July is the month of the Precious Blood. In the traditional rite, the first day of the month is the feast of that name. In the Roman Martyrology, July 1 also commemorates Aaron the High Priest, the brother of Moses. This liturgical concurrence is appropriate, since Aaron’s priesthood — part of the alliance mediated by Moses — was a priesthood that offered many sacrifices prefiguring Christ’s Precious Blood.
In his Making a Monkey Out of Darwin, the formidable Buchanan reviews a recent book by Eugene Windchy, The End of Darwinism: And How a Flawed and Disastrous Theory Was Stolen and Sold. You gotta give it to Pat; he’s not afraid to slaughter a sacred cow… or …
It would take too long to point out all that’s wrong with Laurie Goodstein’s New York Times piece, “U.S. Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny,” so I’ll cut to the chase. The last sentence of the article reads:
But the investigation of American nuns surprised many because there was no obvious precipitating cause.
The same article reports that vocations in the group in question are down from 180,000 in 1965 to 60,000 today. It also mentions that
Brother Francis has taken a downturn. We received news last week that Brother has “a couple of months” to live, due to his worsening aortic valve stenosis. This prognosis is from his very competent cardiologist at Cheshire Medical Center in Keene, New Hampshire. As those who know Brother Francis can well imagine, he is taking the news very “philosophically.” Showing his resignation to the divine providence, he told one of the doctors, “I am in the Hands of God.”
Just after I posted an appreciation of the recent USCCB document clarifying the Church’s teaching on her mission and the Jewish People, I checked my familiar news sources to catch up on what’s going on.
Coincidentally, I discovered that “ADL president Abraham Foxman said that the bishops’ statement might be …
Our beloved Superior, Brother Francis, who will be 96 years old on July 19, is in need of prayers for his health. Brother was in the hospital last week with congestive heart failure, a condition he is prone to because he has long had aortic valve stenosis. He was discharged from Cheshire Medical Center last Friday, the Feast of the Sacred Heart. He is now at home, where the brothers and visiting health-care professionals are attending to him.
If you’ve not read Brian Kelly’s brief and delightful biography of Venerable Solanus Casey, please do yourself the favor. This Irish-American Padre Pio ought to be better known and loved across the nation.
Please Note: if any of our readers know some GM execs, could you please put a bug in their corporate ear? With all the trouble the auto-making giant is having these days, they should be reminded of Venerable Solanus’ past benevolence to Chevrolet, one of General Motors’ subsidiaries. As Brian writes:
Father Kenneth Baker, S. J., has written a short and delightful review of a recent book on Saint Francis of Assisi: “Preach Christ to the Muslims” The volume in review is St. Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of the Muslims, by Frank M. Rega, S.F.O.
These two excerpts are worth savoring:
Trusting absolutely in God and willing to die for the faith, Francis was at first beaten by the guards but eventually taken to the sultan.
Over at Taki’s Magazine, Charles Coulombe playfully takes readers on a fast-paced romp through the unfamiliar (for most people) political spectrum of what is called “Paleoconservatism.” His article, The Old Paleos and the New, seeks to explain the contrasts and often bizarre alliances within this recently-coined label.
Kirkians, Burkeans, the descendants of the Old Right, Monarchists, Strict-Constructionists (like Birchers), devotees of Richard M. Weaver, and even certain Libertarians — all these find a home under the Paleo umbrella.
A magnificent writer, Elizabeth Thecla Mauro, has a passion for the sport, and boy is she good at her craft. Her team? The Yankees. Well, that’ll just have to be overlooked. She finds a nobility in the game and in the players, or in many of them that is, and …
The annual Pilgrimage for Restoration is a sixty-five mile walk from Lake George to the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY. For four days, pilgrims attend Mass together, walk, camp, sing pray, and compare blisters! It’s an unforgettable experience. This year’s dates are Wednesday, September 23 to Saturday, September 26.
This event is not sponsored by Saint Benedict Center, but we participate in it every year, with great enthusiasm. The sponsors are the Company of St. René Goupil, with the…
One of the doctrinal controversies between the schismatic, so-called Orthodox churches of the East and the Catholic Church is a dogma expressed in one word: Filioque (Fee-lee-OH-kway). But what does this word mean?
Filioque is Latin for “and the Son.” It is found in the Nicene Creed as it is said in the Catholic Church: “I believe in the Holy Ghost… Who proceeds from the Father and the Son .”
When he began his trouble with Rome (c. 870), Photius, the usurping Patriarch of Constantinople, needed an occasion to bring a popular movement against the Latins. He found one in the fact that certain Spanish monks in Constantinople chanted the Filioque in the Creed of their Mass. Photius claimed then, and the schismatic Greeks still claim, that this addition to the Creed was not permissible. Photius’ followers held that the Council of Ephesus, in its seventh canon, forbad additions to the creed. (”It is not permitted to produce or write or compose any other creed except the one which was defined by the holy fathers who were gathered together in the Holy Spirit at Nicea.”) This is a false premise, since the canon was written to forbid the composition of any teaching contrary or contradictory to any truth already expressly defined in the Creed of Nicea-Constantinople. Other creeds had been used before and after Nicea, witness the one attributed to St. Athanasius. And witness also that the Creed of the Council of Nicea was itself reformulated by one Ecumenical Council which took place in-between Nicea and Ephesus: Constantinople I.
As the reader has no doubt garnered by now, the original Creed formed at the Council of Nicea, and later added to at the First Council of Constantinople, did not originally contain the Filioque, which was first added to the Mozarabic Liturgy by the Council of Toledo around the year 600. (The Visigothic Kingdom was a stronghold of Arianism and other Trinitarian heresies, so the Mozarabic bishops, properly exercising their office, inserted the word to defend Trinitarian orthodoxy.) From the Mozarabic Rite it made its way into the Gallican Rite, formally being added to their liturgy at the Council of Aachen around 800. In the 11th century, Pope Benedict VIII formally added it to the Roman Rite, which had, by that time, imported much from the Gallican Liturgy.
Now that we have identified the issue and briefly explained some of the historical controversy surrounding it, it remains for us to defend the truth of the dogma of the Filioque — a dogma one denies at the peril of his soul.
Concerning our dogma, Father Anthony J. Maas, S.J., the great Catholic Scripture scholar says, “As to Sacred Scripture, the inspired writers call the Holy Ghost the Spirit of the Son (Gal 4:6), the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9), the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19), just as they call Him the Spirit of the Father (Matt. 10:20), and the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11). Hence they attribute to the Holy Ghost the same relation to the Son as to the Father. Again, according to Sacred Scripture, the Son sends the Holy Ghost (Luke 24:49; John 15:26, 16:7, 20:22; Acts 2:33; Tit. 3:6), just as the Father sends the Son (Rom. 8:3, etc.), and as the Father sends the Holy Ghost (John 14:26). Now, the ‘mission’ or ‘sending’ of one Divine Person by another does not mean merely that the Person said to be sent [only apparently] assumes a particular character [...], as the Sabellians maintained; nor does it imply any inferiority in the Person sent, as the Arians taught; but it denotes, according to the teaching of the weightier theologians and Fathers, the Procession of the Person sent from the Person Who sends. Sacred Scripture never presents the Father as being sent by the Son, nor the Son as being sent by the Holy Ghost. The very idea of the term ‘mission’ implies the person sent goes forth for a certain purpose by the power of the sender, a power exerted on the person sent by way of a physical impulse, or of a command, or of prayer, or finally of production; now, Procession, the analogy of production, is the only manner admissible in God. It follows that the inspired writers present the Holy Ghost as proceeding from the Son, since they present Him as sent by the Son. Finally, St. John (16:13-15) gives the words of Christ: ‘What things soever He [the Spirit] shall hear, He shall speak;… He shall receive of mine, and shall shew it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath, are mine.” Here a double consideration is in place. First, the Son has all things that the Father hath, so that He must resemble the Father in being the Principle from Which the Holy Ghost proceeds. Secondly, the Holy Ghost shall receive ‘of mine’ according to the words of the Son; but Procession is the only conceivable way of receiving which does not imply dependence or inferiority. In other words, the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Son.”
Eastern Church Fathers who can be cited in defense of this dogma are Sts. Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and Hippolytus. Here is a passage from the writings of St. Cyril, the hero of the Council of Ephesus:
“Since the Holy Spirit, when He is in us, effects our being conformed to God, and He actually proceeds from Father and Son , it is abundantly clear that He is of the divine essence, in it in essence, and proceeding from it.” Treasury of the Holy Trinity , Thesis 34, quoted in Jurgens, William, A., trans., The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1970).
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