyed Sodom and sent its inhabitants to Hell.

Just remembered - Edinburgh pro-life chain

2007-04-25T13:14:00.000Z

This Saturday (28th April) - standing on Princes Street holding non-threatening placards as a silent witness.

Rosary 10am, Sacred Heart Church, Lauriston Street.

Assemble 10.45am, King's Stables Rd.

11am-1pm on Princes Street.

You don't have to stay the whole time, and can drop in for a bit any time!

Warning: frivolous post

2007-04-25T13:04:00.000Z

Since I have no interesting or intelligent thoughts on Limbo, John Paul II or Marxism, and can't think of anything intellectual or edifying to say - this would seem to be the perfect time not to post.

Ah. Oh well, carry on regardless -

On revisiting old haunts: Do not have a good reason to return to a place of past happiness in good weather. In a season of sun, sandstone, and snakes-head fritillaries, one is apt to forget all the good reasons why one left. That apart, I am very sorry to report that the ladies' loos in the Old Bod have been refurbished. In itself unexceptionable, you might think; but in fact this means that an ongoing bodice-ripper, among other quite interesting and remarkably non-obscene graffiti, has been tiled over and lost to the world. Alas. (Also the taps are irritating now. But that's less important.)

This post on the lovely Dress A Day is about professional dressing (can one wear a frock to work?), and relates vaguely to my ongoing concerns about what academic females are meant to wear. Tweed, mismatched ties and unbrushed hair looks fine on chaps. For ladies, it's trickier. Just one reason why academic gowns should be more widely used. Anyway. Possibly of interest to, well, women who work. Um.

John Paul II's debt to Marx? (KES debate continued)

2007-04-23T14:30:00.000Z

[link to original in title]

Published online at 21.02 on 24th March 2006

This text follows the article in The Tablet of 14th January 2006; see also the KUL institute's reaction here.

Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch sent the following clarification to KAI (Catholic Information Agency) in response to its news article about the meeting of representatives of the John Paul II Institute with the Grand Chancellor of KUL:

In the KAI article Archbishop Życinski misrepresented our views as given in the article published in the British Catholic [sic – translator’s note] weekly The Tablet on 14th January.

The article concerned the unpublished two-volume work of Fr Wojtyła entitled Catholic Social Ethics. Since the majority of readers will not have read our artilce, and also since we were not given the possibility of replying directly to the Archbishop’s criticism, we would like to respond in this letter to the accusations made.

The article contains an analysis of lectures given by the Rev. Dr. Wojtyła at the Jagiellonian University at the beginning of the 1950s, which are collected in the work called Catholic Social Ethics. In our opinion, this work of around five hundred pages is of important historical significance for the understanding of the intellectual formation of the future pope. It contains a detailed analysis of marxism and proposes a Christian reply to Marxist claims.

Initially there was difficulty in confirming the authenticity of the work’s authorship. Currently several authorities, including the Insitute of John Paul II at KUL and the John Paul II Foundation in Rome have confirmed that the author of Katolickia Etyka Społeczna was indeed Fr Wojtyła. Independently of these affirmations, our analysis of the text supplied further evidence for this conclusion. The above reasons led us to conclude that it was important to write about this for the Anglo-Saxon reader.

In the article we presented two fundamental arguments. First, that the Rev. Dr. Wojtyła had a wide acquaintance with the subject of marxism (as indeed with other philosophical traditions). Secondly, that already as a young priest he had begun “reflections on the subject of ‘moral victory’ over the communist power” and developed a Christian reply to Marxism. Like many intellectuals of the post-war generation Fr Wojtyła showed a gret sensitivity to social problems and like many in those times he used “the language of the period”.

However the views we present are a long way from the statements attributed to us and criticised by Archbishop Życinski.

Nowhere in the text of our article did we state that Wojtyłą had “left-wing sympathies”, or that he represented “the position of the Left”. Moreover we consider it inappropriate to identify the views and teaching of Karol Wojtyłą with any particular political orientation. We said that Wojtyłą was interested in and studied “the ideas of marxism”. That scholars take an interest in and research ideas does not mean that they sympathise with or support them.
The article did not concern “the teaching of John Paul II” but the earlier work of Fr Wojtyła. We wrote that Fr Wojtyła taught phenomenology as a “kind of antidote” to marxism. The personalism he studied can be considered as “ a counterproposition to marxism”. In his analysis Fr Wojtyła showed how certain ethical categories had been exploited and deformed by marxism, including that of the understanding of the alienation of the person. Fr Wojtyła argued against, among others, the marxist understnading of social class, the class war and “political revolution”. The unique nature of Catholic Social Ethics, as we state in our article, lies in something quite contrary to that of which AbpŻycinski accuses us, namely in the remarkable ability shown by Fr Wojtyłą in deconstructing the concepts of marxist social philosophy and in recreating their Christian significance.

Regarding the reaction of George Weigel to our article we would like to say that he did not argue with our interpretation of Catholic Social Ethics but asserted that the contents of Fr Wojtyła’s lectures was taken from Fr Piwowarczyk. Assertions of this kind ought however to be backed up by an analysis of the text, and since Mr Weigel neither speaks nor reads Polish it is difficult to accept his assertion as authoritative.

What strikes us as particularly important in the tex published by KAI is the declaration that the John Paul II Institute will publish Fr Wojtyła’s work (in, we hope, its entirety).

At the same time we are concerned by the resolution to “counteract false interpretations of the views of the Pope in various stages of his life” Of course, different interpretations are possible and held. We hope that after the belated publication of the Rev. Dr. Wojtyłą’s lectures readers will have many different opinions, which they will be able to present and exchange freely.

Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch, Oxford, 20th March 2006

*********
A similar clarification was received by the Rev. Andrzej Szostek. Taking up the discussion he wrote:

Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, Catholic Social Ethics and Marxism

Notes on the margin of the article “Karol Wojtyłą’s forgotten text” The Tablet, 14th January 2006, by J. Luxmoore and J. Babiuch

The article “Karol Wojtyła’s forgotten text published by J. Luxmoore and J. Babiuch in The Tablet has already provoked a reaction from George Weigel, author of the well-known biographical monograph on John Paul II, Witness to Hope, to which the authros of the article replied (The Tablet, 14th and 28th January 2006), which in turn brought a response from Archbishop Józef Życinski (cf. KAI, 19th March 2006. It seems probably that this response will be answered in turn by the authors of the original article. Ithink that the article deserves a few words of comment, which ought to clear up at leasta few misunderstandings.

1. The consideration of K. Wojtyła’s script in the beatification process of John Paul II
The article begins and ends with a reference to the beatification process of the Servant of God John Paul II. In this connection the authors express the concern that the typescript Katolicka Etyka Społeczna (KES) written by Fr Karol Wojtyła will not be taken into consideration, and likewise express their worry that the authorities of the Catholic church in Poland are unwilling to publish the text, which – in the opinion of those authorities – is not worthy of publication, being insufficiently mature and independent.

It should be remembered in this connection that at the stage of the examination of writings of any candidate for the altar, only those writings can be considered which he himself decidedto publish. When the candidate is a pope, official papal declarations (encyclicals, exhortations, apostolic letters etc) are excluded from this stage, since their publications is regulated by separate ecclesiastical regulations. Also excluded are texts which the Serant of God did not himself decide to publish, even if they appeared in print after his elevation to the See of Peter. Though this may seem strange, this rule is for the benefit of the candidate for the altar. The censor has to give his opinion as to, among other things, whether the writings of the Servant of God contain anything contrary to Catholic faith and morals. Now if such content were found in unpublished writings, then the accusation of having expressed opinions contra fides et morum (as it is technicaly called) would not have as much weight as if it had been decided to publish the texts. After all it happens that someone expresses himself unguardedly, or opinions are ascribed to him which he did not hold. It would be unfair and damaging to burden him with the accusation of infidelity to the teaching of the Church. Writings which someone has personally authorised and submitted to public attention are a different matter.

This coin has of course two sides. Protecting the Servant of God from unfair accusations in this way means that things cannot be taken into consideration that might otherwise greatly strengthen convictions of his orthodoxy and sanctity. The above-mentioned rule means that at this stage not only the typescript of KES but also many other valuable texts of Karol Wojtyła published after 16th October 1978 cannot be taken into consideration. They include a large part of his poetic works, retreat conferences, homilies and academic texts, among which are not just the Lublin lectures but even the full text of his doctoral thesis (only the conluding summary of the doctorate was published before 16th October 1968, and it is an insufficient basis for showing the full richness of the analysis contained in the dissertaion and the conscientiousness of the author in an honest search for the truth).

Let us hope that the at the next stages of the beatification these texts will also be taken into consideration (I am not familiar with the whole procedure of the process), but any suppositions as to the intentions behind the non-consideration of KES must be considered completely unfounded.

2. The publication of the text of Katolicka Etyka Społeczna
It is howeer true that the John Paul II Institute of KUL began the publication of a series entitled Man and Morality (Człowiek i moralność) in which appeared not only previously-published texts of Karol Wojtyła, but also inedita. For example, the Lublin Lectures (Wykłady Lubelskie), also previously unpublished, appeared in the series. The authors of the article emphasise that the publication of KES is eminently desireable, as it is not true that Wojtyła merely repeated therein the theses of Fr. Piwowarczyk, on whose book (also at the time unpublished in Poland) he based his lectures.
They are right: KES must absolutely be published, if only to dispel suspicions as to the hidden and suspect motives lurking behind the delay of its publication. The reasons for this delay are rather prosaic: the Insitute was not (and still is not) able to publish all texts worthy of publication simultaneously. It had to choose between them , basing its decision on the value of the texts and the “need of the moment”. The Institute decided to publish first (with commentary) Love and Responsibility, then a reange of other works important in the scientific legacy of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła. It also had to pay attention to the immensely numerous and important papal documents, edit the Ethos quarterly, and react to the moral challenges presented by modernity. The project of publishing KES, though raised at the annual meeting of the Institute’s Academic Committee in 1994, was continually put off, especially as the typewritten text demanded not a little work to be red precisely. The publication of KES is included in publishing plans for 2006, and let us hope that this time things will not stop at the level of plans. The authors of the article have not doubt a different estimation of the importance of the script than do the authorities of the Institute, postponing its publication from year to year. They emphasise the originality of Wojtyła’s thought, in opposition to the opinion (expressed also by George Weigel) that his KES lectures are a repetition of the views of Fr. Piwowarczyk.
The matter is a little complicated. It is true that the (as a rule consienciously prepared by him in scriptis) lectures of Wojtyła are undoubtedly his. It is however also true that he based his KES lectures on texts of Fr. J. Piwowarczyk, who lectured in Catholic Social Ethics in the theological faculty of the Jagiellionian University at the beginning of the 1950s. (His Katolicka Etyka Społeczna, unpublishied in the Polish People’s Republic, was published by Veritas in London in 1960, and its second volume, on economic ethics, was published by the same in 1963). Copied on a duplicator in 1958, Wojtyła’s text is not therefore merely a copy of the lectures of Fr Piwowarczyk, but it does clearly refer to it. This is understandable: Fr Wojtyła’s theological education was not immediately concerned with the social teaching of the Church, and so when lectures in this field were entrusted to him he turned to an author known to him and recognised in Catholic circles, developing in his own way a range of that author’s ideas. The authors of the article emphasise the originality of Wojtyła’s contribution, especially in regard to marxism. Indeed, in this areaWojtyła formulated many of his own thoughts. However this does not mean that he did not also in this area use thought of Fr Piwowarczyk’s. It is worth referring to this book (cf, esp. vol. I, pp 129-150, 217-229, 309-315, vol.II pp 69-88) to see for oneself how much attention Fr Piwowarczyk gives to marxism and to the position of the Church in regard to the ideas promoted by Marx, and how much he emphasises the inadequacy of the Church’s social teaching to that point in the face of the challenges brought by the “savage/wild capitalism” severely criticised by the Church. I think that the authors of the article will agree that the views of Karol Wojtyła presented in KES grew out of the lectures of Fr Piwowarczyk (though also from the personal experiences and meditation of the future Pope), but that they find a more mture form in Wojtyła’s later works, especially Person and Act. It is precisely this that led the John Paul II Institute to postpone the publication of KES.
3 Karol Wojtyła and Marxism
This brings us to the last matter,which can be presented here only summarily, though it undoubtedly deserves closer treatment. The authors of the article underline the “empathy” with which Karol Wojtyła approached marxism. If by “empathy” is to be understood aiming at understanding a point of view and grasping that in it which is of value (before undertaking to criticise it) then it must be agreed that he showed empathy for marxism as he did for phenomenology, Humean empiricism and many other ideas, which he then subjected to critical reflection. It was simply Wojtyła’s style of philosophising. He was not prone to condemming views with which he did not agree, rather he tried to find their good points, but nevertheless pointing out their onesidedness, especially where this led to harm for people.
Marxism belonged to those philosophical currents to which it was necessary to pay much attnetion, not only because of its theoretical (though deceptive) attractiveness, but also because it was with it above all that one had to deal in post-war Poland. The fundamental idea of Karol Wojtyła (formulated best in Person and Act and in the article “Osoba: podmiot i współnota”) can be put as follows: individualism (forming the theoretical premise of liberal capitalism) and “anti-individualism” (or “socialist totalism”, inspired by marxist thought) are connected in that they separate and oppose personal good from the common good. Either, therefore, one treats organised society (state) as a threat to the person (individualism) or one subordinates the person to the state, regarding its wellbeing as more important than the wellbeing and fulfillment of the individual (anti-individualism). The alternative to these false and destructive views is participation, whose foundation is relating to others as neighbours [in the Gospel sense], and which the person realises in seeing his own good in the common good. For this reason the medicine for alienation is not economic revolution (as Marx wanted) but countering the tendency to treat others as rivals, and the building of a “civilisation of love”. Wojtyła gave a great deal of importance to discussion with these two sides, which – despite superficial differences – have more connecting them than dividing. On his intitiave a book was prepared before 16th October 1978, in which he wanted to make available his thoughts and those of his pupils to those otherwise separated by the language barrier. This book was translated and prepared for printing in autumn of 1978; this was of great use to Kevelaer Verlag, which ws able to publish the book immediately upon the election of Cardinal Wojtyła to the See of Peter and which grasped well its (and especially Cardinal Wojtyła’s article’s) premise, giving the book the title Der Streit um den Menschen (The Debate about the Person). Cardinal Wojtyłą continued this debate as pope, steadfastly (though in an oringla way) continuing the social thought of the Church, which from the beginning (that is from the encyclical of Leo XIII Rerum Novarum of 1891) treated contemporary capitalism as a threat to the person, even if it considered marxist revolution as a medicine worse than the disease. I mention this, because reading the article “Karol Wojtyła’s forgotten text” might suggest to one that in KES Wojtyła fundentally sympathised with Marx’s criticism of capitalism, improving it only where it seemed to him insufficiently thoroough and consistent. In my opinion it is not so. One might say that he was “empathetic” towards amrxism, as he was to capitalism, trying to find in both systems that which was right, but at the same time subjecting both systems to criticism from the point of view of philosophical and theological personalism. Moreover, in the social encyclicals of John Paul II (being a development of ideas contained in KES, not a departure from them) one can find the thought that though the marxist utopia may have met with collapse, the capitalist system dserves critical reflection and correction exactly because in this way it will be better able to serve the development of the person and worldwide communio personarum than it has been so far (cf. Centesimus Annus, especially parts III and IV).
To fill out the points made only in the letter of Luxmoore and Babiuch to KAI it should be noted that:
1 Their original text published in The Tablet of 14th January 2006 bore the title “JohnPaul’s debt to Marxism”. It is difficult to take seriously the suggestion that John Paul II had any kind of intellectual debt to marxism. On the basis of the fact that – as the authors explain – John Paul II studied marxism, one cannot seriously speak of any kindof “debt”.
2 Karol Wojtyła undertook the KUL lectures in 1954, when the offical version of marxism was stalinism. If one were to be more precise in the title of the Tablet article, then it would read “John Paul’s debt to stalinism”, which is far closer to grotesque than to academic dispute.
3 Referring in the original article to the fact that Wojtyła signed up the criticism of capitalism contained in the teaching of Pius XI has no great argumentative wieght, since it is difficult to imagine responsible Catholic intellectual circles who would at that time have dismissed papal social teaching expressed in encyclicals.
4 In the original Table article the authros point out that the opinion of John Paul was not a “total criticism”of marxism,but an analysis of its ethical categories. It is difficult to imagine academic lectures which would be a “total criticism” of anything. This kind of practice may interest ideologues or – more rarely – publicists, but for someone who had grown up in the circle of influence of the Polish logical school Wojtyła’s approach was necessary and natural.
5 A particular departure from the principles of reasoned discussion can be seen in the conspiracy theory of publication expressed in the words “this is why the Polish Church has been so reluctant to acknowledge the existence of Catholic Social Ethics, fearing it could be misunderstood”. The Polish Church has made no statement regarding the publication of thewords of Karol Wojtyła. The decision of the Publishing Committee respected Karol Wojtyła when it did not identify the social ethics lectures as a work which ought to be printed. It’s a psychologically understandable evaluation of the fact that lectures given for the first time do not as a rule form material that one publishes. It’s a shame that the authors disregard the wishes of the author himself in order to spin a publishing conspiracy theory.
6 From the fact that George Weigel does not speak Polish does not follow that one can refuse him the right to opine on the Polish publications of Karol Wojtyła. In many of his texts he has demonstrated intellectual honesty, bringing closer to the Anglo-Saxon reader texts published only in Polish.
7 Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch write “we are concerned by the resolution [scil.of the authorities of KUL] to ‘counter false interpretations of the views of the Pope in various stages of his life’”. From the context of earlier discussions it appears that this counteraction is conducted by means of the weighing of arguments on an internet portal and by the publication of source texts. These latter do not credibly give any ground for speaking of, e.g., the debt of John Paul II to marxism. Does the reasonable limitation of a groundless debate really provide cause for concern?

Social Modernism

2007-04-22T22:12:00.000Z

"Many believe in or claim that they believe in and hold fast to Catholic doctrine on such questions as social authority, the right of owning private property, on the relations between capital and labour, on the rights of the labouring man, on the relations between Church and State, religion and country, on the relations between the different social classes, on international relations, on the rights of the Holy See and the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiff and the Episcopate, on the social rights of Jesus Christ, Who is the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord not only of individuals but of nations. In spite of these protestations, they speak, write, and, what is more, act as if it were not necessary any longer to follow, or that they did not remain still in full force, the teachings and solemn pronouncements which may be found in so many documents of the Holy See, and particularly in those written by Leo XIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV. There is a species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less decidedly than We condemn theological modernism."

Pius XI - Ubi Arcano Dei

THEOLOGICAL HEALTH WARNING

2007-04-22T18:06:00.000Z

The International Theological Commission has NO MAGISTERIAL AUTHORITY its statements are not pontifical acts. They are not even acts of the Holy See's bureaucracy. No one is obliged to believe them. No guarantee of orthodoxy attaches to them. The fact that the Pope authorises their statements does not even indicate whether or not he assents to their contents even as a private theologian.

Having said that it does not seem that the new statement from the ITC says anything more than that the existence of Limbo remains an open theological question and that its members favour various possible ways in which un-baptized infants might receive baptismal grace extra-sacramentally. Strictly speaking a number of the proposed methods would leave limbo in tact just reduce its population and then only slightly.

Unfortunately, I cant find the document on the internet so I can’t check. Personally, it seems to me (as I’m always saying) that the existence of Limbo is a necessary consequence of various already solemnly defined teachings (such as that one can be damned on account of original sin without actual sin) and thus could be and should be defined.

This is a quite separate issue to whether or not baptism of desire can be received vicariously by the children of Catholic parents.

Limbo should be defined precisely because its denial in favour of a more positive appraisal of the possibilities for the un-baptised (which is the novel direction in which this is generally being taken) usually ends in a denial of Original Sin. The ITC document has already led to various pseudo-Catholics making this claim.

Life

2007-04-21T19:32:00.000Z

I had a zeal on occasion of the wicked, seeing the prosperity of sinners. For there is no regard to their death. They are not in the labour of men, neither shall they be scourged like other men. Therefore pride hath held them fast, they are covered with their iniquity and their wickedness. They have thought and spoken wickedness. And they said How doth God know? And is there knowledge in the Most High?

Behold these are sinners, and yet abounding in the world they have had riches.

I studied that I might know this thing. It is a labour in my sight.

Ps 72

The Scotus side and thw Maid of Bath

2007-04-21T19:28:00.000Z

Talking of the root of all evil, and having just recently glanced at Peter Kwasniewski’s wee piece on unashamed dissent from the magisterium among Traditional Catholics™, I was amused to see “Scotus’s free agreement thesis” placed as the antithesis to “Aquinas’s concept of equivalence” in an outline of medieval just price theory.

I ave also been thinking, as I wrote to Aelianus yesterday (it is a little sad to be repeating a joke)(especially as it’s not particularly funny)(but somehow confessing that I’ve already used it makes it less sad): if it had been the Maid of Bath’s tale, then the question would have been “what do wenches want?” and the answer?

Girls just want to have fun.

Why Lay Communion Under Both Kinds Is A Bad Idea

2007-04-20T06:51:00.000Z

I. The Lord’s command to consume the Eucharist under both species must be fulfilled in order that for the Sacrifice of the Mass to be properly offered. This occurs when the Priest receives from the chalice. This is the reason the server traditionally rings the hand bell at this point (and Irish old men leave the church and go to the pub). Thus the reception of communion under one species by the laity emphasises the doctrine of the Church concerning the objective sufficiency of the sacrifice offered by the priest while communion under both kinds deemphasises it.

II. Because the body and blood are made present under two different species the Lord is present on the altar in immolated form. Nevertheless, it is His living resurrected body that is made present in which body and blood are not separated. Thus, the whole Christ is received body, blood, soul and divinity under either species. These truths are emphasised by the reception of communion under one species by the laity but communion under both kinds deemphasises them.

III. The ministerial and common priesthoods differ in kind and not just in degree and the sacrifices offered by each also differ “Orate, fratres ut meum ac vestrum sacrificium acceptabile fiat apud Deum Patrem omnipotentem…” These truths are emphasised by the reception of communion under one species by the laity while communion under both kinds deemphasises them.

IV. The laity should not administer communion to themselves as this obscures the nature of our relationship to the sacrifice of the cross and the person of Christ. While the Greeks avoid this through the use of intinction (and indeed all the authorised methods of receiving the chalice until 2000 avoided it) the now-legalised-abuse of the lay communicant taking the chalice in his own hands and administering it to himself falls into precisely this error.

V. According to tradition the sacred vessels when containing the consecrated species ought not to be touched by the hands of anyone less than a deacon.

VI. The danger of accidental profanation is greatly increased.

VII. The administration of communion under both kinds is routinely used as an excuse for the habitual use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion (which is rightly prohibited).

All this said no harm would be done if the laity received communion under both kinds by intinction in the Greek manner on occasion (which seems to be what the council fathers intended). Obvious occasions would be Corpus Christi or the spouses at a nuptial mass. However, whatever certain bishops may think no one not even a Pope has the power to insist that communion be administered under both kinds as this has been solemnly defined by the Ecumenical Council of Constance.

D626 "Since in some parts of the world certain ones have rashly presumed to assert that Christian people should receive the sacrament of the Eucharist under both species of bread and wine, and since they give communion to the laity indiscriminately, not only under the species of bread, but also under the species of wine, after dinner or otherwise when not fasting, and since they pertinaciously assert that communion should be enjoyed contrary to the praiseworthy custom of the Church reasonably approved which they try damnably to disprove as a sacrilege, it is for this reason that this present Council . . . declares, decides, and defines, that, although Christ instituted that venerable sacrament after supper and administered it to His disciples under both species of bread and wine; yet, notwithstanding this, the laudable authority of the sacred canons and the approved custom of the Church have maintained and still maintain that a sacrament of this kind should not be consecrated after supper, nor be received by the faithful who are not fasting, except in case of sickness or of another necessity granted or admitted by law or Church; and although such a sacrament was received by the faithful under both species in the early Church, yet since then it is received by those who consecrate under both species and by the laity only under the species of bread [another reading: And similarly, although this sacrament was received by the faithful in the early Church under both species, nevertheless this custom has been reasonably introduced to avoid certain dangers and scandals, namely, that it be received by those who consecrate it under both species, and by the laity only under the species of bread], since it must be believed most firmly and not at all doubted that the whole body of Christ and the blood are truly contained under the species of bread as well as under the species of wine. Therefore, to say that to observe this custom or law is a sacrilege or illicit must be considered erroneous, and those pertinaciously asserting the opposite of the above mentioned must be avoided as heretics and should be severely punished, either by the local diocesan officials or by the inquisitors of heretical depravity."

Star Wars - A New.... Perspective on the 14th Century

2007-04-19T20:13:00.000Z

I am currently seeking funding for a major motion picture called Revenge of the Sophists. It is an historical epic but, taking my cue from Mel Gibson and William Shakespeare, I'm not worrying about chronology too much and I've taken a few other historical liberties as well, here and there.

The cast…

Frank Oz = Thomas Aquinas
Liam Neeson = Bonaventure
Ewan McGregor = Duns Scotus
Hayden Christensen = William of Ockham
Samuel L. Jackson = Giles of Rome later elected John XXII
Ian McDiarmid = Louis of Bavaria
Terence Stamp = Frederick the Handsome
Christopher Lee = Michael of Cesena

The Plot... Christendom is seemingly at peace, the attack of the mysterious Cathars has been headed of by the Friars - for the last 100 years the guardians of faith and reason in the West. The emperor Henry VII has just died and it is assumed that Frederick the Handsome of the House of Habsburg will be elected to succeed him, but unexpectedly his childhood friend (but now enemy) Louis of Bavaria is elected instead. In fact, unknown to the Friars, Louis is a Dark Lord of the Sophists and a practitioner of the Via Moderna. It is believed that the Sophists were vanquished long ago by Socrates the founder of the Via Antiqua which the Friars are sworn to defend but in fact they have continued to exist operating though various shadow organisations the Cathars and then the secretive Knights Templar. The Emperor begins to incroach upon the liberties of the Papacy. Friar Giles of Rome senses something is not quite right about the new Emperor but he cannot put his finger on what. He shares his concerns with his old Master Friar Thomas Aquinas and his friend Bonaventure. Giles persudes the Pope to disolve the Templars who he suspects may be allied to Louis.

Meanwhile, on the remote island of Britain, the Masters of the University of Oxford are suspicious about the rising young Bachelor William of Ockham. Ockham was trained in the Via Antiqua by Scotus who was himself trained by Bonaventure. Scotus thought he could train Ockham just as well as Aquinas, but he was wrong. The Masters of Oxford permit him to lecture but do not grant him the rank of Master making Ockham angry and resentful. Ockham is befriended by Michael of Cesena a fellow Friar who is in fact an agent of the Emperor. Lusting after the freedom of indifference Ockham begins to turn towards the Via Moderna.

Back in Avignon, Friar Giles of Rome has been elected as John XXII. He summons Ockham to Avignon to investigate his orthodoxy. John XXII also has his suspitions about Michael of Cesena. The Pope is now engaged in a titanic struggle with the Emperor Louis of Bavaria who is seeking to corrupt the Friars in his quest to enslave the Papacy. Realising that the verdict of the Pope will go against him Michael of Cesena encourages Ockham to flee Avignon seek the protection of Louis of Bavaria. Ockham gives himself to the service of the Emperor and of the Via Moderna...

[Disclaimer: St Bonaventure never met Scotus and Scotus never met Ockham. Bonaventure and Aquinas and Scotus were all dead by the time the events described occurred. Giles of Rome was taught by St Thomas but he certainly isn't the same person as John XXII. Giles did encourage the dissolution of the Templars. He actually died in the same year as John XXII became Pope. However, he was a strong defender of the Papacy against the temporal power and may even have written Unam Sanctam. I have no idea if Louis of Bavaria cared about the reality or otherwise of universals. Other than that the plot follows history very closely].

Polish blues in London

2007-04-19T15:53:00.000Z

Not the slavonic melancholia of the unemployed and/or homesick, but

Weekend Entertainment for Londoners!

Poland's blues instrumentalist of 2006 with the "legends of the Polish music scene" Nocna Zmiana Bluesa. Theatre of POSK, 238-246 King Street (W6), phone 022 8741 0398/1887. Tickets available there between 6 and 9 p.m., concerts Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 4p.m. Joanna was married on Saturday; the band came to the bash. This was the first time I've heard her play: I knew that apart from teaching acoustics at the Warsaw music academy she'd fallen into playing with a blues band through her recording work, but I didn't realise they were great! Well, I enjoyed it immensely anyway, and possibly have been converted to blues as a genre.

Last night someone rang at the door, and it was the young couple themselves, come to stay at Joanna's family's house a few yards from here. And I learned that they had planned to spend at least a week here, but then this gig came up. It's still her honeymoon, so turn up and make her feel it was worth giving up their planned week in the country!

Happy Birthday Holy Father!

2007-04-16T11:35:00.000Z

May God grant many more years of health, wisdom and holiness to our dear Pope.

Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum eius.

Deus, omnium fidelium pastor et rector, famulum tuum Benedictum, quem pastorem Ecclesiae tuae praeesse voluisti, propitius respice: da ei, quaesumus, verbo et exemplo, quibus praeest, proficere: ut ad vitam, una cum grege sibi credito, perveniat sempiternam. Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Birds and burds

2007-04-16T11:29:00.000Z

OK, so wireless-on-a-bus just broke down and the computer ate my post. Meh. What I was about to say was, and will now say in shorter compass in case the same thing happens again -

I'd always assumed that the use of 'bird' to mean 'girl' was relatively recent, and coined by some derogatory association with fragility or bird-brained-ness or some such. But reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, I saw that the Blessed Virgin was referred to as a 'burde', which the glossary gave as maiden or something like that (will give proper citations when not on bus!). And in the OED, sense 1d of 'bird' says that 'burd' became wrongly connected with 'bird' (as in feathers) and was assumed to be a figurative meaning of this - it's not entirely clear from the quotations in the OED when this confusion took place. Its current usage seems to be a twentieth century thing. Note that for 'burd' in the OED, it really dies out after c.1600 (interestingly the quotation of that date is Scottish - Scots often does seem to retain antique usages), except for one revival by Morris (presumably self-conscious). Interesting. Time to reclaim 'bird' as a term of dignity and grace? Might be an uphil struggle, mind...

(Shortly after that point in Gawain, I'm afraid I admitted defeat (temporary, I hope) and bought Tolkien's translation.)

Advice from Zadok on Maundy Thursday negotiations

2007-04-16T10:53:00.000Z

Recent correspondence:

Boeciana: ... the annual embarrassing conversation - 'Do you want to have your feet washed tonight?' - 'Er, no, I'm a girl' - stony glance from female parishioner...

Zadok: LOL - 'I'm afraid I can't do that... there's something wrong with my feet. (Mental reservation: They're female)'

Wifi excitement

2007-04-16T10:50:00.000Z

This is amazing - I'm on the Oxford Tube (which is actually a bus, for anyone who doesn't know), and there's free wireless internet access! Fantastic! On the down side, though, I didn't realise HOW MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE grown-up tickets are than student tickets, so I only had enough cash for a single, and so have effectively wasterd £7. Bah. Aaaanyway, am amazed by the technological wizardry of having the internet on a bus. Even though now I'm kicking myself for wasting half an hour of my precious time in the Bod on emails this morning.

Over-exicited post over...

Shock and dismay as physicians prove unenthusiastic about murdering babies.

2007-04-16T09:30:00.000Z

Given how bleak all the other statistics on abortion are in the UK it is a relief to see that at least the practitioners themselves seem to have noticed there is something a bit odd about massacring innocents.

Labas, labas, labas

2007-04-15T18:50:00.000Z

The great thing about being British is that (unless you are Welsh) you can't be ethnically British. Britain is composed of four geographical nations which are themselves a hodge podge of Irish, Brythonic, Anglo-Saxon and Norman in varying combinations overlaid with less warlike European visitors and people from more distant countries exploited by the 'indigenous' UK population(s) in the more recent past. As a Habsburg enthusiast, this seems to me a very satisfactory arrangement. It ensures that while Welsh, Irish, English or Scottish identity is ethnic, British identity remains civic. Keep the ethnic and the civic at arms-length I say, or nasty things start happening.

There was a Party Political Broadcast for BNP Scotland on the TV last night. The production values were very low. The best they could manage was zooming out from various Glasgow tenements and flashing up words like 'deprivation' or 'unemployment' . Apparently nowadays even the BNP pretends it isn't racist. A Pyrrhic victory as it doubtless reflects the triumph of political correctness, which causes fascists to breed in the first place. Code for whites is now 'local people'. Other dog whistle techniques are attempted such as silhouettes of figures performing some kind of cod tribal dance while the speaker went on about 'local people' and their objections to immigration. Then there was an inexplicable flourish of sectarian flute music (hunnish dog whistling presumably). But perhaps this attempt at subtlety has a further cause. The BNP don't seem too keen on white immigrants either nowadays especially when they are Popish Slavic untermenchen. Thus bigotry has to roam a little further than the traditional colour-based system.

All this reminded me of a conversation I had on my way back from Poland a few months ago. I was in a taxi in Aberdeen on my way to my flat from the airport. The taxi driver asked me where I had come from. "Warsaw" I told him. He then proceeded to tell me how his area of Aberdeen had been ruined by Poles moving in and opening good quality value- for-money delicatessens all over the place (bastards). He complained that they were taking all the jobs and leeching off the benefit system. He expressed his admiration for the BNP and predicted an imminent revolution to save us all from the hoards of immigrants. I pointed out that EU citizens from accession countries can't claim benefit so that any Poles he saw must either be contributing to the economy or starving to death, that if the 'local people' were having enough children and hard working enough there would be no jobs available and no one would come, and that the alternative to Poles was largely Islamic. This last point seemed alarming enough for him to start backtracking. Colour, it seems, has not lost all its force. I doubt if his sudden grudging appreciation for Poles was inspired by theological concerns. Yet the rather backhanded way in which the victory over the taxi driver was won rather took the satisfaction out of it.

It is quite disturbing that the BNP now have enough candidates to entitle them to a Party Political Broadcast. This comes at the same time as the SNP look set to gain power. I have also noticed increasing numbers of boards set up on lamp-posts with saltires painted on them with a 'P' in the top quarter. I am told that this does not represent a commemoration of the seventeen hundredth anniversary of Constantine's acclamation as Emperor, but is the logo of a Scottish nationalist terrorist group which wants to drive English people across the Tweed or into the sea (whichever is nearest). Sadly they have no plans to drive themselves back into the sea and give Albany back to the Welsh. I was arguing about the SNP with a friend last year who insisted that the Nationalists are Socialists of conviction rather than opportunists who move to whichever part of the political spectrum is most likely to get them a majority. Given the BNP's apparent concern for full employment for 'local people' perhaps BNP-Scotland, the SNP and the Socialist Workers Party could get together to form the Scottish National Socialist Workers Party. Us Anglo-Saxons, Slavs and Balts could flee south together before we are murdered in our beds.

Anyway, on a happier note here is a nice article from the Guardian (sorry) in which the proper reaction to Central/Eastern European population transfusion is exemplified by a friendly Norfolk policeman.

I am Ofski

2007-04-13T22:08:00.000Z

Not Russian, as my maths teacher used to say, but I must go. Here's where I plan to spend the summer. Aren't you all jealous?

NEW ICEL!!!!!!!

2007-04-13T20:46:00.000Z

Oh oh oh oh what is going on the world? Am I only dreaming? Ratzinger gets elected as pope. (brief pause to recollect how incredible this was/is) Credible rumours of a universal indult. And the new ICEL appears to be less than a decade from being introduced (everywhere, probably, except Scotland and England&Wales).

A sample off of Fr Finigan, where indeed I learned this ICEL news.

Latin text Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris; et accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et sacrificium patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam.

Old ICEL Look with favor on these offerings and accept them as once you accepted the gifts of your servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the bread and wine offered by your priest Melchizedek.

New ICEL Be pleased to look upon them, with a serene and kindly gaze, and to accept them as you were pleased to accept the gifts of your just servant Abel, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.

This is more exciting than any universal indult, I think. Because it will be/should be everywhere, not just in little corners. Another fifty years and Britain might be like Poland, you amble into any Mass in any church and though you might wish the PA was turned down and the priest looked as though he meant what he was saying and so on and so forth, the Mass itself is, you know, licit.

Motu Proprio date II

2007-04-13T20:44:00.000Z

Funny how one can post on things of great international import, such as moves to strengthen a country's law against the introduction of abortion, moves with a good chance of success, and there is not a single comment. I bung up a facetious comment about the motu proprio, and lo and behold . . . Now I'm off to giggle at the stat counter.

(dear commenter, this is only observational comedy, or whatever the term should be: it was amusing to find a comment on the motu proprio post about three seconds after having posted it.)

Friends Reunited? Nah, don't need it

2007-04-13T20:34:00.000Z

Sitting in Warsaw wasting time reading blogs I have just found that a recent convert who was received at Our Lady's in North Berwick this Easter (Aelianus and I and another friend began a great day trip with Mass there a couple of years ago) lives in the parish that was mine for eight years and where I made the three Cs. We got the same school bus for a couple of years. I even remember his being at my school! Everyone be friendly and go and visit his blog. And it looks as though he's also into days out at Places of Historical Interest. (I've often pretended to have an exciting and fashionable social life, but it was all an act.)

Motu Proprio release date

2007-04-13T20:25:00.000Z

The latest rumour says Monday, the latest-but-one, May. Do we think it is likely to come out the same day as the Pope's book is published? (Polish, German and Italian: the rest of youse will have to wait.)

Constitutional amendment fails, marshall of the Sejm resigns

2007-04-13T20:13:00.000Z

It didn't get through. I don't know how much the political games of those supposedly in favour are responsible for this failure, but I hope they can't sleep tonight. Poor Jurek.

There's a poll on www.dziennik.pl (yes. it's my newspaper of the moment, I know) : left-hand column, title "sonda", question "czy to dobrze, że Sejm nie zmienił konstytucje?" - if you think they should have done (yes, they should) then vote "tak".

Marek Jurek has resigned, insofar as he is able: PiS say they won't accept it, and it needs an absolute majority vote to go through anyway, apparently, so he might well stay.

Polish constitutional amendment vote (protection of life) today

2007-04-13T06:55:00.000Z

Friends, Romans, countrymen or not: today the Sejm votes on whether to pass a constitutional amendment designed to prevent Poland's abortion laws being slackened. There are several possible versions, don't ask me the details, but you know what you can do. Please do it.

Benedict XVI on the marxist concept of alienation

2007-04-13T06:37:00.000Z

Is it not true that man, that human creation, who throughout his entre history falls victim to alienation, is beaten and exploited? The great masses of mankind have almost always been oppressed. On the other hand, are the oppressors the authentic picture of the person, or are they rather his deformation and profanation? Karl Marx showed drastically the alienation of the person. Although, thinking only in material categories, he did not get to the essential base of the problem, he nevertheless gave a telling depiction of a man fallen into the hands of robbers.

Benedict XVI, Jezus z Nazaretu (Wydawnictwo "M", 2007): excerpt in Dziennik, 10.04.2007

St Beatrice?

2007-04-12T17:32:00.000Z

Apparently Florentines and tourists have suddenly started leaving petitions at Beatrice's tomb, and in increasingly large numbers. Is it too late to introduce her cause? Does the Divine Comedy/Vita Nova count as evidence of an early cult? Has it been continuous? Surely any Catholic reader must be tempted to offer up a prayer to Miss Portinari when they are reading the Divine Comedy just in case Dante is right that she is so listened to in heavenly places?

Left-wing Pope acording to J. Babiuch and J. Luxmoore

2007-04-12T11:09:00.000Z

During a meeting of the Archbishop of Lublin with representatives of the John Paul II Institute of KUL, on the 17th March 2006, various ways of reacting to opinions misrepresenting the teaching of John Paull II were discussed. As an example of suchopinions Archbishop Życiński presented articles by Dr Jolanata Babiuch and Jonathan Luxmoore that had recently been published in the British journal The Tablet (28 January 2006). The authors suggest that Fr Wojtyła demonstrated sympathy for Marxism in his lectures on Catholic social teaching at KUL, and developed a decided criticism of capitalism. In the opinion of the two authors, it is for this reasonthat the "Catholic Social Ethics" lectures have not been printed, being supposedly an expression of the left-wing sympathis of the youngKarol Wojtyłą. George Weigel, author of the monumental work Witness to Hope, dissented from this opinion. He showed, also in The Tablet, that the material from the first year of the lectures was in large part dependent on the teching presented in the lectures of the Rev. Jan Piwowarczyk, and it was for this reason that they were not printed. There is no reason, however, to consider the views of Piwowarczyk as characteristic of the Left; for this same reason the arguments of Babiuch and Luxmoore are without foundation. The Lublin participants of the meeting, among whom were Rev. Dr. Andrzej Szostek, Rev. Prof. Tadeusz Styczeń and Rev. Dr. Alfred Wierzbicki, expressed their support for the views of Weigel and stated that:

1)The social sensitivity of Rev. Dr. Karol Wojtyła may not be identified with the position of the Left, since the sensitivity shown byCardinal Wojtyła we find earlier in the encyclicals of Leo XIII.

2)The vision of the alienation of the person shared by Cardinal Wojtyła has nothing in common with the marxist conception of alienation,* since at its foundation lies the conviction that without reference to Christ human existence remains alienated and distanced from the models of humanism exhibited in the Christian tradition.

3)Suggestions that the supposed left-wing sympathies of Rev Dr. Wojtyła were the reason for his early lectures on social ethics not having been printed are completely groundless. To demonstrate the lack of foundation for such insinuations, it was decided that the 1954 lecutre course on Catholic social ethics should be prepared for publishing in the immediate future.

4)To counter false interpretations of the views of John Paul II from various periods of his life it was decided to introduce a "Debates" section on the internet portal http://www.jan-pawel-2.pl/, in which views as important and groundless as the views of Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch will betaken into consideration.

*watch this blog for a quote on this by Benedict XVI in his about-to-be-published book, extracts from which I read yesterday but left in the penthouse.

Edinburgh's spiritual life seen from the outside

2007-04-12T09:58:00.000Z

I remember a parish bulletin from Edinburgh in which there were Irish dancing courses and cake-bakes, but not a single annoucement for a prayer group.

Robert Mazurek interviewing the new archbishop of Warsaw in Dziennik, 7-9 April 2007, pp 16-17.

Reform of the Reform Wish-List

2007-04-11T14:02:00.000Z

On the perilous assumption that the Vetus Ordo will soon be freely available I have allowed my mind to wander onto the issue of the 'reform of the reform'. It is implausible and in my view undesirable to expect that the Vetus Ordo will eventually seize control of hearts and minds to such a degree that the Novus Ordo will disappear. While the ideal thing might be to go back to what the Council actually decreed and apply that to the 1962 Missal ignoring and eventually suppressing the 1970 Missal altogether, this is impractical. What the Council ordered it ordered in light of the circumstances as they were in the early 60s these circumstances have now been completely transformed (for the worse) it would not be faithful to the fathers' intentions to implement exactly what the council ordered then now, however disastrous it may have been that Paul VI saw fit to stray (or was conned into straying) so far from them then. Instead I think we should strive to transform the Novus Ordo into a Missa Simplex which can give a fitting place to the vernacular and sit alongside the Ancient Rite. This would require the following reforms...

A) Prohibit the celebration of Mass facing the people (which is contrary to Apostolic Discipline and the immemorial tradition of the Church).
B) Abolish all Eucharistic Prayers other than Eucharistic Prayer 1.
C) Abolish all penitential rites other than the Asperges (restored to its 1962 form) and the Confiteor + Kyrie.
D) Return to the 1962 lectionary adding extra readings to create a lectio continua.
E) Return to the 1962 Calendar adding new feasts on the appropriate dates.
F) Prohibit the use of the unvarying parts of the Mass in the vernacular.
E) Prohibit the use of any musical setting other than those found in the Graduale Romanum, Graduale Simplex and Missa Jubilate Deo. (More elaborate pieces could still be performed and freshly composed in the context of the 1962 Missal).
F) Prescribe the singing of the ordinary of the Mass (using at least the Missa Jubilate Deo) in all Masses with a congregation.
G) Eliminate all collects etc composed since 1962 replacing them with the originals unless they were composed for new feasts.
H) Prescribe the vernacular for the readings and general intercessions.
I) Prohibit serviettes and non-vested and female readers.
J) Prohibit extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion (on pain of death).
K)Return to Communion under one kind (except for the spouses at nuptial masses and all communicants on Corpus Christi).
L) Insist that the Bishops create an appropriate supply of Acolytes and Lectors.
M) Restore the 1962 Good Friday Solemn Intercessions and Pius XI’s version of the formula of consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart for use on Christ the King.

I hope the Holy Father (who tells me he is a regular reader of this blog) will forgive my presumption. Any further suggestions or objections are most welcome.

Vertigo

2007-04-10T20:46:00.000Z

I could never do this sort of thing. Brrrrr. I used to get strange aches in my spine sitting in the upper circle of the Usher Hall.

Re the name of the blog with the photos. "d*pa" (for those offended by my previous post) is a less than polite Polish word for the bit at the top of your legs that you sit on. My granny was shocked and horrified the first time she came to visit in Scotland to hear my sister and I describing things as "super-duper". Another family member who had not yet grasped the subtler points of the English language explained that there were a lot of Polish children in the school, and we must have picked it up from some socially-deprived peers . . .

Crap religious reporting. Crap. Crap!

2007-04-10T10:41:00.000Z

You only need to read one newspaper report about something you happen to know a little bit about, to never trust a newspaper report again.

Did you know that the Pope revised one of the central rites of Holy Week this year? No, it wasn't the Easter vigil according to the 1962 missal. Wait for it.

The meditations for the Stations of the Cross weren't on the stations you usually see in churches etc.

Pass the smelling salts. Call the inquisition. Elect a True Pope.

The minute I saw that they weren't the usual stations I thought to myself "some asshole is going to write a moronic piece about this" Where are the words to describe the utter utter utter contemptibility of a fool who can't even be bothered to spend fifteen minutes googling in preparing an article he is PAID for? How difficult can it be for a Rome correspondent to have some bod to phone up for a quick check on a silly wee story like this? And if he can't get this right, then how the ***** does he think he can report anything like accurately on complicated political or economical stories?

The Waste of Space original article.

Amy Wellborn and Fr Tim on the same story.

Khartoum auxiliary to speak in Glasgow

2007-04-10T09:56:00.000Z

Aid to the Church in Need hopes to welcome Bishop Daniel Adwok from Sudan to reveal the courage of the Sudanese faithful in the face of extremist persecution, displacement and conflict. Bishop Daniel, who is Auxiliary Bishop of Khartoum, has recently hit out at the Sudanese government for failing to implement the conditions of a peace agreement – which so many hoped would herald a new era for the country. Please join us as he recounts some of the most harrowing stories of a faithful under fire.
And ACN’s John Pontifex reports on the violent oppression meted out to Christians in Pakistan, where the faithful have endured some of the worst persecution in the country’s 60-year history. Yet they have clung to their faith. Hear how, thanks to your generosity, ACN has offered hope to the innocent victims of extremists.

Glasgow Event: From the Embers of Hope... 27 April 2007
7pm Mass celebrated by Archbishop Mario Conti in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow; refreshments and talks at 8pm in Eyre Hall

More on Nick Healy vs Fr. Fessio

2007-04-04T12:40:00.000Z

I concur with Berenike concerning the distinctive family style apparently at work. A dark force bent upon the destruction of promising Catholic educational institutions…

American Bishops' news service on the Tridentine Motu Proprio

2007-04-03T12:49:00.000Z

From Fr Finigan. Am supposed to be working so you can go and find the link on the right if you like.

April

2007-04-03T10:14:00.000Z

O fair midspring, besung so oft and oft,
How can I praise thy loveliness enow?
Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft
That o’er the blossoms of the orchard blow,
The thousand things that ‘neath the young leaves grow,
The hopes and chances of the growing year,
Winter forgotten long, and summer near.

When summer brings the lily and the rose,
She brings us fear; her very death she brings
Hid in her anxious heart, the forge of woes;
And, dull with fear, no more the mavis sings.
But thou! thou diest not, but thy fresh life clings
About the fainting autumn’s sweet decay,
When in the earth the hopeful seed they lay.

Ah! life of all the year, why yet do I
Amid the snowy blossoms’ fragrant drift,
Still long for that which never draweth nigh,
Striving my pleasure from my pain to sift,
Some weigh from off my fluttering mirth to lift?
--Now, when far bells are ringing, "Come again,
Come back, past years! why will ye pass in vain?"

Prepare your chariot and go down, lest the rain stop you..

2007-04-03T00:34:00.000Z

I feel compelled to say that I find the various texts to which Berenike linked in her last post extremely irritating. The attitude they exemplify is profoundly destructive. Virginity and Chastity are most precious things. Chastity may be retrieved but that part of it which is founded in the acquired virtue of temperance cannot be cheaply redeemed. When Virginity is lost it is truly lost. Virginity and Chastity are distinct in that sense even when Virginity is considered under the aspect of a virtue. Every sin we commit takes the place of a meritorious act we might have performed and which we will never now perform. The guilt may be erased but the merit and the innocence that is lost cannot be restored. Other merits and virtues may be acquired but they will never strictly fill the place of those that were lost. Innocence in the psychological sense cannot be regained. Virginity is a morning that lost will never return. Scab-picking is not actually a cardinal virtue. Surely it is liberating to accept that such things are truly lost when they are lost. We do neither innocence nor virginity nor ourselves any favours by attempting to reinvent innocence in order to avoid admitting when it is lost. Innocence is not cold it cannot be preserved through a lack of passion. It is a fire, a burning passion, a refusal to surrender. Only because the innocent one knows that once innocence is lost it is forever lost has he or she any hope at all of preserving it. On this earth it is possible for someone else to ruin your life, to take so precious a thing from you forever and yet that is no excuse for you to surrender it or curse God that you have lost it. If God had never restored Job to temporal happiness that would not have licensed Job to curse Him for his pains. Temporal happiness can be taken from you through no fault of your own. Once you are in a state of grace only you can let go of eternal happiness, but others can help you. The only tragedy in life is not to be a saint. If I die tomorrow I will not be a saint. Please God He will receive me after purgation into His kingdom, but still I could have been a saint. If I die tomorrow my life will be a ruined thing, please God it will not be completely destroyed. I am responsible for its ruin but other people have helped me. I have helped others ruin their lives. Let not either of us comfort ourselves that we can pick up the pieces. Please God we shall pick up the pieces, but even if it is completed the edifice will never soar into the heavens and pierce the clouds as it might have done. In this sense even the saints have ruined lives. Only Mary ever Virgin, the Immaculate Conception, springs perfect and untainted from the hand of God. Give her her due. Accept what you have done and what you have lost. Pick yourself up and walk on. A light still shines in man, let him walk on lest the darkness engulf him forever.

Only You can Ruin Your Life

2007-04-02T21:07:00.000Z

An anti-determinism post. It ties in with some stuff I thought about last year when pondering the temptations I most often met.

One last point: you cannot ruin a woman's life. You can make it more difficult, yes. You can give her a scar that will last her the rest of her life. But the only person who can ruin his or her life is the person living it. Over a decade ago, I was very badly hurt. I have quite the scar to prove it. But thanks to the grace of God, I did not choose to ruin my life. I chose to save it. So my last word of advice is to cultivate the humility that your email shows you already possess. Be a good man. Do not be afraid.

There is another post worth reading here.

Confessing in Glasgow

2007-04-02T18:54:00.000Z

" ... we hear more confessions of men than of women ..."

Fr pf, CP, Passionist priest in Glasgow, writes about confessions and confessionals in his city centre parish.

'Justice moved my great maker; God Eternal wrought me: the Power, and the unsearchably high Wisdom, and the primal Love supernal.'

2007-04-01T17:22:00.001Z

Weirdest spam ever - just got some in Russian which as far as I can make out is advertising some dentist in Moscow. Bizarresville. (This doesn't, alas, mean I can read Russian. It just means that 'dentalnaya implantacia' is quite easy to make out in Cyrillic.)

Anyway, perhaps even more exciting than the possibility of orthodontics in Russia is this website offering a tour of Dante's Inferno, with a particularly high-quality introduction. (Muchos Flash, so beware if you have a slow connection.) Via the Chaucer blog.

The words Dante places over the gates of Hell reminded me of what the Pope was saying about Love and Hell in a homily the other day - this one - I can't find a full English translation yet (am probably being thick) but am getting a gloss on it from here ('cos I don't read Italian either). Someone at the Guardian who apparently had nothing better to do tries to turn this into a 'scary nasty conservative pope' story, but in a surprisingly half-hearted way. Must have been a slow news day.

(Berenike, the justify button has vanished - I don't think Blogger likes Safari - but feel free to justify this post if your computer lets you!)

Bertone says motu proprio on its way but gives no date.

2007-04-01T14:17:00.000Z

A lady at Church this morning tipped me off about this one.

Interesting for medievalists

2007-03-30T11:44:00.000Z

I finally got round to buying a second-hand copy of the classic Europe in the Late Middle Ages, edd. Hay, Highfield and Smalley. I went for the cheapest hardback edition to be seen on the wondrous ABE, which as it happened was held by a book-seller in Abingdon. The lovely book arrived in my pigeon-hole this morning, inscribed on the fly-leaf... R.R. Davies!!!

(If you're a British medievalist, that's exciting. Honest.)

Appealing to a wider audience: one of the essays I was marking described the inquisition as a 'medieval secret police.' Now I get that none of them are very fond of the inquisition, but really, just how secret is it when a Dominican walks into town, preaches a sermon against heresy, and then starts hearing confessions?

Scraping through the bottom of the indult motu proprio barrel

2007-03-29T18:05:00.000Z

Heh. I wouldn't have bothered except that it is amusing to watch the stats corresponding to the occurrence of words relating to this perhaps happening.

Adding to the random pics of graveyards

2007-03-29T13:27:00.000Z

This is from Glasgow Necropolis (tour courtesy of The Glaswegian), and though less pious than the Polish ones is rather good. An actor's grave - you'll need to enlarge it to read the verse (and possible to see the proscenium arch properly):

Ushpizin

2007-03-29T12:15:00.000Z

A lovely film - Ushpizin, a story set among Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. I randomly saw it on DVD, and highly recommend it. The writer and star is an actor called Shuli Rand who became Orthodox in 1996 and spent five years studying the Torah before returning to acting. The film was apparently tricky to make, as the law had to be kept throughout. It's particularly nice to see a well-made film which takes religion remotely seriously - particularly when in the midst of marking essays by some rather anti-clerical students!

Motu proprio ready with accompanying letter, German paper reports...

2007-03-28T22:17:00.000Z

You heard it here second!

No, the Motu Proprio really is close this time, honest . . .

2007-03-26T21:10:00.000Z

A schismatic (sorry for any SSPX sympathisers who might be reading) (I possibly share a view or two with Bp Williamson, if that makes up for it) source this time.

First comment on WDTPRS - I feel like Zeno's tortoise.

Marini to move on?

2007-03-26T21:03:00.000Z

What is this wave of heart-warming rumours? Some special pastoral intitiative by the Pope for Lent to teach us detachment from our own petty wishes?

Summary translation - Marini's accepted another job, Says US Trid Group Leader.

Via WDTPRS, I think.

New Mass Translation Coming Soon?

2007-03-26T20:43:00.000Z

Probably not to any sanctuary near you, if your church is in the diocese of a Scottish or English&Welsh bishop. Still. Another heart-warming rumour. It was too good to be true that Ratzinger was elected - I still get a little high from recalling the days after the end of the conclave - so maybe this and the motu proprio rumours are too good to be true in the same way.

Fundamental Theology and the Smear Test

2007-03-24T22:13:00.000Z

This is very funny indeed, though not recommended for unmarried male readers.

Fessio back at Ave Maria - history doesn't quite repeat itself

2007-03-24T21:53:00.000Z

Having followed a path strangely reminiscent of another priest-sacking related to a certain prominent US Catholic family, the Fessio story takes an original turn.

Father Joseph Fessio will become a “designated theologian in residence” who will maintain a room on campus, assume teaching responsibilities and make further plans for student study abroad, Fessio and university officials said.
“I’m back and I’m glad,” Fessio said.
But Fessio said he was never given a reason why he was asked to resign Wednesday, other than administrative differences.
Asked what he thought of not being told, the 66-year-old priest quipped: “That may be one of our differences.”

Pictures at a cemetery

2007-03-24T18:26:00.000Z

I would tell you where it is, but what I think it is called appears to be three places in Poland and none of them in the right one, so perhaps I need to think again. It's a fairly typical rural cemetery in Mazovia. I liked the colours (this was October) and the silver Jesus was an extra treat. If you want to appreciate my fine camera work in all its pixelated glory, click on the pictures to make them BIG.

You disgust me

2007-03-24T07:41:00.000Z

That must be a line from a film, so if someone were to come up with a picture to go with this post . . .

You disgust me. You are so totally and utterly out of touch with the real world that it is no surprise to me that the Christian faith is fizzling out to nothing in the United Kingdom. Perhaps when we have managed to turn all our children gay the problem of religious bigotry affecting our laws will no longer be an issue.

Find out who wrote this, to whome and on what occasion, by going to this page.

Why do people never demonstrate how it is that others are out of touch? In what way? Exactly?

Skimming the papers last weekend I read a comment that politics in Poland is now about emotion, about being shocked/disgusted/worried (usually negative emotions, it seems!). It is at least partly true of the rhetoric of politicians, and is true almost without exception of the newspaper comment forums. The pathetic amount of any actual information in the press doesn't help to raise the level of discussion. Freedom of the press? They should all be censored for lack of content.

Old Rite rumours

2007-03-23T12:46:00.000Z

For what it's worth...

'What Does The Prayer Really Say' has had some bits and bobs of late...

Some stuff from Italian sources - don't know if they're the ones feeding the rumours berenike was reading -

and most recently, this...

Well, we'll see. (Incidentally, on the old rite front, any Scottish readers going to the lovely Una Voce Day of Recollection at Glasgow's Nazareth House tomorrow? See youse there.)

Also note Fr Z's observations on the nuances of the English version of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation (which I haven't finished reading yet, how embarrassing) - such as this and this.

Ex-Master General of the Dominicans: "Read gay novels"

2007-03-22T22:15:00.000Z

California Catholic Daily News writer “runs into” His Eminence at the March 1-3 Religious Education Congress. Their conversation follows.

Hi, Cardinal Mahony, I’m with California Catholic.

Mahony: Oh.

Yes, I just want to ask you, how is it that last year we had Father Timothy Radcliffe asking people to go see Brokeback Mountain and read gay novels and make gay friends, and you were sitting right there. Why would a priest be allowed to say that right on the stage here in the arena during his keynote speech?

Well, why are you asking me? Ask him.

Well, don’t you have anything to say about him telling Catholics to do those things?

Well, ask him.

Why don’t you ask him? You were right there on the stage with him. It’s terrible that he did that. It’s terrible that a priest would come into this religious education congress and tell people to go see a homosexual movie. Why would you invite somebody to speak that would say that to the faithful?

Do you know how many speakers we have here?

Yes, I’m aware of it.

Etc. The Cardinal doesn't come out too well, but what's this about Radcliffe? I thought the Dominicans were quite sound, relatively speaking.

On Holy Thursday Vatican to publish document restoring the Tridentine Mass

2007-03-22T20:21:00.000Z

Well, you can imagine I was rather hopeful when I saw an almost full-page article in a major national daily with that headline. I can't find it online, though the paper version is lying here at my right elbow. It gives ANSA as its source, and I can't find anything there, though perhaps someone else will succeed. This priest (sadly links to the SSPX but not the FSSP. But he's a diocesan priest. Which just goes to show how much more easy-going the Polish bishops are on various kinds of crap.) is keen on it too, but he goes by onet.pl, which also cites ANSA. Nothing on Magister's blog. But a Telegraph blog sums it up. Though two weeks ago.

Fessio sacked from Ave Maria

2007-03-22T11:49:00.000Z

Fr. Fessio has been sacked from Ave Maria in Florida and asked to clear his desk. According to 'whispers in the loggia' he was removed because of an argument with Nick Healy over ad orientem. I sometimes wonder if ad orientem and its opposite have a quasi-sacramental significance signifying what they effect and effecting what they signify.

Book Fairy

2007-03-19T18:57:00.000Z

Thank-you to the nice person who sent me a nice book which arrived today!

I am so damn clever. Some time ago I had a metaphysics exam, for which I had to prepare, among others, a question on the difference between existential and essentialist Thomism is. Ya what? (my previous scrap of philosophical education was rather a la Great Books.) Well, I googled and looked and read (the library was too stressful to use much, being womaned by a terrifying elderly sister, but providence led me to a couple of useful things in second-hand-book shops), and eventually, following a footnote on a hunch, started working my way through Thomas's commentary on De Trinitate, q.V a.3. Am no great Latinist, so this was taking some time, and indeed I failed to get to the meat of the question before the exam,which I scraped through ignominously (sp?). However I have been completely cluelessly terribly interested in the matter since, because it seemed to me to be about more than an answer for a daft exam or some academic debate. Little things kept teasingly hinting that there was indeed something interesting involved. Hee hee, there is! This is about is. And not only was my hunch right (that article talks about something that allegedly divides the two schools, though whether I'd have worked out the exact answer is another question) but this lovely lovely book has De Esse et essentia in, and the introduction has about two sentences that make complete sense on this front and have saved me a lot of faffing, and I am so excited that I had to write this post that is utterly pointless except as a demonstration of my happy gratitude for this nice present to a poor unemployed procrastinator from a nice person.

Government regulations for infant development

2007-03-19T09:11:00.000Z

Five year olds should be able to "understand what is wrong, what is right, and why".

The guidelines on what is wrong and what is right (there are discussions on whether "why" would not unnecessarily complicate a simple matter) are in preparation. A source says they will provide clear, easily-grasped first principles that will help children form independent, tolerant life views embracing change and diversity, enabling them to participate responsibly as forward-looking citizens of an inclusive and caring democracy. Multicultural.

Literature that helps teachers to help children free their minds from medieval prejudices is already finding its way into classrooms. King & King is about a prince who rejects three princesses to "marry" their brother. The book not only shows children that intergender relationships are not best for everyone, but also that hereditary monarchy necessarily creates prejudice against rich and unfairly privileged feudal oppressors who experience a same sex attraction, since the oppressed people would be forced by their difficult life conditions to repress their natural openness to diversity. Fear of the public disorder and even civil war that might ensue on the death of a childless monarch would lead ordinary people to pressure their king to produce an heir, with worrying consequences for the level of tolerance in society at large. Children will thus see the damaging effects of the taboos, and even legal restrictions, on adoption by same-sex couples found in traditional societies and surviving in some countries to the present day.

2007-03-16T14:09:00.000Z

[berenike, your email address is rejecting my mails! help!]

Britannia's Trident

2007-03-14T07:59:00.000Z

"The island of Britain, situated on almost the utmost border of the earth, stretches out from the south-west towards the north pole, and is eight hundred miles long and two hundred broad, except where the headlands of sundry promontories stretch farther into the sea. It is poised, so it is said, in the divine balance which supports the whole world."

- St Gildas the Wise

Late yesterday evening I was telephoned by an aged Catholic philosopher exhorting me to email my Member of Parliament and ask him to vote against the motion before Parliament this evening endorsing the replacement of Britain’s Trident submarines. I was unable to comply. When I was a child I was a fervent unilateralist. I remember arguing the point in the playground in my primary school during the 1983 election campaign. (My main frustration was finding someone who was willing to argue the issue with me). After the 1987 election I abandoned unilateralism along with Mr Kinnock.

Almost exactly two months later I was baptised into the Catholic Faith. I subsequently became convinced that the use of Nuclear Weapons was always immoral because they can only be used indiscriminately. I was troubled by the argument presented in the Catechism of Catholic Doctrine written by Herbert McCabe O.P. that if Nuclear Weapons can never be used then it is immoral to implicitly threaten to use them by possessing them in the first place. I thus returned to my former unilateralism after a brief diversion into multilateralism.

However, in more recent years I became convinced, ironically by the same philosopher who rang me last night, that there are circumstances in which Nuclear Weapons might indeed be used. For example, they might indeed be used against a fleet all of whose crew are by definition combatants. This would mean that it is not necessary to rid ourselves of such weapons altogether because they can be used in at least some circumstances.

However, the weapons are maintained principally as a deterrent and it is clear that in many of the circumstances in which it is envisaged an enemy power might fear the weapons might be used their use would be intrinsically immoral. This would seem to count in favour of unilateralism as the ‘enemy fleet’ example is practically irrelevant as this is not a realistic scenario and the real purpose of the weapons is to pose an immoral threat. While it is reasonable for a government to reserve the strategic privilege of refusing to say in what circumstances it might use Nuclear Weapons, this principle does not seem broad enough to cover the implicit threat to e.g. annihilate Moscow.

However, the greater indeterminacy of the threat to the United Kingdom in the present era of Islamic terrorism, Nuclear proliferation and a resurgent China might, it seems, expand the application of this principle to justify a Nuclear deterrent after all in 2007. If this argument works (and I’m not sure) then, it seems to me at least, that many of the ancillary issues about renewal and proliferation fall away. If we have a justification for the possession by the United Kingdom of an independent Nuclear deterrent then, if it is to be truly independent and truly a deterrent, it needs to be as near to top of the range as we can afford.

Britain is a great power. Perhaps it is the second or third most powerful state on earth. The abandonment or downgrading of our nuclear deterrent would probably end this and reduce our ability to preserve the balance of power within the UN Security Council, which at present is undoubtedly favourable to us. Nature abhors a vacuum. If Britain looses its position in the second rank of global power it will be taken by another power. Many many things about my country grieve me sorely but I shudder to think of the inheritance of its global position by any of the other likely candidates.

Nor, I suspect, is it only patriotism which causes me to regret that Britain is only the second greatest power on Earth. Despite its many splendid qualities the USA's tenure of global hegemony has too often been characterised by power without responsibility. Perhaps this is only to be expected given the unfortunate circumstances in which the USA was founded, but it can hardly be denied that the nineteenth century compares favourably with the twentieth. To adapt a famous remark of Churchill's: Britain is the worst country imaginable to have ruling the world, apart from all the others anyone has ever thought of.

Interesting Lecture on Oscar Wilde

2007-03-13T23:23:00.000Z

An interesting lecture on Oscar Wilde delivered at the University of St Thomas in Houston by Joseph Pearce. Pointed out to me by my friend Bill. I suppose I ought to read the book...

James and Ella's baby has been born!

2007-03-13T16:21:00.000Z

Many congratulations to the Preeces over at Catholic and Loving It, who had a little girl, 6lb 5oz, after a very short first labour. Can't wait to hear her name! May the Holy Family watch over them all.

Modernist Hagiography

2007-03-09T04:03:00.000Z

I am just coming to the end of Volume I of Jean-Pierre Torrell's 'Saint Thomas Aquinas' (a work I should have read years ago). Above all, what I find striking and shocking about the work is the demythologising modernism it implies on the part of its author. It is devoid of colour or anecdote because such tales from St Thomas's hagiographers overwhelmingly entail the miraculous and such tales are, we are told, at best 'palimpsests'. Statements like this bear witness to how appallingly far gone unorthodoxy is in so much of the visible Church. It also shows how desperately needed is Boeciana and my forthcoming work on the theory of history! Don’t watch this space too attentively.... St Bede, pray for us!

Pitstick the Theologian

2007-03-07T12:33:00.000Z

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on the Pitstick/Oakes controversy

There has been intense interest in the exchanges between Alyssa Lyra Pitstick and Fr. Edward Oakes on the theology of Hans von Balthasar and the meaning of heresy, which will conclude, at least for the time being, in the March issue of First Things. Although a few readers of this site have grown impatient. As one puts it quite succinctly, “I don’t give a d— about Balthasar or what Catholics think is heresy.” Well, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

The work of Balthasar is without doubt one of the most impressive theological projects of the past hundred years. Anyone not interested in Balthasar is not interested in theology. Or in much else–for he wrote very suggestively about culture, literature, the role of classical Greece in contemporary philosophy, the possibilities of historical change, and the strange relationships between the beautiful, the good, and the true. So not to be interested in Balthasar is not to be interested in the questions that are the reason for the existence of First Things.

In his contribution here earlier this week, Fr. Oakes concluded by quoting Pope Benedict, who urged theologians to study Balthasar with an eye to his thought’s “efficacious application” in the Christian tradition. Benedict, as usual, is very careful in his choice of words. The statement cited by Fr. Oakes is hardly an endorsement of Balthasar tout court. Dr. Pitstick, too, is obviously interested in the efficacious application of Balthasar’s thought, and in guarding against applications that are not efficacious.

In talking with people and looking over the large and lively correspondence in the March issue of First Things, I am struck by the oddity that many people assume that Oakes is on the liberal side of this exchange and Pitstick on the conservative side. Now Dr. Pitstick is undoubtedly conservative in the sense that she is defending what she views as the mainstream of the received tradition, especially on the meaning of Christ’s descent into hell. But note also that it is Fr. Oakes who is regularly invoking what authoritative figures such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI have had to say about their personal and intellectual respect for Balthasar. Dr. Pitstick is in a venerable tradition of theological inquiry when she is not intimidated by ad hoc tributes, even when they are offered by popes. In fact, her contributions to First Things and her book, Light in Darkness, which will be out at the end of this month and develops her argument more fully, exemplifies the task of the theologian as described in the 1990 instruction from Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “The Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian.”

She is–as the instruction says theologians should– helping the Magisterium of the Church to clarify a hotly disputed question of doctrine. A very distinguished and indisputably orthodox theologian of my acquaintance said after reading an advance copy of her book that he didn’t know whether to be more impressed by Balthasar’s scholarship or by Pitstick’s critique of his scholarship. For a young woman with a newly minted doctorate, Dr. Pitstick has done a very daring–some would say impertinent–thing in taking on a figure so venerated as Hans Urs von Balthasar. Agree or disagree with her, she is a first-rate theological talent, and that should not be overlooked in these exchanges.

The 'Church' of England

2007-03-07T10:59:00.000Z

I have just come across this piece by George Weigel on the possible imminent collapse of Anglicanism. There is much to what he says. However, he follows the irritating practice found among a good many foreign Catholics of talking as if the 'Church of England' exists. He refers to 'Becket’s chair'. Either Becket's chair is in Westminster or it does not exist. I'm not sure whether the prerogatives of Canterbury were transferred to Westminster by Bl. Pius IX or merely suppressed but they have certainly never been exercised by the post 1559 excommunicate laymen of Canterbury. As the CDF doctrinal commentary to Ad Tuendam Fidem makes clear " the declaration of Pope Leo XIII in the Apostolic Letter Apostolicae Curae on the invalidity of Anglican ordinations" is to be "held definitively" with "full and irrevocable assent". In Dominus Jesus 17 the consequences of this are made clear "the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense". Thus 'reunion' with the 'Church of England' is strictly speaking impossible because the 'Church of England' does not exist. This is why the Church accepts that Anglicans who marry in a registry office or in violation of the rules of their own 'Church' (like C.S.Lewis) can do so validly, because the human organisation to which they belong has no authority to legislate in regard to marriage or any other sacrament.

Consequently, in order to have 'reunion' with the Anglicans we would have to ordain all their 'bishops', 'priests' and 'deacons' and confirm all their laity while they were still in a state of personal schism (this would be a grave sin) and then end the schism by receiving them into communion. If we did it the other way round and absolved them all of the corporate ban of excommunication and received them into the Catholic Church and then ordained and confirmed them reunion on a personal level would have already been accomplished and they would have already accepted that the 'Church of England' never existed. All this talk of corporate 'reunion' is a source of scandal because it implies the impossible and leads the faithful into error concerning the infallible judgement of Leo XIII, who wrote…

" …strictly adhering, in this matter, to the decrees of the pontiffs, our predecessors, and confirming them most fully, and, as it were, renewing them by our authority, of our own initiative and certain knowledge, we pronounce and declare that ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void."

Adding for good measure

"We decree that these letters and all things contained therein shall not be liable at any time to be impugned or objected to by reason of fault or any other defect whatsoever of subreption or obreption of our intention, but are and shall be always valid and in force and shall be inviolably observed both juridically and otherwise, by all of whatsoever degree and preeminence, declaring null and void anything which, in these matters, may happen to be contrariwise attempted, whether wittingly or unwittingly, by any person whatsoever, by whatsoever authority or pretext, all things to the contrary notwithstanding."

For anyone who seeks further material for salutary meditation on these matters I recommend the 1987 article "Recent Thought On Anglican Orders " by Brian W. Harrison.