Thursday, February 20, 2014

Murray / Neuhaus / Weigel vs Schindler / MacIntyre / Rowland

Christopher Blosser, "Recent Articles on Religion, Liberty, Catholicism, and Liberalism" (Against the Grain, February 13, 2014):
A Catholic Showdown Worth Watching, by Patrick J. Deneen. The American Conservative February 6, 2004. "The most interesting Roman split is over liberal democracy itself."
This and a lot, lot more on the debate between:
  • Illiberal Catholicism, by John Zmirack. Aleteia. 12/31/13. "Catholics used to be open to the lessons of freedom from the American experience. Are we forgetting those lessons?"
  • Unsustainable Liberalism, by Patrick J. Deneen. First Things
  • Murry's Mistake, by Michael Baxter. America 09/23/13. "The political divisions a theologian failed to foresee."
... all with a lot of links to articles and posts offering reactions and feedback. Read more >>

Related: "Editorial Note: After 'reactionary', 'illiberal'..." (Rorate Caeli, January 4, 2014).

13 comments:

New Catholic said...

I prefer our response :-)

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/01/editorial-note-after-reactionary.html

No, really, while we are still men living in historical time, when the concerns of mortality become clearer and more intimate, these debates are so astounding... There is so much in American political discourse that is epithelial, superficial, ephemeral. I even regret having given Zmirak more than ONE paragraph as response.

NC

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Mr. Baxter's opinions have been tried and found wanting in Culture Wars.

Over the past five or six years, Culture Wars had led the campaign to convince their Catholic Brethren (Bishops, Priests, Laity) that it is incumbent upon us as Catholics to strive to turn America into a Catholic Confessional State.

Mr. David Wemhoff has written quite convincingly in this vein and the exchanges over this with his opponent, Fr. Brian Harrison, in the letters section have really clarified the matter- at least for me.

I think Mr. Wemhoff is correct.

Sheldon said...

IANS/BAC,

My head is still spinning from your latest re-incarnation and change of positions.

I don't see anybody here in his right mind even thinking about trying to turn the post-pagan degenerate United States into a Catholic confessional state. It is astonishing that you would make such a claim.

On the other hand, your willingness to jump on the bandwagon of those opposed to traditional Catholic social teaching of the Kingship of Christ even in our public social life is astonishing.

Next thing I fully expect you to be advocating communion in the hand, a broadened use of extraordinary ministers, and more female altar servers.

New Catholic said...

Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to plug that piece...

It's just that it truly baffles me to see so much discussion on this point. The Church is not alien to Republican governments -why, the Venetian Republic had an at times stormy but generally good relationship with the Church of Rome for nearly a thousand years. But there were no attempts to create a Venetianist Political Catholic Theory, or to impose the constitutional characteristics of the Serene Republic on the Church at large, as if the Republic were eternal. This federal Republic isn't eternal either, let us stop pretending its liberal values are eternal values of the human spirit that the Church must somehow internalize, even in her doctrine and in her own Divine constitution.

NC

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Sheldon. Turning America into a Catholic Confessional Sate is the solitary way we born in this crummy masonic country can fulfill the Catholic Teaching on the Kingship of Christ.

Try subscribing to Culture Wars if you want to join the Catholic-minded and abandon the right-minded.

O, and if you are interested, I am thinking of offering official membership in the Society of Saint Christopher Standing
(SSCS) with the cost of memberships being one decade of a rosary said for my soul.

If'n'yer not an Eastern Rite Catholic and able to stand for Communion, y'all are being confined in the protestant penalty box at the old form of Mass (pews were a fairly modern protestantising of Catholic Architecture; iconoclasm by addition) and kneeling while we redeemed Christians in the new form of Mass stand tall with Saint Paul (and Saint Christopher) who only received Communion standing.

Come on, you know you want to join and stand tall with those of us who stand tall with Paul and Christopher who never knelt for Communion ( a very late in time novelty imposed on the faithful).

P.S. I now finally stand in solidarity with Cassius Clay whose name change was not respected; I am the greatest and who stood tall against the ropes and bravely absorbed the body blows of his opponent.

I am not Spartacus, I am Bornacatholic.

It's Friday, let's open the Cabernet !!!

Pertinacious Papist said...

New Catholic,

I understand and I agree. The linked post was from my son, whose political thinking as a Catholic began with the Neo-Conservatives like Novak, Neuhaus, etc., and has only more recently begun reading Schindler, MacIntyre, and Rowland. I consider the discussion worth airing, even if it involves backpedaling a bit into the heavily-embedded conservative American assumptions that remain heavily influenced by Lockean and Austro-Libertarian ideology. Peace, -- PP

Pertinacious Papist said...

Bornacatholic,

I can go for the Cabernet any day, though I remain a bit mystified by some of your other remarks.

Codgitator (Cadgertator) said...

Dear BAC,

Give it a rest with the kneeling shtick. As I have demonstrated, the mind of the Church is clear on the matter. Try thinking with Her instead of merely thinking Against All Things Trad. The irony, of course, is that in your quest to dismantle the Online Rad Trad Machine, you're just out-radding the rad-trads. As I also indicated in my post linked above, you are guilty of precisely the kind of atavism which Pius XII rejected in Mediator Dei. By your logic, the canon, to name only one among countless other developments, is an "innovation".

Sigh.

Hey, I am impressed by my foray in to Culture Wars but coming from you of late it sounds more like Cult Warp.

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Doc. If you are referring to a Catholic Confessional State, I thought you were jake with that.

As to The Society of Saint Christopher Standing, it is just a light-hearted (which Brother Codgitator misconstrues as light-headed) response to the Rise of the Online Trad Machine's Dogmatising the changeable elements within Catholic Ecclesiastical traditions; especially elements of the Mass; that is, while Holy Mother Church has moved-on from the Post-reformation epoch, the ROTOTM has not; owing to the baleful influence of a schismatic, it has concretised a past wrongly imagined to be pure.

There is a reason that a Transitional Missal of but two years (1962 RM) has become identified as the Mass of all time; it is because that is the Missal that Mons Lefebvre, finally, settled on (although his original seminarians at Econe confess he didn't really give a shit about Liturgy and they were told just to follow Lefebvre's whims when it came to celebrating Mass which, for him, was a mixture of things he liked and it excluded elements he didn't like.

While it is factually true that kneeling was a novel imposition by the competent authority that took a long time to take hold, it is also true that standing for Communion was the original (and arguably superior) ecclesiastical tradition (See Nicea's Canons forbidding kneeling).

O, and, of course, I accept that the Pope has the authority to modify and even eliminate elements within ecclesiastical tradition (Mediator Dei #58, Catholic Catechism # 83) whereas the ROTOTM opposes that teaching within Tradition.

O, and I am still thinking about issuing membership in the SSCS if anyone is interested.

Pertinacious Papist said...

Hey BAC,

Yeah, though I doubt it would fly today, I'm "jake" with the idea of a traditional Catholic confessional state and believe the only way of working toward it is through conversion of the body politic, which, short of a miracle, looks a long ways off -- especially since the majority of those conversions would have to take place in the most hardened hearts, the 10% of the national population which comprises lapsed papists who now hate the Church and are at the leading edge of the pro-abort, pro-same-sex-'marriage' Dem party constituency.

Your ROTOTM strikes me as a bit of a novelty, except insofar as anything "online" is by definition a bit of a historical novelty -- meaning that a lot of what falls under your "Trad Machine's Dogmatising" would likely come straight out of the hearts and minds and pens of men like Pope Pius (IX, X, XI, XII), Leo XIII, Ottaviani, Garrigou-Lagrange, etc.

As to your SOSCS, I agree that there's such a thing as organic development (as well as artificial rupture), the particulars of which we could debate, but the original posture for Holy Communion was not standing, as attested by Holy Scripture itself when it says that they reclined at table to eat, as was the Middle-Eastern custom.

As for the SSPX, it's probably true that traditional Catholics were blessed with Summorum Pontificum thanks to the SSPX and Pope Benedict's paternal solicitude in issuing that motu proprio. But for most of this constituency, I doubt it has much to do with Mons Lefebvre's particular "whims" this way or that, although he may have been a much better man than most of us who didn't know him (and know next to nothing about him except from a hostile press) may realize. [Disclaimer: "Da Rulz: Rules ## 7-9]

Pertinacious Papist said...

Hey BAC,

Yeah, though I doubt it would fly today, I'm "jake" with the idea of a traditional Catholic confessional state and believe the only way of working toward it is through conversion of the body politic, which, short of a miracle, looks a long ways off -- especially since the majority of those conversions would have to take place in the most hardened hearts, the 10% of the national population which comprises lapsed papists who now hate the Church and are at the leading edge of the pro-abort, pro-same-sex-'marriage' Dem party constituency.

Your ROTOTM strikes me as a bit of a novelty, except insofar as anything "online" is by definition a bit of a historical novelty -- meaning that a lot of what falls under your "Trad Machine's Dogmatising" would likely come straight out of the hearts and minds and pens of men like Pope Pius (IX, X, XI, XII), Leo XIII, Ottaviani, Garrigou-Lagrange, etc.

As to your SOSCS, I agree that there's such a thing as organic development (as well as artificial rupture), the particulars of which we could debate, but the original posture for Holy Communion was not standing, as attested by Holy Scripture itself when it says that they reclined at table to eat, as was the Middle-Eastern custom.

As for the SSPX, it's probably true that traditional Catholics were blessed with Summorum Pontificum thanks to the SSPX and Pope Benedict's paternal solicitude in issuing that motu proprio. But for most of this constituency, I doubt it has much to do with Mons Lefebvre's particular "whims" this way or that, although he may have been a much better man than most of us who didn't know him (and know next to nothing about him except from a hostile press) may realize. [Disclaimer: "Da Rulz: Rules ## 7-9]

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

Dear Doc. Much of what I write is light hearted and Tongue in Cheek. I prolly ought write a parenthetical (TIC) when I am drafting such a post.

Because writing is an art, I rarely write a post that I do not like (what painter intentionally produces art or what composer produces music that is ugly and boring?) or does not satisfy me more than my intended audience.

I have been having sport with the ROTOTM but I can see it is to captious to continue in here and so I will drop it while noting that the soi disant Traditionalists roar like lions when attacking the Pope, Council, and Mass but mewl like kittens when they are responded to in kind.

You are spot-on re Communion reclining (thus, Dr Hahn was wrong re Last Supper when he claimed it was a seder (order) because that was performed standing but I was just having sport re a putative Tradition; that is The SSCS (TIC) was just as I indicated at my crummy Blog when I wrote I was doing (Establishing the SCSS) this ...tongue-in-cheekily.

But, somehow that was studiously ignored because some reader's ox was gored.

As to what accounts for the thinness of skin and the haughtiness amongst far too many soi disant trads, well, there have been many attempts to unpack that psychological baggage and so I won't attempt to do it here.

I have become too much of a focus in here and my presence is detracting from your posts and excellent writing -when you do have time to write - and so I will bow-out now but not before thanking you for your patience and kindness that you have extended to me over the years.

When I found this Blog I quickly became a fan and admirer of yours and I remaining so right up until this very second and I can not imagine that ever changing in the future.

Good Bye and Pax tecum

Your friend, Bornacatholic

JFM said...

"He didn't really give a shit about Liturgy and they were told just to follow Lefebvre's whims when it came to celebrating Mass which, for him, was a mixture of things he liked and it excluded elements he didn't like."

YOU may be fed up with the liturgy wars, but then you would be the one who doesn't anymore give a shit, as you put it, from sheer exhaustion. Projecting your newfound disdain for theological exactitude on to Lefebvre is unpersuasive and not especially attractive. Another bourbon, maybe?