Srsly?

This




is the Faith




you'll die for?




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Double standards

Let your no be no and your yes be yes... unless it's politically inexpedient at the moment, in which case you should just start issuing random conflicting orders and confuse everyone.

A friend in another venue writes, "Rorate[Caeli] missed the real headline on this one. Follow me here. The bishop's letter reads:

'Therefore, any Catholic faithful who requests and receives Sacraments in the Society of Saint Pius X, will place himself de facto in the condition of no longer being in communion with the Catholic Church.'

"The real story here as far as I'm concerned is that this bishop has de facto refused the language of Vatican II and opted for a TRADITIONAL 'either or' understanding of COMMUNION! Do you see that there? Read the quote above again if you need to.

"Apparently the Eastern Orthodox and the Protestants are said to be in 'partial communion' with the Church. But the SSPX and whoever 'requests and receives Sacraments in the Society of Saint Pius X' is said to have NO communion."

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Another points out the history of using interdict against large groups of faithful as a political weapon as a favourite pastime of Renaissance popes of the past:

Pope Clement V excommunicates Venice



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Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? With a perfect hatred do I hate them: I account them mine enemies.

The hatred of the Faith quite often seems to include a direct hatred of Scripture. So much so that there has for a long time been a huge impulse among the lily-livered "Christians" of our time (and previous times) to edit it, to make it more palatable to modern sensitivities.

This desire was played upon mightily by the people who "reformed" the Divine Office. The little shreds, shards and fragments of the Faith that are left to us once all the difficult bits are taken out, were all neatly packaged up and re-sold (accompanied by a bunch of unsingable American Jesuit hymns) as the four-volume "Liturgy of the Hours". I was shocked to see that this monstrosity of the Church of Nice is STILL being used by a bunch of "conservative" religious orders. Mostly, I imagine, because the good sisters don't know there is anything else. Sigh...

I note it because I've been having an interesting time with my Benedictine Monastic Diurnal, an older edition of which I was given recently by some nice Benedictine nuns in Tuscany. In using it ever day, I've discovered that a previous owner, presumably a female, has gone through and minutely corrected a bunch of the English translation of the psalms in pencil, crossing out offensive parts and a bunch of the "thees-n-thous" kind of language (the "st" crossed off of "didst" etc.) and carefully re-writing them with "updated" language.

I was amused to note that the REALLY offensive bits of scripture have just been expunged. The scary bit at the end of Psalm 137, for example, is firmly crossed of with a big penciled "X".

"Thou wretched Babylon's daughter, * Blessed be who shall repay thee what thou didst to us!

Blessed be who taketh thy babes, and dasheth them against the rock!"

It's been interesting observing exactly which changes have been made by this unknown female Catholic hippie of the past. One of them that I thought telling was this: "How weighty for me are Thy thoughts, O God, * how imposing is the sum of them!" But "for me" is crossed out. It gives a tiny little insight into that kind of mind that is quite fascinating. Though depressing as all hell.

She pencilled her name in the front page: "Sue C." so maybe someone could say a prayer for her? Perhaps fortunately, she seems not to have persevered in her vocation, because the corrections and annotations can only be found in small sections of the book.

Anyway, I suppose it gives us a bit of a hint about the attitudes of a certain kind of Catholic. It should perhaps not be surprising to us when we see some members of the hierarchy telling Our Lord that His instructions, regarding marriage for instance, are just too much for modern people to handle.

"Truly I tell you that Moses only allowed you to divorce out of the hardness of your hearts..."

"Ah yeah...Thanks, dude, but we'll take it from here..."



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How Dan Brown ruined my life

“Thank you for your email. Why no, I hadn’t heard that Pope Francis is keeping clones of himself in a vat in the basement of the Vatican. Please tell me more.”

Actually, no, please don’t tell me more.



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Oh, give us your deathless wisdom, do!

The thing that seems most clear about this papal questionnaire is that the idea of sending it out to the laity in parishes was a silly afterthought, possibly dreamed up by some low-to-mid level Vatican official who somehow heard a vague rumour (possibly from this mysterious "interwebs" thing everyone seems to talk about these days) that the laity needed to be made "more involved" in the Church's inner workings.

This is how the Church does things. The relevant dicasteries send out this kind of document to bishops for their feedback in preparation for any big event like a Synod. Then the bishops speak to their own relevant departments. Those convene committees to do the research and prepare fact-based responses for the bishop and his advisors. Then he tells them what he thinks and they prepare his formal response in consultation, with all relevant documentation (those "fact" thingies) attached, and he signs it and sends it back to Rome.

So, what has happened here is that someone has done the Normal Thing, and, possibly in response to being ordered to "involve the laity," has tacked the extra phrase "and to parishes" at the end of the usual introductory paragraph.

People, I guarantee you that there was no more thought to it than this. Really. That is how they do things here. If it deviates one iota from The Way We've Always Done Things, it's going to be a total botch.

The relative incomprehensibility of the questions to anyone who is not deeply involved and informed about the teachings and practices of the Church - and possessed of at least a passing familiarity with canon law, the bureaucratic processes of the Church and the relevant issues - is the best sign that this document was drafted by people who had no clew at. all. that it was ever even going to be read by laymen.

Anyone who does not know, at first glance, what the following means has no business offering any opinion:

"Could a simplification of canonical practice in recognizing a declaration of nullity of the marriage bond provide a positive contribution to solving the problems of the persons involved? If yes, what form would it take?"

No? Really? You sure?

'Cause this is just the short form, with the questions thought suitable by the UK bishops for lay beginners.

Ready for the big leagues, are we? Well, here's the full text. Knock yourself out.

...

Maybe something useful could come of it. We will now at least be able to say to those who scream and howl about more "involvement" by the laity, "Sure. Here ya go. Give us your timeless thoughts..."

These are the people who have been trained by their New York Times/Guardian/BBC masters to assume that the Church's teaching begins and ends with "Contraception bad!"

Oh dear, did we just receive an unpleasant lesson in what a pack of puffed-up, pig-ignorant little twits we really are?

There, there.

Here's some cat videos.



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Go go Godzilla

I'm confused about atheism. I think not a lot of the people who think they're atheists really are. I think quite a few of them just don't really know anything about it and are incurious. But ask them about it and they often start talking about, basically, pantheism. And none of them have a solution to the causality problem. But now, apparently, they want atheist "chaplains". What for? And what would an atheist chaplain do if an atheist were in some kind of crisis? Affirm his nihilism? Hand him a loaded pistol and a bottle of whisky?

But I have a theory about atheism. I think that atheists (so-called) aren't really people who don't believe in God. I think they're people who don't really believe in the existence of anything, up to and including themselves. My hypothesis is that this is because of a lifetime of television/internet entertainment consumption. By making fictional programmes, movies and whatnot, have the same weight and reality as television news, and by sticking their heads in the tv/computer nearly every waking hour of their lives, I think a great many people have become, effectively, solipsists who don't know what "real" is. Naturally, psychologically, the result is that the only thing they think is real are their wants, their preferences. Of course, the television has told them this all their lives. I think the basic psychological makeup of modern people precludes the notion that anything exists outside their egos. It's not, therefore, that they are atheists. It's that they are their own gods, each living in a tiny bubble universe of their own creation.

I maintain that the assertion of the non-existence of God is a religious assertion, and that atheism, therefore, can only be a kind of religious belief. Moreover, because it is impossible to prove, or even logically demonstrate, it is an essentially irrational one. I've never seen any of the fashionable atheists ever offer any kind of evidence for their claims, either empirical or philosophical. And as I said, none of them has ever offered any explanation for the problem of causality.

Why are there things? Why did anything ever happen? I've always laughed at that meme about their theory: "In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing happened to the nothing and then the nothing magically exploded, for no reason, creating everything, and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself for no reason into self-replicating bits, which turned into dinosaurs. The end." They won't talk about it, because they're militant materialists. They are incapable of conceptualising anything outside the strictly material, so when we ask "Where did the material come from?" they simply don't understand the parameters of the question.

They won't even really go and talk about the historical or anthropological implications. At the very least, the claims made about the Christian God, and about Christ, are unique in the history of the world's religions. Christianity stands out for that, merely sociologically, if nothing else. And the impact on human societies of Christianity's claims about the nature of God and man is unprecedented in history. Nothing else, except maybe the influence of Babylonian/Egyptian mathematics and astronomy, has ever come close. Even the later Greek philosophers would have been forgotten if it hadn't been for Christianity absorbing and rescuing them from the fall of Rome.

I think the challenge one always has to make is, refute Aquinas. Explain causality if there is no Unmoved Mover. If you can't do that, then you can't call yourself a thinking, considered atheist. Thomas is the big one, the theological and philosophical Godzilla to take down. The rest are mere Ghidra or Mothra in comparison.

I always think the same thing whenever I hear Dawkins or any of his ilk talking about it. From the way they blather, it's clear that not one of them has the faintest notion what they are up against. They're so totally ignorant of the extent of their ignorance, that I often like to imagine a sixth-grader fifty years ago, armed only with the Baltimore Catechism, would leave them face down in the mud.

Unfortunately, in our times, the Christians are as big a pack of idiots. I was deeply embarrassed once to listen to Rowan Williams blithering mindlessly about "feeeeeeeeelings" to some New Atheist on a TV debate. It's no wonder they think all Christians are morons.

Here's a video of Gojira, kicking Tokyo's butt.

Watch it and picture what Aquinas would have done to Dawkins or Stephen Fry.



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What do they teach them in schools these days?

Once upon a time, some frogs who lived in a pond called out to the god Zeus and begged him to send them a king. Zeus, knowing the frogs well, threw down a log that made a great splash and then bobbed gently in the water. At first the frogs were terrified of their new king, and obediently gave it honour. But after a while, they found that the king was very gentle, indeed, rather inert and no longer terrified them, so they started hopping most insolently all over it and making jokes about it. Soon the frogs were dissatisfied with their patient and forgiving king, so they cried to Zeus once more, demanding a better, more active, dare we say, more up to date king. Zeus, having become annoyed by the frogs' lack of piety, sent them a much more appropriate king; a stork, who, immediately upon landing in the pond began to eat the frogs. The terrified frogs again appealed to Zeus, begging him to free them of their tyrant-king, but Zeus replied that this time, they must face the consequences of their demands.

The end.

Sometimes we get what we ask for from the gods, and other times we get what we deserve.



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Man's dignity

Am I the only one to have noticed that the Vatican's schedule of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council has been somewhat ...ah... low key? Nothing much going on in the Piazza about it. No big papal Masses or speeches, and no one but the Catholic commentariat paying the slightest attention, and that mostly with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Here's my buddy Chris Ferrara, talking about why that might be. Why, despite Benedict's dogged (and frankly embarrassing and tiresome) persistence on the subject, The Council's star is inevitably waning.

Do we have to say it again? Really? We have to? (Sigh)

Because it was stupid!

OK? Are we clear now? Can we please stop talking about it?

Its documents show an absolutely incredible blindness, a disconnect from reality and an eagerness to embrace all of Modernia's worst self-delusions which alone should be sufficient (and never mind the total collapse of the Faith that followed it) to have a veil drawn politely over the whole disaster. Every time I hear a bishop or a Vatican official talking about "The Council," every time I hear them say, "...as the Second Vatican Council taught us..." it doesn't make me angry, it makes me ashamed at the stupidity and gullibility of our leaders.

As Chris points out, Dignitatis Humanae's premise, lionizing the enlightened moral lucidity of modern men is a perfect example: “A sense of the dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man…”

No it hasn’t! The crisis of “the modern world” is precisely that “contemporary man” has completely lost sight of his infinite dignity as a being created in the image and likeness of God, with an eternal destiny that should inform all earthly relations and the laws and institutions of civil society.

DH was published in 1965. Two years later, Britain started slaughtering children in the womb and created a law that made it legal. Two years after that, Canada followed suit, and three years after that, the US. It took until 1975 for Modernia's idea of the "Dignity of the Human Person" to reach Pope Paul's back yard.

Today I read that the incidence of violent rape has increased in India while the percentage of criminal convictions for rape and other violent crimes against women has fallen from 46% in the 1970s to 26% this year just past. This writer thinks it is because there are now only 916 baby girls born in India for every 1000 boys.



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A nice man

I've written before on the subject of "nice evil". I can't take credit for the expression, which I think I remember having picked up from Peter Kreeft. But just today I've been writing a bit again about our old friend Peter Singer and the odd effect he seems to have on the academic mind and it came to mind again.

Here is Dr. Charles Camosy, a "theologian" from Fordham University, describing himself as a "pro-life Christian ethicist" who met for a vegan lunch with Singer:

"I have come to like Peter Singer...I have found Singer to be friendly and compassionate. He is willing to listen to an argument from almost anyone, and is unburdened by any sort of academic pretension is so doing. He is motivated by an admirable desire to respond to the suffering of human and non-human animals, and an equally admirable willingness to logically follow his arguments wherever they lead."

Do modern theologians ever read real theology? Have any of them ever run across the notion that evil is most successful when disguising itself as good?

The Bible mentions it a few times, if I'm not mistaken...



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Yeah, that'll bring in The Yoot, fer sherrr...

New statue for Den Bosch cathedral:

Sculptor Ton Mooy...is a working on a statue of an angel with a cell phone.

The angel is to replace a worn out statue in the cathedral of Den Bosch.

The cell phone will have just one button: for a straight line with God.

Geddit?

...

But it could have been worse...

According to Mooy, he also wanted to give the angel jet engines, and a skirt instead of pants, but those ideas went too far for the church’s art committee...

Oh yes. It's always possible to make it worse...

One small thing about this confuses me. How does a statue in a church get 'worn out'?

What were they doing with it?

Actually, never mind. I don't want to know.


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Eric Sammons asks, "Has the New York Times ever written an article about the Catholic Church that didn’t sound like the plot for Star Wars?"

"Small Band of Rebel Freedom Fighters Fights Evil Galactic Empire Catholic Church"

“Who takes this bread and eats,” he murmured, cracking a communion wafer with his wife at his side, “declares a desire for a new world.”

With those words, Mr. Delsaert, 60, and his fellow parishioners are discreetly pioneering a grass-roots movement that defies centuries of Roman Catholic Church doctrine by worshiping and sharing communion without a priest.

Don Bosco is one of about a dozen alternative Catholic churches that have sprouted and grown in the last two years in Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium and the Netherlands. They are an uneasy reaction to a combination of forces: a shortage of priests, the closing of churches, dissatisfaction with Vatican appointments of conservative bishops and, most recently, dismay over cover-ups of sexual abuse by priests.

Ok guys. Let me explain how it works.

When you decide you don't want to be in the Catholic Church any more and you go out and start your own garage church, you don't get to hang the "Catholic" sign in front of the door.

Think of it like a corporate logo. Pepsi doesn't go around calling itself Coke.

"The churches are called ecclesias..."

Actually, they're called "Protestant".

Trust us, we've seen this sort of thing before.



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Where do we start?

The author of an in-depth religious study on The Simpsons says that the official Vatican newspaper had misinterpreted his work as meaning the famous cartoon family was Catholic.

You heard it here, folks. La Civilta Catholica and the Jesuits think it is a worthy thing to spend their time doing in-depth religious studies of the Simpsons.

You can't make it up.



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Is that all?

L'Osservatore Romano has come out with another winner. It has published a brief article laying out exactly what it takes to be a real Catholic.

The real Catholic "recites prayers before meals and, in [his] own peculiar way, believes in the life thereafter."

Doh! That's it?!

And there I was getting all geared up to start trying to get back into the swing of that whole One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith thing. I went to Confession and Holy Communion this weekend and everything. Trying to repent of my sins, remember to...well, not pray exactly, but at least give up my habitual cursing and fist-shaking at God...

But apparently, all that is passe these days.

So glad to have that cleared up.

Apparently the sample they are giving is none other than Homer Simpson.

Yep. Not making it up.

Ah, good old Novusordoism.

Making us feel less guilty for being worthless slackers since 1965.



The Telegraph comments:

Once a staid and sober paper of record, L'Osservatore Romano has ventured into popular culture in the last three years under a new editor, commenting on everything from The Beatles and The Blues Brothers to the blockbuster film Avatar and the Harry Potter books and films.

Yep. It's an old person trying to be hip and cool. And there is nothing more excruciatingly, exquisitely embarrassing...



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Liturgical Chicken

You can play this game by yourself or with someone else.

Click the link then click play.

With your finger over the stop button, see how long you can last.

I did 20 seconds. More or less until the woman started warbling.



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Mustn't criticise the bishops

Ever. It's bad. Mean. Uncharitable.

Every. Thing. They. Do. Is. Perfect.



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Does Vincent Nichols read the newspapers?

One has to wonder. Some of the comments he made to this Tweedie bloke are utterly amazing.

It's quite difficult to begin figuring out the truth from the bullshit in this article, not least because, as with nearly all the mainstream press, the Telegraph's apparent editorial policy is to keep a firm clamp on the nature of the so-called "pedophilia" scandals. Tough to keep that one under wraps when there are publicly available reports that demonstrate that over 90 per cent of the victims were adolescent boys and young men between 14 and 17. That's not pedophilia, kids. There's another name for that.

But one does wonder, and wonder, how long the bishops can keep up this incredible pretense:

The crimes of the past, he says, will not be repeated. "It is a difficult and painful issue. It is vital that we ask advice from people from outside the Church, and that they take the lead. The sexual abuse of children is the most hidden crime, and it's taken a long time to be understood.

"Let me give an example: there was a priest in Birmingham who in the late Sixties or early Seventies was reported to the police by the diocese and brought before the court. He was given a £600 fine and told not to offend again. It wasn't just the Church that didn't understand the nature of the offender and the gravity of the offence. Remember, there was a movement in the Seventies to make sexual intercourse with minors of 14 legal. So there was a whole different culture.

I'll just give you that last one again, shall I?

"...there was a movement in the Seventies to make sexual intercourse with minors of 14 legal. So there was a whole different culture.

Yeah, you read that right. That's really what he said.

Whatever you were smoking in seminary in the 70s, Your Grace, must have been pretty powerful.

That culture is still in full swing, (so to speak). Lobbying and producing BBC documentaries on the pope.



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But the event wasn't stacked against them or anything

Heck no!

I'm sure it was all completely civilised, fair and even-handed. Everyone speaking based on verifiable facts with complete, reliable documentation.

"Journalist Austen Ivereigh, who runs Catholic Voices, a team of young Catholics trained to speak to the media, and Fr Christopher Jamison, former abbot of Worth Abbey, spoke against the motion “The papal visit should not be a state visit”, but were defeated by a hostile crowd. Human rights activist Peter Tatchell and philosopher A C Grayling spoke for the motion at the event in the South Place Ethical Society building in central London.

The debate, organised by Central London Humanists together with the British Humanist Association, was chaired by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee."

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Benedict's brave defenders in the English episcopacy

Archbishop Peter Smith:

“I’ve always said, thank God in this country we have free speech. They are perfectly entitled to protest. What I would ask of all of them is to do so in a dignified way, which does not disrupt the joy of the Catholic community in welcoming the pope. I hope they would show respect to those of us who do have [religious] convictions.

...and gallantly he chickened out...



(thanks Zach)
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Must have been a slip of the pen

The Guardian comes clean about media bias against the pope and the Church:

...Jack Valero, the director of Opus Dei in the UK, have combined with the Catholic Union to create Catholic Voices. Ivereigh says the model for Voices "is inspired by the experience of the Da Vinci Code Response Group in 2006, when the release of the Dan Brown film created a similar demand for Catholics to be ready to discuss its claims, however far-fetched".

The fact that the media may not want to hear from these people seems to have escaped the organisers' notice. It is good copy to get the most outrageous Catholic voices who can be found on issues such as abortion, civil partnerships and child abuse.

Many in the media are not interested in a rational voice from the Catholic church – it's not good box office. What is more, Catholic Voices has already hit choppy waters, being accused of ageism because of its upper age limit of 40, and a rival group called Catholic Voices for Reform has already been set up.

The question is: how will this all pan out? The worst-case scenario for the Catholic church here is that before the pope's visit journalists discover recent abuse cases. This would shoot to pieces the strategy that has attempted to separate the church in the UK from the rest of the world on child abuse, arguing it acted properly and put in place rigid guidelines.

Now that bit about "ageism" is pretty funny.

It looks like the be-Birkenstocked wrinklies continue to be irritated by their own loss of relevance.

But of course, this doesn't stop intrepid reporters from making sure their voices get heard:



It's all about speaking truth to power, right, Ruth? Long live the Revolution!



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Kathy, still making me laugh

Apparently, some US proddies are burning the Koran.

...burning a book -- any book -- is a fascist and destructive.

Admittedly, this distinction may be too subtle and artsy for Reverend Stereotype to figure out, since he probably thought "WWJD?" was as "deep" as stuff gets.

...

Let Muslims retain their reputation as the ones doing the burning.

That's the trouble with so many "conservative" critiques of the Ground Zero mosque; you're saying the same thing as the anti-Mo-toon people said. We can't pretend to suddenly care about "sensitivity" or forget about the Constitution.

The critiques of the Ground Zero mosque are being too subtle for their, and our, own good.

Building the mosque is wrong because they're the bad guys and we can't let the bad guys **** with us.

That used to be a good enough reason for pretty much anything, until men stopped being men and started becoming lawyers instead.

As I said below. I wish there were more men.



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