In Adoration of the FEAST OF ST. BENEDICT July 11th from a Franciscan

On this his feast day, let us take heed and bend our ear to the heart of Christ as Saint Benedict prescribes.

From the Prologue of Saint Benedict's Rule:

"Let us then rise at length, since the Scripture arouseth us, saying: "It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep" (Rom 13:11); and having opened our eyes to the deifying light, let us hear with awestruck ears what the divine voice, crying out daily, doth admonish us, saying: "Today, if you shall hear his voice, harden not your hearts" (Ps 94[95]:8). And again: "He that hath ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches" (Rev 2:7). And what doth He say? -- "Come, children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord" (Ps 33[34]:12). "Run whilst you have the light of life, that the darkness of death overtake you not" (Jn 12:35)."

Franciscans have a deep love and appreciation for Benedict. After Francis' conversion and rebuilding of the little church at San Damiano he went on to the little church of St. Mary of the Angles at the Portiuncula that belonged to Benedictine monks of Subasio. As Francis began to develop a following of brothers they needed a place to stay and worship in. Soon the abbot of the Benedictine monastery gave them in perpetuity their beloved Portiuncula chapel and the ground on which it stood. Francis would accept only the use of the property. The spirit of holy poverty must govern their order, if they were to be disciples of Him who had not where to lay His head. In token of this arrangement, the friars sent to the Benedictines every year as rent a basket of fish caught in a neighboring river. In return, the monks gave the friars a barrel of oil. This annual exchange of gifts still goes on between the Benedictines of St. Peter's in Assisi and the Franciscans of the Portiuncula. On the ground around the chapel the friars quickly built themselves some huts of wood and clay, enclosing them by a hedge. This was the first Franciscan monastery.

This portrait of St. Francis is located in Subiaco, Italy, in a Benedictine Monastery called "Sacro Speco". It is believed to be the true portrait of St. Francis, painted when he was still alive, because of the inscription, which is: Fr. Francesco (not St. Francis), and because there is no halo around St. Francis head. Also, St. Francis does not have the stigmata, so the date of this painting should be before 1224, when he received this precious gift. The Sacro Speco is a shrine, built in the site of the hermitage of St. Benedict, who spent three years in a cave in solitude, on the mountains of Umbria. It is built into the side of a spectacular cliff, and comprises two churches, the upper and the lower one, richly ornate by frescoes. The portrait of St. Francis stands in a lateral room named St. Gregory Chapel.

Sowing Seeds of Faith

A beautiful necessity is the work of the laity in catechizing. Sherry Weddell writes ”In Praise of Catechists.”

Breaking News: Internet Crashes

God in a World of Violence

Your most excellent post Good News Ath and the question, "But won't any religion do?" made me think of my notes from when I led a class on the book Franciscan Prayer by Sr Ilia Delio concerning the God question – pg 55 - 62.

If you are not birthing Christ who or what are you likely to birth?

From: God in a World of Violence by Sr. Diana Culbertson

Overview – Session 1
The Romans had a household god known as Janus. This god was always pictured with two faces – one looking back, one looking forward. He was the god of the past and of beginnings. The doors of the temple of Janus were open at times of war, closed at times of peace. Other versions of this god suggested that he was a god of mercy and of justice. The Persians had two gods: a god of light (Ahura Mazda) and a god of darkness (Ahriman). These two gods accounted for the good and evil in the world. Curiously, many religious believers tend to divide the one God into two: a God who rewards, a God who punishes; a God who curses and a God who blesses. But does the God in whom we believe have two faces? What kind of God did Jesus reveal to us? Was this Abba, this Father of Jesus, just like the God in whom the Jewish people already believed? How was this God different from the God that we project, that we imagine, that we sometimes fear?

Overview – Session 6
The death of Jesus as the innocent victim of human violence, and his being raised to life through the power of the Holy Spirit, reveals the face of God. In God there is nothing but infinite life and love. God has given us his Son who suffered hatred and rejection, who chose to pour out his life so that we could know him and know the infinite love and forgiveness of his Father. Jesus has identified himself with all victims of human violence and all who suffer. Our response to the astonishing love of God for us is to see Jesus in the hungry and the poor, the imprisoned and the weak – all the outcasts of the world. Only the message of the Gospel can heal the world of violence. Only the Holy Spirit can defend us from the evil that threatens to destroy the world that God created out of love.


Sr. Culbertson, an Akron Dominican Sister, is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of Religious Studies at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio and past President of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. God in a World of Violence - ISBN: 1-56077-710-9 Grade Level: Adult 64 pages

The Mission of Christ's Disciples -- John Paul II

Let us not forget...the Gospel readings 7/8/07 - Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

The Mission of Christ’s Disciples

For the disciple of Christ the duty to evangelize is an obligation of love. “The love of Christ impels us” (2 Cor 5:14), declares the Apostles Paul, recalling all that the Son of God did for us in his redeeming sacrifice: “One man has died for all… that those who live may live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for their sake’ (2 Cor 5:14-15)…

To be true disciples of the Lord believers must bear witness to their faith, and “witnesses testify not only with words, but also with their lives.” We must keep in mind the words of Jesus: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 7:21). Openness to the Father’s will supposes a total self-giving, including even the gift of one’s life: “The greatest witness is martyrdom” … The basic task for which Jesus sends out his disciples is the proclamation of the Good News, that is, evangelization (cf. Mk 16: 15-18). Consequently, “to evangelize is a grace and vocation proper to the Church, her most profound identity.”

Urgent needs mean that the mission of evangelization today calls for a new program which can be defined overall as a “new evangelization.” I urgently desire to encourage all the members of God’s People, particularly those living in America, to take up this project and to cooperate in carrying it out. In accepting this mission, everyone should keep in mind that the vital core of the new evangelization must be a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the person of Jesus Christ, that is, the preaching of his name, his teaching, his life, his promises and the kingdom which he has gained for us by his Paschal Mystery.

Pope John Paul II

From the Magnificat 7/8/07 - tip to Doctors of the Church and Catholic Video of the Day

400th Post - In Honor of Brother Porthos

The Geographer - Jan Vermeer
c. 1668-69; Oil on canvas, 52 x 45.5 cm; Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main

In The Geographer, Vermeer presents another individual in an interior. This male figure, though, is endowed with intense energy in comparison to the contemplative women of other compositions. The flow of light from left to right activates the canvas. The flow is accentuated compositionally by the massing of objects on the left. The light spills forcefully into the open area on the right, casting a powerful series of diagonal shadows. Vermeer adjusted his initial depiction of the figure to provide a more active stance. Detailed study of the canvas reveals that the geographer originally looked down at the table, with his dividers also pointed down. Adjusting the composition to align the man's face and the dividers with the flow of light gave further energy to the movement across the canvas. The folds of the robe also serve to activate the figure, with their dynamic, almost abstract depiction in their sunlit portion.

The painting accurately renders the cartographic objects that express the theme: the sea chart, globe, dividers, square and a cross-staff that was used to measure the elevation angle of the sun and stars. It is probable that Vermeer's sophisticated presentation of these instruments was informed by his association with famed scientist Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek. Although no documents exist linking the two, they were both born in Delft in the same year. A contemporary portrait of Leeuwenhoek closely resembles the figure in Vermeer's geographer, and it is very possible that Leewenhoek served as the model.

Another Vermeer work, The Astronomer, is commonly considered a pendant to The Geographer. In it, the same model is depicted, this time among the instruments of astronomical study. Both paintings dramatically convey the excitement of scholarly inquiry and discovery. Considering these works as pendants offers an allegorical interpretation: the astronomer, student of the heavens, searches for spiritual guidance; the geographer, student of the earth, charts the proper course for temporal life. -- Web Museum

Rowling, Tolkien, & Fjordman

From the Global Politician:
Superman, Harry Potter and the War Against Jihad
Fjordman - 7/9/2007

I have commented that there is an undercurrent of anti-Western self-loathing permeating parts of our popular culture and our news media. There is. But there are also some other trends worth studying.

I watched the movie Superman Returns recently. I knew it had received some criticism in advance. Rather than Superman’s traditional motto “truth, justice and the American way,” his mission had now been transformed to “truth, justice and all that stuff" by scribes Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris. “The world has changed. The world is a different place,” Harris said. “The truth is he’s an alien. He was sent from another planet. He has landed on the planet Earth, and he is here for everybody. He’s an international superhero.” “We were always hesitant to include the term ‘American way’ because the meaning of that today is somewhat uncertain,” Dougherty explained.

Some commentators complained that Superman had adopted too much of the “metrosexual” trend and had been reduced from the Man of Steel to the Flying Girlie-Man. I think they were being too hard on Superman. Sure, he probably wears more mascara than his great love Lois Lane, but he still fights the bad guys and kicks their a**es.

Read further …

Good News

The first bishop of the United States was Archbishop John Carroll (+1815). He wrote:

"...we are all but one body in Christ, and that which strengthens and gives vigor to this mystical body is the common edification mutually given and received, and resulting from the outward functions of religion, which make the greater impression, as we are naturally more encouraged to imitate what we see. But if, on the other hand, this outward worship begins to be neglected, all languishes with it: the idea of religion itself begins to fade away in our minds; impiety avails itself of this neglect and introduces not only a disgust, but even a contempt of all public and every private worship."

What the modern, superficial, and naive secularist who finds himself or herself in this state of "contempt" for the public or private worship as members of the body of Christ, the Church, does not realize is that if one will not have the revealed religion, or faith, that Archbishop Carroll admonishes us to observe, then the only alternative is, as Nietzsche taught us, is Dionysian religion. And what, pray tell is that? Gil Bailie informs us in his tape series on The Gospel of John:

At the Dionysian ritual, the point at which the distinction between male and female, between pleasure and pain, between sex and violence are swept away is the point at which the ritual is about to settle down to its sacrificial business ... [4b]

(For a more detailed examination of the primitive sacred, I suggest chapter one, "The Victimage Mechanism as the Basis of Religion," in Girard's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.) The point is, we may choose to practice (in every since of that word) the Christian faith, or we will fall into the ancient practices of the Dionysian, regardless of the myriad ways we "gussy up" and rationalize it. Probably the most foolish, naive, and self-congratulatory notion today is the myth of the autonomous self. "I Did It Myyyyy Wayyyyy" is the single silliest idea to pass through the human mind, and one that all traditional societies would see as dangerous as the plague. Such a self simply does not exist. Mimetic studies have had to invent an illumining word to help us better understand subjectivity and personhood; namely, "interdividuality". The only choice we have to avoid psychological promiscuity (of which sexual promiscuity is only one symptom) and becoming another modern who has fallen into the Dionysian is to choose to follow Christ through His Church.

"But won't any religion do?" the question may be asked. The shadow of mortality may begin to haunt a person after a close encounter with injury, illness, or death itself, after all. It's quite a marketplace out there, with every imaginable religionist hawking his or her wares. "Why Christianity, for goodness' sake? Why not something more cool? Hip?"

Let's take just one example: Islam. The word itself means "submission". To whom, or what? Like that of all religions, the question goes back to the image of God of this particular religion. In the case of Islam, God, Allah, is a Taskmaster, harsh Judge and Master. Humans are mere slaves, either obedient and faithful or unfaithful, but slaves -- all -- nonetheless. Submit to this Dictator deity, or else... Well, if that is what God is really like, wanting global war, then I'll take hell and the sooner the better.

But if the Bible is correct, and by the way, if the Catholic Church that produced the Bible is correct, then God is love -- a love that is the source and ground of our very being; a love that is steadfast and unconditional; a love that will not abandon us, but is willing to allow us the free will to walk away from this love that is our grounding and selfhood. The Christian faith goes so far as to say that this love became one-with-us, the "Word made flesh" [Jn 1,14] in Jesus Christ the Lord. He lived among us, taught and healed, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from death in glory and vindication. He established his Church on earth to continue his mission and ministry, feed us grace through his Sacraments, and to reassure us that he will be with us always "the close of the age" [Matt 28,20].

The secularist believes there is no God; no heaven; no hell. So eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we will be worm food. He will predictably end up pagan and acting (tho' never admitting) in ways that show that he is worshiping pagan gods and goddesses in "primitive forms of bonding" (Bailie). You can call that good news if you want. I don't.

The Muslim talks about a deity who wants faithful, obedient slaves. You can call that good news if you want. I don't.

Perhaps G. K. Chesterton said well what constitutes good news to mortals:

"...So far as a man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead, and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called antiquated."

Is Timing Everything? What about "Summorum Pontificum"?

I have only known the Mass in the vernacular, and I LOVE IT. With that said though, I go to a Latin Mass every first Saturday of the month (today) and usually find that I want everything to slow WAY down so I can take all the mystery of it in. I do believe there may be important aspects about releasing the Summorum Pontificum document now:

1) as Athos brought up in a comment to a previous post, there will be a bonding of sorts for all Catholics everywhere (including past and future). As the Church continues to be under attack this binding back of Catholics to Our Source of Sustenance will prove to be vitual;

2) it will stimulate a deepening and strengthening of the meaning of sacrifice - as sacrifice is at the heart of the Mass. Girardians will see the significance of this and I believe that this is crucial as we own up to - God wants mercy (as in self-sacrifice) and not the usual projecting of our violence onto another (or falling back into pagan violence that Athos posted here). Pope Benedict XVI continues to shatter the hall-of-mirrors of relativism as he points the way to peace masterfully using Truth to explain the differences in sacrifice; and

3) it centers or re-focuses our sights on the Real Transcendence. Again another point of significance for a Girardian - our only way to break free of the inevitability of mimetic doubling and rivalry was having a model "without sin" - a Transcendent Other. As we all know that we are so into living and believing without MYSTERY, going on for now generations, as we have raised ourselves up in educational environments and 'self-sustaining' worldviews that dispensed with mystery all together. The Latin Mass brings MYSTERY back with full regalia.

Thanks be to God. AMEN.

Pope Benedict XVI's Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum (in English)

A tip of the hat to Michael Joseph at Vox Nova.

The USCCB has an unofficial translation of Pope Benedict XVI's Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum, and the accompanying explanatory letter to bishops, as well as a Q&A section on the Motu Proprio. You can read all three here.

When all the world seems gripped by hate, bombings and terrorists I can't help but feel that the timing of this treasure and gift of the Catholic Church is just right. During this chaotic time when we could simply 'run' through this blessing, taking it for granted, we have this gift of an opening up, if you will, the significance of what the traditional Mass means to the believers.

To celebrate this day, below is a Traditional Latin Mass filmed on Easter Sunday in 1941 at Our Lady of Sorrows church in Chicago. The film presents the ceremonies of the Missa Solemnis or Solemn High Mass in full detail with narration by then-Mgr. Fulton J. Sheen. Celebrated by Rev. J. R. Keane of the Order of Servites (hence the white habits and cowls), the ceremonies are accompanied by a full polyphonic choir, orchestra, and fifty Gregorian Chanters.

Trady posted this film on You Tube and had the following comments.

The attention to detail in the ceremonies is impressive. Notice, for example, how the servers and ministers always take great care to move in order. Notice too that the servers are all almost identical in height. The Ordinary of the Mass, composed by Rev. Edwin V. Hoover, while pleasant in places, is very much a reflection of its time. The Proper on the other hand is timeless and sung admirably by a healthy throng of Seminarians from Mundelein, Illinois.

Unfortunately due to size restrictions at Youtube around 20 mins have been cut from the original, ... In addition to the cuts I have added new captions and edited the opening credits which had deteriorated in the original. Other than this the film remains largely unchanged. Apologies for the error in the captions for the two parts of the Mass (software). The first part is of couse the Mass of the Catechumens, the second is the Mass of the Faithful.

Another tip of the hat to Catholic Video of the Day for the video.

Pagan Violence - Pure and Simple

David Quinn, like Mark Steyn, has a thing or two to say about Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, in the wake of the two near-bombings in his fair city and one semi-successful bombing in Scotland.

What I want to suggest, however, goes beyond the predictable hand-wringing and dissembling of journalists and talking-heads. The first place you should go to is to the wisdom of 3 Mass'keteers' friend and mentor, Gil Bailie, who reports on his remarks stated at the COV/R Amsterdam Conference. Here you will begin to see how honest, consistent confrontation with the template proffered by Islam and its prophet can be carried out by a (lay and unofficial) spokesman of the Christian faith, in general, and the Catholic Church, in particular.

But, for the record, let it be stated that from my understanding of the mimetic theory of René Girard, the acts of violence carried out by any human beings in the name of whatever deity they chose to foist their acts of terror upon are, by definition and structurally, sacrificial and at-one with the primitive sacred, regardless of what they themselves call them or however they seek to justify them. Such violence is pagan, a product of Original Sin, and is satanic, purely and simply.

This might surprise representatives of a certain major world religion whose numbers hover around a billion (like that of Catholicism) who feel a compulsion to murder innocent men, women, and children whom they deem to be infidel, while (a) a majority of fellow co-religionists seem to view their more violent brothers and sisters as better representatives of "true" religion than themselves and therefore (b) are likely to cover for these violent extremists if necessary.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ vouchsafed by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and couched in the deposit of faith found in Scripture and Tradition is the clearest renunciation of such sacred violence. Do people who call themselves "Christian" carry out similar pagan violence? Yes, and they should know better and their guilt is far, far greater for falling back into paganism. And yet, how many of us drive past abortion clinics and do not bat an eye at the genocide and silent screams going on there?

If this sounds shrill, it is not intended to. Rather, it is proposing that we do not fall into a doubling rivalry that will whisk many, many followers of Jesus Christ into the swirling vortex of the primitive sacred realm of Satan. Let us follow Mr. Bailie's example (above) and confront in honesty, charity, and reality in Jesus' Name. The consequences of not doing so are too great to ignore. Secularist naïveté will only continue to create a vacuum that the primitive sacred will gladly fill.

Fulton Sheen on Freedom

Note well what the Archbishop says about freedom to draw a triangle, as long as it has 3 sides. If one chooses to be magnanimous and give a square 5 sides, it is no longer a square ... So, when it a marriage not a marriage, regardless of what a merely human legislature or judiciary defines a marriage to be?

Originally, there was a nifty You Tube clip of Archbishop Sheen on freedom, but ... someone in his infinite wisdom decided to make that "no longer available." Fortunately for us, my brother-in-arms Aramis went and found a transcript of the great man Fulton Sheen that speaks to the matter at hand: freedom. Thanks to Aramis, you can read said transcript here.

Your Lying Cries

Research is showing that babies aren't as innocent as they seem. I ask my Middle School students if they think infants are also stained by Original Sin. Almost all the girls say, "No". I'm glad science finally "has my back" (as the kids say) on this. After all, any parent knows that babies are the most selfish creatures on earth. The whole world revolves around both ends of a baby, and don't they let you know it!

Faith and Fatherhood

Family researcher, Loren Marks, and co-author of Why Fathers Count, is interviewed.

Another book that looks good (when the book budget is back in line...) is Father – The Family Protector, by James Stenson.

Dante’s Divine Comedy and Independence Day

Anthony Esolen

“The vision of Dante reveals, on the one hand, the continuity between Christian faith in God and the search developed by reason and by the world of religions; on the other, a novelty appears that surpasses all human research: the novelty of a love that moved God to take on a human face, even to take on flesh and blood, the entire human being.” (Pope Benedict XVI)

Dante and Virgil are climbing the steep base of Purgatory Mountain, not sure of the way, when they notice what in that realm is a rarity: a “spirit all alone,” says Virgil, “alone and looking at us quietly” (Purg. 6.58-59). He seems impassive, this spirit, aloof, yet possessed of great nobility. Dante’s description captures the man in a few magnificent strokes:

O soul of Lombardy,
how proud and full of dignity you stood,
deliberate in each movement of the eye
And honorably so. No word he said
but watched us as we neared him, as a lion
at rest will watch and never turn his head.
(61-66)

Homeland

But man is not meant to live alone. Man, says Aristotle, the philosopher whom Dante revered as “the master of all those who know” (Inferno 4.131), can only attain his perfection, the pursuit of moral and intellectual virtue, in the context of a city. Naturally, Aristotle was thinking of Greek republics such as Athens and Sparta, but his wisdom was not lost on Thomas Aquinas, who saw much to be praised in the natural goods that man pursues in the city, while acknowledging that the Christian must look in hope for a good that no city here on earth can provide.

That is why Dante sets his readers up for a surprise. For this soul who seems solitary is most devoted to his homeland and his people. When Virgil asks him the way, he does not pass the time with personal introductions or idle questions about the journey, but speaks immediately from his heart, making

no response
But to inquire about our native land
and who we were in life; and the sweet guide
began with “Mantua,” when that desert shade
Rose up from where he’d stood so firm in place –
“We share one country, you of Mantua!
I am Sordello!” – and the two embraced.
(70-75)

With that outburst of love and patriotism Dante calls the dramatic scene to a halt, suspending the action for a seventy-five-line invective against the Italy of his day, and against his own Florence in particular, whence he was unjustly exiled on pain of death in 1302, and where he would never return. His exclamation after the embrace above is a stern rebuke to all of us who despise patriotism as quaint or illusory:

Ah Italy, you slave, you inn of grief,
you ship without a pilot in the storm,
no lady of the shire, you house for whores,
That noble spirit felt a love so warm
just from the sweet sound of his country’s name,
he ran to greet his townsman even there,
While now in you those still alive all pitch
battle, and gnaw each other, and so near
as those divided by a wall and ditch! (76-84)

Patriotism and worship

Americans still celebrate their Independence Day, with fireworks and barbecues and ballgames; but seldom, I think, with proud faces lifted high, with filial devotion, and even a tear of gratitude. We are perhaps too rich for that, and wealth will ever blur the memory of benefits past. Dante was himself a fierce patriot, one who loved Florence so well that he burned to see her made just. But why should his sacred poem be preoccupied with Florence? What does patriotism have to do with the Christian life?

A great deal more than we wish to admit. No altar, no community: without the common bond of worship, men do not form a city or a nation, and this is as true of America as it was of ancient Athens. No man will lend his heart to a low tax rate or to a system of national roads. But speak to him of liberty, and his eyes grow bright; tell him that that honor was granted to him by his Maker, and he will lay down his life, if need be, to ensure that the honor be respected, for himself and his children, for all generations. So it is that the state can attain its perfection only by recognizing a divinity beyond it; if its dome is not the vault of stars above, it must collapse.

But it is also true that our villages and towns and countries are provided by God as foreshadowings of the world to come. When Aquinas talks about the heavens above us, he uses the Latin caelum or caeli; so too when he discusses heaven as an object of metaphysical reflection. But when he talks about the life of the blessed saints in heaven, it is never caelum but patria – the homeland, the land of one’s fathers. If we are poor lovers of our homeland here, how shall we be prepared for dwelling, as Dante puts it, “where Christ is Roman, in that Rome above” (Purg. 32.102)? There we will find a kingdom, a city, peopled with saints who honored their fathers and mothers here on earth, and who honored the earthly nation that too is father and mother, that directs our hearts to the land of glory. For Aristotle was right: man is the sort of creature who shall attain his perfection only in a city. But the name of that city is not Athens, nor Florence. It is the new Jerusalem.

Anthony Esolen is a professor of English at Providence College, and a contributing editor of Touchstone Magazine. He has recently translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House).

From Magnificat, July 2007.

"Africans to Bono: For God's Sake, Please stop!"

Via Pajamas Media again.


Actually a fairly measured and balanced piece.

WYD - Sydney / Guy Sebastian and Paulini

Tip to Peter @ Cum Grano Salis

Catholic Social Teaching, Economics, and

The Common Good

From a superb essay in the Boston Review by Lew Daly:

The common good commands objective change in the balance of economic power. It is not a unifying force but one that divides right from wrong by a unifying standard. It is a faith with poor friends and wealthy enemies. To deny responsibility for the common good, asking “Am I my brother’s keeper?,” is the same thing as murder, the Bible teaches. In medieval Christianity, “ordering what is personal to what is common” is the beginning of justice, and the tyrant, simply, is one who destroys the common good for private gain. For Roosevelt, it was necessary to wage a “struggle for the liberty of the community rather than the liberty of the individual.” Martin Luther King Jr. described a “single garment of destiny,” by which “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Freedom came not from autonomy or anarchy but from one’s membership and birthright in the “beloved community.”

Within the last 30 years, the struggle between the common good and competing principles of property right and economic efficiency was enjoined again, by a resurgent ruling class. While they cannot succeed in returning to the good old days of laissez-faire constitutionalism, they have succeeded in stalling and, in some respects, rolling back the legislative progress secured in the 1930s.

Catholic teaching recognized the evil that arose from releasing individuals from the moral law. In the background to the New Deal, its whole thrust was to replenish that moral law in binding force against destructive economic power. Father Ryan inscribed this in our public history when he dedicated the new building of the Department of Labor in 1935, beseeching public authorities to fulfill their solemn obligation to the common good, so that God’s justice will “dominate and permeate all the relations of industry and labor.” In King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the moral evil of segregation aborted the same natural law. It was aborted again as the spirit of Lochner was reborn in the Reagan-Bush era. Ryan and King and the millions they helped had little doubt of what was at stake. Has abandoning their faith profited justice in the decades since?

3 Mus(Mass')keteers (& d'Artagnan)

Image by Maurice Leloir, 1894

The Complete People's History

At Pajamas Media.


Blogger analysis & commentary: I read it all the way through! Honest!

Happy 4th!

Stark Realities - Peace Possible

From the article in Instaurare – The Chistendom College Update (July 2007):
Benedictine priest and Professor of Anthropology at St. Vincent's College Reverend Mark Gruber, OSB, delivered a talk entitled Islam Among the Nations at Christiandom College on Monday, April 2, before a crowded auditorium.

"Honest, self-respecting dialogue is what we need in communicating with the Muslim nations," Gruber said. "When the religion of Islam proposes a way of life, it does not mean the same thing that Christianity or Judaism mean. Islam proposes a nation -- a state -- a constitution -- when it proposes a way of life."

According to his vast research on the matter of Islam and its followers, Gruber believes that Muslims cannot be citizens of another nation, for they belong to the nation of Islam. The Muslims who try to spiritualize the teachings of the Koran are a very small minority, less than 1%. The message of the Koran is realized in an earthly state.

Gruber received a Masters in Anthropology and a PhD in Anthropological Sciences from the State University of New York. His anthropological studies in the religion of the Middle East have helped establish him as a nationally circulated spokesman regarding the culture of Islam. He has authored Journey Back to Eden: My Life and Times Among the Desert Fathers.

"The mainstream media likes to paint a picture that Islam is peaceful and that it is just extremists who hold this point of view," he continued. "But that simply is not true. While I was working on my Doctoral Dissertation, I spent a year in Egypt and other Muslim countries. During that time I got to see first-hand what the Muslim children were learning. And it was pretty enlightening! Parents would teach their children songs about killing the infidel -- songs about death and destruction. Cars, with loud speakers attached, would drive through the streets repeating the message, 'Let their women be raped, their men be killed, and their children enslaved.'"

"To be able to accurately judge a religion, we have to pay attention most importantly to what it teaches its children, not to what it says to the outside world," Gruber said. "No progress will be made unless we speak to each other with self-respect and honesty. There is hope for peace, but we must face the facts and use common sense."

Okkayy

Flying Humanoids ...?

Taxonomy of Gender Confusion

Gay No More
From Dawn Eden by way of the Curt Jester, a noted leader and former editor in chief of Young Gay America, Michael Glatze relates in his own words the way that a relationship with God -- a kind and forgiving God at that -- started him on the path away from homosexuality. Glatze:

Poland, a country all-too familiar with the destruction of its people by outside influences, is bravely attempting to stop the European Union from indoctrinating its children with homosexual propaganda. In response, the European Union has called the prime minister of Poland "repulsive."

I was repulsive for quite some time; I am still dealing with all of my guilt.

As a leader in the "gay rights" movement, I was given the opportunity to address the public many times. If I could take back some of the things I said, I would. Now I know that homosexuality is lust and pornography wrapped into one. I'll never let anybody try to convince me otherwise, no matter how slick their tongues or how sad their story. I have seen it. I know the truth.

God gave us truth for a reason. It exists so we could be ourselves. It exists so we could share that perfect self with the world, to make the perfect world. These are not fanciful schemes or strange ideals – these are the Truth.

Healing from the sins of the world will not happen in an instant; but, it will happen – if we don't pridefully block it. God wins in the end, in case you didn't know.

"Silver Ships" and Mayan Apocalypse

Similar to the UFO phenomenon that Aramis posted about in Look, Up in the Sky... Happy 60th Anniversary, the New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a story called, "The Final Days – Is the New Age Apocalypse Coming Round at Last?"

The tipping point apparently is based on the Mayan calendar which ceases in 2012. Well, it doesn't cease cease. Rather, "the Maya conceived of history not as the linear passage of time but as a series of cycles -- they called them 'world age cycles' -- that would repeat over and over."

A guru of the 2012 doomsday prediction is José Argüelles, with his Foundation for the Law of Time. Argüelles states, "The post-2012 world will be a world of universal telepathy." He has moved to New Zealand to prepare for the transition, and recently has been calling himself Valum Votan, Closer of the Cycle (this is in the New York Times!). "There will be a lot fewer of us, with simple lifestyles, solar technology, garden culture, and lots of telepathic communication." As for those who have not evolved spiritually, well, Argüelles predicts that they will be taken away in "silver ships."

Argüelles and others in the article are called "the Gnostics of our time," by Prof. Anthony Aveni, archeoastronomer and professor at Colgate University.

Now, what are we to make of all this? Why this quirky interest in what feels similar to concentrating on "when the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligned with Mars..." interest in the dawning of "The Age of Aquarius?"

Robert Hamerton-Kelly has noted that when the sacrificial cult at the heart of every (fallen and sinful) human culture begins to lose its momentum and gravitational pull, capable of keeping that culture coherent psychologically and socially, two things notoriously take place regarding the kind of victims on that culture's altar of sacrifice (didn't you know it still takes place? Really?). (1) Either the victims must become more prestigious, or (2) the number of victims increases: regicide or genocide.

Looking at the 60's, one remembers who was assassinated: John F. Kennedy (president), Martin Luther King, Jr. (prophetic, charismatic leader for vast numbers of Americans), Robert F. Kennedy (presidential candidate). So far, Hamerton-Kelly makes a point. But what of his other notion, genocide? Between 1965 and 1980, murder rates doubled, while rates for aggravated assaults skyrocketed by 165 percent in the same time period. And, the unseen, voiceless victims of abortion go unheard and unprotected by law to this moment. (One might add, the soldiers and civilians killed on the exported altar in Iraq, structurally speaking.)

Loopy apocalypticism aside, in my opinion, we are in a gravely serious cultural time that René Girard calls the "sacrificial preparation." His mimetic theory is an asset of great import to the Church in diagnosing the sin of the world. And, again in my opinion, for those who do not wish to cave to quirky end-of-the-world nuttiness on the one hand, or give a free hand to atheistic social science drivel on the other, mimetic theory helps us understand cultural melodrama and sacrificial events in ways that, at the very least, thematize the sin at work around us and our loved ones. More to come on this ... Oh! Did I mention that the Maya practiced human sacrifice? You probably knew that.

The Target of the Terrorists - London

Via Gerald Augustinus' ”The Cafeteria Is Closed”, Christopher Hitchens points out a disturbing fact about the non-bombings in London.

Link to Get Dawn Eden's Talk at Chesterton Conference

Here is just a little post from the Chesterton Blog site on Dawn Eden's talk at their conference last month.

To get a copy of her most excellent talk, I highly recommend it, you can order online here.

We are anxiously awaiting news about Dawn's first day at her new job as Cardinal Newman Society’s first Director of its new Love and Responsibility Program. For more information about the Love and Responsibility Program link here.

We are wishing you the very best and we know you will do a great job.

By the way, the suave and debonair gent sitting next to Dawn is our very own Athos. Nice smile there Ath.

The Crisis of Distinctions

I just read Porthos' suggested article, then I listened to this (click on the second song, "I Was Just Flipped Off by a Silver-Haired Old Lady with a 'Honk If You Love Jesus' Sticker on the Bumper of Her Car"). I ... I just don't know (pulling at hair). The cognitive dissonance is just too much to bear. Christians sin? Aarrrggghhh! [HT: Mark Shea]

The Culture Wars Are Dead. Long Live the Culture Wars.

??

Well, I dunno. Make of it what you will . . .

Look, Up in the Sky... Happy 60th Anniversary

July 2nd, 1947 -- the phenomenon of "flying saucers" got its big push when something crashed in the desert near the military base in Roswell NM. We are still tracking those strange incidents 60 years later.

Read here

We know that there is more to this life and so we keep searching, mainly in the wrong places...

This part about the test dummies struck a nerve in me as I was born in Roswell during these dummy sitings...

These tests ran from 1954 to 1959 in New Mexico, and the U.S. government suggested that sightings of these dummies might have been the root of stories about humanoid aliens, with people mistaking the dates after so many years, and erroneously linking what they'd seen with the 1947 story of a UFO crash.

But we got to ask ourselves...

So what is it about UFOs that continues to excite our imaginations? To some people, the subject has become almost a religion and perhaps that gets to the heart of it. Those who study the subject are on a quest not just for the truth, but for meaning. It's a search for the answer to one of the most fundamental questions we can ask - are we alone?

Dangerous Dads of Boys

Recently, I purchased a copy of Hal Iggulden's Dangerous Book for Boys for my 10-year old. It has plans for tree houses, knot-tying, and even a section on grammar. Iggulden has a great essay in the Washington Post entitled, ”In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby Faces." And, from The Weekly Standard, Boys Will Be...
...pleased by this garden of earthly delights.

I am fortunate to come from an era and place similar to that of Iggulden, and to share the experience of having a father, like his, who could fix nearly anything, pinched pennies and lived within a family budget (a la The Great Depression), and could make a toaster shine and last for decades. In his retirement village apartment, he still has a workbench in a back room, replete with an iron vice/anvil (!). At 87, he is my compleat man.

What prompted this post, however, was something that the Musical Monk said in a comment on Aramis' review of Evan Almighty. "After the flood, all the colors came out -- Sir Bono," says he. Hmmm, colors came out ... Colors came out. Aha! -- Calvin's Dad! thinks I.

Dads can -- and should be seens, perhaps, by sons -- as "dangerous" too. Caveat -- Not in a sacrificial, abusive, fearful way. Nope. Rather, dangerous as in knowing a few things, because the "Old Man" or "Gaffer" (as Sam Gamgee calls his father) has been around the block a few times. He's been through the School of Hard Knocks. He is a survivor.

And we see perhaps the greatest exemplar of the art of fatherhood in Calvin's Dad. Not perfect (see illustration above), but capable of helping Calvin not to be too "cocky" and to see the wonders of existence. In the linked conversations with Calvin, note especially When the world was still black and white. You go, Dangerous Dads ...

Prayers, Please

A long-time sister-friend from my Protestant pastoring days, Kathi, has felt the pull that Chesterton describes (below) upon a person by the Catholic Church. She has recently accepted a full-time office position at a Catholic Church. Please keep her and her family in prayer as she discerns God's call and will for her. Thanks!

Chesterton: “...Truth is a magnet, with the powers of attraction and repulsion ... The moment men cease to pull against [the Catholic Church] they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair ... When he has entered the Church, he finds that the Church is much larger inside than it is outside.”

Day - by - Day from the Magnificat

Thanks to Doctors of the Catholic Church

Putting Our Hand to the Plow

For the man of the world, life is but a space to be got over as slowly as possible, by the pleasantest road; but the Christian does not regard it in such a light. He knows that every man is the vicar or Jesus Christ, to labor by the sacrifice of himself for the redemption of humanity; and that in the plan of this great work each has a place, marked out eternally, which he is fee to accept or refuse.

He knows that if he voluntarily deserts this place which Providence offers to him in the ranks of useful beings, it well be transferred to a better than he, and that he him himself will be abandoned to his own guidance in the wide and short way of egotism. These thoughts occupy the Christian to whom his predestination is not yet revealed; and, convinced that the surest way to ascertain it is to desire to accomplish it, whatever it may be, he keeps himself ever ready to accept the appointments of God’s will.

He despises none of the functions necessary for the Christian republic, because in all may be found three things on which depends their real value – the will of God which imposes them, the good which results from their faithful exercise, and the devotedness of heart of which they are confided. He even believes firmly that the less honored are not the less high, and that the crown of the saints never comes more directly from heaven than upon a poor man’s head, grown gray in the accepted humiliation of a laborious calling. Little does it matter to him, then, where God may appoint his place; it suffices for him to know that its is his will.

- Father Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire ( + 1861) was a great Dominican preacher who refounded the Order of Preachers in France after the French Revolution.


He (the Christian) knows that every man is the vicar of Jesus Christ. WOW! From the CCC, "vicar" means one who stands in for or acts for another. I love that and a different way of saying - we are to be Christ for one another.

Evan Almighty - The Meaning of the Flood

"...lot of people didn't get the point of the story. They think it is about God's wrath and anger...they love it when God gets angry... "

"...sounds like an opportunity. If someone prays for patience, do you think that God gives them patience or does He give them the opportunity to be patient? If one prays for courage does God give them courage or the opportunity to be courageous? If someone prays for the family to be closer do you think God actually wants them to have warm fuzzy feelings or does He give them opportunities to love each other?" -- Al Mighty

This scene didn't make any the trailers yet I thought it was perfect to play here in our blog.

Two Thumbs Up. Going in, I had a good feeling about this movie yet at the same time I had braced myself for disappointment. We were NOT disappointed as we walked out of the theater with smiles and, and well, joy. Great family movie. Morgan Freeman is great in the role of God.

Ronald Knox on God's Love Incarnate

Ronald Knox (1888-1957) was (another) convert to the Catholic Church, and one for whom C. S. Lewis had great admiration. After their first meeting, they "both afterward expressed their delight with the other. Each was witty, humorous, very widely read; each had an unobtrusive but profound Christian faith. They had much to say to each other, and it was a pity that Monsignor Knox left Oxford and that they had few further opportunities to meet." Lewis went so far as to describe Knox "as possibly the wittiest man in Europe." [Pearce, 269]

Great wit and humor aside, Ronald Knox struggled with doubts himself and never stopped seeking ways to present the faith that would help others, too, in plain and simple ways. Here he finds evidence of Jesus' divinity in the ordinariness of Our Lord's life:

He came, and the world missed the portents of his coming. The stars could not keep the secret, they blurted it out to the wise men, their cronies; the angels could not keep the secret, they sang it to the shepherds over the fields of Bethlehem. But the world, the world of fashion and intelligence, was looking the other way. What, after all, was there for it to see? A baby, crying at its mother's breast; a boy working in a carpenter's shop; a street-corner orator, producing a nine-days wonder among the fisher-folk at Capharnaum; a discredited popular leader, ignominiously put to death; a corpse lying in a tomb -- and this was God! He rose again, but in doing so he showed himself to none but a handful of chosen witnesses; the world looked to find, him, and he was gone.

Would you know that Jesus Christ is divine? Then see how he imitates, in his humanity, the reticence of the God who created the world and left it to forget him, the God who rules the world, yet rules it imperceptibly; and recognize, in the masterpiece of the Incarnation, the touch of the same artist's brush. [Pastoral Sermons, 326-327]

Knox wanted also for persons to begin to comprehend the mysterium tremendum of God's universal love for all, and for each:

You pass through the streets as you go to your daily work, and see all those thousands of your fellow beings -- faces hardened by money-getting, faces impudent with the affectation of vice, faces vacant with frivolity, faces lined with despair -- and it seems to you impossible that each one of those faces, with so little recognition in it of a divine vocation or an eternal destiny, can yet represent a soul for which God cares. And yet he does care, if theology is to mean anything; cares for this one as he cares for Zaccheus, cares for that one as he cared for Mary Magdalen, cares for that one as he cared for the penitent thief.

All these millions of souls, and he cares for each, thirsts for each. And then suddenly you think of your own soul, only one among all those millions, and among all those millions so little distinguishable by really vivid faith, by really generous love, by real intimacy with the things of eternity; can it really be, you ask yourself, that he cares for me? [PS, 303]

I highly recommend Milton Walsh's fine book to you, Ronald Knox as Apologist – Wit, Laughter and the Popish Creed. Cheers +

ChesterBelloc Mandate - Distributism 102

The ChesterBelloc Mandate is an online archive of distributist materials. This site was created for the novice or the researcher interested in the subject, whether sympathetic or not. By the by, Bertrand Russell coined the conjoined names of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc -- "ChesterBelloc" -- to refer to the united front these two great friends presented to an obstinate and faithless world of modernity and atheism. (We could use them today; Gilbert and Hilaire, pray for us.)

One may want to begin here for a definition of Distributism.

Piccadilly Circus & Perspicacity

Good catch, Scotland Yard. What ho!

There Are Crowds, and Then There Are Crowds

A post by Mark Daniels that is worth reading all the way through. The power of crowds and the power of prayer.

via Instapundit

Speaking of Catholic Youth Ministry

Check out Life Teen. Here is one of their videos geared toward relationships and the Bible.


Testimony to the power of scripture in the lives of teenagers and young adults. Great video!

Steubenville On The Bayou

Steubenville On The Bayou 2007 begins today, see link. Nothing quite like the inflamed heart of the young. So if you are anywhere in the south and happen to hear shouts of adoration it is probably coming from Steubenville, LA.

Only Muslim Mobs, or ALL Mobs?

All Mobs
"Baron Bodissey" of the Gates of Vienna, looks at Islam from the perspective of how individuals act and react versus groups and mobs.

This is a vitally important area of research, and one that mimetic theory takes a special interest in. I commented in the Baron's post, linked above, but I want to share my comment here as well:

FWP wrote: as harmless as individual Muslims might seem, in any sort of concentration they become mob-minded and dangerous to others.

How true. But why? And is this observation applicable only to Muslims in mobs?

A popularizer of Girard's mimetic theory, Gil Bailie (author of Violence Unveiled) said this about a sad incident in a Japanese school:

What is going on in a situation like that (a Japanese school boy was bullied, stuffed head-first into a rolled up gym mat, and suffocated) is hard to sum up quickly, but I think we could say this about it:

It is a form of social rejuvenation at the expense of the victim; the recreation of the esprit de corps of a community at the expense of a victim, which has both social and psychological effects. It produces both social and psychological conviction. The etymology of that word (conviction) reminds us that it happened with a victim. It is a form – what we would call a largely unconscious one – of regenerating social and psychological stability at the expense of a victim. And the question is, Can we do it otherwise?

Because of the Crucifixion, we can’t do it that way any more. The Crucifixion has made those who it influenced, it has exposed the gears and pulleys of this (sacrificial) system such that it has crippled them. It has awakened an empathy for the victim of such things so that we can’t do it any more. Those people who are even tangentially exposed to the Crucifixion and its cultural effects can’t do it that way any more. That does not mean we won’t keep trying to do it, but our efforts will be increasingly disastrous. [End of Bailie quotation]

The degree to which human are influenced by the Gospel, at the heart of which stands the Cross of Jesus Christ, will impact the degree to which we will be able to live civilly and sanely without resorting to the accusatory, satanic rule of the mob. The degree to which we continue to lean on the ways and means of these satanic powers and principalities will impact the degree to which we can preach in such a way so as to help others move away from the scapegoating mechanics of crowds and power.

We stand at a critical juncture in human history, at which many powers are jostling and crowding for stances of control of the destiny of our cultural destiny. We need to remember that Our Lord spoke in simple parables about the difference little things, small things can make: a little yeast in the bread; a candle burning in the darkness shedding great light in a household; a few talents that are multiplied; grains of wheat that fall on good soil.

Each of our decisions help move and create a niche for God's in-breaking Kingdom if they originate in the grace-infused, supernatural theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. And, like Jesus before the crowd demanding the stoning of the woman taken in adultery [Jn 8,1-11], we, too, can stoop-yet-stay with the victim of the crowd/mob. Maybe -- just maybe -- they'll begin to drop their stones and walk away, too.

"Let the Dead Bury Their Dead"

Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the Pontifical Household Preacher, speaks to this Sunday's Gospel reading (Luke 9:51-62) using the Holy Father's book here.

The Divine 'No' - Zeffirelli's St Francis

Because Some Images Are Just Too Good to Pass Up

via Hugh Hewitt

See What Can Happen in 40 Days

http://www.40daysforlife.com/splash.cfm

Dramatically reduce abortions in your community... Mobilize hundreds of new pro-life volunteers... Help post-abortive women find healing... Generate prominent pro-life news coverage... Make LIFE the most important issue in elections... Copyright © 2007 40 Days For Life.

Franciscan Peace - Video and Plug for a Retreat

Songs performed by John Michael Talbot.

Beginning in the late 1960s with Mason Proffit pioneering the Country Rock that became the mainstay of modern Country Music, John Michael went on to be part of the more radical founding generation of the newly forming Christian Contemporary Music in 1976.

In addition to John's music, writing, and teaching ministries, he and the Brothers and Sisters of Charity operate an agricultural mission in Nicaragua, provide major assistance to Mercy Corps, maintain a free medical clinic and engage in itinerant ministry locally, and operate The Little Portion Retreat and Training Center. He is also the founder and President of CAM, the Catholic Association of Musicians, an organization dedicated to the support and nurturing of Catholic musicians.

Check out the Little Portions Hermitage - a great place for a retreat, guided or individual. From their website:

The Brothers and Sisters of Charity, a Public Association of the Faithful, was founded by John Michael Talbot in 1980. We are a Catholic-based covenant community of celibate brothers, celibate sisters, and families, called as a
monastic spiritual family into deep live relationships with and in Jesus Christ... We share common work and recreation areas while retaining appropriate separate cloistered areas for each expression...

Most of the work we do at the Little Portion Hermitage consists of gardening, care of livestock, office work, cooking, cleaning and maintenance of the grounds and buildings. Part of our life deals with the manual tasks of making the community as self-sufficient as possible. Each brother or sister may also choose to spend a few hours a week doing some ministry in the nearby towns. Our local outreaches include manning our Little Flower Clinic; ministering at our Little Portion Retreat and Training Center, which is run mostly by local domestic members but with some involvement from the monastic community; and meeting various other needs of the local populations that come to our attention from time to time. Another ministry of ours is giving tours and simply being a loving presence to the hundreds of “pilgrims” who come to visit the hermitage every year.

JMT has a very nice series of instrument music listed under "Pathways" that I really love.

Live Free, Your Majesty?

The Queen Sees New Willis Movie ...
…and tries a new, more personal approach to security.

Tehran Burning

hmmm

Hope something comes of it.

via Pajamas Media

Sin Taking Advantage of the Law - Again

Sacred Scripture, the Word of God, as the Church teaches, is always about the work of freeing people from slavery to sin and death. This slavery, so well thematized in the work of René Girard, is inextricably bound up with Satan whom Our Lord himself designates as a “murderer and a liar from the beginning” [John 8]. I have given a quick rundown of how the primitive sacred lays the sacrificial foundations for fallen, human culture in "Summer Thoughts" (below) and elsewhere (Cf. 'Mimetic Theory' in sidebar), so I won’t go into it again now (Porthos: “Whew!”).

What is too important now not to do is to expose yet another way the primitive sacred has skittered, roach-like out of the light of Christ in our day. Secular materialists are churning out books on atheism that sell like hot-cakes, so appeal to the Divine for approval of violence is silenced in the west. That should be good news, and it is! But ... the satanic primitive sacred slips under a different rock of sanction. What is left if one cannot get approval for one’s brutality from one’s deity? Why, what worked so well in the 20th century, of course: government and law.

It’s an old recipe: Saint Paul pronounced it telling us that sin took advantage of the Law [Romans 7,8].

So, today a German pastor is sentence for merely making a comment against abortion. Massachusetts, a state that used to know something about fighting governmental tyranny, won’t allow people to vote regarding a key element of the new expression of the primitive sacred, literally degenerate sexuality. And the central government of the Sudan allows systematic rape and murder in Darfur (The Koran and the government say it’s okay – double whammy - a billion Muslims can't be wrong).

What do all three of these examples have in common? Sin taking advantage of the Law – something extremely difficult to see as evil, because we depend on law to keep the peace and order of society. But it is happening. Now.

And the sinful same ol’ same ol’ slithers out of sight again. But only for the time being. The Holy Spirit is opening the eyes of many who will not this snake get away with enslaving and murdering again. But what damage, what death, what destruction will take place under the mantle of the Law in the mean time?

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Americans United (?) in Fighting Secular Fundamentalism

This article is not too long so I will wait patiently while you read it before preceding.

Done reading?

I don't get too wrapped up in "pending disaster" predictions, however I think there are a couple interesting aspects to the article that I want to draw out.

Rabbi Lapin is the founder and leader of Toward Tradition - a ground-breaking coalition of Jews, Christians and other Americans united in fighting secular fundamentalism and promoting traditional, faith-based American principles of constitutional and limited government, the rule of law, representative democracy, free markets, a strong military, and a moral public culture.

The creation of an alliance of people with differing backgrounds and traditions is something to look at. What is their 'gathering' principle? What model of coming together are they fashioning themselves after? Don't misunderstand, I think in this case they may answers these questions in a very favorable light to our way of thinking. If this is a good working model of 'coming together' then I hope others can copy their method...

And then this following quote needs to be held up for all to meditate on -- and each of us should delve deep inside to touch our own core belief of end times.

"The secular world view will generate an end of time picture of hopelessness and doom and by contrast a Biblical world view of both Jews and Christians shows an end of time picture that, while it may have its turbulent threshold, is a time of some kind of unimaginable solution to all human problems."

Many of us get caught up in "turbulent threshold" paranoia and we don't allow the "unimaginable solutions to all human problems" to wash over those fears. Kind of reminds me of a story Gil Bailie has told:

I remember reading, back in the 80’s when they were building nuclear weapons as fast as they could, there was this woman arrested for pouring blood on a nuclear warhead. She was interviewed while the nuclear build up was going just as fast as it could, the interviewer said, “Don’t you despair? Here you are serving 18 months for that, meanwhile these warheads are coming off the assembly line as fast as they can?” “Oh no,” she said, “the victory over evil was accomplished at the Cross my task is to live in the light of the victory.” Isn't that something?

I think that Rabbi Lapin's remarks should not be taken for granted nor tossed aside. My first question regarding their 'gathering principle' should be examined, particularly from a Girardian perspective to see if at its center there is a victim.

But there is something very special going on when a group can move peacefully beyond the dialogue (initial stage) with members of other faith traditions and venture to the next level of discernment together so that each feels safe to explore their end of times picture. Along this path of exploration a group will find that each faith tradition will be able to help the other, but the absolute key to helping foster a safe meeting place is the holding onto this end of times picture of "unimaginable solutions to all human problems," as Rabbi Lapin puts it -- or as the Christian in the above story says, "the victory having already been won." The Judeo-Christian tradition is vital for this process. And it is a Girardian anthropology that will help ground the group in the knowledge that it is our violence - not God's that has to be undone.

The wrath of God is forgiveness - problem is that we just don't want to believe it.

Chimeras - Never Let Me Go

So, what's a chimera? English and Welsh bishops say that chimeras are humans and deserve life and dignity.

Porthos recommended Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It apparently has come to this ...

"It Grows In Silence"

How does a vocation grow? The Deacon’s Bench offers two magnificent videos on vocations to the priesthood produced by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The Sign of the Cross +

If you haven't watched it, Children of Men qualifies as the most fear-filled prophetic film of sacrificial meltdown you will see. Why bother to watch the whole phantasmagoria? For a simple reason: Theo. Theo (played by Clive Owen -- King Arthur, 2004) is not a finger-pointing accuser, but a hustler/cubicle flunky who becomes a Saint Joseph-like protector of the only child born (in the entire world!) in 17 years. It is he who threads this immigrant mother and child through the death-dealing special interests of this dystopic futuristic vision of England, with the help of political cartoonist, Jasper Palmer, a favorite character of mine, played by Michael Caine.

Too, here is an appreciative review/essay by John Murphy in Godspy.

Warning: 'R' rated gun violence. But if you watch, look for the Sign of the Cross:

That Catholic Show - Statues & Icons

Dreadful Numbers

While Aramis launched a comment to The Turning Tide – Youth Turn to the Catholic Church that was worthy of a post in itself, John Heard (“Dreadnought”) ferrets out the faulty logic and crumbling reasons for supporting the so-called entity, "gay marriage" (warning: some disturbing images). As a professed homosexual, Heard is at one and the same time in full obedience to the Magisterium and teachings of the Catholic Church.

Let us never flag in prayer, practicing the virtues (Cardinal and Theological), and observance of the Blessed Sacrament. Our warfare, like that of St.-Anne's-on-the Hill in C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength and Aly's in The Dionysus Mandate is against the powers and principalities of Satan.

Jesus on the Most Holy Cross did not see wolves crucifying Him, as our friend and mentor, Gil Bailie says. He saw lost sheep. Hate the sin, never the sinner(s). Deo gratias!

The Turning Tide

Youth Turn to the Catholic Church
as the Solid Rock amidst the shifting sands of cultural chaos.

The Tiny Crack

Using the image of Monsignor Ronald Knox, “Within the Revolted City,”* one sees clearly that our planet is still that dreadful place. Gangs roam and ravage, seeking to quell their fears by making others feel what they refuse to feel in themselves: cowardice, dread, anguish, despair. Unforgiveness is the O/S, blame is the coin of the realm, and violence the cathartic pay-off.

Atop this unholy polis, like a mocking regent, sits Lucifer in dulcet, preening self-aggrandizement. All appears under his malevolent sway and power. His sole fear is that somehow the tiny crack in his city’s wall – caused 2,000 years ago by the One who, then, really did strike fear into him -- that tiny crack may one day bring down his ruinous reign and all the world’s kingdoms that parody his own. But his forces seem greater, more powerful and deadly today than ever. The tiny crack no longer concerns him.

But that tiny crack has both allowed something into his city and into the heart of every citizen of it. No longer are humans consigned merely to the heroic, or romantic, or lyrical -- noble human qualities at one time -- but now there is the breeze of the providential. One sees it in the best literature, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and hears it in Leonard Cohen's Anthem, for example (Golding tries in his The Dionysus Mandate, too). In these there is the ineffable conviction of unseen help, beyond satanic power, pistols, pomp, and policies. And beyond even the cessation of biological life itself (Gandalf, Lenny).

And this providential help is not impersonal or transpersonal. It is “more we ourselves than we are are ourselves.” There is no need to stand off from it, fearing its influence or intrusion. It is mother’s milk, father’s arms, spouse's steadfast love, children at the table -- comfort, joy, red meat, mead, wine, and Home all in One.

And this Personal has a human face and name. And Mother.

This is the Good News of that tiny crack. It has not only breeched Satan's city wall. Its fissure runs through every human heart, only asking for the chance to broaden, widen, and let in the light of life and breeze of the Holy Spirit.

One of the best spokesmen at work thematizing this providential hope is Gil Bailie. For many years, Bailie worked along literary lines, mixing in insights of Carl Jung's analytical psychology -- but this, again, only gave a shove to the most noble aspects of human nature (Tenemos). It could not go further than the impersonal help of the collective unconscious -- a questionable source of assistance, at best. Then came Gil's discovery of René Girard's mimetic theory. Like nothing else, Girard's work gave Bailie the lens through which to view the "revolted city" of Lucifer with clinically forensic eyes (The Florilegia Institute).

But now Bailie has turned his attentive work to the providential tiny crack (The Cornerstone Forum) with such projects as The Emmaus Road Initiative.

I, for one, laud Bailie's work and urge readers to support his work. It is time to lean more heavily on providence, cursing the darkness less and letting the light in more.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

*University Sermons [1963, 322]

Ray, Jake, & Elwood's Vision for World Peace