That wisdom could be “romantic” would strike many as odd. This is because, generally speaking, neither romance nor wisdom is properly considered. The former is mistaken for lust, while the latter is lost in a sea of empty esotericism, or consigned to simple disregard. Since the theme of our upcoming conference is “The Romance of Wisdom,” I feel bound to explain how these two nouns, seemingly so distant, can possibly be conjoined.
No question where this Catholic layman, Edmund Adamus, stands. He speaks with a clear tone of righteous indignation. Some question his timing, being that the pope will be visiting Britain in two weeks. Perhaps he is hoping that such a forthright assessment of Anglo-reality (and western reality) will preempt what could be a mere diplomatic mission into being a more provocative one that will truly spur on the loyal Catholics who have the potential to become a catalyst for a Catholic contra-reform in Britain.
Ahora hay un blog en español que defiende el dogma católico “No hay salvación fuera de la Iglesia Católica.” Está aún en construcción, pero tiene un post que se llama, “Las tres definiciones dogmáticas del dogma ‘Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus,’” que contiene en español las tres definiciones infalibles …
He had a vision for his country, inspired within him by a Catholic friend, that for China to be a great country it must find its greatness in the Christian religion. Lu (Lou) Zhengxiang was born to Protestant parents in 1871. He converted after meeting his future wife, Berthe Bovy, who was a Catholic Belgian. He represented China in 1919 at Versailles, the only representative who refused to sign the Treaty because it left Japan in control of certain territory in China that it had seized during the World War.
The most current information on the conference is on our SBC Conferences site. You can now register for the conference online at store.Catholicism.org. Keep your eye on Catholicism.org for the final conference schedule with complete list of speakers, times, etc.
I would like to bring to the attention of our readers a new blog — new to me, anyway — called The Holy Unia Blog. It’s an Eastern-Rite and pro-extra ecclesiam nulla salus blog that is “Promoting Holy Unia. Rejecting Ecumenism. Fighting Modernism. Rejecting Latinizations.” There’s nothing of a “Latin Rite is inferior” attitude about the contents. It promotes great apostles of Church unity like Mar Ivanios of Trivandrum.
Vladimir Soloviev gives this wonderful meditation on the Petrine office in Russia and the Universal Church (reprinted as The Russian Church and the Papacy). He is writing about St. Peter’s being made the Rock of the Church by our Lord and then, almost immediately, being called “Satan” (Mt. 16:18, 23).
In New Ideas on the Church and Salvation, I addressed the positions taken by Dr. Jeffrey Mirus in his piece, Salvation for Non-Catholics: Not a New Idea. Here, I will make some observations concerning the first of his two follow-ups: Sound Off! Comments on Salvation for Non-Catholics.
Dr. Mirus proffers the opinion that, to be damned for their unbelief, not only do people need to have heard the teachings of Jesus and the Church, they must have been convinced of them.
Father Michael Rodriquez, who has been mentioned on this site before, was recently featured on a local television program in El Paso, Texas. The issue under discussion was Church teaching on Homosexuality. You can see the video here. Notice, if you watch it, how this priest keeps …
The head of the Supreme Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest court, has clarified certain liturgical questions in light of Canon Law. His comments were made in the preface to a book celebrating the third anniversary of Summorum Pontificum.
Excerpts from the CNA article:
Pat Buchanan reports on Nancy Pelosi and company’s $26 billion loan from China to save the jobs of other government bureaucrats whose jobs were threatened. Their jobs were threatened because their employees (state and local governments) felt the need to balance budgets. Federal government glut is sapping the life blood out of American families and putting future generations in debt to hostile communists. This is not what’s called “political prudence.”
The Holy Mass is an inexhaustible fountain of grace. As a most divine mystery it is an unfathomable source of wonder and contemplation. Countless spiritual writers have made it, and the divine liturgy enshrining it, the subject of their books and meditations, each attempting to glorify so great and terrible a gift, so holy a sacrifice. That is what the Mass is, first and foremost, the unbloody sacrifice of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, our Victim and Priest. It is the same identical sacrifice as that offered on Calvary near two thousand years ago, only the manner of offering being different. It is Calvary re-presented in an unbloody manner in every time and every place until the end of the world.
Four hundred years before the Incarnation of the Son of God, Malachias, the last of the Old Testament prophets, foresaw the Holy Mass, and, through him, God announced to Israel its advent with these words: “For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts” (Malachias 1:11).
The liturgy of each individual Mass, in every approved rite, honors the whole life of Our Lord. At the consecration of the bread the altar becomes Bethlehem; with that of the wine, the altar becomes Calvary; with the covering of the chalice with the pall after consecration is symbolized the burial of Christ; and with the Minor Elevation before the Pater Noster is symbolized the Resurrection. The Victim who is glorified and Immortal cannot be slain again, but He is truly made present under the sacramental species, and He appears in that guise, as the Apostle John saw Him in vision, “as a Lamb standing as it were slain” (Apoc. 5:6).
The articles in this section deal in some way with the Holy Mass and/or the liturgical life of the Church in her feasts. Gary Potter’s article, for example, on the greatest of all liturgical writers, Dom Prosper Guéranger, is a magnificent tribute to this prolific Benedictine reformer and writer. Guéanger’s masterpiece, The Liturgical Year, employs all the Church’s liturgical treasures, East and West, to immerse the reader in the life of Christ as He lives it in our sanctuaries from Advent to last day of Pentecost.
The head of the Supreme Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest court, has clarified certain liturgical questions in light of Canon Law. His comments were made in the preface to a book celebrating the third anniversary of Summorum Pontificum.
Excerpts from the CNA article: Read More »
“O God, I give Thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men…”
What’s the problem? Have you ever stopped to consider what it is that was really wrong with the prayer of the Pharisee? After all, it seems that he is thanking God, doesn’t it? Aren’t we supposed to do that? And, if God really gave him the grace to do these things — fasting and tithing — should he not thank God for it? Read More »
[The following is from Questions Asked by Protestants briefly answered by Father M. Philipps, Rector of St. Joseph’s Church, Buffalo, NY. Cabinet of Catholic Information, 1903 Imprimatur: Archbishop John Farley]
The Mass
What do Catholics mean by a sacrifice?
A sacrifice is the oblation of a sensible thing made to God through a lawful minister by a real change in the thing offered, to testify to God’s absolute authority over us, and our entire dependence on Him. Read More »
The Gloria is the most ancient of the Church’s liturgical hymns. As with the Angelic Salutation, it was intoned first by the voice of an angel, or the choirs thereof. Saint Elizabeth added the second part of the Ave Maria and the Church added the petition Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Nine months later, in Bethlehem, immediately after the Christ was born of Mary, an angel appeared to shepherds watching their flocks in the hills. Read More »
We have an apparent contradiction between the Epistle and the Gospel today. St. Paul lays down the rule that if we live according to the flesh we shall die, but if by the spirit, we mortify the deeds of the flesh, we shall live. The Holy Ghost will assist us in this, so that we can live as worthy children of God. But in the Gospel, Our Lord holds up for our imitation a man clearly living according to the flesh: A steward losing his job because of fraud and embezzlement and then further defrauding his master when he gets caught in order to be treated well by his masters’ debtors. In addition to all this lying and thievery, we have the additional vices of pride and sloth. The man was too proud to beg and too slothful to do manual work. Read More »
Today can be called the Sunday of Merciful Love. The Divine Mercy is brought before our eyes in manifold ways it the propers of the Third Sunday after Pentecost. This liturgy predates the feast of the Sacred Heart, so it is something of a divine arrangement that the Feast of our Lord’s Heart would immediately precede this Sunday which so much extols his merciful charity to sinners. The theme is taken up straightaway in the Introit: “Look Thou upon me, O Lord, and have mercy on me; for I am alone and poor. See my abjection and my labor; and forgive me all my sins….” Read More »
This is a Zenit reprint from their Column God’s Men by Traci Osuna. Here is a clip:
“We’ve probably trained several hundred priests, at least, in the last three years since “Summorum Pontificum,” just in our North American district. A large number of those priests have said to us, “This mass has saved my priesthood.” When you hear something like that, you know you’re on to something good. God is making use of you.” Full interview is here.
For those who were liturgically tormented in their youth by weapons of Mass destruction, it’s almost a sweet revenge to hear the words recently spoken by Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. (If, like me, you suffered such abuse, briefly recall all those groovy felt banners with hip slogans, “relevant liturgical presiders,” and ex-nuns who forced you to sing the execrable rot from Glory and Praise. Now, read on…) “Worship becomes perverted,” His Eminence said, “when we have a celebration in which the community celebrates itself. The principle should be that God occupies the central place.” Further, he complained that, too often, the Mass is “reduced to a mere banquet, a celebration of the community, a commemoration, but not the very sacrifice of Christ who gives himself up for us on the Cross.” Read More »
“Come, for everything is now ready.”
There is a common theme in the Epistle and the Gospel of today. It is that the same God who wants us to love Him in the Eucharist and to come to His heavenly banquet, also wants us to love our neighbor with a practical and real charity. St. John, the “Beloved Disciple,” tells us this: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Read More »
In reading this morning about the street fighting going on in Kingston, Jamaica, where battles between the police and drug dealers has left twenty-six civilians dead, plus thirty more between the gang members and police (if I am reading the report correctly), I came across the request of the Archbishop for all priests and religious to pray the traditional Saint Michael the Archangel prayer daily for an end to the violence. Read More »
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