What French priests neglected to preach as the church in France collapsed

"A Crisis of the Four Last Things" (New Oxford Notes, July-August 2018)

NOR readers will be familiar with the stark reality that much of Europe is no longer Christian. That goes, too, for the eldest daughter of the Church, France, which boasts hundreds of renowned Gothic churches visited by the thousands each week, most not for purposes of religion. Think Notre Dame in Paris, or the cathedrals in Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, Strasbourg, and Beauvais. The list goes on and on. If only these churches were still honest representatives of a Catholic culture in France. If only that culture were as strong as the flying buttresses of its sacred houses. Alas, each of these cathedrals at this point in its history is little more than a monument to times past, a sepulcher for a once-flourishing religion and way of life. It is instructive to note that only 1.7 percent of Catholics regularly attend Mass in France — and according to Guillaume Cuchet, a professor at the University of Paris-Est Créteil who specializes in contemporary Church history, “regularly” isn’t even defined as meeting the Sunday obligation; it merely means “at least once a month.” Thousands of old French churches are no longer active places of worship; priests often have the care of 20 to 30 parishes and only celebrate regional Masses each week — and even those are attended by few. When Catholics die in France, chances are slim that a priest will be around to bury them.

There is certainly no shortage of hypotheses for the causes of the demise of the Church — the disappearance of Christians and the decline of the traditional Catholic way of life — in France. Popular fingers point to the old French Revolution, the newer sexual revolution, and the increasing influence of scientism, moral relativism, and other personal philosophies of life that have eclipsed the idea that piety, tradition, and doctrine provide a natural compass for faith and morals.

Recently, French Orthodox writer Jean-Claude Larchet reviewed Cuchet’s new book, How Our World Stopped Being Christian: Anatomy of a Collapse (OrthoChristian.com, May 29), a penetrating look at the spectacular decline of Catholicism in France. Some — though likely not most NOR readers — might be surprised at what Cuchet identifies as the root cause of this decline. Catholicism itself, says he, bears the heaviest responsibility in the de-Christianization of France. And yep, he specifically identifies the Second Vatican Council as the primary catalyst of it all. The Council, writes Larchet in his review, “proposed to face the challenges of the modern world,” and yet it “did nothing but adapt itself to the latter; thinking to bring the world to its side, it ended up giving in to the world, and despite wanting to be heard in the secular sphere, Catholicism has instead become secularized.” In other words, the Church in France (and elsewhere, of course) became impotent by its own hand.

Though this assertion is hardly groundbreaking, Cuchet gets into specifics that are worthy of serious consideration. This rupture in the Church, which he traces back to 1965, the year the Council closed, can be identified with the liturgical reforms, yes, but more precisely with the changing attitudes toward sin occasioned by both the Council and its liturgical reforms. In the area of piety, the abandonment of Latin and the change toward the reception of Communion in the hand played an important role, but Cuchet focuses more on the promulgation of a religious relativism that, if not written straight up in the documents of Vatican II, was the result of willful misinterpretation or misapplication of these summary documents. The Council’s documents seem to have been designed to allow for liberal interpretations, the kind that led to the secularization of Catholicism throughout France — a secularization that happened almost overnight. “A whole series of ‘truths’ suddenly fell into oblivion,” writes Larchet, “as if the clergy themselves had ceased to believe in them or did not know what to say about them after having spoken of them for so long as something essential.” More importantly, writes Cuchet in his book, “the Council paved the way for what might be called ‘a collective exit from the obligatory practice on pain of mortal sin.’”

Cuchet traces almost all the official and unofficial conciliar reforms to two fundamental crises: the crisis of the Sacrament of Penance and the crisis of not preaching on the Last Things. According to Cuchet, the massive abandonment in just a few years of the practice of confession had a profound impact on Catholic attitudes toward sin, and toward life in general. In 1952 51 percent of French Catholics went to confession at least the obligatory once per year. By 1983 that was down to just 14 percent. The concept of a personal conscience, misunderstood as it universally was, led to most Catholics rationalizing away the sins they had committed. Not only that, says Cuchet, the French clergy allowed them to do so. They abandoned the practice of confession (that is, hearing confessions frequently) just as had the so-called faithful.

Cuchet, in fact, lays most of the blame at the feet of the French clergy. They failed, he says, in their duty to preach about sin, to preach properly on the work of a well-formed conscience, and to preach about the importance of confession and penance. Thus, the usefulness of confession became less obvious, as did the connection between confession and Holy Communion. In a word, Communion was trivialized and confession nearly non-existent.

Cuchet also claims that the French clergy stopped preaching about the Four Last Things — death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell — “as if they had stopped believing in it themselves.” French priests, he says, in effect “paved the way to Heaven.” They gave the distinct impression that the path was no longer narrow and steep, but was now a wide, well-travelled thoroughfare. In a sense, wonders Cuchet, doesn’t that essentially mean the end of salvation? If one does not believe in sin, why the need for salvation? If there’s no need for salvation, why bother with Jesus Christ? If we needn’t bother with Jesus the Savior, why go to Mass? Why belong to the Church? Why identify as Christian? The rhetorical answer to those questions leads back to the astounding statistic that only 1.7 percent of French Catholics attend Mass even once a month.

Though Cuchet doesn’t provide a way out of the decline explicitly (and that is not his purpose as a historian), one can easily see the implicit solution: a strong Church made up of vibrant, faithful clergy who are not afraid to preach on sin or the effects of sin, and who promote the myriad spiritual, physical, and communal advantages of being a practicing member of the Church.

The foregoing article, "A Crisis of the Four Last Things" was originally published in the July-August 2018 issue of the New Oxford Review and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.

Fr. George Rutler on the Resurrection, a "curious absurdity" to the pagans

Fr. Rutler's Weekly Column

April 1, 2018
We know directly from Saint Paul that Greek philosophers thought the Resurrection was a curious absurdity. Politicians more pragmatically feared that it would upset the whole social order. One of the earliest Christian “apologists,” or explainers, was Saint Justin Martyr who tried to persuade the emperor Antoninus Pius that Christianity is the fulfillment of the best intuitions of classical philosophers like Socrates and Plato.

Justin was reared in an erudite pagan family in Samaria, in the land of Israel just about one lifetime from the Resurrection. Justin studied hard and accepted Christ as his Savior, probably in Ephesus, and then set up his own philosophical school in Rome to explain the sound logic of the Divine Logos. Refusing to worship the Roman gods, and threatened with torture by the Prefect Rusticus, he said: “You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us.” Then he was beheaded.

Fast forward almost exactly a thousand years, and another philosopher, Bernard of Chartres, also admired the best of the Greek philosophers and coined the phrase “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” There had been long centuries without much effort to explain the mystery of the Resurrection with luminous intelligence. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton would describe himself the same way. Being intellectual dwarfs may sound pessimistic, but there was also optimism in the fact that, lifted on the shoulders of giants, they could see even farther than the giants themselves. In witness to that, less than fifty years after Bernard died, building began on the great cathedral of Chartres. The magnificent rose window in the south transept depicts the evangelists as small men on the shoulders of the tall prophets. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are closer to Christ in the center of the window, than Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel who lift them up, seeing in fact what the prophets had longed for in hope.

The Risen Christ is neither a ghost nor a mere mortal. Ancient philosophies could be vague about things supernatural, and ancient cults could be distant from personal conduct. The Resurrection unites ethics and worship. The famous letter of an anonymous contemporary of Justin Martyr, meant to be read by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that the way Christians live “has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines.”

The Resurrection was the greatest event in history, and unlike other events that affect life in subsequent generations in different degrees by sequential cause and effect, the Resurrection is a living force for all time, making Christ present both objectively in the Sacraments, and personally in those who accept him. Thus, indifference to the Resurrection is not an option. The future life of each one of us depends on a willingness to be saved from eternal death.

The core of the political war is spiritual (sex & abortion), not pocketbook issues, says M. Matt

Fr. Perrone on what we prayed to be spared

With each passing year, as our society continues to evolve, I grow ever fonder of our parish, which in so many ways is unlike nearly any other I've experienced. By the same token, I suspect, in the eyes of the surrounding society (even Catholic society), our parish must seem proportionally out-of-step and weirdly antiquated. What makes it so? Simply that it has resisted evolving along with society. There's nothing really extraordinary about our parish at all in the great historical scheme of things. The fact is, it is simply Catholic; and Catholic precisely in the sense that any of our Catholic great-grandparents would have immediately recognized. They would have found it entirely ordinary; which is what makes it so extraordinary today. This is one reason I like to include those parts of these weekly reflections by our pastor that open a window onto our parish life -- like the concluding two paragraphs of his column below, which was published the Sunday preceding the presidential election. Enjoy.

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (assumption Grotto News, November 6, 2016):

I recently came across this and thought you'd enjoy reading it these days just before the election.

*****

A Fable
Once upon a time in a not too distant land there was a people who had just elected a New Leader (NL) who promised, if elected, to enforce contraception funding, support unlimited abortion rights and fetal experiments, and uphold gay marriages, and who was known to have done criminal deeds but people didn't much care about that because their own sins blinded them to see them. One of NL's goals that had not been kept too much of a secret was to penalize any religious body that opposed sweeping social changes for a brave new society. While some people protested these, only one religious group proved big and powerful enough to stand in the way of NL's new ways. So an order came down on them. "Either change your ways and your beliefs to fit with the new program or else heavy taxes will be levied on all your properties, and you'll be shut down in no time!" This threat terrorized the hierarchy and made the hearts of believers tremble. But to keep peace some of the hierarchy said, "Let's give in to this new program so we can keep our properties, stay in control, and keep some semblance of our religion." Others, clergy and laity alike, were adamant and refused to change. These had their parishes shut down for lack of money to pay the taxes and their clergy went into hiding -- some of whom were imprisoned. And so there was a huge split in this church. While the side of those who went along with the new policies resented the oppressive controls they weren't really all that sad. "NL means well," they said. "Besides, most of us -- unlike those rigid forlks who were shut down and forced undegroudn -- secretly agreed with a lot of what NL wanted done anyhow." And so these got on rather well, though theyfelt deeply guilty for their conformity. The diehards meanwhile, those who refused to change their ways, kept the old religion alive, conducting their religious services clandestinely and teaching their children the old religion of their fathers. So there was now an officially recognized church under NL's control and the opporessed reactionaries who kept to their traditional ways in secret.

Meanwhile the whole land was now beginning to feel other pressures as NL pushed on to greater and greater control of people's lives. Taxes were increased to unbearable limits to create the new society that promised freedom, equality, and happiness for everybody -- everybody except those who opposed the new program. Conformists with the reforms were rewarded with jobs and privileges while the general population suffered emotionally and economically, even unto wretchedness. But whenever somebody began to object or criticize NL or the new reforms they were forcibly silenced and punished severely. In this way NL exercised total control over everything in this land and many pretended they liked things this way -- though they really resented them -- because they were afraid.

Life went on a long time in this land and the people were miserable. All the while, however, the underground believers and other dissidents kept going quietly under oppression, living by their old beliefs and ways as best they could, keeping alive in their hearts the hope that someday NL would be gone, the former order reinstated, and liberty restored.

But in the meantime, the people lived most unhappily and were very sorry that they had ever brought this sufering upon themselves.

*****
Recall that there will be an overnight prayer vigil in our church this Monday night after the 7:00 p.m. Mass through Tuesday morning just before the 7:30 a.m. Mass. We will be prostrate before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, precisely as we sing the Benediction hymn, veneremur cernui, that is, falling down before God. This is expressed well also in (Vulgate) Psalm 94 that is prayed in the Divine Office every morning: "Come, let us adore, and bow down before God, let us weep before the Lord." We have great reason to pray so very humbly for a good outcome to this election.

The Forty Hours Devotion opens this Friday at the 7:30 a.m. Mass with its procession following, closing just before the 7:00 p.m. Mass. It will reopen Saturday morning at 6:30 (with Mass at the usual 7:30 time), closing 8:00 p.m. On Sunday morning adoration begins at 6:00 a.m. and continues through the solemn closing Mass at noon (procession with the Blessed Sacrament is at the end of the Mass). Note that during the Sunday Masses, the Eucharist is not exposed, except during the noon Mass due to a special privilege for the closing Mass of Forty Hours.

Fr. Perrone

Pancake Sunday today.

"Just give up!" What an encouraging first TLM homily!

Homily pronounced by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP at the First Solemn High Mass in England of Fr Ian Verrier, FSSP at St James’ Church in London on 20th June 2015.

Dear newly ordained Fr Verrier,

Just give up! It is all lost. Go and hide. We are vanquished. Christianity is over. Our time is gone. Anyone with eyes to see will agree. Greater than waves, tsunamis rather surge against life, against common sense, against freedom and against innocence! See the crimson tide of abortion; the green tide of Islam; the pink tide of inversion; the black tide of pornography; and as a deadly mix of all others, the fluorescent tide of political correctness.

But wait! There's more! - "'Light the Beacon' - Is Christianity Over? - A Sermon" (RC, March 11, 2016).

'International Women's Day' eclipses feast day of founder of Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God (or they're trying to change our calendar)

And Google (signs of the times ...) is helping along the cause, like many, many others:


You may remember that during the French Revolution a new calendar was created by a commission under the direction of the politician Charles-Gilbert Romme seconded by Claude Joseph Ferry and Charles-François Dupuis. The unspoken object was to rid the new calendar of every vestige of the Christian calendar. They stopped counting the years from the year of our Lord's birth ('AD', or Anno Domini), replacing it quite literally with year Number One. They did away with the seven day week from the Book of Genesis, replacing it with a decimal (and so much more 'rational') ten-day week. And they divided each day in the Republical Calendar into ten hours, each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds. Thus an hour was 144 conventional minutes (more than twice as long as a conventional hour), a minute was 86.4 conventional seconds (44% longer than a conventional minute), and a second was 0.864 conventional seconds (13.6% shorter than a conventional second).

Well, we all know how well that worked. The irony is that even if the secular powers and principalities refer to our current year as 2016 C.E. (for "Common Era"), they're still keeping time from the approximate year of our Savior's birth. Soli Deo gloria!

Los Angeles Churches Make Worship ... Hip?

Sheila Marikar, in the New York Times (December 12, 2015) enthuses:

Mosaic, a church that counts thousands of young people among its congregants, offering sermons rife with pop-culture references, musical performances that look like Coachella, and a brand cultivated for social media. (Church events are advertised on Instagram; there’s a “text to donate” number).

While Christianity is on a decline in the United States, at Mosaic and other churches like it in the Los Angeles area, the religion is thriving.

Sorry. Not a fan. Not for me. This flash-in-the-pan surrogate religious fare seems to offer a quick fix with shots of pure sugar and adrenalin that draws young people because it's like a free concert with fringe benefits. It's like taking LSD to attain Satori (enlightenment) rather that doing the hard work of Zen meditation. Kids will continue to go for several months, maybe even a couple of years, but then they will find themselves getting real jobs, kids of their own, and moving on; and the whole enterprise will just fade away into oblivion.

It looks like a huge shining lake of sparkling water, but turns out to be a shallow puddle of enthusiasm that cannot possibly sustain over the long haul because it is fuelled by the cult of personality and entertainment and lacks the benefit of deep theological rootage.

This is precisely what is killing AmChurch Catholic parishes attempting to ape these methods and cultivate a 'hip' ambience. Things turn out not to be 'hip' as hysterically pathetic, vapid and boring. By contrast, nothing revives the faith more than the solid meat of authentic Catholic teaching. To go deep into history is to cease to be vapid and boring, and to open the wellspring of the Living Waters of Life passed down from the Apostles and our Lord through Catholic tradition.

True our Lord says (Mt 11:30) that His "yoke is easy" and His "burden is light." But He also says (Mt 7:14): "small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and few are those who find it." There is no quick and easy path to sanctity or salvation. The consolations of Christ will lighten our burden, but the simple fact remains: faith is hard work. Faith is not a rock concert.

Fr. Perrone on the commodification of human beings in porn and abortion, as reflected in the McDonaldization of death

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, January 31, 2016):

Funeral customs are fast a-changing in our time. Speaking recently with a local funeral director, I was shocked to learn about the new thinking of how we bid adieux to the dead, viz. with increased indifference and quick dismissal. It’s so very inconvenient to have someone’s death interfere with whatever one happens to be busy about. The old obsequies of making visits to the funeral home to “pay one’s respects,” of comforting the mourners, of praying for the happy repose of the departed, of taking time off from other demanding necessities in order to perform these corporal works of mercy–all that is fast vanishing from American life. In its place, according to my funeral director friend, is something like this. No funeral home visitation; no flowers or Mass offerings; the quickview scan of the online bio of the deceased with its ready-at-hand link to register a brief word of sympathy; cremation for the corpse; and, often, no funeral service or requiem Mass. Moreover, the strictly forbidden retention of the deceased’s cremains or, worse, their scattering to the four winds, is becoming more prevalent. In short, we’re making rapid disposal of the dead, just as we had avoided contact with them as living persons in their last years of life, allowing them to rot in a nursing home or hospice facility. (Even that fate is now become accounted as fortunate since the administration of painkilling drugs in high doses can speed along the death processes so as to avoid all the inconveniences of what we had been accustomed to call one’s “final illness.”)  

What’s caused these new customs, these new ways of thinking about the dead and the process of dying? For one thing, we’re all on life’s fast track. We have now no time to be bothered by the death (or even the life) of anybody else when we’re so busy getting done whatever we must do–or even–whatever we think advantageous to ourselves–even our own pleasures and idle leisure. And what’s behind that selfish preoccupation? A number of things. The indoctrination of Selfism has long been forming our attitudes, succeeded to convince us that only the Great I am worthy of myself, my time, my deeds; only my goals are important; only what I want–morally good or bad–is what I must have; and whatever may interfere with these ‘goals’–God and religion included–must be set aside. And how did we arrive at this?  

Among the contributing causes to this attitude and way of living is the ever increasing use of porn which reduces the human person to so many body parts for exploitation and titillation of the senses. The fact that the “models” who so shamelessly expose themselves for public viewing are real people with minds and consciences, with souls that have human feelings–these facts have been put out of mind with porn use. Other people are toys. They can be bought, used, abused and are disposable. This contributes to estimate that the bodies of the deceased are as so much useless trash. 

Another thing that has shaped our thinking about the body is our relative unconcern over the hideousness of crushing and dismembering babies in the womb. Killing babies or–worse yet–selling its surviving parts as ‘spares’ for the living or as ingredients for cosmetics–is regarded as a social good. But it’s an old heresy which regards the human body this way where it was said that only a person’s spirit, (soul) counts. The body is unimportant. This specious premise, which at first glance may seem an ascetical, spiritual perspective, is in fact a way of so denigrating the body as to make utilitarian use of it without a care to any moral considerations of it or even to consider the meaning of the human person as a unity, a totality, of spirit and body.  

Our world is changing fast, and with it our thinking about who (or what) we are. Necessarily we will think about God and the Catholic faith differently (and not for the better). We are transhumanizing, becoming something else. Monsters, I would say, caricatures of what we were made to be–the image of God–and of what we were privileged to become as Christians–children of God and Christs-in-miniature.  While we may not be able at large to stop these horrible denigrating ways of inhumanity, we can retain the consciousness of our human dignity and our Christian vocation to holiness and refuse to go with the flow. Keeping ourselves unsullied by all the filth this fallen world offers and by the devout practice of the Catholic life is a goal within the reach of all of us. 

Fr. Perrone

Maureen Mullarkey on Bishop Barron on Paris

First, here's Bishop Barron, sounding more like a Mennonite pacifist than a Catholic moralist:


Next, here's Maureen Mullarkey on "Bishop Barron on Paris" (Studio Matters, November 27, 2015). Mullarkey's piece is more a response to responses to her earlier piece, "The Incredible Shrinking Bishop Barron" (One Peter Five, November 23, 2015), in which she had written:

The massacre aroused no outrage, not even a wince of distaste. . . . [Bp Barron] found the atrocity “especially poignant” because he had studied in Paris for three years. And because he remembered some of the locations involved, the attacks were “moving and poignant.”

Mullarkey comments: "Moving. Poignant. Had the bishop been watching a film version of the death of Little Nell? The sentiment, and the genial detachment it signified, seemed a bizarre reaction to the slaughter and maiming of scores of innocent Parisians." Then, quoting from the earlier article, she writes: "The syrup thickened":

He glided on to a serene tutorial on mercy, on the obligation to “respond to violence with love,” and “to fight hatred with love.” He enjoined Catholics to mercy and “a non-violent stance.” . . . This time on camera, he confused Paris in 2015 with Selma, Alabama, in 1965.

Mullarkey concludes her latest piece with these words: "Bishop Barron has an influential platform. If he uses it to promote confusion between Christian love—caritas—and dispassion in the face of the murderous ambitions of Christianity’s oldest enemy, then he will be evangelizing for evil. No matter the Christ talk."

Was Bp Barron imprudent in his remarks? Was Mullarkey overly harsh? You decide. Guy Noir's only words were: "... the syrup gets thicker. But as I said, certainly the Bishop's lines are the Church's now standard lines!"

Related:  Steve Skojec, "The Perils of Popularity: Critiquing Bishop Barron" (1P5, November 30, 2015).

Timely: "The Mass-Clock and the Spy: The Catholicization of World War II"

"Never did American Catholics do evangelization better than in World War II," wrote the correspondent who emailed me the link to this article. Indeed, it's a telling and timely piece, given what lies just over the horizon. Read on: John C. Seitz,"The Mass-Clock and the Spy: The Catholicization of World War II," Church History (December 1, 2014). What follows here are just two excerpts from the Introduction:

At the back of a pocket-sized missal distributed by the National Catholic Community Service (NCCS), U.S. military personnel serving in World War II could find a particularly useful wartime device. The two-page spread centered on an image that would have been vaguely familiar to most U.S. Catholics. The largest feature was a sun-like circle rising and radiating out from a smaller ciborium beneath. In more familiar Catholic imagery the circle appeared sometimes as the sun, sometimes as the Eucharistic host itself. It was typically embossed with the letters "IHS," a Greek-derived abbreviation of the Holy Name of Jesus, or with the Greek letters A[Omega], representing Jesus as Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end of all. In these familiar forms, the image signaled the centrality and efficacy of the sacrament of communion in the religious life of Catholics. Through communion, received in the form of the Eucharistic bread consecrated and delivered by the hands of an ordained priest, Catholics united themselves with Christ, whose very name was woven into the fabric of the universe. Participation in Holy Communion, which for the properly scrupulous was preceded always by the sacrament of confession, united Catholics with Christ, activated the flow of grace into their lives, and ensured their eternal proximity to God.

Global warfare pressed this imagery into new realms. Instead of a host or the sun rising up, the circular form here took the shape of a clock face. Inside the clock face, instead of the letters "IHS," readers found a world map, including the six inhabited continents viewed from a point high above the North Pole. In each hour segment of the clock face, the names of two different regions were listed. Text below and on the facing page offered instructions if one was "unable to attend Mass because of military service or the absence of a chaplain." Using this "World-Mass-Clock" and the accompanying "Mass-Clock-Prayer" Catholics could join themselves spiritually with the sacrifice of the Mass as it was happening at any given moment, somewhere in the world. "No matter when you look at your clock," the pages explained, "it is early morning somewhere ... and some Priest is offering Mass!" With these pages at hand, Catholics could discover where in the world, at that precise moment, the church was uniting itself with Christ's original sacrifice. In addition to studying the catechism assigned to that week's Mass (found earlier in the booklet), servicemen could recite the "Mass-Clock-Prayer" which began:

Eternal Father, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I wish to unite myself with Jesus, now offering His Precious Blood in [mention name of country] in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

... But Catholics did not rest solely on the assurances provided by these powerful prayers, objects, and actions. Alongside the heavy traffic of sacramentals and stories about their potency, Catholics eagerly disseminated separatist narratives of U.S. Catholic triumph. "Mack," a "twentieth-century G.I.," offered one of these stories for the editors of the NCCS's wartime newsletter entitled Contact....

Well-versed in Catholic expectations for the lay apostolate, Mack riffed on the motto of Catholic Action--a very twentieth century plan for extending Catholic influence in secular democracies--to describe his role as a Catholic in the U.S. military. The main fruit of this experience, he averred, would be relatively slow to develop. Military service was a time to "OBSERVE and JUDGE," a chance for "sizing up what is pagan in our environment." Armed with "a knowledge of what this environment should be," "Contact men"--those lined up with the Catholic approach to the war--could also use their time in the service to forge plans "to change what is into what should be ." "ACT," the implementation phase of the Catholic Action mandate, would have to wait until later, when the hindrances of military life--"army discipline and organization, schedules, breaking up of outfits, fatigue, discouragement"--had been left behind.

In the meantime, "day-to-day living in the midst of the men," what Mack described as life in a "pagan" environment, could be a kind of religious ordeal. Military life, he wrote, is "unconsciously sounding our spiritual depths and ploughing furrows in the very fibers of our being." With war's end, the "days of reconstruction " would begin, and tested and focused Catholics would manifest "a spiritual ripeness hitherto unknown to us" in the form of Catholic Action. Catholics in the military should understand themselves as spies behind enemy lines, immersed in a trying reconnaissance mission on behalf of the church. The enemy was not Germany or Japan, not Nazism or totalitarianism, nor even the lurking menace of communism. The enemy was a wayward America. Catholicism, mobilized through informed and eager lay Catholics, could be America's only hope in a future clouded by indifference, immorality, and paganism.

Read more. Much, much more >>

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

True Israel and the Jews

The question of the Church's relationship to the Jews, the Mosaic covenant, and the New Covenant (New Testament) with Christ at its foundation, is an ongoing one among Catholics and other Christians. I remember hearing a very bright Lutheran student of mine, who went on to work for First Things and then to become a woman pastor of a Protestant denomination, once say in class that Jews ought to be excepted from those whom we as Christians seek to evangelize. The assumption seemed to be that they were already "God's people," already, in effect, "saved." Something like this also seems to be assumed by some Protestants of a more evangelical stripe, who see the nation of Israel as "God's chosen people" today, even if they should be evangelized and come to know Jesus. This raises all sorts of questions about supersessionism, about what covenants obtain today, etc., which I don't plan to go into here.

A recent combox debate in this blog raised the issue again, however; and so I simply post for your consideration this piece by our pugnacious and irascible friend, once known as "Amateur Brain Surgeon" (my favorite appellation), and now known as "Raider Fan," "Raider Fan won't shut up but he will put up (1)" (The Nesciencent Nepenthene, June 27, 2015), which begins with this provocative declaration:

It is possible for a country, France, to suffer a revolution and commit Regicide and yet still be able to recover much of its tradition at some point in its future but a country, Israel, which commits Deicide has committed national suicide and can never recover even the tiniest portion of its tradition; it's only hope is to corporately confess that Jesus is the Messias and convert to Catholicism, the new Israel.

There is, of course, this beautiful promise of Scripture: "And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son" (Zechariah 12:10), which is cited by the Apostle John (19:37). Nearly one third of Pascal's Pensees is devoted to prophecies of the Messiah of this sort.

What is the "world" in Scripture? What is our rationationship to it, and that of our shepherds?

Boniface, "Shepherds for the Whole World" (Unam Sanctam Catholicsm, May 29, 2015) - a sampling:

"And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19).

"Adulterers, know you not that the friendship of this world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, makes himself an enemy of God" (Jas. 4:4).

"Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (Jas. 1:27).

"If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (John 15:18-19).

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12).

And a bit more:

You may surprised to learn that this phrase "in the world but not of the world" never appears in the New Testament. It seems to be based loosely on John 17:14-15, where Jesus prays,"I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world; as I also am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from evil." Here Jesus specifically teaches that we are "not of the world", and that though we must remain physically present in it, He prays that God would keep us from its evil. In other words, Jesus never says by way of command that we are to be engaged in the world; He merely says that since we must be physically present in the world by necessity, God should keep us from the world's evil, which is quite a different shade of meaning than that conveyed by "in but not of."

The goal of the Christian life if holiness. Yet what is holiness? What does it meant to be holy? We understand that we are called to be loving, forgiving, etc. But what does it mean to be "holy"? Is holiness a mere sum of all other natural and supernatural virtues? And what about God? God is love, power, forgiveness, justice and so on. But what does it mean when the angels cry that God is "holy, holy, holy?"

The fundamental definition of holiness is separation. The Latin word for holiness is sanctitas, from whence sanctity. Holiness denotes separation or consecration unto God. When the angels cry "holy, holy, holy" it is because God is so far separate and distinct from all created things that awe is the only appropriate response in his presence.  

This, and a whole lot more.  This is a long and substantial post, as we've often come to expect from Boniface.  There is more, for example, about Vatican II's adopted posture of "openness" to the world and what it might mean.  Read more >>

Fr. Perrone on the Importance of Intellectual Catechesis, Sacred Tradition, & Prayer in Knowing Christ

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, April 26, 2015):

A few things converge in my mind, leading to the subject matter here.

In our home school classes on Wednesdays we are attempting a bold enterprise: a course in Christology. That would be quite an undertaking for anybody. For high school students, it’s a near impossibility. I knew that in proposing the study in the first place but I wanted to see how far we could go. The central problem in general is that theological study, especially of the Catholic kind, presumes a grounding in philosophy and familiarity with its terminology. This is not something easily to be had and cannot be compensated for by improvised explanations of the moment. In musical terms, it would be like attempting to play a piano concerto when one had not first learnt the fundamentals of piano technique. One can, without the preliminary studies, grasp some things, but a great deal must be left undone. Was it then a foolish attempt to have a course in Christology for high schoolers? My purpose was to make known some of the complexity involved in trying to grasp divine things–in this case, the study of Christ–to expand the mind, if you will. Religious studies in a number of parishes are reduced to reading bible stories and to some sentimental aspects of religion (usually religious enthusiasm). This is a great impoverishment because the mind seeks to understand, and in the Catholic tradition there is a great deal to be understood. The Church would have a lot to impart to questing minds about many things in our faith. Too often, however, our kids are not taught even the basics of the faith in catechetical instruction, an omission which leaves them high and dry when they mature and begin to ask the deeper questions about faith only to find little or nothing in their mental store to lead them to a an understanding. The result is proved by the stats. Kids drop out of going to Mass and often leave the Church on account of the conjunction of two factors: 1) the awakening of adolescence, which causes an interior rebellion against the moral teachings of God and the Church leading to question the force both of their consciences and the moral authority of anyone, parents or priests, over them, and 2) the lack of solid religious instruction in the basics of the faith that should have been implanted in them in their youth through catechetical instruction.

Another matter which stirred me to write is reading a critical review of a very prominent Protestant theologian’s work on Christ. He makes some very basic errors where a good grounding in the Catholic tradition would have led him to truth. Here we see that the stored wisdom of Mother Church would have been a guiding light to the unfortunate man had he been well prepared to approach the daunting subject of Christ with the advantage of a Catholic background. 

The third influence pressing upon my mind to write is the experience of Christ that can be gained only through prayer. Where human ignorance is necessarily presumed in trying to grasp, comprehend, encompass God—an impossibility in the full sense, since God must remain beyond the capabilities of any finite intelligence—and where the dizzying experience of concupiscence tends to divert one from the paths of humble submission to God, the discovery of the Person of Christ through prayer secures a personal possession of Christ that can’t be had by religious instruction and moral discipline alone. Prayer is the indispensable means for spiritual maturity. One who does not pray is lost, both in the sense that he is consigned to meandering through life without the security of God’s friendship and in the ultimate sense of everlasting confusion in the next life.

The conclusion is inevitable. Unless one prays with humility, regularity, with perseverance, and with love for Christ, he can neither know Him in any deep sense nor remain in a state of grace. Possession of Christ is a need that is satisfied through the sacraments and through personal prayer. If you’re not doing these things, you will be lost, mentally, morally, and eternally.

Fr. Perrone

For a few dollars more (Catholic Relief Services, etc.)

Our correspondent, Guy Noir, sent us an interesting cluster of links a few days back about Catholic charities and gross inordinancies in salaries of CEOs of these NGOs:

Concerning Matt C. Abbott's "The controversy surrounding Catholic Relief Services" (Renew America, March 26, 2015), Noir writes, "The entire article is interesting, but this stuck out like a sore to me:

... for a government-funded NGO that takes in just under a billion dollars per year, $460,000 is not unreasonable for a CEO's salary. For a Catholic charity that serves the poor, it shows a disconnect bordering on the extreme.

Then there's this article about Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo, President and CEO of Catholic Relief Services on the organization's website, about which Noir comments:

Note that this CEO is married to a Dr. I imagine is also a high earner. I am still confused why people are so self-righteous about the "one percent," when CEOs of associations and college presidents, institutions set up to be altruistic and not profit-driven, make these salaries of over $300,000. It all suggests not that there are a rich few, but that there is a sizable wealthy class steering not simply robber baron businesses but our entire culture. And so we are given moral instruction from a tier of folks who do their grocery shopping at Whole Foods.

Finally, this interesting aside, by Matthew Archbold, "Wide Disparity in Catholic College Presidents’ Salaries, From $1 Million to Zero" (Catholic Education Daily, August 22, 2013).

"The Elephant in the Higher Education Room"

Lydia McGrew, "The Elephant in the Higher Education Room" (What's Wrong with the World, March 31, 2015) - excerpt:

"When I obtained a PhD in English from Vanderbilt University in 1995, the rot was already firmly in place. In order to get my requisite graduate credits without taking Queer Theory and other postmodernism (which I did not entirely avoid) I had to do repeated independent studies with the last members of the old guard, all of whom are now long since retired or passed on "to the greater life." Most other relatively conservative students were not so lucky. And that was twenty years ago.

"Why in the world should people who want to defend the humanities write as if this were not a reality? Why should we pretend that a student who takes a literature course at the majority of secular colleges (and even some Christian colleges) can be sure of learning worthwhile content when that is, at best, a gamble with a risk of big losses?"

In correspondence on this post, Guy Noir commented:

This is spot on.

As proof, see this over at Crisis, where a well-intentioned, serious commentator seriously asks us, "Will Notre Dame Continue to Betray its Catholic Identity?"

...

Hahahahahahaha...

Is that a serious question? If conservatives are operating under paradigms so naive that they can ask something like this straight-facedly, I suggest that our serious conversations are little more than posturing and game playing. Let's just give Francis the blank check he wants minus the feigned open dialog already.

Must be forgetting to take his Prozac again by the look of it.

I'm finding myself rapidly becoming a fan of the new Mic'd Up!

In this Mic'd Up, Michael Voris explores the origins and rise of the New Catholic Media. Guests include: Chris Manion, Jim Hughes, Judie Brown, Michael Hichborn and John-Henry Westen. Very informative.