To Know the "Goodness" of the "Good" in Good Friday is Paramount

Reflecting on this and other events - for me things just in my own life, small ones to larger ones, I am noticing more and more anger and resentment everywhere and I bet you are likely experiencing this as well. The world seems to be suffocating under this "air" of madness - of resentment - of having to justify myself by attacking another. One can almost feel, if one stops long enough from our own efforts of projecting-off-of-ourselves-this-same-resentment, the increase in density that this resentment has grasped us by. Listening to what René Girard teaches from his understanding of the Gospel he uses the term "ressentiment:" meaning a suppressed desire for revenge that carries over into perpetual judgment against the other describing this human tendency that so often leads us into acts of sinfulness and violence.

It becomes difficult for those who seek to understand, as they are found whirling around faster and faster in this vortex of ressentiment, especially when they self-identify with the victimizing group, to listen to and to learn from it. In countering such desire for revenge, a helpful approach is to recognize the deeper roots of ressentiment. These roots are found in our tendency to make scapegoats out of others, a tendency to project blame for the ills that afflict us onto the other. Instead of being about the activity of flinging revengeful and hurtful ressentiment we need to be about bringing a level of calm and groundedness that can only be birthed from a conversion, daily if not in each moment - a death of the self enmeshed in the swirling vortex of violence (Good Friday) to a resurrection of new life (Easter).

THIS is Easter!

At one level, Easter is a personal conversion and resurrection from a life based in self-centeredness where we are brought to a moment of recognition - where we can see the "old self" based in a false individuality linked to the contours of the scapegoat mechanism vividly displayed in our own heart. It seems to me that such recognition is what Girard appreciates about some scriptural texts like the Joseph cycle from Genesis. This model of recognition provides an example of a preparatory step that may be necessary for our personal Easter - our personal resurrection into Christ.  It starts first with the recognition of own "old self" grounded in the ressentiment of the scapegoat mechanism and then the experience of our conversion - a personal grafting of our self into the New Creation as St. Paul writes in Galatians 6:14-16 (The New Jerusalem Bible):

But as for me, it is out of the question that I should boast at all, except of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  It is not being circumcised or uncircumcised that matters; but what matters is a new creation.  Peace and mercy to all who follow this as their rule and to the Israel of God. After this, let no one trouble me; I carry branded on my body the marks of Jesus.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, my brothers. Amen.

This is a life journey of daily conversion - it is making the personal choice - the YES of Mary - to being members of this new creation - it is living Good Friday to Easter moment to moment.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Feast of the Visitation

14th century wall-painting in the Timios Stavros Church in Pelendri.
The unborn John the Baptist bows before the unborn Jesus. Such depiction appears only in three more churches in Cyprus.

Except for the fact that Pentecost falls today, May 31, it is the day celebrated as the Feast of the Visitation. Like most feasts of Mary, it is closely connected with Jesus and his saving work. The more visible actors in the visitation drama (see Luke 1:39-45) are Mary and Elizabeth. However, Jesus and John the Baptist steal the scene in a hidden way. Jesus makes John leap with joy—the joy of messianic salvation. Elizabeth, in turn, is filled with the Holy Spirit and addresses words of praise to Mary—words that echo down through the ages.

Then comes the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). Here Mary herself (like the Church) traces all her greatness to God.

- American Catholic

Have you prayed for the message?

tip to Amy Welborn

Catholic identity at issue NOT President's agenda

Another GREAT video. I hope this scandal will help awaken our - the Catholics in the US - need to address what it means to be Catholic in the US. Currently a strong majority of US Catholics, including ND students as well as US bishops have not opposed the invitation afforded to I Won by officials of ND.



It is obvious that the evil addressed in this and other videos are NOT apparent to the majority of Catholics in the US or they simply are CHOOSING which Catholic teaching to follow and which to ignore. How long is the American Catholic - the cafeteria Catholic?

Conflicted and Divided Catholics need a strong voice or does the majority soon it all go away?

Everyplace I read I do not see where the majority of Catholics agree with this position, however I think that Fr. Corapi delivers a very strong and powerful message.



It is always so easy to point fingers at "I Won" or others for who we disagree yet the body of Christ continues to be fragmented. It seems to me that this scandal at ND points to our huge problem, that of not passing on the faith. Clearly we in the US are divided, conflicted and prefer choice and therefore struggle to understand what it means to be Catholic, even on such a critical issue as life - no wonder that we are doing such a minimum or modest job of passing on the faith.

Stand up for what is Life

"I am supportive of all efforts by NDResponse or any other prayerful and dignified demonstrations by Notre Dame students."
- Bishop J. M. D'Arcy

Go HERE to get more information on ND Response
Tip to Athos @ Chronicles of Atlantis who is always a step ahead.

Yes and No at the feet of Our Lady

History consists – in the words of Hans Urs von Balthasar and as I heard first from Gil Bailie – of "the mutual intensification of the Yes and the No to Christ."

So it is stunningly appropriate that the "No to Christ" in the form of an invitation accepted by our current, pro-abortion agenda president, Barrack H. Obama, to speak at a commencement exercise take place at the feet of Our Lady of the Golden Dome, the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana.

For precisely here, of all places, is the intensification of saying "Yes to Christ" and "No to Christ" at its most historically appropriate congruence.

The abortion industry, given the huge effort to further promulgate itself globally and made a "key" to United States foreign policy, is in effect the same hypocritical reaction that we see in the crowd that stoned to death our first Christian martyr, Stephen: they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together.

What do I mean? I mean that there is indeed in nearly every person the whispering, sometimes howling, awareness that abortion is a travesty against life and against the One Who created us, the Word (Jn 1). The only thing to do now, in light of the genocide of the unborn unimaginable numbers of infants killed since Roe v. Wade, is increase it, shout its justifiability, "cover" the "ears" of more and more people, make more and more people accomplices.

To face the consequences of such massive slaughter of the unborn is far, far worse than Germany had to face following WWII. If it is wrong, evil, a mortal sin (it is), then, "Lord, who can stand?" Since this cannot be faced, it must be neurotically transvalued to be the "key" of American foreign policy. Oh? So if we all shout it and stomp our feet, that will make it right?

So the "No to Christ" of this tragedy of humanist "progress" comes, symbolically in the man most committed to furthering abortion, to the campus of Notre Dame, Our Lady, who modeled for us the perfect "Yes to Christ," full of grace.

What a moment it may be.

Walter Hoye - Valor and Truth

How can praise adequately be raised for the likes of the Rev. Walter Hoye? After rejecting a deal from a judge to keep 100 yards from an abortuary - abortion "clinic" - he was sentenced to 30 days jail. From jail, he writes:

"Here my thoughts turn towards my brothers, men of the cloth, men who are called and sanctified by God the Father. Men who are preserved as the bondservants of Jesus Christ. Men who serve as the holy burden bearers of God's word. Men who are the watchmen on the wall. It is now in the spirit of the prophet Ezekiel, I write to my fellow watchmen on the wall."

Noting the statistics on abortion of African Americans, Rev. Hoye writes: "Brothers, in Black America alone every seventy-two seconds a black baby is murdered in the womb of his or her mother. This holocaust is genocidal to the point that today a black child has less than a fifty-percent chance of being born. According to the 2006 U.S. Census, Black Americans are below the replacement level.

"In other words, death in Black America outpaces life. Abortion alone accounts for three times more deaths in our community than HIV/AIDS, Violent Crimes, Accidents, Cancer, and Heart Disease combined. There is no question pre-natal murder, abortion, is the number one issue in not only Black America, but in all of America today."

Encouraging his brother pastors to keep the scourge of abortion prevalent in the minds of their congregations, Rev. Hoye urges them to "speak regularly and boldly from our Sunday morning pulpits, from our mid-week Bible studies and from our small group meetings on the weekend against abortion."

"We must inform, educate and activate God's people to take public stands against the sin of legalized murder in America today..."

Read more here.

Another Slippery Slope

A current survey, being released Monday, found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.

Highlighted from the American Religious Identification Survey 2008
• The challenge to Christianity in the U.S. does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.

Fighting the "good fight" is at times battling on a slippery slope as numbers of the moral and ethical population dwindle yet as the religious relativists fall away the "good fight" becomes more apparent and clear as people will begin to experience what the real difference is between choosing life versus choosing death.

Look in a Mirror, Sir

HT: The Divine Life via Jimmy Akin

Choice the Dragon

Anthony Esolen looks at tales from The Quest of the Holy Grail, written by an unknown Cistercian monk of the 12th century, and sees a dragon that still devours hoards today.

Choice is the dragon of our day. It smuggles into its charcoal-smelling barrow not goblets and gilt pommels but human souls, one after another after another, enticing them there with “choices,” all of them more or less trivial, while it sits upon the hoard and snores away in its inhuman sleep.

We like that dragon. We eat the fruit of the land in season, out of season. We surf the speckled Internet for spiky games and delights, or for the sheer satiation of ennui, only a click away. We shop for schools, we demand “electives.” We shop for churches (alas that we should have to shop for churches), even shop for creeds. We will give the dragon our gold for the privilege of wider choice in how we may put our brain waves to sleep for a couple of hours a day, irritable and unaccountable as those brain waves are.

We find arranged marriages abominable. What, no choice? And after we marry, we retain a fail-safe, lest married life prove to be married life and not the predictable scripts of our own writing. We are the first people in the world who expect that our children will live far away from us and from each other. Why should anyone be subject to the geographical accident of having been raised in Bag-End, near a certain hill or beside a certain brook?

We even believe in the “freedom to choose,” a lizardly slogan that darts past the silent object of the infinitive: as if we feared that the children of our own wombs would be reptiles themselves, now come to prey upon our precious choice. We like that dragon. We like our choice ...

The dragon has a name; it is Choice. [ht: Mary Victrix]

What If

From a corresponding member of the 4 Mass'keteer, and, I might add, a powerful message:

Choose Life

From CatholicVote.com via The Deacon's Bench. A special video and timely.

Weigel - Two Americas

George Weigel gives expression to Two Americas: (W)hat this year’s election cycle clarified decisively is that the great public fissure in these United States is between the culture of life and the culture of death.

Is This Clear Enough?

BALTIMORE—Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), voiced hope for the Obama Administration but pointed to possible obstacles to our desired unity, in a Nov. 12 statement at the end of the annual fall assembly of the USCCB.

"The bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States welcome this moment of historic transition and look forward to working with President-elect Obama and the members of the new Congress for the common good of all," he said.

He said that "the unity desired by President-elect Obama and all Americans at this moment of crisis will be impossible to achieve," if the administration's policies increase abortions.

"Aggressive pro-abortion policies, legislation and executive orders will permanently alienate tens of millions of Americans, and would be seen by many as an attack on the free exercise of their religion."

"We express again our great desire to work with all those who cherish the common good of our nation," he added. "The common good is not the sum total of individual interests: it is achieved in the working out of a common life based upon good reason and good will for all."

Read the STATEMENT of the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to the newly elected President HERE.

but Sunday's Coming

tip to Dawn Eden

How would you know evil in today's world?

h/t to Amy Welborn

from Jennifer F. at Conversion Diary

How would you know? (click here to read more)

What litmus test could you offer that would apply to all places and all times as a way for a person to look around themselves with completely clear eyes, piercing through even the thickest fog of self-delusion and widespread cultural acceptance, and see that they are surrounded by grave evil? Is there any simple way for a person to immediately undergo an earth-rocking paradigm shift in which they look up and realize that the world around them is not what they thought it was?

One thing that stands out in all these examples is that the victims of the widespread evil were categorized as something less than human.

So here is the advice I would offer to my children, and to my children's children:

Every decade or so, take a look around the society in which you live, and ask yourself if there is any group of human beings who are seen as something less than human. A big tipoff is if dehumanizing words -- terms other than "man," "woman," "child," "baby," or "person" -- are used to describe any category of people.

And if you ever see that going on, you might be in the midst of something gravely evil.

One strange reaction (at least to me) that Jennifer received in her post centered on an idea that within evil there is some sort of hierarchical structure - as if one act of evil could be more evil than another. In answering one such comment Jen writes: "My point was not that abortion is the exact same thing as the Holocaust, but that both are in a special category of evil that you only see when a group of people are considered less than human." Another person commented simply that: "Evil is evil - there are not varying degrees. Just like you can't be kinda pregnant."

We must remember** to keep and be active in our faith for the victory over evil was accomplished at the Cross our task is to live in the light of the victory.

* * In his book, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, Gil Bailie makes the point that 'alethia', the Greek for 'truth', is a compound word: a-(not) + -lethia (forget). Here, truth is literally rooted in remembrance. We need to be vigilant about those determined to silence the voices of memory, especially when it involves muting victims when they give voice to memory.

Hope isn’t a road to retirement...

tip to Dawn Eden

READ Drusilla on hope - hope for today and hope for tomorrow... In the meantime, let's wear out some rosary beads.

Choose Life - Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

tip to Dawn Eden

Make sure to read the story behind the song HERE.

A Prayer to Mary

"Note that Mary is not only the Mother of Jesus, Head of all the elect, but is also Mother of all his members. Hence she conceives them, bears them in her womb and brings them forth to the glory of heaven through the graces of God which she imparts to them. This is the teaching of the Fathers of the Church, and among them St. Augustine, who says that the elect are in the womb of Mary until she brings them forth into the glory of heaven." -- from EXCERPTS FROM THE LOVE OF ETERNAL WISDOM by Saint Louis De Montfort

There have been more than 40 million abortions in the United States since 1973. "Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion." - Mother TeresaLet us join in prayer with Father Mark at Vultus Christi ...

HEART OF JESUS, formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, have mercy on this nation soaked in the blood of the innocent.

May that vast army of infants slaughtered mercilessly in their mothers' wombs raise their voices and plead before Thy throne in glory for an end to the crime of abortion that has so rightly merited Thy Father's wrath and caused our nation to become an abomination in His sight.

Do what Thou must, O merciful Heart of Jesus, to reveal to all the horror of this sin and to bring us to repentance.

Immaculate Virgin Mary, thou who didst bear Thy Son for nine months in the inviolate sanctuary of Thy womb, intercede for the United States of America, which claim thy maternal protection.
Amen.