Pope Benedict compares Vatican II aftermath to 'chaos' following Nicea

Sandro Magister, "All Against All: The Postconciliar Period Recounted by Ratzinger, Theologian and Pope" (www.chiesa, July 27, 2007), writes:

The period following Vatican II reminds Benedict XVI of the "total chaos" after the Council of Nicaea, the first in history. But from that stormy Council emerged the "Credo." And today? Here is the pope’s response to the priests of Belluno, Feltre, and Treviso.

"We had such great hopes, but things proved to be more difficult..."

"In his book on the Holy Spirit, saint Basil compares the Church’s situation after the Council of Nicaea to a nighttime naval battle, in which no one recognizes another, but everyone is pitted against everyone else. It really was a situation of total chaos: this is how saint Basil paints in vivid colors the drama of the period following the Council of Nicaea.

"50 years later, for the first Council of Constantinople, the emperor invited saint Gregory Nazianzen to participate in the council, and saint Gregory responded: No, I will not come, because I understand these things, I know that all of the Councils give rise to nothing but confusion and fighting, so I will not come. And he didn’t go....

"Thus it seems to me that we must learn the great humility of the Crucified One ... But we must also learn, together with this humility, the true triumphalism of the Catholicism that grows in all ages.... In this combination of the humility of the Cross and the joy of the risen Lord, who in the [Second Vatican] Council has given us a great road marker, we can go forward joyously and full of hope."

Quotable

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

-- Will Rogers

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

-- Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

Amazing students

We all have stories. I've got mine. I have had some amazing students over my years of teaching. Some have become fast friends.

One kind of 'amazing' is the type of student who is a member of an immigrant family from Romania, Moldavia (we have a Moldavian consulate in town), Pakistan, India, Korea, China, or Japan, and who struggles in English as a foreign language, yet comes out at the end of the semester with one of the three top grades in an honors course -- in a class of some twenty students, most of whom are from upper-middle class Anglo families with money to burn.

Another kind of 'amazing' is the student who is hearing impaired who takes in lectures through a sign language interpreter and who achieves the same kind of academic levels by end-of-semester.

Yet another kind of 'amazing' is the exceptional student majoring in Physical Education, Sports Management, Athletic Training, or Health & Exercise Science [sic.], who pulls down straight 'A' grades in tests, writes brilliantly articulate papers, and achieves similar end-of-semester academic goals.

Still another kind of 'amazing' is what I find in my honors students, who can be generally counted upon to actually read their assignments, be prepared for in-class discussion, and to actively participate in lively classroom debate. I've always loved these students, who make teaching a joy and the classroom experience a genuine delight.

Most 'amazing', however, are those dime-a-dozen students whose parents pay 1k per semester for one of my courses, and never bother to buy the texts for the course, take notes, stay awake in class, or even trouble themselves to come to class. That's amazing.

I know, I must be boring. I received the Raymond Morris Bost Distinguished Professor Award for excellence in teaching at Lenoir-Rhyne College in 1990. More telling, perhaps, may be the development that nearly one-third of all students at this institution are now majoring in some program of study related to athletics or physical education. Large billboards around town have featured advertisements for the college carrying banner headlines reading, not "Academic Excellence," but "Athletic Excellence" [sic.]. (Incidentally, I'm not sure if anyone can remember when our major sports teams had a winning season, but that's a detail.) Another recruiting brochure contained a caption declaiming: "we may not be Harvard, but ..." Really? No kidding?

I've had all of these types of students in my classes, all of them truly amazing. But by far the most common type are those in the last category. I noticed a sea change in our quality of in-coming freshmen about five years ago. 17 out of 30 students failed a freshman survey course. In my two decades of teaching experience prior to that, nothing of the kind had ever happened. Maybe two or three students would fail a core-level survey course, but not half the class. Furthermore, I've not become more rigorous in my grading over the years; if anything, I've become too lenient. What's happening in your neck of the woods? Thoughts?

Two books on the Mass to be published

Two major contemporary works on the Mass will be published in August and September:

• Charles Journet, The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross (South Bend IN: St. Augustine's Press, August 15th, 2007), $37.50, 304pp.
  
  
  
• Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, September 1, 2007), $35.00 ($23.10 Amazon discount), 360pp.

[Hat tip to A.S.]

It was the best of times ... the worst of times ...

I've always felt that the struggle between spiritual good and evil in the world coexist, not as two discrete "sides" that can be marked off by a line dividing those who align themselves with 'Christ' from the world of non-believing secular 'culture' (pace H. Richard Niebuhr) -- no matter how this struggle may be manifested in various societies and institutions -- but, rather, as a spiritual antithesis running through the heart of every individual, even every religious believer. It may be pure fantasy, but I've always had this notion, despite the horrors that blight our past, that this struggle must somehow intensify as history progresses. There's food for thought in that, I suppose.

In any case, I was made aware upon awakening this morning of how much we have to be thankful. Things might have gone much differently, but on April 19th, 2005, the former Cardinal, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was elected Pope Benedict XVI. On December 1st, 2006, he returned safely to Rome from a visit to Muslim Turkey where there where assassination rumors abounded. On July 7th, 2007, the long and often painfully-awaited Motu Proprio was finally published. Who could have expected such answers to prayer?

Then upon arrival at school this morning, I was greeted with an unopened piece of mail from the Cardinal Newman Society for the Preservation of Catholic Higher Education containing a message from Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. Among other things, it related some news from the other side of the scale -- about Catholic universities. In 2006 a Georgetown University dean ran for office on a pro-abortion platform. Santa Clara University openly and actively refers its students to Planned Parenthood for contraception. DePaul University offers students a minor degree program in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Studies. A recent survey shows that at least 46 Catholic colleges and universities recognize homosexual clubs promoting and celebrating gay 'culture'. Advocates of abortion, stem-cell research, and physician-assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, and women's ordination are being invited to give commencement addresses and receive honorary degrees by Catholic institutions throughout the country. Oh, and remember The Vagina Monologues, celebrating lesbian seduction, molestation, and rape of a minor? This year, for the 6th year running, nearly one of every ten Catholic colleges and universities -- including Boston College, Marquette university, and the University of Detroit Mercy -- hosted performances of this delightful little sexually explicit, anti-Catholic, women-demeaning drama.

The struggle continues ...

Disputations on Tom Brokaw and the Church Pubescent

A reader just called my attention to this fascinating and provocative discussion posted by John da Fiesole over at Disputations: "The Church Pubescent" (Disputations, July 18, 2007). If you haven't read it, I think you'll find it interesting. The piece is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author:

In a commencement speech at Emory University a couple of years ago, Tom Brokaw spoke truly:

You have been hearing all of your life that this occasion is a big step into what is called the real world. "What," you may ask, "is that real world all about?" "What is this new life?" Ladies and gentlemen of the class of 2005 at Emory, real life is not college; real life is not high school. Here is a secret that no one has told you: Real life is junior high.

The world that you're about to enter is filled with junior high adolescent pettiness, pubescent rivalries, the insecurities of 13-year-olds, and the false bravado of 14-year-olds.

This is true, and it's maddening.

It's particularly frustrating that it's true of that part of real life lived by the Church Militant. Grace -- and not just an over-the-counter kind of buck-you-uppo grace, but the very Presence of God Himself within our persons -- is supposed to transform us into images of Christ. Yet in practice, contact with others -- which is to say, being confronted with the fact that we can't have everything our way right this instant -- transforms us into 13-year-olds.

Surely Christ's grace is stronger than our own petulance. But do we give witness to this by how we live and how we talk to each other?

It's a commonplace to say that on-line Catholic discussion sites are a scandal to the Church. Bitter hatred expressed in the most vile terms is only a few links away from most every non-self-contained Catholic website.

Most days, though, it's not the hatred that gets to me, but the sheer childishness of it. Someone disagrees with you? Someone's so ignorant you can hardly stand to have him around. Someone is a little too pleased with himself? Someone must be taken down a notch. Someone tries to take you down a notch? Someone's just asking for it.

A person can rise to a challenge, or he can sink to it. Living in a junior high world means most of us are predisposed to sink, and once a conversation begins to sink it's almost impossible to turn it around.

It's also decidedly unsatisfying to rise above adolescent baiting. What if no one notices how mature you're being? What if they think you're not responding, not because you've put away childish things, but because you just got served? We can't have these... these adolescents think they're getting away with something merely by being juvenile.

But worrying about what adolescents are getting away with is the job of their parents and teachers. If you're not someone's parent or teacher, then there may well be times when your being a grown up means they'll get away with something. That's no fun, but if being a grown-up were fun, we wouldn't be living in a junior high world.

In his speech, Tom Brokaw went on to give this advice, which I think is pretty good:

In your pursuit of your passions, always be young. In your relationship with others, always be grown-up. Set a standard, and stay faithful to it.

In real life, when grown-ups have grown up conversations, adolescents either leave as quickly as possible or stay and try to act like grown-ups. I bet it works the same way in the life of the Church.

Of related interest: David L. Alexander, "When Johnny Can't Reason" (Man with black hat, July 23, 2007)

[Hat tip to J.M.]

They joy of education today . . .

Here is the exhilarating yield from an examination I gave this summer in a senior-level course in religious studies:

• Who was the Roman emperor who ended imperial persecution of Christians by converting to Christianity? Answer: Henry IV.
  
  
• Who viewed Christ as a human creature, neither eternal nor uncreated like God the Father, prompting the framing of the Nicene Creed? Answer: Anglicans.
  
  
• What was the location of the synod that published a list of the canonical Christian Scriptures? Answer: Ontological argument.
  
  
• What was the earliest Christological heresy, to which the Apostles Creed contained a response? Answer: Extreme unction.
  
  
• What was the name of the Reformation movement that re-baptized those who had been baptized as infants because they insisted on an adult "believer's church"? Answer: Carthage.
  
  
• Who was the 16th century Swiss reformer who made Geneva a theocratic center for training protestant reformers? Answer: St. Augustine.
  
  
• Who stood barefoot in the snow for three days before obtaining absolution from the pope at Canossa? Answer: Gregory I.
  
  
• What name is generally given to arguments for God's existence from the idea of a first cause? Answer: Pantheism.
  
  
• The Wesley brothers founded the Methodist movement as a reform movement within the branch of the Reformation called ... Answer: Gnosticism.
  
  
• The traditional Catholic sacrament reserved for the sick and dying is called ... Answer: Special revelation.
  
  
• Under which pope was the papacy understood as the "servant of the servants of God"? Answer: Constantine.
  
  
• Explain the nature of the arguments from general revelation (natural theology) for the existence of God. Offer two examples. Answer: General revelation is being able to believe in something. Putting your faith into something besides yourself. Even if you don't believe in God you still believe in something.
  
  
• Name a Protestant Reformer and identify one of his distinctive teachings. Answer: St. Augustine made Geneva a theocratic center for training many protestant reformers.
  
  
• Describe how one of the twelve Apostles died. Answer: Judis [sic.] hung [sic.] himself.
  
  
• What is Gnosticism? Explain. Answer: Reform of Methodism. Branching off and opening the mind to a new beliefe [sic.] that was not sterotypical [sic.].
  
  
• Distinguish between general and special revelation. Answer: General revelation is that which all have a bliefe [sic.] and faith in. Special revelation is that which those believe and have faith in God.
  
  
• Distinguish between mortal and venial sin. Answer: Mortal sin [is] knowing right from wrong. Venial sin [is] knowing what is wrong but not caring.
  
  
• What are the three basic divisions of the Old Testament? Answer: (1) Creation, (2) exile, (3) sin.
  
  
• Enumerate the four basic divisions of the New Testament: Answer: (1) Birth of Jesus, (2) Reserection [sic.], (3) Hope of an after life with God, (4) Crusitication [sic.] of Jesus.
  
  
• Analyze the logic of the 'ontological' argument for the existence of God. Answer: The 'ontological' argument for the existence of God would be that since there is a universe and it must keep going and things happen good and bad there has to be a higher power than just us.
  
  
• Name the seven sacraments distinguished by the Church from medieval times. Answer: (1) Baptism, (2) confession, (3) confirmation, (4) Lord's supper, (5) oil (anointment) [sic.], [and wait ... it just keeps getting better] (6) Carthage, and (7) Special revelation.

All of this, mind you, from a single, well-heeled student from a good family, regarded as having every prospect of success in life. Incidentally, this course is costing the student around one thousand dollars in tuition at this institution, whose tuition now ranks seventh highest in the state after the likes of Duke University, Wake Forest University, and Davidson College. O Domine, miserere nobis.

A little detective story ...

A little detective story involving three elderly ladies, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and a baseball game.

Query

Are any of you acquainted with the website, PewSitter.com -- "Voice of the Catholic Lay Faithful"? I've been receiving emails to publicize it. I haven't had the time to examine it carefully, but it sort of resembles what might be called a Catholic Drudge Report. Anyone know this site?

The fate of the inner city parish

by Ralph Roister-Doister
Like many dioceses across the country, and especially in the northeast, my diocese, the diocese of Buffalo, is undergoing a severe contraction. Churches and schools have already been closed or "consolidated". No one knows as yet what the final figure will be, but fifty is a reasonable guess, and may indeed prove to be a conservative one. A disproportionate number of these parishes will be in the city. The suburbs will be virtually unscathed. Why? Because that’s where the people are, and that’s where the money is. To many, this is the sensible, "businesslike" way of doing things, and ought to be accepted by Buffalo Catholics, chronic losers that they are, with benumbed stoicism. After all, sensible suburbanites reason, if these people had had any sense, they would have scurried to the suburbs decades ago, like we did.

A marketing genius in the diocesan bureaucracy dubbed this "business decision" , with doubtful inspiration, "A Journey in Faith and Grace". But for the handful of "loser" – largely Polish -- Catholics left in the city, the three-year agony and ecstasy of bargaining and bean-counting has been painful and dispiriting, doubly so because it is viewed by many as a sham process, in which the outcome was never in doubt. With the closing of these east side and central city parishes, the last vestiges of their Polish-American heritage will be gone. The streets of their blighted districts will be given over completely to scuzzy pizza parlors, rent-to-own clip joints, bodegas run by Koreans and Arabs (where elderly Polish ladies pay three times as much for a can of chicken noodle soup as their sons and daughters in the suburbs), bars where blacks stab and shoot other blacks, and anyone who happens to be in the way, and abandoned buildings by the score, where squatters sell each other drugs, and assault, rape and steal from one another to pay for them. And on everything, everywhere you look, tags, tags, tags.

Recently, the "journey" took a particularly stupid and ugly turn. The Buffalo City Council decided to add its two-cents worth. This aggregation of (in my humble opinion) thieves, prostitutes, and scum-on-the-make, felt the time was right to express their heartfelt concern over the effect that the closings of these churches might have in the districts that, under their stewardship, have degenerated to their present blighted state. The piece-de-resistance came from an ineffectual mama’s boy of a councilman by the name of David Franczyk, who opined that the diocese of Buffalo, in closing these predominantly Polish parishes, exuded to his sensitive, patrician nostrils, "the whiff of ethnic cleansing." Franczyk, a Catholic democrat in the Brian Higgins mold, got what he was after: instant notoriety. He granted interviews to every local radio talk show host who asked, and all of the local news programs prominently displayed his soft, pudgy, Neil Cavuto-like face in good-as-gold sound bites. "It’s a form of homogenization," he obligingly explained. "It’s a protestantization of the church, too". Homogenization, protestantization, and ethnic cleansing. Pearls of idiocy, from the mouth of a craven -- as only Buffalo democrats can be craven -- politico.

Catholic establishment outrage was predictable. Catholic League president William Donohue threatened a lawsuit. Local commentators, echoing the smugness of suburban Catholics, professed wonderment that the diocese should be criticized for running itself like the business it is. Even Bp Kmiec, who has a wondrous gift for not noticing anything unpleasant or discomforting happening around him, bristled at Franczyk’s remarks. Franczyk kept firing, plainly tickled by all the attention his loutishness had garnered.

And, in the end, it was Franczyk who uttered the germ, the crumb, the speck, of truth: "they [the diocese] should be encouraging people to worship in these churches, rather than building in the far-flung suburbs."

Precisely right.

Many of the most inspiringly beautiful churches in the diocese are located in the city, and will close. It is truly a tragedy, and doubly so, because the surviving parishes – the parishes with the money -- are largely suburban cow palaces that should never have been built in the first place. One such church is just down the street from me. It is an oyster-shell shaped monstrosity, like a concert hall, built in the sixties. Sunday Mass communion processions are like Keystone Kops chase scenes, with EMHCs fanning out in all directions, and bewildered communicants stumbling after them. Awful. Even the traditionally-designed suburban churches are strangely barren – "protestantized", in Franczyk’s suddenly not-so-idiotic term. Their walls are bare, save for the periodic station of the cross faux carving, with stained glass windows that seem somehow generic and plain, next to no statuary, probably no communion rail, a tabernacle that may be located anywhere – I’ll stop now – you know the litany, I’m sure. One church has a small crucifix on the wall, and a large, bare, "protestant" cross suspended from the ceiling like something hanging in a famous aviators’ museum. It is all so depressingly sterile, a stroll through a museum exhibit of the vestiges of a dead civilization.

Such impoverishment led me to start going into the city for Sunday Mass several years ago. Buffalo is not a big city. It takes 15-30 minutes to get from my suburban cape cod to virtually any parish in the city. The churches are beautiful, the attitudes usually prayerful. Most of the time, no one grabs your hand rapturously, and best of all, the guitar stylings of Buffy, Muffy, Lance and Tyler, teenage performance artists of a spiritual turn, seem to be confined to the suburbs (except for one mission on the east side).

I can't tell you what a huge difference it makes to attend Mass in a large, ornate, traditionally designed church, full of statuary, side altars, and beautiful details etched, carved, and painted, in some cases over a century ago, by artisans who probably attended the church themselves. The sense of tradition and continuity is palpable, even in this day of the anti-traditional novus ordo. An extra twenty minutes on the road is a paltry expenditure for such an experience.

Buffalo has many such churches. The following is a short link to a photo collection of three of them. I have been to each, and can testify to the dimensions of what Buffalo Catholics stand to lose:

http://www.unavoce.org/buffalochurches.htm

For the record, St Ann’s is scheduled for closing. So far, Corpus Christi is not. Blessed Trinity is protected by virtue of the fact that it is an historical landmark. It gets state money – on the other hand, it hosts "ecumenical events", such as a concert, in the church itself, by the combined voices of the Buffalo Gay Men’s Chorus, and the Buffalo Unitarian-Universalist Chorus. What joyful noise the power of the purse may bring! Dozens of smaller, but no less beautiful churches, are also on the block.

So why are these churches being closed? Because attending Mass has become a matter of convenience, something that has to be fitted in to a schedule of more consequential things, like breakfast at Denny's and the NFL. Mass is not an end in itself. And Bp Kmiec, like dozens of his colleagues, has chosen to take Deep Throat’s advice and follow the money. If the people with money want fast food, McDonald’s and Burger King will give them inferior food fast. If the people with the money want Sunday Mass fast, the diocese will give them nearby churches, short, contentless sermons, battalions of EMHCs to expedite the flow of communion lines, and will even hold the door for them as they scuttle out to their cars with the Host still dry in their mouths. Can valet parking be far behind? I scent the birth pangs of a new ministry!

In one sense, it is hard to blame Bp Kmiec for most of this, even though his managerial stolidity invites it. The hard facts of available priests and available funds cannot be denied, and decisions about them are no less hard. But the managers are making the wrong decisions, IMO. Instead of following the money, they ought to exhort their flock to treasure their diocese’ most beautiful churches. Instead of settling for the basic "protestantized" meeting place, or modernistic art house, they ought to force the flock to nurture their faith in surroundings actually conducive to that end – surroundings lovingly built by their forebears, who knew nothing of EMHCs and the St Louis Jesuits. If anything has to be razed or peddled to Wal-Mart, let it be the worst of the suburban cow palaces, which have contributed so much to the impoverishment of our experience of the Mass.

Topical PS: On January 14, 2006, an article was published in the Buffalo News documenting the request of Catholics led by the local chapter of Una Voce for a traditionalist parish:

http://www.unavoce.org/news/2006/Buffalo.htm

According to the article, "Una Voce Buffalo wants to add a priest from outside the diocese, trained in celebrating the traditional Mass, to serve as pastor. Group members say they'll take just about any church the diocese offers, although they would prefer one with Old World architecture". Una Voce even had a particularly distinguished candidate in mind: "Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro Carambula, a native of Uruguay who serves as director of the Rome office of Human Life International, a worldwide pro-life advocacy organization based in Virginia."

Barreiro Carambula confirmed to the News that he was interested in the assignment:

"For years, I have done a work that hopefully I cannot be reproached for, but at the same time it has been mostly intellectual and administrative, so as my life enters into its declining years, I would want to offer to the Lord some real priestly work".

Eighteen months, fifty-odd closing parishes, and one motu proprio later, the Buffalo diocese’ intrepid shepherd of souls has yet to respond.

Dale Price is Priceless

Speaking of Catholic-Protestant differences in outlook, Dale Price has a priceless discussion of the nearly antithetically different perceptions of Catholics and Protestants on the Virgin Mary -- utterly hilarious as well as trenchant: "The woman who is not there" (Dyspeptic Mutterings, May 17, 2007).

[Hat tip to K.K.]

Cardinal Walter Kasper: Helping or Hindering the CDF?

Christopher has posted an article, "Cardinal Walter Kasper: Helping or Hindering the CDF?" (Against the Grain, July 14, 2007). He invites comments, criticism, agreement or disagreement with his conclusion. He says he was reading section #22 of Unitatis redintegratio, and the 'tone' of the passage leaped out at him -- not at all "let's celebrate the positive elements of Protestantism and the 'protestant eucharist'" but a not-so-subtle call for full communion with the Church. He asks whether it's just him (Christopher) or whether others see Kasper as minimizing this in his presentation of the CDF's document? (Well, he notes, at least Kasper didn't give any interviews to papers expressing how "offended" he was this time around, as he did in 2000).

Reformational Philosophy

The Dutch Reformed tradition in philosophy -- often called "Reformational Philosophy" (not to be confused with the "Reformed Epistemology" of Alvin Plantinga, et al., which is an independent development in the Dutch Reformed tradition of Anglo-American analytic philosophy -- has produced a wealth of societies and journals and theorists stemming from Calvinistic tradition of Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck and the seminal philosophical work of Herman Dooyeweerd (pictured left) and D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (pictured right) at the Free University of Amsterdam in the last century. Philosophical societies include the Stichting voor Reformatorische Wijsbegeerte (Society for Reformational Philosophy) and the professional journal, Philosophia Reformata. Other related sites include that of The Dooyeweerd Center for Christian Philosophy (Redeemer College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada), Studies relating to Hermann Dooyeweerd (J. Glenn Friesen, Calgary, Alberta, Canada), Herman Dooyeweerd (Steve Bishop, Bristol, UK), The Dooyeweerd Pages (Andrew Basden, Salford, UK), Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) (Philip Blosser, Lenoir-Rhyne College, Hickory, NC), and numerous other links. Of recent interest is the launching of a new electronic periodical, Aspects of Reformational Philosophy, Vol. 1 (2007), No. 1. Philosophers from a Catholic background may be interested in the work on Dooyeweerd by the Jesuit, Fr. J. Marlet, Grundlinien der Kalvinistischen "Philosophie der Gesetzesidee" als Christlicher Transzendentalphilosophie (Munchen: Karl Zink, 1954), which has interesting chapters comparing Dooyeweerd with St. Thomas Aquinas.

A number of sites promote the published work of the premiere Dutch Reformed philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd. Among these one finds, for example, Steve Bishop's New Critique site, self-described as "A Guide to Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought." This site offers introductory summaries not only of Herman Dooyeweerd's major philosophical work, the four-volume New Critique of Theoretical Thought (2nd ed., 1997)

• Vol 1: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy
• Vol. 2: The Structures of Individuality of Temporal Reality
• Vol. 3: The General Theory of the Modal Spheres
• Vol. 4: Index of Subjects and Authors.

Bishop's "Guide" also offers an introduction to and study guide for Dooyeweerd's In the Twilight of Western Thought, a series of lectures Dooyeweerd gave at Princeton in the 1960s. A survey of Amazon links to the works of Dooyeweerd reveals that English-language translators of his works (originally in Dutch) have been busy over the last decades:

• The Christian Idea of the State, tr. John Kraay (1968)
• Christian Philosophy and the Meaning of History (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. Series B, Vol 1) (1997)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Introduction (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Historical (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Systematic (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Encyclopedia of Legal Science: Systemic (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Essays in Legal, Social, and Political Philosophy (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd. Series B, Vol 2) (2001)
• In the Struggle for a Christian Politics (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Political Philosophy (Dooyeweerd, H. Selections. Ser. D, V. 1.) (2004)
• Reformation & Scholasticism in Philosophy (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd) (2007)
• Roots of Western Culture: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options (Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd Series B, Vol 3) (2003)
• Christian Theory of Social Institutions (Dooyeweerd, H. Works. V. 1.) (1986, currently unavailable)
• In the Twilight of Western Thought (1999)

Although there is not much in English by D.H.Th. Vollenhoven, Dooyeweerd's brother-in-law, one can find the following:

• Introduction to Philosophy, ed. John H. Kok and Anthony Tol (2005)
• The Idea of a Christian Philosophy, Essays in Honour of D.H.Th. Vollenhoven (includes selected and annotated bibliography of Vollenhoven by K.A. Bril) (1973)
• Vollenhoven's Problem-historical Method: Introduction and Explorations, by Kornelis A. Bril, ed. by John H. Kok (2005)

Any intellectual wading more than ankle-deep into the work of these Reformational Philosophers soon realizes that he would be a fool to ignore the wealth of theoretical insights yielded by them over the last century. Dooyeweerd is probably among the two or three greatest Christian philosophers of the twentieth century from any tradition, period. I say this as a Catholic with more than a passing acquaintance with the work of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, Gabriel Marcel, John Courtney Murray, Bernard Longergan, and Alasdair MacIntyre, not to mention Karol Wojtyla. This is a philosophical tradition, in my opinion, with which every serious thinker ought to be acquainted and conversant.

The Pope, the Mass, and Tradition

• "Pope Benedict uses older ritual for his private Mass" (Catholic World News, July 16, 2007):

  Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news), who recently issued a motu proprio allowing all Catholic priests to celebrate the old Latin Mass, uses the older ritual himself for his private Mass, CWN has learned.
  
  Informed sources at the Vatican have confirmed reports that the Holy Father regularly celebrates Mass using the 1962 Roman Missal.
  
  Update:Please note the retraction of this claim based on further information.

• Sandro Magister, "Liturgy and Ecumenism: How to Apply Vatican Council II" (www.chiesa, July 17, 2007):

  For Benedict XVI, there must not be rupture between the Church’s past and present, but rather continuity. He has given proof of this with his latest decisions – receiving less criticism than foreseen, and much more agreement. The comments of Ruini, Amato, De Marco.

• "Critical Mass: Life After 'Te Deum'" (Man with black hat, July 16, 2007)
• "[International] Summorum Pontificum Contact Database" (LumenGentleman Catholic Studies)
• Thomas E. Woods, "Benedict and the Great Liberation" (LewRockwell.com):

  For several decades, not only the Catholic left but also the "orthodox" Catholic right condemned supporters of the 1962 Missal as disobedient, wicked, schismatic – you name it – because they believed that what was beautiful and venerable yesterday could not cease to be beautiful and venerable today. They likewise found it hard to believe that they were considered a little bit crazy, perhaps even in need of counseling, because they longed for the traditional Mass, the very thing they had been taught their whole lives to venerate. They rightly refused to believe that being Catholic meant living in a scenario straight out of Orwell or Kafka.

• "Remembering Klaus Gamber" (Rorate Caeli, July 6, 2007)
• "Remembering Tito Casini -
  'The Mass will rise again!'" (Rorate Caeli, July 2, 2007)
• "Justice" (Rorate Caeli, July 12, 2007):

  The beautiful words of that great French hero of the Traditional Mass, Jean Madiran, who has lived to see the miracle, remembering the names of some who died in the battlefield ...

• "Fellay speaks" (Rorate Caeli, July12, 2007)
• "Laguérie speaks" (Rorate Caeli, July 15, 2007) [The Superior of the Institut du Bon Pasteur (Institute of the Good Shepherd-IBP)]

Students texting professors

The following is a student's email message to a professor -- sent, I presume, by means of text messaging from a mobile phone:

Hello Prof,

da # 3 xtra credit which you hav 2 read bout da delany sister is it two pages n double spaced?

tnx,
Student

Of course, those of us in academe love teaching because of the respect we get from our students. You know it.