Catholic relief services gave $13M to pro-abort group

Patrick B. Craine, "Catholic Relief Services gave over $13 million to pro-abortion group in 2012" (LifesiteNews, July 10, 2013):

BALTIMORE, July 10, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As the U.S. Bishops’ development agency was taking heat last summer for handing out over $5 million to the abortion-supporting group CARE, they were in the midst of giving a total of $13.8 million in grants to the same pro-abortion group during 2012, according to its recently-published IRS filings.

[Hat tip to New Oxford Review]

Pope cracks down

... criminalizes leaks, sex abuse, in first laws ... (July 11, 2013).

Where's the Devil's Advocate on the proposed canonizations?

Of course the "Devil's Advocate" was done away with in the reforms of the last century, and it seems that the traditional number of required miracles is being done away with as well.

The world loved both of the two Blessed's -- John XXIII and John Paul II. They were the beloved superstars of the conciliar and post-conciliar period. Like many, I shook hands with the latter and was pretty giddy about the event.

Honesty and fair-mindedness, however, requires that we listen to the voices of those who tell us they have reason to be scandalized by the prospective canonizations, those reasons that would traditionally have found expression in the voice of the "Devil's Advocate," intended to keep the process honest.

Here's a brief summary of the kinds of objections raised: "Saints aren't perfect" (Unam Sanctam Catholicam, July 7, 2013).

Related: History of the Devil's Advocate (Unam Sanctam Catholicam, 2013 Article)

[Hat tip to IANS]

The good press on Catholics

The late, great Deacon Hugo May, who was became good friend of mine after I was received into the Church, and who baptized our daughter eight years ago, used to say that the Catholic Church is a precious jewel passed from one dirty hand to another down through the years.

He had, of course, a point. It's easy to see only the dirty hands, but one must also remember the precious jewel. That is, at least, half of his point:


The other half of the point, of course, is that we must not so romanticize the jewel that we fail to see the dirt on the hands, and the fact that the dirty hands are also, at times, our own.

Only Christianity avoids these two dangers -- (1) the danger of an idealism that so romanticizes the aspirations of human nature that it loses sight of our aberrations, and (2) the danger of a realism that is honest about the aberrations of human nature, but at the cost of denying our aspirations.

We have two core doctrines that speak to both sides of this dilemma -- (a) the doctrine of creation, which tells us that we were made in the image and likeness of God, for glory and greatness, and (b) the doctrine of original sin, which tells us that we have fallen, through our own grievous fault, into Gollum-like selfishness, smallness, malice, cruelty and sin. Only a religion that does justice to both our aspirations and our aberrations can be true. The Church, a precious jewel passed from one dirty hand to another down through the years.

Related: Thomas E. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization(Regnery, rpt., 20012).

CDF Prefect wants to break all contact with the SSPX?

From Rorate Caeli (July 7, 2013):

German weekly FOCUS reports this Sunday that Archbishop Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wants to break contact with the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX). A statement to that effect is about to be published, according to a source of FOCUS within the CDF.

The reason for ending contacts with the SSPX is the recent declaration of the three SSPX Bishops, in which they not only criticize the texts of Vatican II, but also the Magisterium, "a magisterium resolved to reconcile Catholic doctrine with liberal ideas". Furthermore, they state that the church is "imbued with this liberal spirit which manifests itself especially in religious liberty, ecumenism, collegiality and the New Mass."

According to FOCUS's source, the reaction of Archbishop Müller was: "That's it!" ("Jetzt reicht's!", i.e., "enough!")

(Tip: Reader; First source: Focus; Second source: Pius.info)

Rorate note: what exactly happened one year ago, anyway? What caused the unbelievable turn between April and June 2012? We will try to explain it in a specific post on the matter [See previous post below].

Côme de Prévigny: what exactly happened between the SSPX and Vatican?

Côme de Prévigny, "One Year Later," via "Setting things straight about the SSPX-Vatican talks: What exactly happened in April-June 2012? A guest article by Côme de Prévigny" (Rorate Caeli, July 7, 2013), with this introduction:

A narrative has dominated the news on the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) in the past year: those difficult priests did not accept the extended hand of Pope Benedict XVI; hard-hearted people with stubborn demands, they missed the chance of a lifetime. As in the narrative created by news-creators such as John Allen Jr:

Short of standing outside their headquarters in Econe, Switzerland, in the snow and begging forgiveness like Henry IV at Canossa, Benedict XVI did everything possible to heal the split, and yet the society balked. In an Easter letter to friends and benefactors, Bishop Bernard Fellay asserted that Rome has imposed acceptance of the Second Vatican Council as a sine qua non -- a prerequisite, Fellay wrote, "to which we could not and still cannot subscribe."

Many observers believe it's now "game over," at least for the foreseeable future and barring some surprising concession on the Lefebvrist side.

... Our readers know we have covered more extensively this matter than practically any other online source - even moments ago, on a matter reported on Sunday by the German press.

In April 2012, a probable regularization certainly seemed to be the case, and who can forget the (leaked) letter of SSPX Superior-General Bp. Bernard Fellay to his fellow bishops? On June 13, 2012, what seemed to be a meeting that would set the path for such reconciliation, following the acceptance by the Vatican of the negotiated Doctrinal Preamble, ended in flames as Bp. Fellay and his assistant met a Vatican side that suddenly came up with new demands - more stringent even than those contained in the May 5, 1988 Protocol. Why would the side that always has the upper hand in any Catholic discussion - that is, Rome - do this, that is, raise new stakes near the end if not from an interest to derail any agreement? Who in the Vatican forced the Supreme Authority's hand at the eleventh hour? Why?

We now know that, in the middle of Vatileaks (which were also made public at around the same time), the Pope's position gradually became untenable. We know that because of what would happen on February 11, 2013. We know now that his isolation, always present throughout the Pontificate, had become critical since the explosion of Vatileaks in the heart of the Pontifical Apartments - that Francis (rightly, it seems, considering what happened with his predecessor) has refused as his living quarters. And we can presume that the pressures on the Pope reached unbearable levels. Truly unbearable.

We asked our friend Côme de Prévigny to present a brief history of those decisive months: something happened in the Vatican between April and June 2012 that created the need for unprecedented demands, more stringent even than the contents of the 1988 Protocol; the "stubborn SSPX" narrative, regarding what took place in June 2012, is simply unsustainable.

Côme de Prévigny, "One Year Later" (scroll down at linked site)

Henri!!!

We received this from our underground correspondent we keep on retainer in an eastern seaboard city which knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir, Private Eye:

This from the com box at Rorarte C caught my eye and made me chuckle. I imagine DeLubac was probably very much Ratzingerian-like, without the last few decades to furhter shape him:

Johannes de Silentio said...

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us.... And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them. It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less.”

- Henri de Lubac

See, de Lubac does come in handy every so often!

[Hat tip to JM]

When "Guitar Masses" became a chew toy

Bonnie Tyler, Call Your Office...
A very good discussion with many quotable quotes:

... "Where power ballads go, praise bands follow" ...

... "Yet smart pastors no longer shepherd their flocks in terms of equations like 'memorable sermon + rocking band = full collection plate'" ...

Patrick O'Hannigan, "Can Litugical Music Be Saved? - Reassessing the quarrel between the power ballad and the hymn" (The American Spectator, June 17, 2013):

Remember the power ballad? It was a subgenre of rock music pioneered by Boston in 1976 and Styx a year later. From near-symphonic beginnings in “More Than a Feeling” and “Come Sail Away,” the power ballad elbowed its way to prominence in the early Eighties.

Tom Scholz of Boston and Dennis DeYoung of Styx welded songwriting craftsmanship to imaginative orchestration and “wall of sound” microphone placements, mixing electric and acoustic guitars in tunes that did more than build to crescendos. Artists like Bonnie Tyler and REO Speedwagon then parlayed their own examples of the form into successful recording careers.

Power ballad pioneers play now in places like state fairs. But when the power ballad fell out of fashion, it found a home among the “praise bands” of “Christian Rock.” Where power ballads go, praise bands follow. That unabashedly Christian lyrics can be heard on FM radio is a good thing, but that power ballads also enabled praise bands to displace so many church choirs ought to give us pause. Power ballads are not hymns. That is precisely the problem with singing them during church services, even — perhaps especially— services aimed at younger people.

Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

Is Christ bored with "Europe"?

David Warren, "An alteration of course?" (Essays in Idleness, March 15, 2013)

My sense of things, when Pope Benedict resigned, is my sense now: that we have rounded the cape, that we are in a new ocean. There is a new man at the helm of our barque: the first to have become a priest after Vatican II, the first Jesuit, the first from the New World, &c. That his “style” is a radical break from the last is already apparent. His choice of the name “Francis,” unused by popes over all these centuries, was our first indication. It is as if the polarities were reversed at Rome, & the strange dishevelled saint of Assisi, who was absolutely loyal to the resplendent papacy, now receives the fealty of the robes. I am convinced there is a Hand on the hand of our tiller.

There will, perhaps, be other popes from Europe, but Benedict XVI may still come to be remembered as the “last European pope,” & his resignation to be pregnant with that spiritual message. Here I am not using the term “Europe” geographically; nor would I dream of dismissing the popes who came before, now a heritage to all ages. It is to Europe as the Christian culture I am referring....

Here is a son of Piedmont: removed somehow to Buenos Aires, “to the ends of the Earth.” Tied to Italy by one last thread, he still speaks some words in the old Occitan. The thread is inseverable; but a time will come when we can no longer trace it along its full length....

The seed is now planted abroad; Christ has moved on from where He is not wanted....

There are moments when, even as an old European, I think we should blow up the cathedrals, rather than let them fall into enemy hands.... But no, let future generations see their beauty, even in their ruin. Let them know that Europe was not always a dance of death in the pigsty of consumerism; that we once put our wealth & all our art at the feet of our Saviour.

A great majority of Catholics now live outside Europe, & the Rome of the Vatican is once more being transformed into the capital of a different kind of “empire.” The faces of the cardinals streaming out of the conclave were still in their majority white, but this may only be the case for another generation....

These are things that go beyond the election of Pope Francis, but to which his election now points. He is an old man, with sciatica, on one lung; we cannot expect to have him with us for long. We can, however, believe that God has entrusted him with a mission, upon which he is acting with the energy of a youth. We can expect that some of it will be incomprehensible to us, in a way perhaps as Francis of Assisi was incomprehensible at first to so many of his contemporaries, who saw in him very worrying departures from conventional religious custom, & did not yet see that he was heroically loyal to the Church; that he honoured the Magisterium, & had come not to destroy but to renew.

Christ, I believe, is bored with Europe, bored with our wealth, bored with our sleaziness, bored with our narcissism, sick through the nostrils with our Paris perfume. He will never, however, be bored with our hunger for the Bread of Life. We must rise & be on our way: Europe has died, & Christ liveth.

[Hat tip to JM]

"Official: Pope Francis will canonize John XXIII and John Paul II"

From today's Bollettino via Rorate Caeli (July 5, 2013) ... "The first Pontiffs to be canonized since Saint Pius X, in 1954." Rorate asks: "Is there a Pope that links all three? Yes, the one who beatified and canonized Sarto, who made Roncalli a cardinal and who named Wojtyła bishop. Pope Pacelli's cause is gathering dust somewhere."

Meanwhile, Fr. Z weighs in with "Wherein Fr. Z explains what is really going on with the canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II" (WDTPRS, July 5, 2013:

The decision to canonize Blesseds John XXIII and John Paul II at the same time, at the time when we are observing the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, is a kind of “canonization” of the Second Vatican Council....

The canonizations have even more to do identifying the proper lens or hermeneutic by which we are to interpret the Council: the pontificate and the magisterium of St. Pope John Paul II.

This move is intended to identify John Paul II as our helper in interpreting difficult and controversial aspects of the Council.

... John Paul, in his magisterium, commented at some point on virtually every controversial or disputed point in the Council documents and on the event of the Council itself. He may not have solved, settled, definitively pronounced, on every controversial issue, but he offers commentary and insight on them.

New Encyclical: Lumen Fidei

The encyclical carries the name of Pope Francis, who acknowledges in it that actually it was substantially the work of Benedict XVI, nearly completed in its first draft before his resignation to supplement what he (Benedict) had said about charity and hope. Francis gratefully acknowledges the work of Benedict, adding that he (Francis) took up this work and added "a few contributions of my own."



ENCYCLICAL LETTER
LUMEN FIDEI [The Light of Faith]
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS
TO THE BISHOPS
PRIESTS AND DEACONS
CONSECRATED MEN AND WOMEN
AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON FAITH

[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]

Happy Dependence Day

No, that isn't a typo. I was going to post the picture below and wish everyone a "Happy Independence Day!" But then I remembered something ...


I remember the feeling I had whenever I travelled abroad and returned home to the United States in decades past. I remember in particular, one trip to Europe to present a paper at the University of Jena in what used to be East Germany. After the conference, I took the train up through Germany and Scandinavia to Stockholm, where I caught a boat to Turku, Finland, and visited friends in Helsinki.

After this long trip, I returned home to the United States, flying into JFK in New York. Going through customs took some time. The last officer I met was an African American man who stamped my passport, flashed me a smile, and said, "Welcome home!" I'll never forget the feeling, a happy feeling of solidarity and security in being home in the United States again. This, despite the fact that the first twenty years of my life were lived outside the United States.

Then I remembered listening to Teresa Tomio on the Catholic radio station during my morning drive the other day, and something she said stuck with me. She said that on recent trips abroad, she noticed how different she felt when returning to the United States -- a certain "heaviness" and unshakable burden of concern that she often felt upon her arrival back in the United States.

Many of us, I think, know all-too-well what she means, sad-to-say. This is no longer the country that our parents knew when they were growing up, or even the country we knew when we were growing up -- before Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) Roe v. Wade (1973), or Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), or the recent Supreme Court Ruling striking down DOMA (2013).

It was, in retrospect, a time of comparative innocence, a time of relative simplicity, in many respects. Now we have Obamacare, same-sex "marriages," and a government few people trust. What there seems little doubt about, however, is that the majority of people are now ready to turn John F. Kennedy's dictum on its head and say: "Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you." We have become a nation of takers.

So, perhaps it seems a bit cynical (and maybe it is); but Happy Dependence Day! (... Or not so happy, as the case may be ...)

Obama’s tapped-out trust

George F. Will, "Obama's tapped-out trust" (Washington Post, May 16, 2013):

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this past week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government’s large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question “Will Barack Obama’s scandals derail his second-term agenda?” was a question: What agenda?

The scandals are interlocking and overlapping in ways that drain his authority. Everything he advocates requires Americans to lavish on government something that his administration, and big government generally, undermines: trust.

Liberalism’s agenda has been constant since long before liberals, having given their name a bad name, stopped calling themselves liberals and resumed calling themselves progressives, which they will call themselves until they finish giving that name a bad name. The agenda always is: Concentrate more power in Washington, more Washington power in the executive branch and more executive power in agencies run by experts. Then trust the experts to be disinterested and prudent with their myriad intrusions into, and minute regulations of, Americans’ lives. Obama’s presidency may yet be, on balance, a net plus for the public good if it shatters Americans’ trust in the regulatory state’s motives.

Now, regarding Obama’s second-term agenda. His reelection theme — reelect me because I am not Mitt Romney — yielded a meager mandate, and he used tactics that are now draining the legitimacy that an election is supposed to confer.

One tactic was to misrepresent the Benghazi attack, lest it undermine his narrative about taming terrorism. Does anyone think the administration’s purpose in manufacturing 12 iterations of the talking points was to make them more accurate?

Another tactic was using the “federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” The words are from a 1971 memo by the then-White House counsel, John Dean, whose spirit still resides where he worked before going to prison. Congress may contain some Democrats who owed their 2012 election to the IRS’s suppression of conservative political advocacy.

Obama’s supposed “trifecta” of scandals — Benghazi, the IRS and the seizure of Associated Press phone records — neglects some. A fourth scandal is power being wielded by executive branch officials (at the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) illegally installed in office by presidential recess appointments made when the Senate was not in recess.

The secret that died with Andrew Greeley

Matt C. Abbott (Renew America, June 30, 2013), via JM:

Father Andrew Greeley has died at the age of 85.

I've mentioned him a number of times in this column over the last several years. I was no fan of his, to say the least. He even sent me a cryptic email a while back.

Out of Christian charity, we should pray for his soul. But I do want to remind readers of the following excerpts in Father Greeley's non-fiction book Furthermore! Memories of a Parish Priest – something he never (to my knowledge) revealed while living:

80 Windmills

There are some exceptions of course, including Chicago. But even in Chicago, the ring of predators about whom I wrote in the paper-back edition of Confessions remains untouched. There is no evidence against them because no one has complained about them and none of their fellow priests have denounced them.¹ Those who have been removed are for the most part lone offenders who lacked the skill to cover their tracks. The ring is much more clever. Perhaps they always will be. But should they slip, should they get caught, the previous scandals will seem trivial. Others like them still flourish all around the country.

1. They are a dangerous group. There is reason to believe that they are responsible for at least one murder and may perhaps have been involved in the murder of the murderer. Am I afraid of them? Not particularly. They know that I have in safekeeping information which would implicate them. I am more of a threat to them dead than alive. [back]

[Hat tip to JM]

Beheadings of Christian clergy by Syrian opposition supported by U.S.

Makes one wonder whether Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin doesn't have the better of the argument, doesn't it? I've thought so for a long time. My Chaldean students readily acknowledge that former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, was repressive, cruel and dictatorial; but they also point out that there was a great deal more stability as well as safeguarded civil rights for Christians in Iraq under Hussein, whereas they have mostly fled Iraq for their safety under the present "democratic" regime. Is Obama repeating the mistakes in Syria that G.W. Bush made in Iraq?



Clarification: It seems my title confused at least one individual. My intent is not to state that the beheadings are supported by the U.S., but that the Syrian opposition responsible for the beheadings are supported by the U.S.