Until mid July I shall be very busy. In fact I shall be practically tied to my desk.
I'm finishing off a dissertation on Pope Benedict and Islam. Regrettably, this means that blogging will be sporadic for the first half of July.
However, I am also very happy. I moved house, and am now living in a university Catholic chaplaincy. About twenty paces away from my door, is Jesus in the Tabernacle.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Monday, 29 June 2009
"Poor Dan Brown! He completely missed the story!"
Dr. Robert Moynihan, reporting from Rome, has written a good article on Angels, demons, and a visit to the headquarters of Opus Dei.
He starts by clarifying what Angels are and what demons are, before proceeding to Number 75, viale Bruno Buozzi, the world headquarters of Opus Dei. The visit takes him to St. Josemaria Escriva's tomb, where Dr. Moynihan knelt to pray on the Saint's Feast day.
The tomb of St. Josemaria Escriva
Dr. Moynihan also speaks to a young woman, who explains quite honestly that when the Church is plunged into secular controversies, she is focused only on holiness and not on getting drawn into the debates of the world. A salutatory reminder for us all, especially bloggers.
But my focus is a different one. I'm here in Rome to study canon law, and I don't want to be distracted from that. So I've never even read that book. If it says things about Opus Dei that aren't true, I'm sorry. But I have set my life in a certain direction. I'm like a woman who has fallen in love and knows she wants to marry a certain man. I want to give my entire life to Christ.
And I think that the best way I can defend Opus Dei, and the Church, is simply to live my life in complete abandonment to God's will, so that my example outweighs any slander anyone may invent — if that is even the case. I am focused on the positive, not the negative. My eyes are set on the goal, and I don't want to take them off that goal, because I want to get there.
Relics and iconography of the holy Apostle St. Paul
Yesterday, on Sunday 28th June, Pope Benedict celebrated of Solemn Vespers - the first Vespers of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul - on the occasion of the conclusion of the Pauline Year, commemorating the 2000th anniversary of the birth of St. Paul, in the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
The homily was quite outstanding, although as I write it is only available in Italian. In his homily, Pope Benedict revealed that a special minuscule probe has been inserted into the sarcophagus of St. Paul at the Basilica of St. Paul in Rome, and an extraction of a very small piece of bone made, along with traces of precious purple and gold vestments and incense. A radiocarbon examination has shown that the bones belong to a person who lived between the first and second century.
The Holy Father said, "This seems to confirm the unanimous and undisputed tradition that these are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul." Isn't it great to belong to the One True Church? :-)
Incensing the relics of St. Paul, at Papal Vespers
Tradition has always held that St Paul was buried with St Peter in a catacomb on the Via Appia, before being moved to a basilica erected in his honour. For centuries it was believed that his remains were buried beneath the altar. A stone coffin, containing human remains, was discovered during excavations at St Paul Outside the Walls Basilica, in February 2001. Giorgio Filippi, an archaeologist with the Vatican Museum, said at the time: "The tomb that we discovered is the one that the popes and the Emperor Theodosius (379- 395) saved and presented to the whole world as being the tomb of the apostle."
Vatican archaeologists have also discovered what they believe is the oldest image in existence of St Paul, dating from the late 4th century, on the walls of a catacomb. L’Osservatore Romano reports that the discovery was made last Friday 19 June in the course of restoration works in the Roman catacombs of St. Thecla on the Via Ostiensis, not far from the burial place of St. Paul. Experts of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology described it as the "oldest icon in history dedicated to the cult of the Apostle”. It is identifiable as St. Paul because it matches the iconography which existed at the time.
Big hat-tip to the New Liturgical Movement.
Sunday, 28 June 2009
My prayer book
I've a great little traditional prayer book. It's called "The Golden Treasury of the Sacred Heart". It was given to me by the chairman of the Latin Mass Society in Leeds, and it has prayers for everything we could need for our salvation, and for every occasion. It has a little bit of catechesis at the front, too.
Many young people know no traditional prayers beyond the Our Father and the Hail Mary. Many young people know little about the Faith. Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Here is the prayer given for the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul.
Prayer to Ss. Peter and Paul (may be used for a Novena)
O blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, I, N.N., take you this day for my special protectors and advocates with God. In all humility I rejoice with thee, blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, because thou art the rock whereon God built His Church; and I rejoice with thee, too, blessed Paul, because thou wast chosen of God for a vessel of election, and preacher of the truth throughout the world. Ask for me, I pray you both, a lively faith, firm hope, and perfect charity, entire detachment from myself, contempt of the world, patience in adversity, humility in prosperity, attention in prayer, purity of heart, right intention in my works, diligence in the fulfilment of all duties of my state of life, constancy in my good resolutions, resignation to the holy will of God, perseverance in His grace even unto death; that by your joint intercession ad your glorious merits, I may overcome the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and be made worthy to stand before the face of the chief and eternal Bishop of Souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, to enjoy Him and to love Him for all eternity, Who, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth ever, world without end, Amen.
Pater. Ave. Gloria.
There's also a Litany of Ss. Peter and Paul, which I could not find elsewhere online.
I've been considering (having checked out the legality of it) republishing the prayers from this little book on a separate blog. These prayers are very doctrinal, as well as being a great aid to devotion, especially when the mind is wandering a little. I think if more Catholics prayed them the Church would be bolstered in holiness. I wondered whether readers thought it would be a good idea, and also, whether readers wished to recommend other excellent prayer books which are currently in print.
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Protect the human (sometimes)
Amnesty: not protecting the human
More evidence to the effect that Amnesty International has lost its credibility as a human rights advocate. When Amnesty changed its policy on abortion, eyebrows were raised. Now the organisation is truly walking the walk.
Amnesty International recently issued its 2009 survey of what it considers to be the state of human rights throughout the world. Of particular interest to social conservatives is Amnesty’s continued campaign to advance a “right” to abortion globally.
In its entry on Poland , Amnesty raps the country for its alleged “Denial of access to abortion for eligible women,” citing criticism that Poland received from the Human Rights Council (HRC) in May 2008. It further faulted the government for failing to implement a 2007 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Tysiąc v. Poland, concerning a purported “duty to establish effective mechanisms for ensuring women have access to abortion where it is legal.”
According to Susan Yoshihara of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM):
…at the Women Deliver conference held in London in 2007, Amnesty’s “reproductive rights” coordinator Stephanie Schlitt committed the group to partnering with CRR to get abortion recognized as a human right through litigation, in part by arguing that such a right could be found in existing human rights treaties. While conceding that treaties are silent on abortion, Schlitt stated that skillful advocacy could help create recognition of a new “right to abortion” among a “critical mass” of United Nations officials and global jurists.
This is semantic gymnastics; a route to perdition. It is no basis for defending human life.
A big hat-tip to MercatorNet.
Rumoured Motu Proprio, Vatican II and religious liberty
It is rumoured that the release of a new document relating to Ecclesia Dei and the SSPX is imminent. Yesterday, the liberal French news service Golias had an article Vers un nouveau Motu Proprio pour les Lefebvristes (a rough translation is available from a reader of Fr. Z’s blog). Fr. Finigan has more on the developments. The document is much anticipated as it could well set in progress a deeper clarification of the issues relating to the reading of the Second Vatican Council through an authentic lens of tradition.
The other day I wrote about two cases of Christians being discriminated against because they sought to publically express their religious beliefs. A knee-jerk "that's wrong!" approximates the truth of the matter, but when we think seriously about issues like religious liberty we find that things are less clear. Are we talking about secular values, like human rights? Are we talking only about Christians or about all expressions of religion? What does Vatican II teach? What did Pope Pius IX teach? On first appearances, the question is confusing, and it cuts right to the heart of the questions which many traditionalists come against when looking at everything which has been written about Vatican II.
The difficulty, whenever we speak of religious liberty, is that not everyone is singing from the same hymnsheet (amusingly, the current PC term is “songsheet”). On the one hand, we live in a society, which since the Enlightenment, has been founded on ideas inimical to the true Faith. The modern world is awash in the sea of contingency. Societies ground their “absolutes” and “values” in changing ideology, which even tries to change things as fundamental as marriage. Of course, if we forget the moral law, then all we have is the civil law, and here we slip into legalism, with endless litigation to try to get to the truth of the matter.
A second factor which causes confusion when Christians write about discrimination is that many Catholics now lack the spiritual perception to discern the ontological difference between principles safeguarded by the Holy Catholic Church and simple political ideology. If the Truth of the Catholic Faith is not grasped, then complaining about anti-Christian discrimination just looks like insistent whinging of an ideological kind. In the secular model of the Church, people like Tony Blair think that the whole Church is open to political debate and that the Pope needs to have his mind changed about homosexuality. Tony Blair seems to believe that the Holy Father’s true teaching about the fact that marriage was instituted for man and for woman, is merely an affirmation to be found in his own subjectivity. It’s no surprise that many Catholics think this way, because a great deal of religious instruction is based on subjectivity and experientialism, and some catechists even encourage dissent in the guise of “debate”. People do this in the name of “progress”, but rescinding the Truth of the matter to secular ideals is a mark of corruption. As the Gospel for the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, emphatically explains, while the world was awash with opinions about who Jesus was, it was only St. Peter, the first Pope, who unambiguously identified Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.
The third point of confusion is also found in the language of “rights”. Using “rights” vocabulary appears to have involved something of a paradigm shift, given that Pope Leo XIII affirmed that “error has no rights”. The argument for religious liberty from human rights is problematic. It makes Vatican II look like a huge about-turn, as if a change in doctrine occurred. Appropriating the vocabulary of the “modern world” is not without its difficulties, not least because that vocabulary shifts because it is not rooted on the Truth like the Church is, and because it departs from the usual doctrinal language of the Church. Hence, the invitation of Bl. Pope John XIII to open up to the world is a challenging one. The case is not closed; in fact it is only just opening.
We have to understand that we can read the Conciliar documents through a hermeneutic of continuity with tradition, but we also have to acknowledge where shifts away from doctrinal language have occurred, even within the documents, such as Lumen Gentium. It's necessary then, to look at what the documents actually say, and distinguish this from how traditionalists might have felt about things like altar girls or the multi-religious prayer meetings at Assisi, and understand that "yes!" we can be trads and fully faithful to the Council. We will not find, if we look, any inauthentic development of doctrine in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. We will find things which are new or even challenging or in need of clarification, none of these undermine the credibility of the Church by contradicting the past. The Church is Christ's and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. She did not, and indeed cannot, teach error. Even though not all doctrinal elements of the Church concern me directly, as I am saying my devotions in chapel, I have to have complete and utter faith in everything Catholic, so that in times of difficulty I may lean back and find myself in the sure arms of Mother Church and succoured by the company of Heaven. In order to believe in the Eucharist I have to believe in the Truth, and if I do not believe that the Magisterium teaches the Truth then I would have no reason to believe anything.
Returning to the question of religious liberty: this is clearly a key issue for any future discussions on the doctrinal reception the Second Vatican Council in line with tradition. What everyone – SSPX, secularised Catholic, or non-Catholic – needs to grasp is that the Church teaches the full Truth, and that this continued through and beyond the Second Vatican Council. We might then consider how the state’s first obligation is to protect the goods of the soul, and should exist as a means to perfect the life of the soul. For this reason, neither of the women I mentioned should be forced to act in a way inconsistent with their nature, leaving their souls in shreds. This was the Truth for which the holy martyrs of England and Wales gave their lives. We can talk about “rights”, or we can talk about “prudence”, but when we talk about the granting of religious liberty, we are merely talking about the protection of the soul. Sometimes, the commentary on Vatican II is so awry that it obscures the facts of the matter: that the Council was a means by which Mother Church pastorally and indeed, doctrinally, presented the faith for the good of our souls. It does not matter what John Courtney Murray SJ or other theological speculators who have come to be identified with the Council said, as much of his later theological speculations do indeed contradict tradition.
We also need to remember that Vatican II need not be the starting point. It’s merely a Council in continuity with others. When I was received into the Church the older generation who instructed me talked a great deal about the “spirit of Vatican II”. This nearly destroyed my faith and left me confused because their “spirit” bore no relation to Catholic tradition. It was like there was a devotional Catholicism in the writings of the Saints I was reading, and an entirely different set-up in the Church I experienced which seemed like a social club for fair-trade campaigners. As a result of what was presented to me, I understood fully what was being said by those in the SSPX, that the Council represented a rupture in doctrine. For a while, when I thought that the only choice was between liberals and the SSPX, the SSPX appealed, because they seemed like pious souls, and good Catholics. However, they were both talking about rupture, so to use that term again, they were both singing from the same hymnsheet! So even if I bought into the SSPX, their liturgy and devotions may have had the Catholic beauty I craved, but my faith would still be unsettled because I would not be able to say emphatically that I believed everything which Mother Church teaches.
Because it mattered to me, I could not believe that a) the tradition contradicts Vatican II but the tradition is not binding, or b) the tradition contradicts Vatican II but Vatican II was not binding. It would have ruined my faith had I held either to be true, however appealing to intellectual pride it is to pursue a thesis of rupture. It had to be the case that either (a) the tradition only seemingly contradicts Vatican II, which has in fact clarified the tradition, or (b) the tradition only seemingly contradicts Vatican II, which is, rather, clarified by the tradition. Now I’ll admit that literature to this effect seems quite dry, with its appeal to logic, and to distinctions between the moral law and the ecclesiastical law. It will never make good sound-bites, and it will be hard to transmit in a Motu Proprio, but this process of reconciliation is a much needed process. It is a greatly pastoral thing as it will draw many who are considering schism back into the fold of Mother Church, and there is nothing more consoling than to have fallen prey to intellectual error and to return in humility to the Church and drink the milk of Truth, believe me.
In order to embrace Vatican II I had to understand that the Church is holy, and not of this world. No wonder so many people were led astray by secularisation when they had forgotten that the Church is holy. Traditional catechesis really teaches us everything we need to know about the things of our salvation. Just as the Holy Mass takes place in this world and is joined to the liturgy in Heaven, the Church is present in this world for its salvation, in order that the world itself might be drawn into the Church. We have forgotten that it is God who is the starting point of Christian mission and action in the world. By linking the teaching of Vatican II to the perennial tradition of rights which are to be found in the natural law, and the Church as governor of how best to apply them in the common law, we iron out a great many of the problems inherent in the hermeneutic of rupture.
Your considered comments are very welcome, and I hope to learn a great deal from them.
The other day I wrote about two cases of Christians being discriminated against because they sought to publically express their religious beliefs. A knee-jerk "that's wrong!" approximates the truth of the matter, but when we think seriously about issues like religious liberty we find that things are less clear. Are we talking about secular values, like human rights? Are we talking only about Christians or about all expressions of religion? What does Vatican II teach? What did Pope Pius IX teach? On first appearances, the question is confusing, and it cuts right to the heart of the questions which many traditionalists come against when looking at everything which has been written about Vatican II.
The difficulty, whenever we speak of religious liberty, is that not everyone is singing from the same hymnsheet (amusingly, the current PC term is “songsheet”). On the one hand, we live in a society, which since the Enlightenment, has been founded on ideas inimical to the true Faith. The modern world is awash in the sea of contingency. Societies ground their “absolutes” and “values” in changing ideology, which even tries to change things as fundamental as marriage. Of course, if we forget the moral law, then all we have is the civil law, and here we slip into legalism, with endless litigation to try to get to the truth of the matter.
A second factor which causes confusion when Christians write about discrimination is that many Catholics now lack the spiritual perception to discern the ontological difference between principles safeguarded by the Holy Catholic Church and simple political ideology. If the Truth of the Catholic Faith is not grasped, then complaining about anti-Christian discrimination just looks like insistent whinging of an ideological kind. In the secular model of the Church, people like Tony Blair think that the whole Church is open to political debate and that the Pope needs to have his mind changed about homosexuality. Tony Blair seems to believe that the Holy Father’s true teaching about the fact that marriage was instituted for man and for woman, is merely an affirmation to be found in his own subjectivity. It’s no surprise that many Catholics think this way, because a great deal of religious instruction is based on subjectivity and experientialism, and some catechists even encourage dissent in the guise of “debate”. People do this in the name of “progress”, but rescinding the Truth of the matter to secular ideals is a mark of corruption. As the Gospel for the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul, emphatically explains, while the world was awash with opinions about who Jesus was, it was only St. Peter, the first Pope, who unambiguously identified Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.
The third point of confusion is also found in the language of “rights”. Using “rights” vocabulary appears to have involved something of a paradigm shift, given that Pope Leo XIII affirmed that “error has no rights”. The argument for religious liberty from human rights is problematic. It makes Vatican II look like a huge about-turn, as if a change in doctrine occurred. Appropriating the vocabulary of the “modern world” is not without its difficulties, not least because that vocabulary shifts because it is not rooted on the Truth like the Church is, and because it departs from the usual doctrinal language of the Church. Hence, the invitation of Bl. Pope John XIII to open up to the world is a challenging one. The case is not closed; in fact it is only just opening.
We have to understand that we can read the Conciliar documents through a hermeneutic of continuity with tradition, but we also have to acknowledge where shifts away from doctrinal language have occurred, even within the documents, such as Lumen Gentium. It's necessary then, to look at what the documents actually say, and distinguish this from how traditionalists might have felt about things like altar girls or the multi-religious prayer meetings at Assisi, and understand that "yes!" we can be trads and fully faithful to the Council. We will not find, if we look, any inauthentic development of doctrine in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. We will find things which are new or even challenging or in need of clarification, none of these undermine the credibility of the Church by contradicting the past. The Church is Christ's and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. She did not, and indeed cannot, teach error. Even though not all doctrinal elements of the Church concern me directly, as I am saying my devotions in chapel, I have to have complete and utter faith in everything Catholic, so that in times of difficulty I may lean back and find myself in the sure arms of Mother Church and succoured by the company of Heaven. In order to believe in the Eucharist I have to believe in the Truth, and if I do not believe that the Magisterium teaches the Truth then I would have no reason to believe anything.
Returning to the question of religious liberty: this is clearly a key issue for any future discussions on the doctrinal reception the Second Vatican Council in line with tradition. What everyone – SSPX, secularised Catholic, or non-Catholic – needs to grasp is that the Church teaches the full Truth, and that this continued through and beyond the Second Vatican Council. We might then consider how the state’s first obligation is to protect the goods of the soul, and should exist as a means to perfect the life of the soul. For this reason, neither of the women I mentioned should be forced to act in a way inconsistent with their nature, leaving their souls in shreds. This was the Truth for which the holy martyrs of England and Wales gave their lives. We can talk about “rights”, or we can talk about “prudence”, but when we talk about the granting of religious liberty, we are merely talking about the protection of the soul. Sometimes, the commentary on Vatican II is so awry that it obscures the facts of the matter: that the Council was a means by which Mother Church pastorally and indeed, doctrinally, presented the faith for the good of our souls. It does not matter what John Courtney Murray SJ or other theological speculators who have come to be identified with the Council said, as much of his later theological speculations do indeed contradict tradition.
We also need to remember that Vatican II need not be the starting point. It’s merely a Council in continuity with others. When I was received into the Church the older generation who instructed me talked a great deal about the “spirit of Vatican II”. This nearly destroyed my faith and left me confused because their “spirit” bore no relation to Catholic tradition. It was like there was a devotional Catholicism in the writings of the Saints I was reading, and an entirely different set-up in the Church I experienced which seemed like a social club for fair-trade campaigners. As a result of what was presented to me, I understood fully what was being said by those in the SSPX, that the Council represented a rupture in doctrine. For a while, when I thought that the only choice was between liberals and the SSPX, the SSPX appealed, because they seemed like pious souls, and good Catholics. However, they were both talking about rupture, so to use that term again, they were both singing from the same hymnsheet! So even if I bought into the SSPX, their liturgy and devotions may have had the Catholic beauty I craved, but my faith would still be unsettled because I would not be able to say emphatically that I believed everything which Mother Church teaches.
Because it mattered to me, I could not believe that a) the tradition contradicts Vatican II but the tradition is not binding, or b) the tradition contradicts Vatican II but Vatican II was not binding. It would have ruined my faith had I held either to be true, however appealing to intellectual pride it is to pursue a thesis of rupture. It had to be the case that either (a) the tradition only seemingly contradicts Vatican II, which has in fact clarified the tradition, or (b) the tradition only seemingly contradicts Vatican II, which is, rather, clarified by the tradition. Now I’ll admit that literature to this effect seems quite dry, with its appeal to logic, and to distinctions between the moral law and the ecclesiastical law. It will never make good sound-bites, and it will be hard to transmit in a Motu Proprio, but this process of reconciliation is a much needed process. It is a greatly pastoral thing as it will draw many who are considering schism back into the fold of Mother Church, and there is nothing more consoling than to have fallen prey to intellectual error and to return in humility to the Church and drink the milk of Truth, believe me.
In order to embrace Vatican II I had to understand that the Church is holy, and not of this world. No wonder so many people were led astray by secularisation when they had forgotten that the Church is holy. Traditional catechesis really teaches us everything we need to know about the things of our salvation. Just as the Holy Mass takes place in this world and is joined to the liturgy in Heaven, the Church is present in this world for its salvation, in order that the world itself might be drawn into the Church. We have forgotten that it is God who is the starting point of Christian mission and action in the world. By linking the teaching of Vatican II to the perennial tradition of rights which are to be found in the natural law, and the Church as governor of how best to apply them in the common law, we iron out a great many of the problems inherent in the hermeneutic of rupture.
Your considered comments are very welcome, and I hope to learn a great deal from them.
Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, patron of Leeds and Middlesborough
Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, Patron of the Dioceses of Leeds and Middlesborough.
The picture venerated under the title of our Lady of Perpetual Succour is in the church of the Redemptorists in Rome. It is Byzantine in style, and is said to have been brought from Crete to Rome in the 15th century. Its long history is documented on this SSPX website. It is considered to be a miraculous picture, and many graces have been granted to those who devoutly venerate it, and who invoke our Blessed Lady under this title.
Behold at thy feet, O Mother of Perpetual Succour! A wretched sinner who has recourse to thee and confides in thee. O Mother of Mercy! Have pity on me. I hear thee called by all, the refuge and hope of sinners: be, then, my refuge and my hope. Assist me for the love of Jesus Christ; stretch forth thy hand to a miserable fallen creature who recommends himself to thee, and who devotes himself to thy service for ever. I bless and thank Almighty God, Who in mercy has given me this confidence in thee which I hold to be a pledge of my eternal salvation. It is true that in the past I have miserably fallen into sin, because I had not recourse to thee. I know that with thy help I shall conquer. I know, too, that thou wilt assist me, if I recommend myself to thee; but I fear that in time of danger, I may neglect to call on thee, and thus lose my soul. This grace, then, I ask of thee, and this I beg, with all the fervour of my soul, that, in all the attacks of hell, I may ever have recourse to thee. O Mary! Help me. O Mother of Perpetual Succour! Never suffer me to lose my God.
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