We continue what be began in our last number, a three-part study of spiritual childhood by Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (1877-1964).
St. Teresa of the Child Jesus reminds us that the principal virtues of the child of God are those in which are reproduced in an eminent degree the innate qualities of the child, minus his defects. Consequently the way of spiritual childhood will teach us to be supernaturally ourselves minus our defects.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day
I just read on the New Advent website the Catholic Encyclopedia’s excellent account of the life of Erin’s great apostle. I would highly recommend it if you can spare fifteen minutes today. I can’t think of anything I’ve read elsewhere over the years about the saint that …
That’s the motion that was debated last week in London, at an event hosted by the Spectator and held at the Royal Geographical Society. And guess what — “the 700-strong sell-out audience voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion”!
Excerpt from The Catholic Herald:
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, author Piers Paul Read and Dom Anthony Sutch, former headmaster of Downside, spoke for the motion.
Anime cartoons and their characters are a huge cultic phenomenon, the most popular of all escapist media venues. It is very addictive and very dangerous, to the soul and the mind. I don’t post weird stories, but this blog by Zoe Romanowski from Inside Catholic, along with another, even …
One of the commentators on the relevant CWN article expressed it well: “It’s past time someone said this. Too often ecumenism is taken to mean the weakening of the teachings of the Church and the addition of non-Catholic ritual and beliefs.” A-m-e-n-!
Past time is better than no time — or, “better late than never.” All the scandal that has transpired, and is ongoing, in the name of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue should cease at these words of Cardinal Levada defining its purpose (or “final cause” to you Aristotelians out there): “Union with the Catholic Church is the goal of ecumenism.”
Our 2010 conference will be held on October 8 and 9 at Saint Benedict Center in Richmond, New Hampshire.
The information currently available is as follows:
Theme: “The Romance of Wisdom”
Cost: $100 for both days (Friday and Saturday). This includes meals. Single days without meals: $40.
Note: This year, Friday and Saturday will both be full days. There will be eight speakers giving presentations in addition to the master of ceremonies, our Prior, Brother Andre Marie.
Archbishop Alberto Bottari de Castello, apostolic nuncio to Japan, has a very perceptive insight into the subversive effects Buddhist doctrine has on the soul of a suffering devotee confronting hopelessness. From Sandro Magister’s latest column: “Why Life is Worth So Little in Prosperous Japan.”
“The Japanese do not have a personal …
[March 5, 2010 - Rome Reports (with hat tip to Rorate Caeli)]
Benedict XVI has formed a commission to investigate if Our Lady truly appeared in Medjugorje, a small town in Bosnia.
The commission is part of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Cardinal Camillo Ruini will preside over the commission. Ruini is the pope’s former vicar of Rome’s diocese. Ruini goal will be to explain to the pope what’s happening at the sanctuary which has become the third most visited in Europe.
Allegedly, at least 6 people have witnessed the Virgins apparitions there since 1981.
When the enemies of the Church, the enemies of Christianity in general, and those who want to “hold” the Catholic hierarchy’s “feet to the fire” constantly jabber about Pius XII’s supposed complicity in the Nazi murder of Jews, it becomes necessary to defend the truth as well as the honor of the Holy Father. He was, after all, not only innocent of the crime of which he stands accused by an angry mob, but was also proactive in the protection of innocent Jews. That’s history. Catholics have a particular duty to defend the Church’s honor, but even secular historians of the era ought to vindicate Pius XII, if only to protect the integrity of their science.
In changing the traditional Douay-Rheims rendering of Genesis 3:15 from “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” to the Catholic Revised Standard Version translation (based on the King James Bible), “I will put enmities between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel,” the scriptural foundation for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is compromised. So, too, is the traditional doctrine concerning Our Lady’s essential role in salvation history, which has been translated into her more modern title of “Co-redemptrix.”
“The United Nations estimated that 683 Christians fled Mosul between February 20 and February 27. Chaldean Catholic Bishop Emil Shimoun Nona of Mosul estimated that ‘about 400 families’ had left the city’s community of 4,000 Christians.”
This disheartening data comes from an article in Catholic World News. The Iraqi Catholic bishops themselves are bemoaning the situation. But that’s not all they are doing; they are also praying, fasting, and organizing their people to protest peacefully. The facts are not to be denied, and they are not the “spin” of liberal news pundits trying to make a Republican effort look bad.
When you identify yourself as a “Slave,” you can get some strange looks. But of all the adverse reactions to our name I have ever known, perhaps the most memorable came from a highly educated man who understood the background and purpose of “holy slavery.” Yet, he delicately pointed out that — here in the United States — the word “slave” has a “particularly acerbic connotation.” Hearing this, I wondered out loud if calling someone a slave ever had a particularly unacerbic meaning in any culture anywhere at any time in the history of the world. I think it was just that acerbic meaning, just that sense of abjection, dependence, servitude, etc., that made Saint Louis de Montfort (and others before him) choose the word.
I just came across a double defense of our name — or at least the “slave” part — a defense both ancient and new as it is a recent Roman Pontiff citing a Father of the Church. The Pontiff was Pope John Paul II and the Father was Saint Ildephonsus of Toledo.
It happened while I was reading the book, Mariology, a Guide for Priests, Deacons, Seminarians, and Consecrated Persons, published by Queenship Publishing and bearing a forward by Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke. Three of the articles in this weighty collection are by Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins, a priest to whom I owe a personal debt of gratitude as it was he who regenerated me in Christ when I was just a lad. (Besides being an internationally renowned Mariologist, Monsignor Calkins is also an official in the Holy See’s Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.)
Now, I owe the good Monsignor another debt, since it was he who supplied me with the “double defense” of which I speak.
The following is from Monsignor Calkins’ article “Marian Consecration and Entrustment,” and comes from pages 730 and 731 of the above mentioned volume. It deserves to be read attentively.
St. Ildephonsus of Toledo (+667)… is usually considered the first major representative of the spirituality of “Marian slavery” which eventually develops into what is now known as Marian consecration.
Pope John Paul II himself, in his homily in Saragossa on November 6, 1982, immediately prior to the Entrustment of Spain to Our Lady, reviewed what is for us the most relevant information about this Benedictine Abbot who became the archbishop of Toledo:
“St. Ildephonsus of Toledo, the most ancient witness of that form of devotion which we call slavery to Mary, justifies our attitude of being slaves of Mary because of the singular relation she has with respect to Christ. ‘For this reason I am your slave, because your Son is my Lord. Therefore you are my Lady because you are the slave of my Lord. Therefore, I am the slave of the slave of my Lord, because you have been made the Mother of my Lord. Therefore I have been made a slave because you have been made the Mother of my Maker’ [De virginitate perpetua Sanctae Mariae, 12: PL 96, 108].
“As is obvious, because of these real and existing relationships between Christ and Mary, Marian devotion has Christ as its ultimate object. The same St. Ildephonsus saw it with full clarity: ‘So in this way one refers to the Lord that which serves his slave. So, what is delivered up to the Mother redounds to the Son; thus passes to the King the honor that is rendered in the service of the Queen” [c. 12: PL 96, 108]. Then one understands the double employment of the desire expressed in the same blessed formula, speaking with the most Holy Virgin: ‘Grant that I may surrender myself to God and to you, to be the slave of your Son and of you, to serve your Lord and you’ [c. 12: PL 96, 105].”
Tags: Marian Consecration, Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins, Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, Saint Ildephonsus of Toledo
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Brother Andre Marie:
Fair enough on your deleting my previous comments on this article. However, I would appreciate some feedback on some of my future comments, and not just “rebuttals” to my comments in areas where we do not believe the same things. OK?
Brother Andre Marie:
Tell you what might be appropriate for a renewed dialog based on mutual repect with disagreement in some areas. If I had any heroes in the Catholic Church they would definitely be the early Jesuit missionaries in French speaking Canada – especially the 8 North American martyrs. Thanks.