Here and There

• Young Hemingway's Wound and Conversion, by Matthew Nickel. PILGRIM: A Journal of Catholic Experience:

  "If I am anything I am a Catholic. Had extreme unction administered to me as such in July 1918 and recovered. So guess I am a super-catholic.... Am not what is called a ‘good’ catholic.... But cannot imagine taking any other religion seriously." - Hemingway, 1927

• Chris Cornell - 1964-2017 Unam Sanctam Catholicism reflects on the passing of the frontman for Soundgarden. 05/28/17.
• The Sufis: Islam’s Anti-Terrorists, by Robert Carle. The Public Discourse 07/13/17. "Growing numbers of Muslims are adopting Sufi practices that promote peace, hope, and harmony among religions."
• Stop Donald Trump From Colonizing Your Brain, by Anne Marlowe. The Tablet 05/21/17. "Like a Libyan dictator of old, the leader is everywhere, including inside your head."
• The Saint You Hate, by Chase Padusniak. Jappers and Janglers 11/29/16:

  In fact, Merton came to love her, to be truly devoted to her: how? Well, he recognized that she took what she was given, took the world she knew, and sanctified it. Even if she "kept everything that was bourgeois about her […] her nostalgic affection for a funny villa called 'Les Buissonnets', her taste for utterly oversweet art, and for little candy angels and pastel saints playing with lambs so soft and fuzzy that they literally give people like me the creeps," she transcended these things. Merton struck up a spiritual friendship in appreciation precisely of his differences with the Little Flower, and this blossomed into fruit in his own life; he entrusted his brother to her and came to see her as “the greatest saint there has been in the Church for three hundred years.”

• Catholicism in an Age of Discontent, by Thomas Joseph White. First Things November 2016.

  We need both Balthasar and de Lubac rather than the one or the other. Balthasar helps us recognize that only the fullness of Catholic wisdom that arises from a Christocentric focus can heal our fallen, God-forgetful human culture. With de Lubac, and against postmodernity, the Church must restore to the human person a sense of the natural human capacity for the universal, and with it the possibility of an ennobling unity based on shared metaphysical truth rather than the negative peace of nonjudgmental tolerance. Our postmodern age needs both the radiant light of Christ’s theological wisdom and encouragement to venture out in search of decisive philosophical understanding.

  Along with these two imperatives we must adopt a third, one brought to the fore in the current pontificate. Our theological and philosophical efforts to overcome postmodern fear of—and despair about—truth must be accompanied by spiritual charity toward those who live disoriented and loveless lives in today’s secular culture. ...

• Caleb Bernacchio offers an interesting take on Macintyre and Dreher: MacIntyre, Dreher, and American Politics. Ethika Politika 05/23/17:

  ... American conservatives were never really interested in MacIntyre’s politics. There was no discussion of MacIntyre’s extended account of the social relationships and political institutions of local communities in Dependent Rational Animals (published in 1999) nor was their any consideration of his earlier text Marxism and Christianity. Instead, conservatives Catholics were reinterpreting MacIntyre’s brief discussion of St. Benedict in the closing pages of After Virtue — a passage intended to highlight the importance of a local politics of community building — as a call for fidelity to the Magisterium after Vatican II. In other words, they were equating MacIntyre’s brief sketch of a renewed politics of community building with his later defense of the Catholic intellectual tradition (primarily outlined in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry). [...]

  [Rod Dreher's] The Benedict Option must be seen as another episode in the political reception of MacIntyre’s work among American conservatives. Ironically, as I have noted, this reception has involved the least political portion of MacIntyre’s work, his defense of the Thomist tradition, rather than his explicit discussions of local politics (which seems to be largely irrelevant to the American conservative political project). This is why academic critics of Dreher are mistaken to think that it is sufficient to argue that Dreher has misunderstood MacIntyre. [...]

  If MacIntyre is correct, American conservatives will not be able to develop a coherent and plausible identity without rediscovering a local politics of associations, municipalities, and activism within social movements. (See MacIntyre’s recent defense of municipal government as an important locus of political activity.) Dreher’s vision in The Benedict Option is too narrow because it fails to recognize the relationship between local politics, issues-based activism (fighting for labor rights or health care), and national party politics [as expressed in his latest, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity].

• Breaking Free of Identity Politics, by Stephen Adubato. Ethika Politika 05/11/17:

  The inconvenient truth about us humans is that we are complex, we are mysterious, and there is always more to the story. You can slap an easily comprehensible label onto a person that may only tell you very little or even nothing at all about that person’s unique experience. We need to be able to open a space for a way to make sense of that “something more” that defines us as humans. Perhaps we can begin by ceasing to reduce religion to a mere identity category that is equated with others like race and gender, and affirming it as the complex phenomenon that it really is.

• Francisco Romero Carrasquillo (Ite ad Thomam):

  As of late, I have been searching the internet for downloadable PDFs of works relevant to Thomism and to pretty much anything else related to traditional Catholic thought. Highlights include much of St. Thomas' Leonine Edition and lots and lots of works by Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. and Santiago Ramírez, O.P. in various languages. And I'm just getting started; there's lots more out there. ....

Amy Welborn: "Against Popesplaining"

Thank you, Amy Welborn:

Guess what.

You don’t have to defend every word the Pope says.

Even if you consider yourself an enthusiastic and faithful Catholic of any stripe you are not obligated to defend every utterance in every papal interview or even every papal homily or declaration.

Popes – all popes – can say things that are wrong, incorrect, ill-informed, narrow, short-sighted and more reflective of their personal biases, interests and limitations than the broader, deeper tradition of Catholicism.

Which is why, traditionally, popes didn’t do a lot of public talking.

Quite a few issues have popped up recently – well, more or less continuously over the past three years, but I want to begin by addressing what I see as the fundamental, underlying problem apart from any particular priorities Pope Francis may have. That problem is the importance given to papal statements. Papal paragraphs. Papal sentences, participles and even papal pauses.

All of which require continual, exhaustive and exhausting rounds of what I’ve come call Popesplaining.

Read the whole thing.

* * *

"It's true I don't give interviews. I don't know why. I just can't. It's tiresome," he said. "But I enjoy your company."

-- Pope Francis, en route TO Brazil. July 22, 2013.

* * *

I understand why Popes expound themselves in encyclicals -- such seems to be their natural habitat, as it provides ample room for drafting and re-drafting and minimizing the potential for misinterpretation. The same could be said for books … I recall reading John Paul II's "Crossing the Threshhold of Hope" on the road to becoming a Catholic, and who can deny the theological richness of Pope Benedict (writing as Joseph Ratzinger)'s trilogy "Jesus of Nazareth"?

Of course there is television, and as an actor in an earlier life, John Paul II knew full well the power of public performance: the well-placed quip or televised soundbyte to the masses … but not all Popes are gifted public speakers. Benedict XVI was certainly not given to such.

As I see it, the perpetual confusion that characterizes the present situation comes in large part as a result of the full-throttle advent of "social media", together with Vatican's headlong desire to be 'with it' and to integrate itself into the latest technical trend. Chiefly of concern is the sense of IMMEDIACY that it engenders -- together with it's "dumbing down" effect, the minimization of attention spans on the part of the audience.

For example, reading Benedict XVI in print has been a personal joy, witnessing the architecture of his arguments play out over the pages with grace and precision. Conversely, I was rather dismayed by the Vatican's announcement (I think it was at World Youth Day) that the Holy Father would from that time forth be Twittering, and in such a manner rendering himself vulnerable to the responses (and sniping) of the world in the confined space of 140 characters.

So, too, with the free-for-all, off-the-cuff airline interviews, which have become a trademark of the present pontificate.

Iraq and Syria News Roundup

Iraq and Syria News Roundup - Aleppo's Christians under grave threat of genocide Rorate Caeli 8/16/14.

"Them's Fightin' Words" -- Responses to a vile act of calumny from "The Food Babe"

If you're on Facebook and/or browse the web, you might have encountered -- or had foisted upon you -- "THE SHOCKING INGREDIENTS IN BEER!" -- a piece of hysterical drivel from a food-purist (and non-beer drinker) regarding various "additives" to beer, revealing along the way the author's general ignorance about the brewing process altogether.

As the situation may warrant, here are some helpful responses from defenders of God's Gift to Man:

• Beer Wars: The Calumny of The Food Babe, by Thomas 'Tom' Cizauskas. Yours for Good Fermentables
• What’s In YOUR Beer? Or, The Dangers of Dumbassery Maureen Ogle.

Pope Benedict's Journty to Mexico and Cuba

From the Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club, a special blog dedicated to exclusive roundups of news and commentary on Pope Benedict's Apostolic Journey to Mexico and Cuba March 23-29, 2012.

Joe Carter takes on the Front Porch Republic

For those who are endlessly entertained by such:

• Who Gets To Be the Czar of Aesthetic Consumption? Joe Carter. First Things 11/18/11.
• Who Gets To Be The Czar of Human Evolution? Jerry Salyer. Front Porch Republic 1/5/12.
• Monarchists to the Left of Me, Socialists to the Right, Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle with You Liberals Joe Carter. First Things 1/6/12

"Six Types of Reading"

Ben Myers (Faith and Theology) provides "a typology of six types of reading".

Support the Arts.

An Opera-tunity to Support The Arts | Anna Egan sings the standards. DarwinCatholic

LiveAction, Planned Parenthood and The Truth About Lying (a roundup)

The Controversy: What did LiveAction do?

Two members of LiveAction, a pro-life group, masquerading as a pimp and an under-age prostitute, approached multiple Planned Parenthood locations, petitioning them on how to cover up their underage-prostitute business (requesting testing for diseases, abortions, and access to contraception). The "sting operation" revealed incidents of Planned Parenthood members all too willing to indulge the requests of the faux-"sex traffickers" without reporting them to the law. See: Caught on Tape: Planned Parenthood Aids Pimp’s Underage Sex Ring February 1st, 2011.

The Catholic Debate: Did LiveAction lie, and is lying always and everywhere immoral?

Planned Parenthood released a statement condemning the "dirty tricks" campaign against their organization, and has fired one of the clinic managers engaging in questionable activity. While agreeing on the laudable objective of bringing down an organization like Planned Parenthood, the orthodox Catholic community is conflicted on the justness of the "intentionally deceptive" measures taken in relation to the traditional Catholic moral prohibition on lying [see "Offenses Against Truth" #2475-2487; discussion of the eigth commandment, Catechism of the Catholic Church].

What follows is a roundup of the debate ...

Stephen Schwartz via Michael Totten

"From San Francisco to Sarajevo" - An interesting take on current affairs from Stephen Schwartz, a former Communist born of an interfaith (Jewish/American) family, whose intellectual journey led him into Republican-neoconservatism and ultimately conversion to Sufi Islam (via his encounter with Albanian Catholics, no less):

I had been interested in Islam, and especially Sufism, since I was a teenager. You see, even though I was an “official” atheist, I realized at age eight that I believed in God. But I was not what we call in California a “shopper for God.” I kept my religious feelings to myself. I did not leave the Communist milieu for religion, though I was tempted to do so.

After I was about 15, I started to read anti-Soviet literature on the sly, in the library away from my parents, who were appalled when I told them I read Whittaker Chambers and Ayn Rand and National Review. I was more interested in Chambers than Rand. Though I rather like some of Rand’s writings, I was not drawn to her philosophy. ...

Interview courtesy of Michael Totten, one of my favorite foreign correspondents, particularly on all things Middle East, with a forthcoming first book: The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel

Eric Sammons on "The Purpose of Christmas"

Too often we look at Heaven as just a really great earth: we eat whatever we want, we hang out with whoever we want and we never get sick or hurt. But Heaven is less about what we do and more about what we become. When we enter into Heaven we are transformed into a new creation: while keeping our human nature we participate in the divine nature. In the scandalous words of St. Athanasius, we “become God” – we are deified. We of course must be careful not to confuse the Christian doctrine of deification with Eastern conceptions which confuse divinity and humanity. But we must also not minimize the great transformation that will take place: we become by grace what God is by nature, all while retaining our human nature and individuality. It might seem impossible to see how this could happen, but we have a model already: Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man. By his incarnation he showed us the path which unites divinity and humanity. In his bountiful love he gives us as a gift what he has by right.

Eric Sammons, "The purpose of Christmas" The Divine Life December 17, 2010. (HT: Alan Phipps).

* * *

Deification and Grace
by Daniel A. Keating. Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University (July 1, 2007)

That Christians share in the very divine life of the Trinity is one of the most exciting and awe inspiring mysteries of the Christian faith. Dr. Daniel Keating has written a concise and readable theological introduction to this marvelous Christian doctrine. Not only does he provide an insightful examination of the New Testament evidence for the doctrine of deification, but he also masterfully explores the historical development and perceptively assesses the doctrinal significance of the notion of deification within the Eastern and Western traditions. Dr. Keating's study is biblically enlightening, historically sensitive, doctrinally engaging, and spiritually enriching. One finishes reading this book rejoicing in the knowledge that one is a Christian. --Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap., Executive Director for the Secretariat for Doctrine at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, DC

Who is "Father Z"?

This article escaped me when it was originally published. A profile from Anna Arco (Catholic Herald), on "why everyone logs on to ‘Father Z’" - He was once a long-haired Lutheran. But now, says Anna Arco, he is a legend in the conservative Catholic blogosphere. (February 29, 2008).

New blog: "Common Sense Catholicism"

"Common Sense Catholicism" is a new project by long-time Catholic blogger Kevin Tierney. From his introduction:

Why are you Catholic? Whenever I run into someone new who finds out about my faith, this inevitably comes up. I always state that the reason is "common sense." This might seem a cop-out. I intend to prove otherwise with this blog.

Why is Catholicism ultimately a common-sense faith? Because only Catholicism truly has the appreciation of human nature and of man's purpose. The other religions, faiths, and worldviews, from one side or the other, portray a false view of who man is, and what he is supposed to be. As a result, they devise these highly complex philosophies about man and his responsibility. These abstract thoughts seldom make any real sense when one sits down to discover them.

Whether it be the teachings on faith, culture, doctrine, Catholicism approaches things with an easy understanding. Common-sense need not mean "simple." Indeed, the message of Catholicism, when properly understood, is one of the most challenging ever issued to mankind. Yet since she has an intimate understanding of human nature, her sentiments truly are "common-sense."

"A comment not fit for publication"

... at Vox Nova.

The Spiritual Exercises

"The Spiritual Exercises" is

a collaborative effort between David Paternostro, S.J., John Brown, S.J., Deacon Kevin Dyer, S.J., and Fr. Chris Collins, S.J. In it, we will offer daily reflections over the course of Lent based on the prayers proposed by St. Ignatius Loyola, S.J., in his Spiritual Exercises. By Easter, one who has followed these reflections regularly will have a basic introduction to the whole of the Spiritual Exercises.

"Drawn to Catholicism"

A new blog discovery:

saintos [a.k.a. Owen, i.e. me] is the author/illustrator of drawntocatholicism which is a comic diary by a Catholic convert / husband / father / artist / perish catechist / urban cyclist / dog lover…

Check it out.

'Nuff said.

Matt Talbot, Vox Nova:

I wish Catholic priests and laity would stand up more often against this sort of thing.

Kurt (in response):

I really have better things to do that stand up against the fact I could drive around in a densely populated urban area and see my country’s flag every five minutes.

InsideCatholic's Double Standard

InsideCatholic readers are well aware of their standard guidelines for commenting, clearly posted a the bottom of every article:

1. No name calling or personal attacks; stick to the argument, not the individual.

2. Assume the goodwill of the other person, especially when you disagree.

3. Don't make judgments about the other person's sinfulness or salvation. You are not the Inquisition. ...

One has to wonder why certain authors themselves are exempt from such rules?

Paul J. Griffiths on Rowan Williams and "Ecumenical Obedience"

Catholic theologian Paul J. Griffiths pens a good response to Rowan Williams on the Catholic-Anglican divide:

This past Thursday (19 November 2009), Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, gave an address at the Gregorian University in Rome as part of an event celebrating the centenary of the birth of Cardinal Willebrands, the first President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. In it, he made a distinction between first-order theological understandings of the Church, on which he thinks that there has been considerable convergence between Anglicans and Catholics since the Second Vatican Council; and second-order questions, the answers to which still divide, but consensus about which, he thinks, is not as “vital for its [the Church's] health and integrity” as is that about first-order questions.

He distinguishes three putative second-order topics: the question of authority in the Church; the question of Petrine primacy; and the question of the relations between local churches and the universal Church. And he notes that the fundamental issue is the importance of these (and perhaps others), because it is about them that Anglicans and Catholics are divided. How can we, he asks, “properly tell the difference between ’second order’ and ‘first order’ issues”?

This is the right question. Williams clearly thinks that the three divisive topics he identifies are second-order, and that in light of agreement about the first-order theology of the Church differences about them should not remain a barrier to (some form of) sacramental unity. He asks of those who disagree with him that we provide a theological account of why what he thinks are second-order questions have sufficient theological importance that they ought to remain church-dividing.

I think he is wrong. ... [More]

See Also

• Why Rowan Williams is Wrong: Priesthood as a First-Order Issue, by Fr. Jeffrey Steel (De Cura Animarum).

Self-Indulgent Scott Hahn Rage-Fest!!!

Arturo Vasquez is seething, SEETHING! -- the author positively enraged over "paying $10, being told to park in an unconvenient/borderline unsafe location, and sitting in bleachers all to be in the wonderful presence of Scott Hahn and sit through a 'Catholicism is Scriptural, now let’s all cheer ourselves' pep rally."

As a commentator pointed out:

I wouldn’t expect Hahn to lecture on the nuances of Aristotelian metaphysics re. Transubstantiation, to what is essentially a lay audience. You really need to relax, this type of even was not meant for people like you. Why you went there to begin with is beyond me. He has much more serious "events" like the “Letter & Spirit Summer Institute."