The humble integrity of the man who played Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons

"Scofield himself was baptized into the faith of his Catholic mother, although he always felt somewhat divided in spiritual matters since his father was Anglican. He was known for being 'a true country gentleman' who put his marriage, family, and home life first and never allowed the fame of his career to go to his head. A classically trained Shakespearian actor and resident of a small village in Sussex, he did not even go in person to collect his Academy Award for Best Actor. He also rejected the offer of knighthood three times, believing in the maxim 'Never the actor before the part he plays.' After his death, many of Scofield's fellow villagers knew next to nothing about his fame in the acting world, simply regarding him as one of their own, the nice old man who always supported local theater productions. Perhaps it is this abiding combination of humility and intellectual honesty, and recognition of the important things of life that truly made him perfectly destined to bring the character of Thomas More to life on screen."

Avellina Balestri, "Silence Louder Than Words: Looking back at A Man for All Seasons," The Latin Mass: The Journal of Catholic Culture and Tradition, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Fall 2017), p. 58.

A film in which Christians and non-believers are not cast as natural enemies

Well, this is interesting. I've never cared much for overtly 'Christian' films, which tend in my experience to be too long on didacticism and too short on artistry. But here's what Steven D. Greydanus has to say about 'The Case for Christ,' based on Lee Strobel’s best-selling conversion story:

The atheists and nonbelievers in The Case for Christ don’t have horns and tails, or even mustaches for twirling. They aren’t out to crush believers into dust or banish their beliefs from respectable society.

The believers aren’t persecuted, marginalized victims, but capable, respected professionals in fields ranging from medical science and health care to archaeology, New Testament studies, philosophy, journalism and more. The conflict turns on faith and unbelief, but believers and unbelievers aren’t cast as natural enemies.

In other words, The Case for Christ is far from the paranoid, agonistic world of the two God’s Not Dead films, for which Pure Flix Entertainment is best known. Producers Elizabeth Hatcher-Travis and Pure Flix CEO Michael Scott collaborated on all three films — and Lee Strobel, the protagonist of The Case for Christ, cameoed as himself in God’s Not Dead 2. Yet The Case for Christ is the furthest thing from a God’s Not Dead 3.

The differences start with the real-life story behind The Case for Christ, Strobel’s conversion story from atheism to Christianity. Where the God’s Not Dead films offer lurid distillations of fundamentalist urban legends, The Case for Christ is about real people — at least, about as much as an average fact-based Hollywood drama. Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

Fr. Perrone: How could a Catholic possibly support a party promoting abortion, contraception, euthanasia, sodomy, and "transgender" identification?

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, February 12, 2017):

A few made known to me their appreciation for the pastor's column last week in which there was a commendatory word about President Trump for his pro-life stand. One may wonder whether it is to be afeared that the pastor now becomes an advocate of partisan politics. Without addressing that suspicion, it must be admitted that for a long time Catholics generally -- and the clergy especially -- have been victims of the gag rule which has deterred them from deep opposition to the immoral policies of the Democrat party, those very moral issues St. John Paul II stigmatized by the shocking epithet, "the culture of death." Surely it ought not to be a matter of preference for one political party over another that every Catholic, every Christian -- indeed, every citizen of sane mind and moral decency -- should oppose abortion, contraception, euthanasia, sodomy, and "transgender" identification. And yet this one partisan body has made these particular issues the basis of much of its program for a revolutionized American society. Can Catholics support these anomalies, these moral atrocities which are an outrage to God and a repugnance to any rational being? This is no endorsement of one political body over another (historically, by the way, the American hierarchy has had a long track record of open support for the Democrat Party). The fact that both major political parties, though unequally, have been supportive of these crimes against humanity means that Catholics must work to expunge these deleterious proposals from any political platform.

Catholics have every reason and duty to be the best of American citizens. they represent, no matter how poorly they may exemplify it in their individual lives, the teachings of Christ and the magisterium of the church which upholds the natural law. They must send this 'message' to their politicians and insist that they uphold moral truth. On its side, government must protect the rights of the Church to be this moral voice for American society and it must not interfere in the right of the Church to assert the moral truths God implanted in human nature and expressed so clearly in divine revelation.

Catholics must contribute to the good of society by its untiring witness to the law of God. The fact that one political party has chosen to espouse immoral ways of living and acting is most regrettable. We pray in our daily rosary "for God's mercy on our country,." This is not a plea that God allow us to continue merrily downward towards moral degeneracy with impunity -- that would be a veritable mockery of divine mercy. Rather, we are praying for a moral conversion of men's minds and their ways of living to conform to God's truth while we make reparation for damage already done by the sins that "cry out to God for vengeance" (as they are labled in the catechism).

There's much work to be done for the spiritual rebuilding of America. If our mores begin to improve, many other national benefits will result, including a renewed confidence in the basic, though not perfect, good of our constituted government; a rediscovered love of our fatherland (patriotism); and the recovery of the Christian faith upon which the entire moral and political order depends.

I have at time spoken in sermons on this theme, though perhaps with less of a political epmhasis, and concluded by insisting that there cannot be hope for a morally improved country or Church without a personal reform of each individual to keep from the sins which are the cause of his own ruin (those so called "besetting" sins of spiritual literature). Everyone contributes wittingly or not to the upbuilding or the ruination of public life. In short, if you do not reform your own life, you become part of America's and the Church's "problem."

By the time you read this the funeral rites for Fr. John's father will have taken place. While I did not know Anthony Bustamante very well, I know he was a lifelong Catholic, very dedicated to his faith, to Holy Mass, and to his family. With the parishioners of Assumption Grotto Church I wish to express condolences to the Bustamante family in this sorrowful time. While their faith and hope in Christ is a great consolation, the inevitable sadness of this great absence in their lives cannot be denied. We lend them the unseen support of our prayers for Anthony's eternal welfare.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him!

Fr. Perrone

Michal Sean Winters's Discontent with Abp Chaput's critique of contemporary politics

By Card. R. Trueman. In First Things. Very good.

[Hat tip to JM]

What is a "peronal relationship with Jesus Christ," and what role does it play in one's salvation?

Let's start with the Old Testament Patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, Esther, Ruth, David, and the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos, for starters. Does any Christian doubt the likelihood of their salvation? Yet did they have a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ"?

Jesus famously declared: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father but through me." (Jn 14:6) If this is true, and the Old Testament saints are in heaven, they are there only by virtue of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, even if they could not have personally known anything about Jesus, who would only come centuries later.

What this suggests is that salvation through Christ is based on the objective fact of Christ's substitutionary atonement and the incorporation of the faithful into His mystical body by the means provided by God during particular dispensations of salvation history. For the Old Testament saints, this meant the animal sacrifices prescribed by God through the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets, whose rituals looked forward to the promised Redeemer. For those of us who have lived since the publication of the New Testament, this means the re-enactment of the sacrifice of Christ in the Lord's Supper, which looks back to the Passion of Christ and His once-for-all sacrifice in human history.

Michael Voris seems to have something of this sort in mind in his provocative new "Vortex" feature entitled "Personal Relationship With Jesus Christ" (Church Militant, January 7, 2016). He may seem unnecessarily harsh in his denunciation of the prevalent Protestant-like talk about the need for a "personal relationship with Jesus" among many contemporary Catholics. But if you listen closely, I think the real message may be something else.

Yes, it's true that a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" doesn't seem to have played much of a role in the redemption of the Old Testament saints. Nor does it seem essential (or even possible!) in the salvation of a child who dies in infancy, or those who are severely mentally retarded.

But on the other hand, perhaps Voris' point is that a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" is very much the key to one's salvation, but that it has been misunderstood by those who take it to mean something purely subjective and experiential. What could possibly involve a more personal relationship with Jesus Christ than any of the seven sacraments? By being baptized into his Body? By becoming a partaker of the divine nature by way of Holy Communion? By being absolved by Him of one's sins through the sacrament of Confession? But the point is that all of these are objective performances, things one does. That is, they are more than mere experienced feelings of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

On this reading, perhaps even Abraham and the other Old Testament saints very much had "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," even if it wasn't expressed in ways familiar to contemporary evangelicals and evangelical Catholics. After all, Jesus said to His fellow Jews: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad." (Jn 8:56) I doubt this means that Abraham understood that God would become incarnate as a historical man named Jesus. Yet by faith he certainly is said to have trusted in the redemptive promises of God; and one of those promises, if yet seen only inchoately in Abraham's day, was the promise of a Messiah, which came gradually into focus as the fullness of time -- the time of Jesus' birth -- drew nearer.

So did this entail having certain feelings and emotional experiences on the part of Abraham. That he felt things profoundly during certain junctures in his lifetime, I have not doubt. But the point, I think, would be that his salvation rested on something objective: keeping the terms of the Covenant God imposed upon him. This is where his faith effectively came to expression; just as ours comes to effective expression in our keeping the terms of the New Covenant imposed on us -- that is, in our fulfillment of the precepts of the Church.

Cardinal Sarah: "Don't deceive ... with the word 'mercy'; God forgives sins only if we repent of them"

Matteo Matzuzzi, in Il timone (May 30, 2015), via Rorate Caeli HERE.

Sarah also sees a problem in the new rite of baptism in that it doesn't mention the word "faith." "There's a big problem right there," he says. Interesting.

The Irish referendum rejects the Faith

Michael Voris, "The Murdering of Catholicism" (Church Militant, May 23, 2015): 

Dublin, May 23, 2015 (ChurchMiltant.com) - This weekend's 2–1 vote by Ireland to lovingly embrace sodomy as a form of marriage proves two points.

The first is the abject, epic failure on the part of the Catholic clergy over the course of decades to transmit the Faith. Bishops refused to discipline various priests who were active homosexuals or sympathetic to the militant homosexual agenda. These traitorous priests slowly but certainly converted the Catholic populace, in cooperation with a high-voltage secular culture, to accept evil step by step.

The repeated refusal of bishops to discipline these clergy contributed greatly to this wicked turn of events. The status quo allowed the culture of death to flourish. Catholic leadership offered absolutely no defense, and in many cases supported the trashing of the Faith.

Homosexual priests abused boys in a Catholic school system that turned the Irish population decidedly against the Church when all was revealed a few years ago.

And that is the second point to consider: This was not only a vote in favor of sodomy, disguised as a human right, but also a referendum on the Catholic Church — and quite frankly, the Church got exactly what it deserved. The leadership betrayed the Son of God, and they are getting their due punishment.

Without a public admission of their sins, a call for forgiveness and resignation of their offices, they will more than likely be punished for eternity in the fires of Hell as well.

They will have chosen their eternal fate every time they looked the other way, allowed an abuse against the truth, covered up a homosexual abusive priest, diminished the Faith by allowing errant catechesis in the parish, permitted an active homosexual to run the nation's major seminary for over a decade (a man who has since converted to the heresy of Protestantism, and is civilly married to his gay lover in California.)

The step-by-step degrading of the Faith is how this happened. But it didn't come out of the blue. Four years ago when we were in Ireland, we interviewed random people on the street and asked them if they still attended Mass. We asked 19 people; 18 did not.

The total collapse of the Faith did not happen overnight.

 The video at the bottom of the page on the original site is very telling.  It was recorded earlier, maybe even a year ago, but it shows the "state of the faith" on the street, so to speak.  And it's about as dismal as the political understanding of the general American electorate, if you know what I mean.

In case you were wondering

HERE is the reality in which I daily live my life (see below); and I post this because I sometimes get the impression that at least some readers may sometimes received the wrong impression from the tone of many of my posts.

I recently posted the following on Facebook (yes, I sometimes descend into that nefarious pit of hell to preach to the prisoners inside). Just in case you were wondering ...

The Catholic Faith is just so utterly BEAUTIFUL !!! There are so many disturbing things in the Church and in the world that I sometimes need to stop myself and let people know that the ultimate reality in which I live is so untroubled, peaceful, and saturated by God's grace that they would probably be surprised, in view of my frequent laments.

Being nice but not being clear

Guy Noir, our correspondent, sent a link to Katelyn Beaty's article, "Rachel Held Evans Returns to Church" (Christianity Today, April 16, 2015), which begins:

Four years ago, Rachel Held Evans spent Easter in the apartment of a funeral home. But there would be no candles lit, no feast after the service. Instead, the group of about 10 had gathered to mourn the death of their church....

Noir comments:

I could say a whole lot about this piece in CT. But I guess I can summarize with the line, "Truth matters. Sort of."

This is the mentality that plagues Catholicism as well. History shows that no good comes of it. It is genial but wrongheaded. May we be genial and right-minded. It is good to have a benevolent attitude towards people. It is wrong to act like "getting things wrong" is [comparable?] to preferring the wrong flavor of Jell-0. Let me put it this way:

if you can say the creed and participate in a liturgy, but also believe the wafer might as well be bread as flesh; if you can read the Bible and think it is myth and fable as much as truth and history; if you can look at pre-marital sex, second and third marriages, gay marriages and think they fall more into preference and biology than morality; and if you can look at all religions and think well-meaning people are essentially all invisible Catholics ...

Well, If you can do that, and want to push it, don't be surprised if you effectively let all the air out of your 'religion.' As Flannery O'Connor thought, people can easily think "To Hell With It!"

Meanwhile, I see InterVarsity Press is releasing this little book to further dialog.

Richard J. Mouw and Robert L. Millet, eds, Talking Doctrine: Mormons and Evangelicals in Conversation (InterVarsity Press)

Which makes me another point: At some juncture, if all strange religious beliefs start seeming like your own, it is reasonable to find your own not sounding reasonable but strange. Genesis is myth, the Book of Mormon is bogus but beautiful, and I am supposed to get hyped for Bible Study? I am not so sure...!

Fr. Perrone on Christ's Descent to Hell & Resurrection

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, April 5, 2015):

On the third day He rose again from the dead. We say these words frequently and are sometimes perplexed when we do the math. Our Lord died on Good Friday and arose very early on Sunday, which counts for two days, unless we reckon the number of the days of the week, even partial days, in which His body was in death rather than count the number of twenty-four-hour days. Another interpretation holds that since Christ had been thrown into an underground prison on Holy Thursday night awaiting trial the next day, His body was “in the bowels of the earth” three days: Thursday in a cellar under the High Priest’s house, and Friday and Saturday in the tomb. In any case, our Lord emerged out of the earth alive in the body after having descended into “hell:” limbo or the abode of the dead. This mission into the lower regions of the earth (it was believed that spirits of the dead went to a place deep in the earth) must have been a sort of Easter celebration for the souls of those just men and women. Although Christ was not yet there in His body, His appearing there indicated to those souls that the purpose for which He had lived and died–to be the Victor over sin and death–had been successfully accomplished. Can we imagine the jubilation which took place in limbo? A vast sea of humanity, we should hope, was there waiting for this precise moment. A short time later these holy souls would follow Christ in His ascension into heaven, producing a sweeping procession of people into the Holy City, the Jerusalem above.

I use a bit of imagination to try to stir your minds to catch some of the excitement which must have greeted our Lord Easter Sunday morning. The rejoicing must have been at a feverish pitch. It was the vindication of everything the disciples had believed about Christ–that He is truly God, the Messiah, the Redeemer of humanity, the true judge of judge the living and dead. The resurrection meant that His teachings about heaven, beatitude, righteousness, the Holy Eucharist, about the worth of the sacrifices that had been made for the sake of Christ by leaving home and work–all is vindicated. This was the sign which confirmed everything. There would be no further proof needed to convince these witnesses to convert all the world to Christ. On Easter day any doubts about Christ were dispelled and the affection for Him must have been intense. The Acts of the Apostles indicates the prodigy of people whose faith was ardent.

We are at a seeming disadvantage not having seen the Lord’s resurrection with our eyes. Our knowledge of Him comes rather through faith, a way of knowing which is often taken to be a lesser, weaker manner of knowing. “Seeing is believing” is a well-known phrase, but one that’s totally contrary to what we mean by faith. Faith is indeed a kind of knowing Christ, but not through sight, not through the senses. It is a supernatural gift infused into the soul at baptism. And in order to be a living faith, it needs to be fed by instruction and by intimate association with Him through prayer. This is how many lapse from faith. They suffer malnourishment through poor instruction, and are weakened by deceit and led astray through godless men. Our Lord indicated that the faith of many would grow cold. This does not happen of itself since faith is a permanent gift abiding in one’s soul. But faith can be lost by putting faith in falsity and it can be ‘cooled’ through neglect of religious practice.

Once I heard the sad words from a woman: “I’m afraid we’re rather poor Christians” (‘poor’ here referring to lax, not to material poverty). We’ve got lots of such people today, poor Christians, people without a passion for truth, without a deep personal love for Christ, but who have skeptical minds and sordid affections. What follows this laxity is disorder, sadness, misery, and deep spiritual loneliness.

I know you are aware of this enfeeblement of Christianity in the world today. It’s a worrisome thing for us and surely a heartbreak for the Lord who gave His all to redeem us. But I hope you are true believers in Him and in His holy Church which brings you truth and grace. If so, you are spiritually alive and so you must be joyful. Easter has literal meaning for you. Christ is living and you know Him with the superior kind of knowledge called faith. It’s wonderful to live in God’s grace and to have some of that apostolic zeal which the first Christians had ever since Easter morning.

I wish you to have this always: a strong faith in Christ and deep love for Him. If so, your life has meaning and a secure and worthwhile direction. You should carry the exuberance of Easter in your hearts today and keep it always stored within you. You won’t ever be defeated if the life of the risen Christ remains in you.

Fr Perrone

Easter Reflection: Were the Apostles Deceived? ... Deceivers?

Let's come clean with the alternatives: Blaise Pascal writes in his Pensees, No. 322,

The Apostles were either deceived or deceivers. Either supposition is difficult, for it is not possible to imagine that a man has risen from the dead.

While Jesus was with them he could sustain them, but afterwards, if he did not appear to them, who did make them act?

Former Notre Dame Philosophy Professor, Thomas V. Morris comments, in his book, Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life (Eerdmans):

If what the apostles reported about Jesus was false, then either they believed it and so were themselves deceived or they knew it was false and so were just deceivers. How plausible is either of these alternatives?

First, consider the claim that the followers of Jesus were themselves deceived, wrongly believing in his miracles and resurrection when no such things had ever actually happened. On this supposition they were themselves just mistaken. But there is something interesting about the concept of a mistake. I can be walking down the street and think I see an old friend approaching but on getting closer realize that I have made a mistake. I can mistakenly believe that today is Saturday when it's Friday. I can make some pretty big mistakes. We call can. But a mistake can only be so big. I cannot mistakenly think I see exactly 419 pink and purple elephants outside my office window, suspended in mid-air. I can't mistakenly think I have twelve arms.

Consider the claim that dismisses the literal interpretation of the resurrection, substituting for it the fuzzy intellectual abstraction that would have us believe that in one sense, a spiritual sense (or in a sense in which we can admit of a spiritually transformed body), Christ is risen, but in another sense Jesus' bones may still be moldering in some Palestinian grave. This is the sort of interpretation that is embraced by urbane contemporary sophisticates who would find the simple notion that Jesus could have arisen, bones and all, from the grave, as impossible to believe as that one sees exactly 419 pink and purple elephants outside his window, or that he has twelve arms. The point, however, is that the biblical Resurrection, like the Cross of Christ, is something scandalous -- something unbelievable in ordinary terms. One can't just mistakenly believe something like that. Morris continues:

The apostles reported detailed encounters with the risen Christ sometime after his death and burial. Would it have made much sense for loved ones to respond to such reports by saying, "Calm down, dear. It was just your imagination"? Pascal says that it is not possible to imagine that a man has risen from the dead. That's too extreme to be a mistake. And there were no cultural expectations in first-century Judaism that a single man might be raised from the grave by God into a new, yet recognizable, form of life. Hallucination is not plausible. Repeated, convergent mass hallucinations are even less plausible, much less plausible. Pascal finds this suggestion absolutely incredible, strictly speaking.

So what of the other possibility? If the testimony of the apostles is false, and it is utterly implausible to think of all of them as deceived by appearances concerning such extraordinary events, then the other possibility, as Pascal points out, is that they never believed for a minute these stories they told about Jesus but were themselves just deceivers. How credible is this supposition?

In another passage in his Pensees, No. 310, Pascal writes:

Proofs of Jesus Christ. The hypothesis that the Apostles were knaves is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus' death and conspiring to say that he had risen from the dead. This means attacking all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery. One of them had only to deny his story under these inducements, or still more because of possible imprisonment, tortures and death, and they would all have been lost. Follow that out.

Morris comments:

Lying is hard work. When you tell a lie, you don't have reality to back you up. When you tell a lot of lies, one building on the next, you get yourself in an even worse fix. Such deceit requires extraordinary powers of memory as well as imagination. Most of us have a hard enough time remembering things that have actually happened. And when we forget, we can usually rely upon the fact that the truth leaves traces of itself behind -- footprints, documents, memory impressions in other people's minds. But when we concoct an alternate reality, a history contrary to what really has happened, we have only our own memories to rely on concerning what we said happened.

A conspiracy of lies is even more fragile. This is from the beginning an exceedingly odd sort of agreement - a number of different people get together, concoct a story, and agree to lie about it, each promising not to break and tell the truth. It is crucial to their agreement that they're all liars, but how in the world can you trust liars to keep their end of an agreement? Any supposition that the apostles of Christ met after his death and entered into this sort of agreement is especially hard to swallow. Here a number of ordinary men from walks of life in which the truth mattered, who had just spent an extended period of time with a charismatic leader whom most non-Christians recognize as one of the greatest moral teachers in history, are supposed to have met together after the death of their leader and, to further his work, agreed to tell outrageous lies about him? This is just too bizarre. And worse, Pascal points out, from these lies they would have had little to gain and much to lose, as circumstances developed. Only one of them need have cracked and the whole conspiracy would have unraveled. And each of them, knowing that each of the others was lying against the grain of his own personality, would surely have suspected that one of the others would crack, and so would have been all the more prepared himself to tell the truth and cut his losses, distancing himself from the others in times of increasing pressure and persecution. Further, recall that we are talking about a message that itself emphasized the importance of walking in the truth. The hypothesis that the followers of Christ were just deceivers is just too out of step with everything we know about them, about their circumstances, about their message, and about human psychology.

The citations from Thomas V. Morris's Making Sense of It All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life are from pp. 173-176 of that volume. The quotations from Pascal's Pensees are also from Morris's book.

Also highly recommended:

• Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees -- Edited, Outlined, and Explained by Peter Kreeft (Ignatius Press)

Question: What will the "New Evangelization" yield?

The question comes to us from the undercover correspondent we keep on retainer, Guy Noir - Private Eye, who asks, even more starkly: "Will the 'New Evangelism" ever produce recognizable faith?"

That may sound a bit bleak, given the fact that a fairly large swath will likely be claimed for the "New Evangelizaton," which includes the likes of the significant numbers of those who would attest that their lives have been impacted in a positive way by what is largely termed the "renewal" of the last few decades (happening places like Steubenville, for example).

But I'm not sure that's exactly what Noir has in mind. I'm guessing that he's thinking of the virtual collapse of Catholic overseas missions since the mid-20th century and erosion of the zeal that animated those efforts since the early years of the Church right down through St. Francis Xavier's time -- namely, the conviction that the unevangelized in all probability cannot be saved apart from the Gospel. Here's what Noir was thinking about: David G. Bonagura, Jr.'s article, "Can Faith Survive in the 'first world'?" (The Catholic Thing, March 22, 2015). Excerpts:

... history shows that Catholics have had massive success evangelizing whole peoples when they were compelled by two deeply held beliefs: a profound love of Christ to the point of martyrdom, and an understanding that those they encounter cannot be saved unless they accept the Gospel.

Our Lord promised that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, but that was not a guarantee to keep souls within her. A distressing number of first world residents have heard of the Gospel [heard hear suggests understood, gotten it] but have not listened to it.

Noir comments: "This is rather shocking in how it makes quiet assertions seemingly oblivious to the example of reigning clerics who seem to deny them by pastoral example. The bolded lines, what leaders even believe these things?"

Hard words.

This also reminds me of what John Lamont wrote (New Blackfriars, Vol. 88, 2007) concerning a missing element in Vatican II:

The trouble with the Council's approach to mission is that although it stresses that Catholics must seek to convert unbelievers, it gives no adequate reason for doing this. It does give Christ's command to evangelize as a reason, but it gives no proper explanation of why that command is given, or of the good that the commandment is supposed to promote. This, of course, means that the command is unlikely to be followed; and it has in fact been largely disregarded since the Council.

In other words, Lamont writes: "[The Council] made no reference at all to unbelief rendering salvation doubtful." Or, in still other words: completely missing was a sense of urgency about the possible damnation of the unevangelized.

Again, hard words. Do we still believe them?

Cardinal Kasper on how Pope Francis sees the Church

Walter Kasper, "How Pope Francis Sees the Church" (Commonweal, March 13, 2015).

No surprises here. I can't help remembering the question that arises when reading Plato: Is Plato merely reporting what Socrates said, or is Socrates a mouthpiece for the projected opinions of Plato?

Either way, it's interesting: Kasper dies state, however, that the Pope's "pastoral" style is more than "good-natured folsiness" or "cheap populism." Behind it stands an "entire theology," he says. It's deliberate.

What are its elements? The Church, as the people of God, "transcends every institutional expression." It is rooted in God's mercy. It eschews every form of clericalism ("Laypeople are ... the vast majority of the people of God"). It recognizes the indispensable contribution of women. It recognizes the importance of young people and recognizes their difficulties. It puts a premium on the sensus fidei. It seeks "a magisterium that listens." In terms of the Sacraments, the Church is viewed as "a merciful mother with an open heart for all," seeking to reconcile those in irregular relationships. It regards as wrong an attitude that stays fixated on "hot potatoes." It seeks to grow, not by proselytism but by attracting. "God is a God of the journey ..." It wants to "touch Christ ... in the poor." Its "paradigm shift" takes as its model the Good Samaritan. The "guiding star of evangelization and of this kind of pastoral care is Mary, Jesus mother -- and our mother." It's magna carta is Evangelii gaudium, in which Pope Francis writes:

... I would like to remind you that “pastoral care” is nothing other than the exercise of the church’s motherhood. She gives birth, breastfeeds, lets grow, corrects, nourishes, leads by the hand.... There is need therefore for a church that is capable of rediscovering the womb of mercy. Without mercy it is scarcely possible today to penetrate into a world of the “injured,” who need understanding, forgiveness, and love.

The virtual inevitability of sin, the blessing of repeatable confession & absolution, and the increase of Christ in us

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, March 1, 2015):

Life is not a continuous movement either in progress or regress. There are the ups and downs of living which, in the spiritual life, can be sorely disheartening. Once having set one’s feet on the way of Christ, determined to be a loyal and observant Christian, one soon discovers that there is no security, nor lasting guarantee of one’s new-found fidelity. There’s always the possibility of reversion to old bad ways and to wicked habits. “The dog returns to its vomit” (2 Peter 2:22); an expelled demon says, “I will return to my house from which I came” (Mt 12:44). Sanctifying grace is given to the soul as a “habit” (to use the traditional theological term), that is, as a permanent possession. Of itself it’s stable and meant to remain in the soul (in-habiting there) with the potential for increase through the exercise of the virtues, prayer, and the reception of the sacraments. Somehow–and it is enough of a common experience–a new situation arises in which evil begins to work its magical, seductive influence and–alas!–a moral fall is immanent. Anyone who has ever made a good confession with the sincere intention of sinning never again and who, nevertheless, falls back into the hated sin knows this unfortunate instability and delicacy of his spiritual state. According to the wishful thinking manifest in some Protestant circles, all one needs do to be saved is to make a once-and-for-all confession of belief in Christ as the Savior and then all will inevitably be well, right up unto entry into heaven. Would that it were so! The obvious fact is, however, that a person who can make such a declaration of faith in Christ by a free act of the will can also, by another act of will, make a counter decision to be disloyal and disobedient to Christ. With this reality of the changeableness, the inconstancy of the will our Lord instituted the sacrament of Confession for sins committed after baptism. The pledge is therein renewed, sins absolved, and one sets out from theconfessional determined to avoid sin and be henceforth invariably pleasing to God.

“Nothing is forever in this life.” I think about this every time I use some manufactured thing with its built-in, planned obsolescence which fails to work right. Too bad this saying applies as well to the inconstancy of decision to be faithful to God’s commandments and decrees. To train the mind and will to be unvarying in goodness is part of the reason why we need to be rather hard on ourselves in Lent. (Certainly, it must not be for morbid pleasure of the hardship. Lent is not to feed a pathological human condition but to remedy one.) Like an athlete who does repetitive movements to perfect his skills, the Christian needs the determined and constant exercise of moral disciplines to achieve regularity, consistency, fidelity. I doubt that anybody can ever ease up on self vigilance, no matter how advanced he may be along the way to spiritual perfection. The chances of slipping back, of regression, are always a possibility, though they should become more remote as one moves forward.

In a morning meditation from the writings of St. Gertrude, I read that Christ told her that every little act done in union with Him was as a pleasure to Him. That thought inspired the whole time of my prayer, thinking that our Lord might be so pleased with so little if only I would have a good intention and a clean soul. Making our beloved Lord pleased is that other motivation that should bestir us to be diligent in our Lenten promises. Not only we, but Christ Himself, would be the beneficiary of them, though for Him that can be so only in an analogous sense since He can’t become any greater, better or happier than infinite perfection already accords Him. Christ can only be ‘increased’ in the sense of a greater extension of His presence and influence in our souls, that is, exteriorly. And so, if this is case, we should wish Him to abound more and more in us. Lenten self-imposed practices attempt to make it so that obstacles to this are put down or at least weakened. How odd to think that I can get in Christ’s way of taking over myself!

A closing reminder that Fridays we have the Lenten fish fry (from fresh, not frozen, fish–I am told). While there, you would do well to hear the talk given on the Last Things–a good way to keep going forward this Lent.

Fr. Perrone

"Filial Appeal to Pope Francis on the Future of the Family"

Read it. Sign it. Spread the word.

Christ, the great Prophet, who proclaimed the Kingdom of His Father both by the testimony of His life and the power of His words, continually fulfills His prophetic office until the complete manifestation of glory. He does this not only through the hierarchy who teach in His name and with His authority, but also through the laity whom He made His witnesses and to whom He gave understanding of the faith (sensu fidei) and an attractiveness in speech so that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in their daily social and family life.

Lumen Gentium, 35

Cardinal Burke’s Appeal to All Catholics

           In an age filled with confusion — as can be seen with gender theory - we need the teaching of the Church on marriage. But we are being
pushed in the opposite direction to admit divorced and remarried Catholics to the Eucharist. And this is without even mentioning the obsession to make easier the procedures to annul the marital bond….

I am therefore very worried. And I call upon all Catholics whether laymen,
priests or bishops to get involved — from now until the upcoming Synodal

Assembly — in order to highlight the truth on marriage.  

(Excerpt from an interview granted in Rome to Jean-Marie Guénois - Le Figaro Magazine, 19 December 2014 issue, p. 46)

- See more at: http://filialappeal.org/#sthash.Mxar8WLO.dpuf

Cardinal Burke’s Appeal to All Catholics

           In an age filled with confusion — as can be seen with gender theory - we need the teaching of the Church on marriage. But we are being
pushed in the opposite direction to admit divorced and remarried Catholics to the Eucharist. And this is without even mentioning the obsession to make easier the procedures to annul the marital bond….

I am therefore very worried. And I call upon all Catholics whether laymen,
priests or bishops to get involved — from now until the upcoming Synodal

Assembly — in order to highlight the truth on marriage.  

(Excerpt from an interview granted in Rome to Jean-Marie Guénois - Le Figaro Magazine, 19 December 2014 issue, p. 46)

- See more at: http://filialappeal.org/#sthash.Mxar8WLO.dpuf

Cardinal Burke’s Appeal to All Catholics

"In an age filled with confusion — as can be seen with gender theory - we need the teaching of the Church on marriage. But we are being pushed in the opposite direction to admit divorced and remarried Catholics to the Eucharist. And this is without even mentioning the obsession to make easier the procedures to annul the marital bond….

I am therefore very worried. And I call upon all Catholics whether laymen, priests or bishops to get involved — from now until the upcoming Synodal Assembly — in order to highlight the truth on marriage."

(Excerpt from an interview granted in Rome to Jean-Marie Guénois - Le Figaro Magazine, 19 December 2014 issue, p. 46) 

Sign the Filial Appeal
[Hat tip to R.C.]

Unbelievably bad popes who can strengthen one's faith in Christ's promises and the Church

Dr. Howard P. Kainz, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Marquette University and former executive member of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, offers an eye-opening review of a book by James Hitchcock, History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012).

His review, "The Church: God Writing Straight with Crooked Lines" (New Oxford Review, July-August 2014), is substantial and full of fascinating detail. The excerpts about some of the historical popes alone are enough to bolster the confidence of anyone concerned about rocky periods in Church history. Here are several excerpts:

Celibacy was eventually mandated in the eleventh century to prevent family dynasties — even in the papacy. For example, in the sixth century, Pope St. Hormisdas was the father of Pope Silverius, and Pope Felix III was the grandfather of Gregory the Great....

... In the ninth and tenth centuries, corruption of kings and clerics was common. Charlemagne married five times, had six concubines, and forced his daughters to have their children out of wedlock in order to avoid potential political entanglements with his sons-in-law. The institution of the papacy was often in disarray. For example, Pope Stephen VI ordered the body of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, to be exhumed and tried for violations of Church law; Formosus was found guilty, stripped of his vestments, and desecrated. Later that year, Stephen himself was strangled in prison. Bribery was common. Benedict IX paid to become pope in the eleventh century, but later resigned on the condition that he receive his money back. The general picture by the fifteenth century was not very pretty. As Hitchcock observes, “Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484), a Franciscan who was notoriously immoral in his private life, set out to make the papacy a feared military force, placed his nephews in important principalities, and arranged their marriages with an eye to effecting strategic alliances. He supported a plot to assassinate the Medicis, the ruling Florentine family, who were to be killed at Mass by two priests…. Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) was a Spanish cardinal, a member of the Borgia family, [and]…became one of the most notorious of all the popes, the worst since the tenth century.” Hitchcock adds that the future Pope Pius II came from a background of pornographic authorship.

... Popes themselves conflicted with one another: In 1570, for example, Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth; but a few years later Pope Sixtus V declared that she was an admirable woman. The Church hierarchy was sometimes involved in criminality; for example, some cardinals in the sixteenth century tried to poison Pope Leo X, who got wind of the plot and executed their leader. Leo’s unfortunate decision to recognize the right of the king of France to nominate bishops caused problems of authority for the following three centuries.

... In the fourteenth century there were three claimants to the papacy — Urban VI, Clement VII, and John XXII — which helped give rise to the conciliar movement, so that cardinals could depose popes in such cases. But this “solution” turned out to be a vicious circle, since councils are customarily called by popes. In the twelfth century, Peter Abelard, famous for his romantic affair with Heloise, eventually became a reforming abbot whose monks tried to poison him. And in the sixteenth century, some unlikely popes began to lead the way to reform. As Hitchcock writes, “Papal support for the reforming impulse in the Church began with Paul III, who led a scandalous life. He fathered children, and his ecclesiastical career flourished primarily because of his aristocratic Farnese family connections and the fact that his sister had been one of Pope Alexander VI’s mistresses. By the time of his election, he had undergone a change of heart, although he still used his office to favor his children.” But the Church was unable to head off the very different approaches to “reform” carried out by Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and others. So the Council of Trent was called to stem the disruptive tides, beginning with the Protestant Reformation.

Many such councils have been called in the hope that they would clear up ambiguities and differences once and for all. But, as Hitchcock observes, the history of Church councils would lead us to a different conclusion. The fourth-century Council of Nicaea left unresolved the question of Christ’s divinity. The fifth-century Council of Chalcedon seemed to make Constantinople and Rome equal sees. And Trent opened up with disputes that seemed to portend similar or even worse ambiguities. For starters, France boycotted the proceedings, leaving mostly Italian bishops, along with a few other European bishops. Pope Paul IV opposed the Council as a threat to papal authority, causing a hiatus. But as Trent resumed under the aegis of Pope Pius IV, acrimonious national and doctrinal factions developed, leading to some ambiguity in the final decrees. For example, Christ was declared to be present “whole and entire” under both species, bread and wine, and frequent Communion was encouraged; but the “frequent Communion” recommended for seminarians was once a week, and for nuns once a month. Disputed questions about justification and the relation of grace and free will were left unresolved. And Mass in the vernacular was prohibited, even though, as we saw above, Latin was first chosen because it was the vernacular.

... About a third of the Council Fathers at Vatican I were either opposed to the declaration of infallibility or wanted to attach conditions to its announcement. A lingering problem was that, in the past, two popes had dabbled in heresy — Pope Honorius in the seventh century accepted monothelitism, and Pope John XXII in the fourteenth century supported (but later recanted) the doctrine of “soul sleep” before the Last Judgment. So the condition of “speaking ex cathedra” was finally emphasized, to take into account the possibility of occasional papal infelicities.

Read the whole article >> Hitchcock's conclusion is a good bit more upbeat and optimistic than many would seem to be the blogosphere these days. But as Kainz says, by way of conclusion, "Perhaps the sedevacantists in our midst, by boning up on Church history, warts and all, might realize that her present state is miraculous -- not the work of men, but of God, who writes straight with crooked lines." And how crooked those lines have been for those willing to examine them! As I have oft contended, the better versed one is in Church history, the more one's faith, counter-intuitively, is bolstered by the miracle that is the Church.

Anyone remember Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones?

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (20 December 1899 – 1 March 1981) was a Welsh Protestant minister, preacher and medical doctor who was influential in the Reformed wing of the British evangelical movement in the 20th century. For almost 30 years, he was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London. Lloyd-Jones was strongly opposed to Liberal Christianity, which had become a part of many Christian denominations; he regarded it as aberrant. He disagreed with the broad church approach and encouraged evangelical Christians (particularly Anglicans) to leave their existing denominations. He believed that true Christian fellowship was possible only amongst those who shared common convictions regarding the nature of the faith.

[Hat tip to G.N.]

Bible 101: Invitation to Agnosticism

By Joseph Martin

I do not know why people have a hard time understanding the following: believers in Inerrancy do not necessarily believe everything in the Bible is to be taken literally. Never have. Really. To believe the Bible is word for word true is not to believe that the trees literally clap their hands, or that there are four corners of the world, or that Adam's Rib is not just a steak house but also the anatomical artifact from which sprang Woman. On this score the decrees of the early Pontifical Biblical Commission [HERE and HERE] deserve revisiting.

That said, if you gut the Bible of its credibility, no amount of authoritative Church teaching can salvage belief. Witness one reason for the current crisis in Catholicism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is great [Christopher Schonborn's involvement I suppose is a stunning testament to prevenient grace], but still, if the notes in the New American Bible are true, what rube would believe a catechism that relies so heavily on the Bible?

All of this is said as a preface to this linked testimony: Rod Dreher, "She wishes she was still born again" (The American Conservative, May 22, 2014).

People always talk like the problem is Fundamentalists. Or Traditionalists. No, the problem is Modernists. Always has been. Even if they make up the majority of faculty at Notre Dame and Fordham and Catholic U. I recall a best friend, very faithful, pride of the church youth group, who -- poof! -- lost her faith as a college freshman fairly quickly once she took a course in Old Testament. Her mother could not understand how this happened at a "church" college!

The Evangelicals do seem to be the only ones who get the fact that modern Scripture scholarship as currently taught dissolves faith. Even when it is gussied up with assurances from a comfortably less verifiable papal magisterium (see Ignatius Press’ depressingly oblivious [if happily no longer marketed] Scripture introduction The Consuming Fire: A Christian Introduction to the Old Testament,for an example of well-intentioned embrace of critical thought that nonetheless pops the balloon of belief). If the Bible is not very reliable, on what grounds does the Church base its authority? If the historical claims are textually bogus, well, good luck then trying to maintain an authoritative voice. Or maybe that is why there seems to be so little motivation to exercise one.

Are we or are we not confident of the Biblical witness? I am almost afraid to ask that question. And I'd wager Rome would tell us we simply don't need to go there and risk seeming... combative? Meanwhile, however, I would also wager the linked sad story has been replicated in the lives of tens of thousands, prompted our very enlightened and very non-Fundamentalist Catholic Scripture scholars (including the widely referenced Raymond E. Brown). It's an issue I have harped on, but that is because I think it is an issue that is rarely if ever faced honestly.

The last real rumblings I've heard about it were at a conference hosted by Fr. Neuhaus, and that was back in the '80s (and attended by then Cardinal Ratzinger). Those conference addresses are reprinted in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989). Inerrancy was hardly the focus, but a careful reading reveals that the issue of source credibility was certainly raised there. Cardinal Dulles diplomatically commented, "Many have made the point that modern critical exegesis, with all of its methodological self-limitations, has in fact destroyed the credibility of a great deal of church teaching. It does this by saying that Jesus had no messianic or divine self-consciousness, that Jesus was very likely not conceived of a virgin, that we do not have a coherent and consistent account of the Resurrection appearances. At almost every point where faith begins, this historical-critical exegesis falls silent and says, ‘We cannot help you there.'" Another pastor told of “a former colleague, […] a New Testament scholar, [who said]: ‘There was a time when I could read the Bible for devotional purposes. But after a lifetime spent on exegesis, I am no longer able to do so.’" And finally a seminary dean gave what might be the most jarring assessment, saying “We have invented ways of studying the Word of God from which no word of God could possibly come."

We are left with the question that never goes away. Is the Bible trustworthy, reliable, and worthy of our respect as more than some ancient literature esteemed by academics but problematic to honest inquirers? That's a question any non-sleeping Catholic college student is likely to ask. And you don't have to buy into caricatures of Protestant Inerrancy to answer affirmatively, witness C.S. Lewis, Romano Guardini, Fulton Sheed and Frank Sheed -- not to mention the currently toasted Scott Hahn. Christianity, unlike Judaism, "is not a religion of a book." That's an argument you'll frequently hear Catholics invoke against earnest Protestant debate opponents. But Catholicism is hardly a religion that can stand independently of the Bible. But thus far the only book I have found to hand Catholic students in this regard is Peter Kreeft's You Can Understand The Bible: A Practical And Illuminating Guide To Each Book In The Bible,which, perhaps unsurprisingly, sounds almost like it was almost written by an Evangelical.

Related resources (with annotations by Dr. Martin):

• Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament(Ignatius, 2010)
• Pope Benedict XVI, God's Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office(Ignatius, 2008)
• Fr. William G. Most, Free from All Error: Authorship Inerrancy Historicity of Scripture, Church Teaching, and Modern Scripture Scholars(Franciscan Marytown Press, 2009)
• Edward Sri, et al., Gospel of Matthew, The (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)(Baker Academic, 2010)
• Mary Healy, Gospel of Mark, The (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)(Baker Academic, 2008)
• William S. SJ Kurz, Acts of the Apostles (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)(Baker Academic, 2014)
• Robert Sungenis, Gospel of St. Matthew (The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Volume I)(Queenship Publishing, 2003) [Actually good -- and not nearly so radioactive by author association as critics might have you believe.]
• Robert Sungenis, The Apocalypse of St. John (The Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Volume II)(Queenship Publishing, 2007) [See annotations to the previous entry.]
• Scott Hahn, Catholic Bible Dictionary(Image, 2009)
• Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn, Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11(Ignatius, 1989)
• Msgr. George A. Kelly, The New Biblical Theorists: Raymond E. Brown and Beyond(Servant, 1985) [Inexplicably out of print but for American Catholics arguably indispensable, of this Kelly wrote, "At some point a seminary professor suggested to me that, if I wanted to appreciate what was wrong with contemporary Catholic theology, I should read everything ever written by Fr. Raymond E. Brown, S.S. I did, and the end result was [this book. It] did not appear without wide consultation. Rene Laurentin told me in advance that such a book would raise the questions that needed raising. A member of the International Theological Commission added: 'I am happy that you will publish a study of the biblical positions of R.E. Brown.' Hans Urs von Balthasar later told me it was the best thing I had done." ]
• Msgr. George A. Kelly, "A Wayward Turn in Biblical Theory" (CatholicCulture.org, November 12, 1999)
• I. Howard Marshall, et al., New Bible Dictionary(3rd ed., InterVarsity, 1996) [Also provides solid counterpoint to higher critics across the board, even if Protestant biases are on display.]
• The Gospel of Matthew (New International Commentary on the New Testament)(Eerdmans, 2007) [Rather academic but good series on individual books of Scripture, providing counterpoint to the usual higher critics, even if Protestant biases are on display.]
• J. I. Packer, Truth and Power: The Place of Scripture in the Christian Life (Harold Shaw, 1966 - Protestant) [Online] [Also from a Protestant perspective but inspiring as well as being overall respectful of Catholic distinctives, a strong exposition of the doctrine of Scripture in relation to 20th century scholarship, written by the evangelicals' most senior and certainly most stylistically elegant penman.]
• "St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology" (Resource library on Scripture complied by Scott Hahn and associates) [Scott Hahn does not go quietly, but instead provides a mother load of solid resources.]
• Joseph Martin, "'Tolle Lege' this! Catholic Bible Scholarship since V-II" (Musings, November 9, 2009).
• Dennis J. Murphy, ed., The Church And The Bible: Official Documents of the Catholic Church(2nd Enl ed., Alba House, 2007)

Jesus Seminar Critically Examined series:

• Rev. Roger Hunter Hall, "Introduction [to Jesus Seminar series in Crisis Magazine]" (Jesus Seminar Critically Examined, January 29, 2007)
• Prof. John McCormick, "The Genesis of the Jesus Seminar" (Jesus Seminar Critically Examined, January 29, 2007)
• William R. Farmer, "Robert Funk & The Jesus Seminar" (Jesus Seminar Critically Examined, January 30, 2007)
• Kenneth D. Whitehead, "Biblical Scholarship & the Faith of the Church" (Jesus Seminar Critically Examined, February 9, 2007)
• John Burger, "Funding of the Jesus Seminar " (Jesus Seminar Critically Examined, February 17, 2007).
• N.T. Wright, "Setting Scholars Straight about the Bible" (Jesus Seminar Critically Examined, March 5, 2007).

Joe Martin is a professor of Communication at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, who prowls the outskirts of the Internet and keeps an eye on the Atlantic surf.

"Atheists cannot be saved and cannot have clear consciences"

Now before anyone has what Fr. Z calls a "spittle-flecked nutty," let's remember that St. Paul in the first chapter of Romans denies that there is such a thing as a bona fide atheist. Speaking of the Gentiles (that is, the "pagans" of the time), he writes:

... what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. (Rm 1:19-22, emphasis added)

Then again, the Psalmist (in both Ps. 14:1 and Ps. 53:1) also declares that anyone who says there is no God is a "fool" -- a point that wasn't lost on St. Anselm when he compiled his ontological proof of God's existence in which one of his minor premises are nothing other than the very words of the "fool"!

But the article that prompted this post is a sermon by a traditional mission priest that one can listen to in its entirety here (Audio Sancto podcast), or read in text form here: "Atheists cannot be saved and cannot have clear consciences" (Rorate Caeli, October 23, 2013).

The basic point is that even allowing for invincible ignorance, one cannot take refuge in that doctrine over the long haul:

It is held by eminent theologians like Ludwig Ott that “Inculpable and invincible ignorance regarding the existence of God is not possible for a long time in a normal, grown-up person ...” (cf. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, p. 16). Such people choose to ignore their very nature. As, St. Paul says this is “inexcusable.” They are fools and foolish....

There's a lot more where that came from. Read more >>

If anyone finds this "unpleasant" or "undiplomatic," I would ask that he think of the matter in this way: Kierkegaard found himself living in a time when everyone around him seemed bent on doing everything he could to make life easier, whereupon he concluded that his mission in life must be to make things harder again.

Surely we live in such a time as Kierkegaard describes. Since Vatican II, those in charge of the Church have thought it best to make life easier, moving mid-week holy days of obligation to weekends, allowing Saturday evening vigil Masses to fulfil one's Sunday obligation, dispensing with the overnight fast before Mass, Friday penance, etc. Pastors have dropped from their vocabulary offensive words like contraception, fornication, masturbation, adultery, and the like, in preference for words like love, compassion, love, mercy, love, forgiveness, and more love. And pastors at Catholic funerals assure us that the departed are assuredly safely in heaven, smiling down on us, whether or not they darkened the door of a church in the last twenty years of their earthly lives, committed scandalous sins, or even committed suicide. All in all, the new "pastoral" approach has made life much easier all around.

So let's take it upon ourselves to do right by Kierkegaard and help make things harder again. A good place to start is thinking about death, hell, and damnation.

And might I add: have a nice conscience-troubling day!

Pope Francis and the mystery of the world's recognition of truth

So now that the Italian edition of Vanity Fair has named Pope Francis "Man of the Year"; Elton John has declared that "Francis is a miracle of humility in an era of vanity"; and Kathryn Jean Lopez, in her article "Franciscum Revolution" in the National Review has stated that what the world sees in Pope Francis "is the love of Christ made manifest," what are we to make of this? It all seems a bit over-the-top, does it not?

It might be tempting to believe that "the Gospel" is reducible to something so easily recognizable, so simple, that even the secular entertainment industry could recognize it through gestures of sacrifice and kindness, and their "ring of truth."

The Gospels, after all, do have passages that seem to suggest something like this -- that others should be able to discern the identity of Christians by their love and good works and glorify the Father:

• "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven." (Mt 5:16)
  
• "By this all men will know what you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (Jn 13:35)

Yet again, there are some hard passages to reconcile with leaping too readily to the conclusion that the "world" comes by such powers of perception easily:

• "The world cannot accept [Christ], because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you." (Jn 14:17)
  
• "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you." (Jn 15:19)

Let us be honest about the spiritual profundity of this question. It is true that there are gestures of self-sacrifice -- St. Maximilian Kolbe's willingness to take the place of a condemned prisoner at Auschwitz comes to mind -- that clearly do point beyond themselves to deeper truths about the way things actually are in the world -- what Aslan calls the "deep magic" of the universe. Yet we know from St. Paul's discourse in the opening chapter of Romans that the availability of true knowledge to the Gentiles cannot be equated automatically with their appropriation of that knowledge. There is such a thing as duplicity of mind and repression of truth, and, as the Prophet Jeremiah says: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer 17:9).

Faith is a supernatural gift, and nothing short of God's grace can generate it within the human heart. Therefore, while feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and self-sacrifice are essential elements in the life to which Christians are called by their Lord, these are nothing without the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity. This is why, in the final analysis, prayer is more important than mere activism. Counter-intuitively, it is the most heavenly-minded that are often the most earthly good. Not Vladamir Lenin, but Mother Teresa.

[Hat tip to JM]