July 2009 Archives
Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te!
(Thou art all fair, O Mary, and there is no stain of Original Sin in thee!)
It may be a sign of encouragement that, as society continues its destruction of marriage, the Church may be turning around to defend holy and chaste marriage. One aspect of this is external, where more bishops are speaking out against terrible societal trends. Another aspect is internal, where the faithful are throwing off some of the more disgusting elements inside the Church. In particular is the recent flap over Christopher West and the so-called "Theology of the Body" (TOB). Many persons, including a priest, have expressed their difficulties with West's discourses. We hope this indicates a return to traditional modesty, and chaste speech and behavior, as is proper to marriage.
The answer to this ailment is true devotion to Our Lady, to imitate her purity, and to return to the traditional thinking of the Church. This can be difficult for a modern mind attached to TOB, because it has become desensitized to immodest speech. Christopher West and his ilk are accustomed to saying things in public that my wife and I are reticent to mention in private. Likewise, I'm reticent to provide links to discussions of West et al, but realize they are necessary for those who are unconvinced. Hence, here are some links. They contain disgusting material, and it's good to say a prayer before reading them. Link [1] has Alice von Hildebrand criticizing West's presentations as "irreverent and insensitive to the tremendous dangers of concupiscence." Link [2] has Chris Ferrara's overview of the worst of West, along with a sampling of the disgusting Gregory Popcak on EWTN. Link [3] has a review of West by Fr. Maurizio Faggioni, OFM, a theologian in Rome. This priest notes the importance of discretion and prudence, and how indiscretion invades the privacy of the marriage bed. Finally, link [4] shows that Pope John Paul II is to blame for fostering the novelty that the marriage act is sacramental. As you can see, TOB is a serious problem requiring serious measures. Hence, we call upon Our Lady to free us from it.
[From an insightful commentary by Gary Potter, posted at catholicism.org, let me take the unusual tack of posting the tail rather than the head of the article. Please visit the website to read Gary's full article.]
It is foolish to think, as some may be tempted, that if the culture declined as rapidly as ours has, it is proof the society can be changed, can be turned around, sooner than I’ve said here. That is not how reality works. Destruction takes but a moment. Building takes much longer. Consider the Mass of which we spoke earlier. It took a thousand years for the liturgy to develop to that point in the Baroque where it was codified by the Council of Trent. All of that millennial work was undone in a single generation. The same can be said, more or less, for literature, for schooling (from education to job-training), for architecture (from the humane to a “machine for living”), for manners (from cultivated to coarse), for music to become “music,” even for warfare (from the immorality of unprovoked aggression to “anticipatory self-defense”). This downward spiral to bottom — not that we necessarily have reached that point yet — took less than the lifetime of my mother-in-law, who will be 103 in October.
None of it is going to be as quickly and easily turned around. And don’t count on God doing the job for us, no matter how hard some pray. If we pray, He will certainly lend us help, mainly in the form of fortitude (provided we discipline ourselves) and wisdom (if we seek it), but if He was ever inclined suddenly to stop using men as His instruments for the unfolding of history as He has designed it, He would surely have done so in some age when there were a lot more saints around than we see today when it is a Michael Jackson who commands the world’s adulation.
Here is a sad story from Catholic News Agency, Catholic nurse forced to participate in abortion, lawsuit filed. A nurse in New York City was "forced" to aid an abortion, and she was so intimidated that she went along.
Yes, she is guilty of abortion. However, the American bishops, who fail to teach that abortion is murder, are guilty of the greater sin. When they allow "Catholic" politicians to support murder, they fail in their duty to properly teach the rest of the faithful, such as this nurse. As a commenter added at the bottom of the article, St. Maria Goretti chose death rather than give in to her attacker. We never hear anymore that death is preferable to mortal sin.
Worse than all this, Cardinal O'Malley is still "participating" in his abortion cooperative, hiding behind a secular company he helped create, so as to pretend that the murder doesn't touch him. With shepherds like that, who would expect a nurse to refuse her cooperation?
Following investigations into Father Tomislav Vlasic and the farce of Medjugorje, Rome has finally pulled the plug on Vlasic. Although the local bishops have warned the faithful for decades, the deception continues to this day, promoted by many "conservative" Catholics and, of course, the demonic pentecostal infection in the Church known as the Charismatic Renewal. Vlasic was a con artist extraordinaire, psychologically manipulating the visionaries from the beginning, and even fathering a child with a nun.
We should view this as a sign of encouragement, that Rome may be taking action to clean out the more egregious cults in the Church. Pray the Rosary, that the deceived souls will see the truth and remain in the Church.
On July 24th, Pope Benedict XVI gave a brief nod to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., a pantheist and evolutionist who passed away 54 years ago. His remark was noted in the Italian press, and covered stateside by John L. Allen, Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter in an article entitled, Pope cites Teilhardian vision of the cosmos as a 'living host'. Here are some excerpts:
Benedict's brief July 24 reference to Teilhard, praising his vision of the entire cosmos as a "living host," can be read on multiple levels -- as part of the pontiff's rapprochement with the Jesuits, or as a further instance of finding something positive to say about thinkers whose works have set off doctrinal alarms, as Benedict previously did with rebel Swiss theologian and former colleague Hans Küng.
...Toward the end of a reflection upon the Letter to the Romans, in which St. Paul writes that the world itself will one day become a form of living worship, the pope said, "It's the great vision that later Teilhard de Chardin also had: At the end we will have a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host."
...Teilhard, who died in 1955 at the age of 73, was a French Jesuit who studied paleontology and participated in the 1920s-era discovery of "Peking Man" in China, a find that seemed to confirm a gradual development in the human species. Teilhard has also been linked to the 1912 discovery of "Piltdown Man" in England, later exposed as a hoax.
