Translation project completed: Book to be published

H. G. Stoker, Conscience: Phenomena and Theories, translated by Philip E. Blosser (University of Notre Dame Press, March, 2018)

I have been waiting long to see this project to completion -- a translation of a book by H. G. Stoker, possibly the most exhaustive study of conscience in any language -- and from a perspective informed by phenomenology and the traditions of Christianity. It's more expensive than I would like, but it's not overly technical and should interest a wide audience -- anyone interested in conscience, its psychology, religious and moral significance, how it 'works,' historical theories about it (from ancient Greece, through Medieval thinkers to the likes of Kant, Nietzsche, Cardinal Newman, and F.J.J. Buytendijk), terms used for it in multiple languages, it's development, reliability, and whether it is primarily intellectual, intuitive, volitional, or emotional. The book will go on sale the end of March.

For more details, see the promo page over at the University of Notre Dame Press (Here)

Conscience: Phenomena and Theories was first published in German in 1925 as a dissertation by Hendrik G. Stoker under the title Das Gewissen: Erscheinungsformen und Theorien. It was received with acclaim by philosophers at the time, including Stoker’s dissertation mentor Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, and Herbert Spielberg, as quite possibly the single most comprehensive philosophical treatment of conscience and as a major contribution in the phenomenological tradition.

Against the new optimism ...

Michel Houellebecq, prophet without religion
Rod Dreher, "Against The New Optimism" (American Conservative, July 31, 2017):

Oliver Burkeman has a long-read piece in The Guardian about whether or not life is getting better or worse. It is mostly a defense of the claims by the “New Optimists” that pessimism is grounded on willful blindness to the spectacular material improvements modernity has brought us. But it’s not entirely a defense. Excerpt:

The argument that we should be feeling happier than we are because life on the planet as a whole is getting better, on average, also misunderstands a fundamental truth about how happiness works: our judgments of the world result from making specific comparisons that feel relevant to us, not on adopting what David Runciman refers to as “the view from outer space”. If people in your small American town are far less economically secure than they were in living memory, or if you’re a young British person facing the prospect that you might never own a home, it’s not particularly consoling to be told that more and more Chinese people are entering the middle classes. At book readings in the US midwest, Ridley recalls, audience members frequently questioned his optimism on the grounds that their own lives didn’t seem to be on an upward trajectory. “They’d say, ‘You keep saying the world’s getting better, but it doesn’t feel like that round here.’ And I would say, ‘Yes, but this isn’t the whole world! Are you not even a little bit cheered by the fact that really poor Africans are getting a bit less poor?’” There is a sense in which this is a fair point. But there’s another sense in which it’s a completely irrelevant one.

At its heart, the New Optimism is an ideological argument: broadly speaking, its proponents are advocates for the power of free markets, and they intend their sunny picture of humanity’s recent past and imminent future to vindicate their politics. This is a perfectly legitimate political argument to make – but it’s still a political argument, not a straightforward, neutral reliance on objective facts. The claim that we are living in a golden age, and that our dominant mood of pessimism is unwarranted, is not an antidote to the Age of the Take, but a Take like any other – and it makes just as much sense to adopt the opposite view. “What I dislike,” Runciman says, “is this assumption that if you push back against their argument, what you’re saying is that all these things are not worth valuing … For people to feel deeply uneasy about the world we inhabit now, despite all these indicators pointing up, seems to me reasonable, given the relative instability of the evidence of this progress, and the [unpredictability] that overhangs it. Everything really is pretty fragile.”

This seems right to me. Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

Liturgy and Beauty: An Essay

Note: What follows is an essay based on a presentation I delivered recently to the Oakland County Latin Mass Association at the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Bloomfield Hills, MI, on October 16, 2016. It is posted here temporarily at the request of some in the audience and for the benefit of anyone else interested in the presentation who could not attend it. The material in it is drawn from research done for a course in aesthetics I used to teach at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina, and is distilled here, often with little more than a passing suggestion as to how to 'connect the dots' mentioned; but hopefully it will be sufficiently accessible to tickle the reader's fancy and suggest some fruitful ways of thinking about things like liturgy and beauty.

Liturgy and Beauty
(©All rights reserved)

by Philip Blosser
C. S. Lewis somewhere distinguishes two different attitudes we may entertain while assisting at liturgy: that of the reverent participant, and that of the detached critic. An attitude of reverence typically allows us to be drawn spontaneously into liturgical worship without undue distraction. The attitude of the critic, however, interferes with worshiping God. The critic is seriously hindered from even finding God at Mass.

The German Catholic author and critic, Martin Mosebach, laments that the jarring liturgical innovations of recent decades have been largely responsible for provoking this kind of a critical attitude among the faithful. Today, he says, we ask questions like:

What is absolutely indispensable for genuine liturgy? When are the celebrant’s whims tolerable, and when do they become unacceptable? We have got used to accepting the liturgy on the basis of minimum requirements, whereas the criteria ought to be maximal. And finally, we have started to evaluate liturgy – a monstrous act! We sit in the pews and ask ourselves, was that Holy Mass, or wasn’t it? I go to church to see God and come away like a theatre critic.¹

One of the most significant factors behind these unfortunate developments, I would argue, is the loss of what I would call ‘liturgical fittingness” – a fittingness, or aptness, or harmony between the external forms of liturgy and the act of worship these forms are meant to express – a fittingness between the art, architecture, vestments, postures, gestures, and actions involved in the liturgy, on the one hand, and the attitudes of reverence, honor, majesty, and adoration due to God as our sovereign Creator and Savior, on the other. Further, I contend, such fittingness is at the heart of what we traditionally call beauty.

Beauty…. What is ‘beauty’? Building on centuries of earlier reflection on the subject, St. Thomas Aquinas answers this question by first observing that beauty is that which pleases upon being seen (id quod visum placet). Certainly that sounds right. Beauty delights us. It enthralls us. It can elevate our souls and fill us with ineffable longing for that which is eternal.

But if this were all that could be said about beauty, we would have a problem. For, if beauty were no more than that which pleases us, it would be purely subjective. It would amount to saying that what makes something beautiful is the fact that we happen to like it. Certainly there are many who would agree with this view. We see it the philistine relativist who says: “Different strokes for different folks.” But relativism about beauty seems to have been an ingrained prejudice even before the advent of postmodern relativism. For example, we find this view affirmed in the old adage, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Or in the maxim De gustibus non est disputandum (“There is no disputing about taste”).

But if this were true, it would mean that we couldn’t dispute matters of taste and beauty, which is clearly not true. It would mean that fans of the “recent liturgical unpleasantness” of the last half-century were beyond criticism in their preferences. It would mean, for example, that they couldn’t be criticized for claiming that Marty Haugen’s hymns (I use the term loosely) are every bit as ‘beautiful’ as Palestrina’s motets, simply because they happen to like Marty Haugen’s wares, just as some philistines prefer Twinkies or Hostess Cupcakes to fine French or Italian cuisine. (A good book on recent Catholic hymnody is Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing: Catholic Culture and the Triumph of Bad Taste [New York: Crossroad, 1990].)

But thankfully St. Thomas doesn’t stop here. He goes on to say that beauty is characterized by three more properties: (1) Integritas – by which he means integrity, wholeness, completeness, perfection, or what we’ll call unity; (2) Claritas – by which he means clarity, splendor, brilliance, radiance, or what we’ll call brightness; and (3) Consonantia – by which he means a certain consonance, harmony, an apt fitting together, or what we’ll call fittingness. (By ‘fittingness’ here we mean not only the harmony between the parts of a work of art, but also the harmony between the work of art and the values it seeks to express, or, in the case of liturgy, the values appropriate to the worship of God.)

Now what is remarkable about these last three characteristics of beauty is that, unlike the first one mentioned by St. Thomas – namely, that which pleases us, or that which we just happen to like – these last three characteristics are objective. They are properties of the object we’re talking about, rather than of our subjective responses. This is what allows us to say that just as truth is the proper object of right knowing, and good is the proper object of right willing, so beauty is the proper object of right admiration. Knowing the truth assumes that we are able to distinguish between reality and illusion, like the difference between what really happened in the Spanish Inquisition and the revisionist falsehoods attributed to it in popular mythology. Willing the good assumes that we are able to distinguish between real and merely apparent goods, like the difference between growing in virtue and growing in popularity. Admiring the beautiful assumes that we are able to distinguish between what deserves to be called beautiful, like Michelangelo’s Pieta, and what doesn’t but merely happens to please us, like Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans.

But how can we know what should be judged beautiful and what shouldn’t? St. Thomas already points us toward the answer by listing three objective characteristics that all beautiful things have: unity, brightness, and fittingness. These suggest that our judgments about beauty needn’t be arbitrary, but can be based on objective qualities that a work of art or music or liturgy may have.

Take fittingness. One of the easiest ways of understanding how fittingness works is through metaphor and simile. “My face was red as a beet.” “He had a voice like a foghorn.” “He has guts.” “This is a ticklish problem.” “This is a dark day in American politics.” “The hours dragged on.” “I felt like a dishrag after that.” “His face clouded over.” “She was wearing a loud perfume.” “Harod is a fox.”

The point of interest here is how our meaning spans the gulf between Harod and the fox, for example. Literally it isn’t true that Harod is a fox. Harod is a person. But figuratively we know what the metaphor means, because Harod is sly and cunning like a fox. So the equation is apt. It fits. It is fitting. The way we see this isn’t through intellectual analysis but through imaginative synthesis. We intuitively grasp the fittingness of the putting these two things together.

We also can illustrate fittingness by matching various nursery rhymes with different ways of walking: For example, “Fee, fi, fo fum” goes together with stomping like a heavy-footed giant, whereas “Hi diddle diddle” goes together with light-footed leaping or prancing. We see the same principle in how we call orange a ‘warm’ color or blue a ‘cool’ color; or in the study that showed that most people associate Shakespeare’s Hamlet with the color purple or burgundy, but almost never with yellow or green;² or in the remarkable phenomenon synesthesia, first noted by Goethe in the 19th century, who noted that music sometimes produced various color impressions in certain people;³ or the fact that tones a seventh apart are almost always associated with restlessness, while tones an octave apart are associated with rest or tranquility.

In one experiment, people were asked to list corresponding terms under the paired terms ‘ping’ and ‘pong’, and the vast majority came up with the following correlations: light/heavy, small/large; ice cream/warm pea soup; pretty girl/matron; trumpet sound/cello sound; Mozart’s music/Beethoven’s music; Matisse’s paintings/Rembrandt’s paintings.⁴ Likewise, when asked to compare two lines, one sharp and jagged with another soft and undulating, the terms most often correlated with this lines were ‘restlessness’ and ‘tranquility.’

So what’s going on here? First, to test whether such judgments of ‘fittingness’ are arbitrary or culturally relative, a researcher named C.E. Osgood in the 1960s administered tests to English-speaking Americans, Mexican-Americans in the Southwest, Navajos, and Japanese subjects. He found approximately 90% agreement on comparisons that were considered ‘fitting.’⁵ Furthermore, there’s plenty of evidence to show that joy and hope are almost universally associated with short upward sloping lines, bright colors, and the major key in music, while sadness and despair are associated with long downward sloping lines, dark shades of gray and black, the minor key in music.

Second, a puzzling feature about such comparisons is what serves as the standard of comparison. For example, when we compare two athletes to see which can run the fastest, no question arises as to the commons standard of comparison, which is obviously speed. But when we ask why most people say that loud is more like large than it is like small, what is the standard of comparison? They’re comparing a sound with a size; and they’re saying one kind of sound is more like (or more fittingly expresses) one size than another. How strange! But what Osgood’s study shows is that several relevant factors emerge, such as potency and activity. Loud is more like large than small with respect to potency; whereas fast is more like hot than cold, and a jagged line is more like restlessness than tranquility, with respect to activity.⁶

What does this tell us? First of all, it tells us that judgments about beauty can have an objective basis. They can be based on qualities that are found in works of art, music, architecture, liturgy, and so on. In other words, such judgments don’t have to be simply arbitrary. They can reference certain characteristics like unity, brightness, and fittingness found in such works of art.

Second, this also tells us that there are certain objective characteristics in a liturgy that make it beautiful because they are fitting with respect to such qualities as reverence, holiness, majesty, and awe. Church architecture that is fitting to such qualities will exhibit characteristics of permanence, unity and verticality, as Michael Rose has shown.⁷ Vestments, postures, gestures, and actions will likewise fittingly reflect these qualities. It’s true that soldiers in the field may celebrate Mass with muddied boots in the jungles of Vietnam or in the sand-swept wastes of Afghanistan with nothing more than the hood of a jeep to serve as an altar. But even there, they attempt to salvage whatever bits of beauty and dignity they can: a white altar cloth is laid; the soldiers kneel, etc. The exception thus proves the rule: what is most apt and most fitting for divine worship is clean shoes, clean vestments, and a church with a high altar and incense and a vaulted ceiling that bespeaks transcendence and awe. What is never fitting at Mass is comportment, dress, postures, gestures, music and ambience that bespeak the carefree nonchalance of a beach party. In the presence of our Lord and Savior, our Creator and our King, what is called for is a studied solemnity, reserve, decorum, and postures, gestures, music and ambience befitting transcendence, awe, reverence and honor.

Once I was at St. Josephat for a Monday evening low Mass nearly a decade ago, and there I noticed that one thing I really like about the extraordinary form is that nothing in it distracts us from the focus of the liturgy upon our Lord. On the contrary, everything – each part of the liturgy, every carefully-prescribed gesture of the servers and priest, their ad orientem disposition, their attentiveness and reverence toward the altar and the Tabernacle and crucifix at its center, and even the silence – seem to conspire to draw our attention toward the Lord. Not one gesture by priest or servers draws attention to itself, saying "Here, look at me!" but rather draws attention to what is going on at the altar in this great mystery of Redemption. Even the long reverent silences of the Canon, far from reducing us to passive spectators, conduces to concentrate our attentiveness to what is transpiring, and so to promote – in the truest sense – our active participation in the liturgy. Here is fittingness. Here is beauty, ever ancient, ever new.

Notes:

1. Martin Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), p. 25. [back]
2. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), p. 97. [back]
3. Lawrence E. Marks, “On Colored-Hearing Synesthesia: Cross-modal Translation of Sensory Dimensions,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 3 (1975), pp. 303-331; Theodore F. Karwoski and H.S. Ogbert, “Color Music” in Psychological Monographs, Vol. 50 (1938), pp. 1-60; M. Collins, “a Case of Synesthesia,” in Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 2 (1929), pp. 12-27; Lorrin A. Riggs and Theodore Karwoski, “Synesthesia,” in British Journal of Psychology, Vol. 25 (1934), pp. 29-41. [back]
4. Ernst H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), pp. 370-371. My list of terms is taken from the modified schematic based on Gombrich offered by Wolterstorff, Art in Action, p. 97. [back]
5. “Cross-Cultural Generality of Visual-Verbal Synesthetic Tendencies,” in J.G. Snider and C.E. Osgood, eds, Semantic Differential Technique (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), pp. 561-584. [back]
6. C.E. Osgood, “Generality of Affective Meaning Systems” in American Psychology, 17 (1962), pp. 19-21; but cf. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action, pp. 108-110, for a critique of Osgood’s psychologistic attempt to explain these patterns, not as direct similarities among the various qualities of reality, but as similarities of affective responses to those qualities. [back]
7. Michael Rose, “The Three Natural Laws of Catholic Church Architecture,” New Oxford Review (September 2009), pp. 28-34; cf. Michael Rose, Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Our Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces and How We can Change Them Back Again (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2001). [back]

Patients who start speaking perfect Latin! (How a scientist learned to work with exorcists)

Richard Gallagher, "As a psychiatrist, I diagnose mental illness. Also, I help spot demonic possession" (The Washington Post, July 1, 2016).

[Hat tip to JM]

Fr. Perrone: how to deal with seemingly ineradicable, habitual sins

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" (Assumption Grotto News, June 26, 2016):

This past week the Church celebrated the feast of Saint Aloysius, that paragon of virtue and high sanctity. He was known to have so trained his will and so disciplined his mind that, after his death, his priest confessor could testify that the saint had probably never committed a mortal sin all his (rather brief) life.

Reading his biography in the breviary each year I feel a holy envy for this most remarkable young man who managed to preserve his innocence -- not in a social vacuum but surrounded by the many enticing evils proposed to him by the noble class into which he was born. With his eyes ever downcast (he never looked into a woman's eyes), with long hours of prayer and many bodily penances, Aloysius always carefully guarded and conserved the treasure of sanctifying grace in his soul. Yet these impressive means, assiduously practiced, could not of themselves account entirely for his unsullied life. There's no possible way for anyone to merit (in the literal sense) the grace of sinlessness. As a grace properly so called, it is a God-given gift which our Lord freely (and rarely, it seems) grants. That said, however, one may surmise that God grants this special preservative grace only to certain souls in view of the fact that they pursue with unrelenting persistence the path of sanctity. I mention this being both a sinner myself and a confessor who knows the great desire to cease committing sin and to be perpetually pleasing to God in every aspect of life. And yet, sin appears to have a kind of inevitability about it. Try as one may, sin happens as sure as metal tarnishes, weeds sprout, and dust settles. Yet this dim view of the inevitability of moral failings -- a form of determinism -- is false. Man always retains internal moral freedom such that no one ever must succumb to sin. This is the point of doctrine. And yet, there is the near universally experienced feeling that sin cannot be entirely avoided, which is true only in the cas of venial sin unless God were to confer that special preventive grace mentioned above.

No one then can "buy" the grace of perseverance. There is no "insurance policy" such that one can pray hard or pledge many good deeds so as to ward off the possibility of succumbing to future sin. All one can do is to pray regularly and undertake appropriate penitential disciplines in the hope that by these means one would have the strength always to resist sin -- with the help of divine grace. If there is a relapse into sin, the sincere Christian understandably become distraught. Recidivism is a cause of anguish for many penitents. How, one asks himself, is it possible to have failed God yet once again? Despondancy, despair, however is never the right response to the feeling of helplessness that can grip the sinner who relapses into sin. As an attempt at offering consolation to the recurring sinner, I offer a few thoughts.

The first is that God has a reason for permitting all things that happen, sin included. That may sound slightly blasphemous since God abhors sin, yet there's a distinction between His willing sin (an impossibility) and His permitting it to happen. In this latter sense God may allow acquiescence to sin as a means of humbling the proud sinner, of making him pray more fervently, of moving him to admit his sins to the priest, of leading him to acquire a deep contrition, of learning compassion for the failings of others, or of demonstrating and proving His mercy and compassion. Another thing to consider is that sin easily becomes accustomed, ingrained behavior, embedded into the emotional system as a kind of reflexive response. Hence sincere attempts to eradicate sin must contend with a powerful, compelling force.

These attempted rationales for the ongoing commission of sin should not be taken as dismissive of its true malice and its consequences, nor should they slight the requirement for the repentant sinner to make a decisive, firm intention to sin no more. Sin truly is evil, and the result of unpardoned mortal sin is eternal hell after death. The reform of one's life must be the unrelenting duty of everyone, and no one may excuse himself from frequenting the confessional. God who permits sin has also provided its remedy in the sacrament of Confession. My purpose in writing you on this subject is to give you encouragement. You are not alone in being a sinner. Sin is one of the (unfortunate) unifying things about the human reace for nearly everybody (Our Lady and John the Baptist for sure, Saints Aloysius and Therese probably). Come then to confess your sins with childlike simplicity and with a straightforward honesty which recognizes that God's compassionating goodness and forgiveness is far greater than the regrettably wretched commission of your sins.

Fr. Perrone

Journal eats crow over article claiming conservatism linked to genetic-based psychosis

Steven Hayward, "Epic Correction of the Decade" (Powerline, June 8, 2016):

Hoo-wee, the New York Times will really have to extend itself to top the boner and mother-of-all-corrections at the American Journal of Political Science. This is the journal that published a finding much beloved of liberals a few years back that purported to find scientific evidence that conservatives are more likely to exhibit traits associated with psychoticism, such as authoritarianism and tough-mindedness, and that the supposed “authoritarian” personality of conservatives might even have a genetic basis (and therefore be treatable someday?). Settle in with a cup or glass of your favorite beverage, and get ready to enjoy one of the most epic academic face plants ever. Read more >>

[Hat tip to JM]

Chilling effect on Catholic blogging?

Guy Noir - Private Eye is back to using carrier pigeons again; and today I received this lugubrious message folded up in a tiny paper that seemed to have been folded with a particular violence. But maybe I'm just projecting:

Do you recall asking if anyone thought this papacy has had a chilling effect on Catholic blogging?

Is there now any doubt? Pope Francis is the pope of one unanticipated surprise: demoralization.

In terms of conservative Catholic blogging, the answer is obviously a YES.

'Codgitator' has essentially ceased to publish. Whatever Bryan Cross' strange "Called to Communion" was, it is now so stale it is not worth a bother (but was also always strange). Father Dwight continues to opine from a comfortable Greenville SC safe house in a Pathos all-is-well mode. Amy Wellborn now does more travel blogging, understandably. Fr. Z plods along, but what is there to say? Etc etc.

And you have doubtless read over at 'Catholicam' this flatliner:

"When the guy in charge has absolutely zero interest in your concerns - and indeed, when it is questionable whether he even shares the most basic theological and philosophical assumptions as historic Catholicism - there is a strong sense of "Why bother?"

What can I possibly say?

Fr. Perrone: psychological & spiritual effects of lack of love for our Savior

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, April 17, 2016):

Once I heard it said, by a Catholic psychiatrist, I believe, that the root cause of all mental illness is the lack of love. It's an idea I'm well-disposed to accept. I observe the suffering of many people of the world at large, and at much closer range of people I know and care a great deal about -- you are among these -- and I'm much troubled over the spiritual want that causes such suffering and agonizing distress. God made the world for love -- for love of Him. When we have the love of God in us, poured into us, as St. Paul would say, by the Holy Spirit, we are then 'right' and consequently are fulfilled. The beauty of love, the poetry of life, the harmony of nature, the ecstasy and serenity of contemplative prayer, the silence and the intoxicating power of music which enraptures the heart, moving it to want to repose in God -- all these spiritually human and properly-speaking divine things are being cut off from our experience in this unloving, ugly, pragmatic, techno world. What can result other than suffering from a stifling of the soul? La tristesse du monde (the French language seems best to convey this: "the sadness of the world"). God's holy word had warned us that all the desires of the world are vanity, a "chasing after the wind." Yet we seem not to be able to escape the entrapment of modern life created by our concupiscences. "Do not love the world, or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world -- the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and teh pride of life -- is not of the Father but is of the world (1 Jn 2:15-16). St. James remarks similarly: "whosever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (4.4).

The one place of refuge in this unhappy world for us Catholics ought to be in church, at Mass and before the most Blessed Sacrament. As we know so well, even this has often been taken from us, where the Mass is secularized and the tranquility which ought to attend the Blessed Sacrament in our churches and chapels is often ruffled by active busyness and discourteous impudent talking.

I write and speak about these problems of the 'difficulty of being' Catholic in the modern world because I too have to fight off the allurements of the world and of the flesh, and the blandishments of the devil and must run for asylum in the solitary quiet of the Lord's presence where I discover all that my aching heart desires. Those few stabilizing moments of daily prayer are surrounded by the worries, duties, noises and problems of banal existence. I want to fly away like a bird to the mountain (Ps. 10:2) to be at peace with God. This is, I would say, a veiled expression of the desire for heaven itself, a yearning for the plentitude of eternal life for which cause we were created. "Our hearts are restless until they repose in Thee," wrote St. Augustine.

Often when newcomers visit our parish church, or come for Mass here, they note a difference from other churches in finding a certain restfulness (for lack of a better word). I would not say that I am satisfied in having attained to the perfection of this, but I have tried mightily to avoid the most rudely invasive agitators that cause the disquiet in many churches and its liturgies. You yourselves, upon coming into our church, bring in with you, unwittingly, much of the commotion and disturbances you acquired from the world during the past week. It takes time for the sanctifying, calming power of the Lord's words and Presence to do their work to restore the spiritual equilibrium you need to face yet another week of temptation, trial, burden of mundane deportment, and harsh realities of everyday life.

We need so much less of much that we have in order to possess much more of God, of love, of beauty, of serenity -- even of sanity itself. Are we willing to sever those attachments to things we can do without in order to have the greater things and the greatest of all things? It's a question to be pondered and to be acted upon in light of the graces received. God wants us to be at peace, in His holy grace, with our minds and our loves riveted upon Him and upon our eternal goal.

We injure ourselves and cause much unhappiness for ourselves and for others by evading the eternal truths.

Fr. Perrone

Fr. Perrone: the weight of guilt & need for a good confession vs. loud-mouthed exposés or the concealing of sins

 Fr. Eduard Peronne, "A Pastor's Descant"  (Assumption Grotto News, September 6, 2015)

Recently, I think, an ex-satanist told the sordid, frightening, and even gruesome story of his former life as high priest of iniquity. The once reprobate man is, marvelous to tell, now a believing, practicing Catholic. His is a tale so horrible I can’t countenance telling it, nor even think about it. One revealing aspect about his confession, however, was making known the activity of satanists inside abortion clinics. This was a confirmation of what many had suspected: there’s even more evil inside abortion chambers than we dared to admit.
  
Leaving aside the rest of the man’s story – it’s gory details are unnecessary to know–I was surprised to find myself a bit annoyed at the disclosure of his former perversities, not so much because of the shocking specifics told but rather because of the overall public manner of his recital, a forum that has now become popular. This practice of being outspoken, telling-it-all about one’s evil past, is not always  inappropriate, nor always without benefit. The lives of the saints, for example, often edify and inspire, when after a great conversion, a sinful life turns into a holy one. With that kind of story everyone can identify to some degree and profit by it in a more resolute pursuit of righteousness and holiness. But the modern manner of  public disclosure is different. It panders to sensational and lurid tastes, satisfying morbid curiosity rather than the thirst for goodness and wisdom. This practice is prevalent in a lot of modern writing, TV talk shows, radio interviews and films. There the objective is not honorable, aiming to satisfy sinful appetites by hearing about the odd, macabre, bizarre and, most often, lecherous and prurient. Tellers of  these misdeeds typically have no or little remorse, either before God or before humanity, but evince instead a braggart spirit that masks guilt in an supposedly honest admission.

There’s irony in this modern openness, this “transparency” (now a favorite jargon in some quarters), and it is this: while many today are bold and brash in telling their shameful deeds publicly, there’s so little humble and honest divulgence of sins in our confessionals which remain–in most parishes at least – grossly neglected. The reason for both the loud-mouthed exposés and for the concealing of sins is the same: guilt. The arrogant boaster and the cowardly evader of truth suffer alike from guilt and try to alleviate their accusing consciences by inappropriate and utterly ineffective means. The only way to be free from the sting of guilt for sin is the way invented by God in a three-fold act: contrition, confession and absolution. The happy result of this is relief for the throbbing soul. It requires, on the part of the offender, humility and integrity and–on the Other side–divine forgiveness. Because sincere openness and use of the confessional are little in evidence, we’re becoming an ever sicker people, unavailing of the proffered divine mercy that maintains good spiritual and mental health. The Church in Confession holds the remedy for wounded souls in her priests’ hands in such a way that the dignity and privacy of the disclosing penitent is  respected. But many would rather deny their guilt and keep it locked inside them where it corrodes, rots and torments their consciences; or else they would rather boast about their sins and ridicule moral norms. A psalm expresses well the mind of a truly repentant sinner: “Blessed is he whose sins are forgiven...in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I was silent about my sin, my body wasted away through groaning all day long. But then I acknowledged my sin to You and I did not hide my iniquity.  I said: ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord’ and then You forgave the guilt of my sin” (Ps. 31). 

People who do not admit their guilt with humility and complete honesty in Confession (and with sincere amendment) must suffer the burden of guilt throughout their lives and afterward must face the dread judgment  of God. Confession, however, is the removal of guilt such that a sinner emerges from a good Confession free of blame before God (though before mankind he may yet have to face other consequences for his misdeeds), his conscience now being at peace. For the repentant and restored man, his confessed and absolved sins will not be charged against him at the Judgment.

With such a marvel of divine clemency as is found in  the Sacrament of Confession dare anyone deny himself access to this unspeakably great benefit? The aforementioned Psalm ends this way: “Rejoice in the Lord and  exult, O you just ones, and be glorified, all you upright in heart.”

Boast, then, O  Christian, not of your shameful sins, but of the goodness of Christ whose mercies are  without end.

Fr. Perrone

Epidemic pornography, the new crack cocaine of addictive disorders: Russell Brand, Psychologist Dr. Peter Kleponis, and Mark Houck of The King's Men

The Messiah's consciousness: an Advent meditation

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, December 21, 2014):

We are in the habit of celebrating birthdays–for good reason. These were the days when we first came to the light of day, bringing–we would like to think–great joy to our mothers. In reality, the day of our conception is even more important than our birthday for it is the day our lives began, though we were unmindful of the fact at the time. 

In the case of the Son of God become man in the chaste womb of the ever-Virgin Mary, He was indeed mindful of His first earthly “home” on His conception day, celebrated in the Church on March 25^th, nine months before Christmas day. His first thought upon entering the world was the sacrifice He had come to make of His human life for saving our souls. “Behold, I have come to do your will, (Father). ...and by that ‘will’ we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’ (Hb. 10:9,10). Our Lord then entered our world conscious of Himself and of His purpose and mission among men. If we understand this fully, it would mean also that Christ-in-the-womb knew all things in His embryonic state–specifically that He knew us, not as an anonymous mass of humanity, but as individuals, with our total history present to His mind. 

With many errors circulated by presumably well-intended but ignorant (modernist) preaching, many would think the above statements pious hyperbole–claims having been made that Jesus did not know many things, even His identity as God! To hear a reliable voice on the matter, I turn to the orthodox teaching found in the marvelous encyclical (it still is, after so many years) of Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis. “The most loving knowledge...with which the divine Redeemer pursued us from the first moment of the Incarnation surpasses the diligent grasp of any human mind. For, by that blessed vision which He enjoyed when He was just received in the womb of the Mother of God, He has all the members of the Mystical Body (the Church) consciously and perpetually present to Him, and embraces them with saving love. In the manger, on the cross, in the eternal glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church before Him, and joined to Him far more clearly than each one knows and loves himself.” 

I quote this passage to make you realize something almost forgotten nowadays in our Christmas meditations, namely, that the Infant Babe we behold in the manger was a most knowing, fully conscious and indeed infinitely-aware Person who, according to the teaching set forth above, would know you as you are in the present moment, in your past, and in your everlasting future. The Christ Child’s omniscience contrasts with the uncomprehending and empty-eyed-stare of the ox and ass around the manger surely, but it also contrasts with our rather feeble grasp of the divinity of Jesus in that Child. “He was in the world...but the world knew Him not” (Jn. 1:10). Artists fashioning the creche have often made the Infant’s eyes look aware of us before Him. No mindless baby-look in His eyes! Our Lord was conscious of who He was and that He had come “for us men and for our salvation.” This realization of Infant Christ’s cognizance puts a realistic interpretation on many things about the Christmas story that we might otherwise regard as poetical embellishment in phrases such as “sleep in heavenly peace” and “radiant beams from Thy holy face” or “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight’ and “veiled in flesh the Godhead see,” and so on. This is a lesson for us not only about the images we make of the nativity figures in the stable but a lesson about Christ in His other most lowly form of the Holy Eucharist. Just as we would say that He is no oblivious baby in the manger, neither is He unknowing of you when you come before Him in the Holy Sacrament.

And while we’re on the subject of Christ’s infinite knowledge, let’s add a word about Holy Mary, since the liturgy today speaks of Her. She, when responding to the Archangel Gabriel at the annunciation, surely knew what She was agreeing to when She said, “Let it be done to me, according to your word.” Some misguided men have not hesitated to attribute ignorance to Mary in what was being proposed to Her. Gabriel did say that “the Most High will overshadow you” and that the holy offspring to be born of Her would be called “the Son of God.” That ‘overshadowing’ would have been understood from Mary’s knowledge of the Old Testament as the place where the divine presence was preserved (first in the desert tabernacle and later in the Temple). She also knew from reading Isaiah that the Messiah would be the “mighty God.” She would have then known that the Presence in Her was God! 

It is then a bad sign of the times in which we live that we so readily attribute ignorance to Mary at the Annunciation and to Jesus both in His adult life as well as in the manger. It is not they, but we who are ignorant.

I’ll not have another word for you here until after Christmas day has come and gone. My purpose in writing as I have above is that I don’t want you to come to church on Christmas as a “faithless and perverse generation” (Mt 17:17) or as “foolish men, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Lk 24:25). Come to adore Him, the Lord. Venite, adoremus Dominum.

Fr. Perrone

"How the Sensitivity Movement Desensitized Catholics to Evil"

A reader writes: "Any concept of God as demanding, hard to please, or holy seems quite gone. Is this a good thing, and how does it square with earlier eras and Scripture? I have yet to hear a convincing answer to that question." And now from William Kilpatrick, "How the Sensitivity Movement Desensitized Catholics to Evil" (Crisis, November 25, 2014). Excerpts:

... The Church has repudiated the philosophy of relativism, but I’m not aware of any similar repudiation of the human potential psychology that made relativism so popular. I would guess that seminary classes are no longer conducted like encounter groups, but it does seem that the encounter mindset still lingers in the Church. Perhaps the biggest hangover from the self-esteem era is the loss of the sense of sin and evil that comes from too much exposure to me-centered psychology. You will get a much better sense of the reality of evil by reading a single Dean Koontz novel than by listening to a hundred Sunday sermons in an average Catholic parish.

...

Up to now, the official Catholic response to the global jihad has been nothing more than continued calls for dialogue. But the dialogue process itself sounds suspiciously like something out of the bell-bottom-encounter group era. Not that the dialoguers stand around in circles and hold hands—I presume that they do not—but that they carry over into their discussions many of the assumptions of that period. When Church leaders speak of dialogue, they tend to use language uncomfortably reminiscent of the heyday of the human potentialists. Calls to dialogue are replete with phrases such as “risk-taking,” “releasing creativity,” “mutual understanding,” “encounter,” and “respect for the other.” Moreover, today’s dialogue advocates seem to share the same optimistic assessment of human nature held by encounter enthusiasts. They operate on the assumption that once you get to know the other fellow, you’ll invariably find that, underneath it all, he shares the same worthy values and goals that you do. As a recent USCCB statement on dialogue with Muslims puts it:

Perhaps most importantly, our work together has forged true bonds of friendship that are supported by mutual esteem and an ever-growing trust… Through dialogue we have been able to work through and overcome much of our mutual ignorance, habitual distrust, and debilitating fear.

In other words, we can trust the other. We only fear others because we don’t know them. And once we know them, we’ll realize that there was never anything to fear.

Unfortunately, this trust in the power of trust seems to have rendered the USCCB dialogue participants unable to grasp the possibility that their Muslim dialogue partners are not motivated by the same vision which inspires them. That their main dialogue partner—the Islamic Society of North America—is a spinoff of the Muslim Brotherhood seems to be of little concern. That their counterparts may simply be using the bishops in order to gain respectability for their main agenda—which is to introduce sharia law to America—does not seem to have entered the prelates’ minds.

Back in the seventies, the trust fall became a standard feature of encounter groups, summer camps, and college orientations. In one version of this trust-building exercise, one person stands in the middle of a circle of his peers and falls backward, relying on the others to catch him....

Contrary to human potential psychology, the world is not a giant safety net, and human nature is still fallen. This has always been a fallen world, but right now, thanks to the denial of that fact by the spiritual heirs of Carl Rogers, the world is a far more dangerous place than it might otherwise have been. The sensitivity movement desensitized us to the reality of evil. And many are now paying the price for that naiveté.

In 1967, smiley-face assumptions about human nature led to the collapse of an order of nuns and a district-wide Catholic school system. Unless we manage to discard our trust-fall fantasies about the human condition, we seem destined to experience a fall of much greater magnitude in the not-too-distant future.

[Hat tip to JM]

Is "gay" sex good for anyone? Brute facts

What would you think if a relative, friend, or colleague had a condition that is routinely, even if not always, associated with the following problems:

• A significantly decreased likelihood of establishing or preserving a successful marriage
• A five- to ten-year decrease in life expectancy
• Chronic, potentially fatal, liver disease --hepatitis
• Inevitably fatal esophageal cancer
• Pneumonia
• Internal bleeding
• Serious mental disabilities, many of which are irreversible
• A much higher than usual incidence of suicide
• A very low likelihood that its adverse effects can be eliminated unless the condition itself is eliminated
• An only 30 percent likelihood of being eliminated through lengthy, often costly, and very time-consuming treatment in an otherwise unselected population of sufferers (although a very high success rate among highly motivated, carefully selected sufferers).

We can add four qualifications to this unnamed condition. First, even though its origins are influenced by genetics, the condition is, strictly speaking, rooted in behavior. Second, individuals who have this condition continue the behavior in spite of the destructive consequences of doing so. third, although some people with this condition perceive it as a problem and wish they could rid themselves of it, many others deny they have any problem at all and violently resist all attempts to "help" them. And fourth, these people who resist help tend to socialize with one another, sometimes exclusively and forma a kind of "subculture."

No doubt you would care deeply for someone close to you who had such a condition. And whether or not society considered it undesirable or even an illness, you would want to help. Undoubtedly, you would also consider it worth "treating," that is, you would seek to help your relative, friend, or colleague by eliminating the condition entirely.

The condition we are speaking of is alcoholism. Alcoholism is clearly undesirable precisely because of all the adverse conditions directly associated with it, although not every alcoholic develops all the problems associated with it.

Alcoholism is a form of compulsive or addictive behavior that has volitional, family, psychological, social, and genetic "causes." Whether it can be considered an "illness" in the strict sense makes for an interesting philosophical discussion but a useless practical one -- as is true for all addictions. Nonetheless, and in spite of the relatively modest "cure" rate, it is still well worth treating, and treating as though it were an illness (as does organized psychiatry, which lists it as a disorder), because of the enormously serious personal and social consequences of not doing so. And now imagine another friend or colleague who had a condition associated with a similar list of problems:

• A significantly decreased likelihood of establishing or preserving a successful marriage
• A twenty-five to thirty-year decrease in life expectancy
• Chronic, potentially fatal, liver disease -- infectious hepatitis, which increases the risk of liver cancer
• Frequently fatal rectal cancer
• Multiple bowel and other infectious diseases
• A much higher than usual incidence of suicide
• A very low likelihood that its adverse effects can be eliminated unless the condition itself is
• An at least 50 percent likelihood of being eliminated through lentghy, often costly, and very time-consuming treatment in an otherwise unselected group of sufferers (although a very high success rate, in some instances nearing 100 percent, for groups of highly motivated, carefully selected individuals)

As with alcoholism: First, even though its origins may be influenced by genetics, the condition is, strictly speaking, a pattern of behavior; second, individuals who have this condition continue in the behavior in spite of the destructive consequences of doing so; third, although some people with this condition perceive it as a problem and wish they could rid themselves of it, many others deny they have any problem at all and violently resist all attempts to "help" them; and fourth, some of the people with this condition -- especially those who deny it is a problem -- tend to socialize almost exclusively with one another and form a "subculture."

This condition is homosexuality. Yet despite the parallels between the two conditions, what is striking today are the sharply different responses to them....

Gay activists deliberately paint a picture of homosexual life, especially among men, that is the counterpart of heterosexual life. Their purpose is to avoid alienating support from sympathetic heterosexuals who constitute the vast majority of people. For example, one activist handbook [M. Kirk and H. Madsen, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays, 1989] advises: "In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be portrayed as victims.... Persons featured in the media campaign should be ... indistinguishable from the straights we'd like to reach." Another [M. Kirk and E. Pill, "The Overhauling of Straight America," Guide, November 1987, p. 24] advises: "The masses must not be repulsed by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself."

In spite of clear evidence that homosexual standards are strikingly different from the heterosexual norm, the general public impression has been created that gays are little different from straights. The above quotations show the keen awareness of some gay activists for the need for deceptive cover. But in many cases it seems as though many gays have bought this artificially constructed picture in all hopefulness.

Excerpted from Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth(Baker Books, 2004), pp. 49-52.

Dr. Jeffrey Satinover has practiced psychoanalysis and psychiatry for more than twenty years. He is a former Fellow in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and past William James Lecturer in Psychology and Religion at Harvard. He holds degrees from M.I.T., Harvard University, and the University of Texas. He and his wife have three children.

Related:

• Joseph Nicolosi, "The Traumatic Foundation of Male Homosexuality" (Crisis, December 19, 2016)
• Austin Ruse, "A Good Gay Myth is a Terrible Thing to Waste" (March 9, 2018)
• Paul Kengor, "Shootings and Fatherlessness: A Clarification on the Data" (March 9, 2018)

Why porn matters

Carl R. Trueman, "The Purpose of Pornography" (First Things, August 5, 2014), concludes:

Perhaps our obsession with sex is not really an obsession with sex at all. Perhaps it is really an obsession with death, to be avoided by remaining perpetually young or by tricking ourselves by sexual athletics into thinking that we do so. Yet whatever the aesthetics, sexual activity as a means for preserving the myth of eternal youth is always going to involve the law of diminishing returns and thus ironically prove a powerful witness to its own falsehood. It really does not matter how many orgasms you have, or how intense they are, you are still going to die.

[Hat tip to JM]

On Catholic cheerfulness

Many years ago about ten years after becoming a Catholic I was involved for several years as a cooperator in Opus Dei, and used to attend evenings of recollection in Durham, as well as retreats. One virtrue the work seeks to cultivate in its members is the virtue of cheerfulness. St. Josemaria Escriva did this as well. And my dear confessor in the work, Fr. Deogratias Rosales (Fr. "Deo" for short) was a living embodiment of this virtue. It was contagious. He could be very serious and grave during some of his meditations, but he was nearly always smiling radiantly, even after driving all the way from Washington, D.C. in order to meet with us.

Cheerfulness is a Christian virtue. It's also a fruit of the spirit if we see it as a kindred of joy (Gal. 5:22-23). It is not, however, something superficial, and it certainly is not the same thing as giddiness. Joy can coexist with a certain gravity, and even pain. So can cheerfulness.

On Catholic Radio the other day, I heard a priest counsel his listeners to exhibit the joy of their salvation by smiling when they come to Mass. He had just been describing the often dour faces of so many parishioners when they come to receive the Body of Christ during Holy Communion. Do people realize they're coming to meet the Bridegroom of the Church in the most intimate act of union this side of heaven, he asked. Come, people: SMILE. Look alive. Look happy. Express the joy of your salvation.

On the one hand, I understand this sentiment. In one sense this is what Opus Dei was seeking to cultivate in its members; and I recognize the natural cheerfulness and joy that accompany (and should accompany) the Christian life.

On the other hand, this priest's remarks also recalls some criticisms I have heard by Protestant evangelicals of Catholic Masses (and, I confess, one hears similar criticisms by charismatic Catholics of what they witness in many Catholic Masses). Look at the peoples' faces, they say. There's no joy. People are so serious and lacking in expression.

Now I know all about the criticisms of "sacramentalized pagans" filling the pews of Catholic churches. I myself have made such criticisms. When people are simply "going-through-the-motions" without any interior affirmation of the act in which they are participating, there is certainly something wrong. But that's precisely the point, isn't it: how does one judge an interior act? Must a soul be smiling, raising his hands during the Eucharistic prayer, or expressing his interior sentiments in some external way in order to have genuine faith in God or love and gratitude for Christ's oblation of Himself in the Sacrifice of the Mass?

Of course not. Furthermore, as I have said before in my posts, smiles may not even be the most appropriate response to assisting (participating) at Mass. When we consider that we are there brought to the foot of the crucifix, to the alter of Sacrifice itself, a serious demeanor may in fact be more appropriate than the hyped-up responses one sometimes witnesses in non-Catholic (and more increasingly in some Catholic) church services.

I am listening to J.S. Bach's St. Matthew's Passion as I write, and it would not occur to me to smile or laugh in response to the profound choral representation of Christ's suffering, death, and sacrifice. This doesn't mean one lacks joy, or even a certain interior cheerfulness, but there are times and places where one thing is fitting, and another is not.


Related (updated 05/10/2014): I was reminded of the post above when recently reading the following account of Fra Modestino Fucci (1917-2011) recollecting his experience of "Serving the Holy Mass of Padre Pio" (The Shield of Faith, May 1, 2014):

I would watch and observe Padre Pio closely every time, from the moment he left his cell at dawn to celebrate Mass. I would see him in a state of suffering and anxiety. He seemed restless. As soon as he reached the sacristy where he put on the sacred vestments, I had the impression that already he was no longer aware of what went on around him.

He was totally absorbed and conscious of what he was about the fulfill. His face which was of normal color became frighteningly pale when he put on the amice. From that moment onwards he paid no more attention to anyone. Clothed in the sacred vestments he made his way to the altar. Even though I walked ahead of him, I was aware that his gait became more dragging, his face sorrowful. He seemed to stoop always more, as if, I thought, crushed beneath the weight of a gigantic invisible cross. Read more >>

This is not the stuff of "happy clappy" giddiness that Msgr. Ronald Knox called Enthusiasm.

Holy Sex!!! There he goes, again (Gregory Popcak)

A white-gloved courier dressed in a tux hand-delivered this message to our office. Upon opening it, we learned that it was from a very distressed correspondent -- yes, the very one we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye. Seemed like his head was about to explode:

Hello Doc,

If you were an advice columnist, I might start out,

"Is it just me, or WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?"

If I was sending you an item on Christopher West, I might start out,

"Do you really think we are Puritanical about sex in Catholic circles? Please!"

But I'll simply say: whatever sense of propriety and taste people once had has been seriously bent out of whack if a book about Toe-Curling Orgasms is seen as a "fun" couples gift book recommend at Christmas by the Peggy Noonon of St. Blogs. Not to mention the the whole list is recommended by Mark Shea, who is himself recommended on the list and gets to namedrop Scalia as "Lizzie."

Of course, Guy Noir is referring to the latest promotion of Gregory K. Popcak PhD's Holy Sex!: A Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving,yet another attempt to cash in on Blessed Pope John Paul II's wildly popularized "Theology of the Body," which now has Catholics falling all over themselves talking about sex and sounding like the latest issue of Cosmopolitan or Playboy than like, well, Catholics. [And if anyone wants the distressing facts about Dr. Popcak, PhD, all he needs to do is take Roister-Doister's advice and read the section on him in the distressingly-titled EWTN: A Network Gone Wrong.] Guy continues:

OK. Now that I have gagged and been snide, I will make a note to confess all tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I am talking about this. Fewer and fewer public Catholics do not induce cringes in me. [And a DVD about Francis ... or Benedict XVI, for that matter ... just a hair over the top too. Wait, how about BOTH, in the same wrapper!?]

AND I will add that though the book has impressive endorsements at amazon.com, of the title I still have to ask, "Really?" If we have to resort to such marketing-driven packaging, do we honestly expect to be able to cultivate high levels of sanctity? Childish in terms of tone versus context regardless of how sober the actually interior content is.... Actually I suddenly recall a sex seminar for us back in high school at a church where you walked into a room and they had it plastered with sexually suggestive images on a table. Seems like similarly-inspired strategy that even at 16 struck me as both slightly adolescent and slightly off base.

Say a prayer for Guy Noir. Obviously he's having trouble catching up with the times.

[Hat tip to JM]

Lessons on the psychology of heresy from Pius VI's Auctorem Fidei

The papal Bull Auctorem Fidei was Pope Pius VI's Constitution against the Errors of the Synod of Pistoia (1786) in Italy. Those errors consisted of the Gallican and Jansenist acts and tendencies represented by the Synod, a tapestry of novelties introduced under the veil of ambiguity, distortion, and obfuscation. The former Bishop of Pistoia, Scipione de' Ricci, is said to have "embarked on confusing, destroying, and utterly overturning [sound Christian doctrine] by introducing troublesome novelties under the guise of a sham reform."

The document has been repeatedly cited by later Popes when called to combat doctrinal errors in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is mentioned in Indulgentiarum Doctrina, Quo Graviora, Commissum Divinitus, Mysterium Fidei and Pascendi Dominici Gregis.

The introductory part of this Bull (advisory: see Rules 7-9)makes for instructive reading because of the uncanny clarity with which Pius VI describes the psychology of the heretical mind and its methods (emphasis Mundabor's):

They [ our most holy predecessors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, the innovators sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith that is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. Moreover, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor St. Celestine, who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed.

What methods does Pius use to expose the error?

In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements that disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged.

[Hat tip to S. Armaticus via JM]

65,000+ Reddit users flock to forum founded by atheist to quit pornography, masturbation

Even a blind hog in a pigsty, as they say, can stumble upon an acorn occasionally. John Jalsevac, "65,000+ Reddit users flock to forum founded by atheist to quit pornography, masturbation" (LifeSiteNews, July 12, 2013):

July 12, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – They’re called “fapstronauts”: men and women who, for whatever reason, have signed up to take the “ultimate challenge” and conquer the urge to masturbate (“fap” in Internet slang) and/or use porn, whether it be for a certain, set period of time, or permanently. And joining their ranks is quickly becoming one of the hottest new trends on the social media site Reddit.

Read more >>

What is notable here, perhaps, is that while the reasons for pursuit of the goal in question are varied, the majority of those involved are secular atheists, not Catholics or otherwise religious; and, like Catholics familiar with Church teaching, they are coming to the realization in this highly hedonistic and over-sexualized culture that pornography and auto-erotic self-gratification do not lead to happiness or joy, but alienation, emotional distancing, objectification of others, and emotional isolation.

In one sense, as Christopher Blosser pointed out to me, the movement might be characterized as a modern day grassroots revival of stoicism (exercise of will and reason, mastery over passions, etc.); but in their own meagre way, these young people -- although completely ignorant of Christianity in general or Catholicism in particular, or even anything redolent of the "theology of the body" -- are coming to parallel epiphanies. Given time, the "truth will out," as they say.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Popular suicide spots in Japan

Larissa Macfarquhar, "Last Call" (The New Yorker, June 24, 2013) - a Buddhist monk confronts Japan's suicide culture:

From time to time, Ittetsu Nemoto gets a group of suicidal people together to visit popular suicide spots, of which there are many in Japan. The best known is Aokigahara forest, the Sea of Trees, at the foot of Mt. Fuji. The forest became associated with suicide in the nineteen-sixties, after the publication of two novels by Seicho Matsumoto, and even more so after Wataru Tsurumi’s 1993 “Complete Manual of Suicide” declared it the perfect place to die. Because its trees grow so closely together that they block the wind, and because there are few animals or birds, the forest is unusually quiet. The Sea of Trees is large, fourteen square miles, so bodies can lie undiscovered for months; tourists photograph corpses and scavenge for abandoned possessions. Another common suicide destination is Tojinbo cliff, which overlooks the Sea of Japan. Visiting such a place turns out to be very different from picturing it. The sight of the sea from a cliff top can be a terrible thing.

At other times, Nemoto, a Buddhist priest, conducts death workshops for the suicidal at his temple. He tells attendees to imagine they’ve been given a diagnosis of cancer and have three months to live. He instructs them to write down what they want to do in those three months. Then he tells them to imagine they have one month left; then a week; then ten minutes. Most people start crying in the course of this exercise, Nemoto among them.

One man who came to a workshop had been talking to Nemoto for years about wanting to die. He was thirty-eight years old and had been institutionalized in a mental hospital off and on for a decade. During the writing exercise, he just sat and wept. When Nemoto came around to check on him, his paper was blank. The man explained that he had nothing to say in response to the questions because he had never considered them. All he had ever thought about was wanting to die; he had never thought about what he might want to do with his life. But if he had never really lived, how could he want to die? This insight proved oddly liberating. The man returned to his job as a machinist in a factory. Previously, he had been so averse to human company that he had been able to function only in certain limited capacities, but now he was able to speak to people, and he got a promotion. . . .

[Hat tip to Saleem P.]

Related: a scene from the Japanese movie, "Departures," which portrays the respect and tenderness with which the dead are treated in Japan, a film well-worth seeing, in my opinion:

Good homily on the true meaning of joy

Dispelling the common misconception that joy, like love, are emotions, Michael "Jeremiah" Voris stresses that emotions are at the service of true joy and love, which are grounded in knowledge of truth (and our Lord Who is Truth itself).