Extraordinary community news

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (November 25, 2012):

The Veni Creátor: The Church’s Prayer to the Holy Ghost

Following up on our discussion two weeks ago of the Te Deum, the Church’s prayer of thanksgiving, today we present its sister prayer, the Veni Creátor, a hymn to the Holy Ghost. Once again we provide for your comparison two approved English versions, one traditional and one modern, the former quite clearly more faithful to the Latin original. The Veni Creátor is sung at Windsor’s Assumption Church on January 1 and on the Feast of Pentecost. Its public recitation or singing on those days is enriched with a Plenary Indulgence, under the usual conditions. Praying it on other days is enriched with a Partial Indulgence.

Veni Creátor [Original Latin]

Veni, Creátor Spíritus,
Mentes tuórum vísita,
Imple supérna grátia,
Quæ tu creásti péctora.

Qui dicéris Paráclitus,
Altíssimi donum Dei,
Fons vivus, ignis, cáritas,
Et spiritális únctio.

Tu septifórmis múnere,
Dígitus Patérnæ déxteræ,
Tu rite promíssum Patris,
Sermóne ditans gúttura.

Accénde lumen sénsibus,
Infúnde amórem córdibus,
Infírma nostri córporis
Virtúte firmans pérpeti.

Hostem repéllas lóngius,
Pacémque dones prótinus;
Ductóre sic Te praévio,
Vitémus omne nóxium.

Per Te sciámus da Patrem
Noscámus atque Fílium,
Teque utriúsque Spíritum,
Credámus omni témpore.

Deo Patri sit glória,
Et Fílio, qui a mórtuis
Surréxit, ac Paráclito,
In sæculórum saécula. Amen.

Veni Creátor [1913 Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook translation]

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, come,
From Thy bright heavenly throne;
Come, take possession of our souls,
And make them all Thine own.

Thou Who art called the Paraclete,
Best gift of God above;
The living spring, the living fire,
Sweet unction and true love

Thou, Who art sevenfold in Thy grace,
Finger of God’s right hand,
His promise, teaching little ones
To speak and understand.

Oh! guide our minds with Thy blest light,
With love our hearts inflame,
And with Thy strength, which ne’er decays,
Confirm our mortal frame.

Far from us drive our hellish foe,
True peace unto us bring;
And through all perils lead us safe
Beneath Thy sacred wing.

Through Thee may we the Father know,
Through Thee, the eternal Son,
And Thee, the Spirit of them both –
Thrice-blessed three in one.

All glory to the Father be,
And to His risen Son,
The like to Thee, great Paraclete,
While endless ages run. Amen.

Veni Creátor [1991 Handbook of Indulgences translation]

O Holy Spirit, by whose breath
Life rises vibrant out of death;
Come to create, renew, inspire;
Come, kindle in our hearts your fire.


You are the seeker’s sure resource,
Of burning love the living source,
Protector in the midst of strife,
The giver and the Lord of life.

In you God’s energy is shown,
To us your varied gifts made known.
Teach us to speak, teach us to hear;
Yours is the tongue and yours the ear.

Flood our dull senses with your light;
In mutual love our hearts unite.
Your power the whole creation fills;
Confirm our weak, uncertain wills.

From inner strife grant us release;
Turn nations to the ways of peace.
To fuller life your people bring
That as one body we may sing:

Praise to the Father, Christ, his Word,
And to the Spirit: God the Lord,
To whom all honor, glory be,
Both now and for eternity. Amen.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 11/26 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Sylvester, Abbot)
  
• Tue. 11/27 7:00 PM: High Mass at Assumption-Windsor (Daily Mass for the Dead) [High Requiem Mass with Choir]
  
• Fri. 11/30 7:00 PM: High Mass at St. Francis Xavier, Tilbury (St. Andrew, Apostle)
  
• Fri. 11/30 7:30 PM: High Mass at Resurrection Parish, Lansing (St. Andrew, Apostle)
  

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat (Detroit) and Assumption (Windsor) bulletin inserts for November 25, 2012. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

A pox on political correctness: "Merry Christmas!"

There's a lot about the Americanization of Christmas that traditional Catholics rightly find distasteful. The advertizing for Christmas begins as early as July. After Thanksgiving it becomes a full-tilt sprint. By December 1, any family that doesn't have it's tree up and decorated seems to lack "Christmas spirit." By December 26th, families are relieved to be finished with the ordeal of credit card-leveraged overspending and trash full of wrapping paper and cardboard boxes and glad to dump their trees on the sidewalk -- oblivious, of course -- entirely oblivious! -- that this is merely the SECOND of twelve days of Christmas concluding with Epiphany in January.

Once in a rare while, however, something comes along that makes a half-way decent point, such as this little Christmas jingle, for what it's worth.

Sunday begins the "Mini Lent" of Advent

Watch and pray. He is coming. He is coming not only on Christmas, hidden under the form of a marginal Jewish baby, born to a peasant girl and construction worker in the back of a motel. He is coming again, and, as one writer once put it, He will invade! Maranatha! Come, King Jesus!

Today we celebrated the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in our home. One part of the private liturgy by the Men of the Sacred Hearts struck me, which reads:

"This action of Enthroning the Sacred Heart has an impact on families and individuals that carries over to society and becomes the basis for spreading the Social Reign of our King and Savior."

Precisely. This is how it's done, painstakingly, brick by brick, heart by heart, community by community. No other way.

Judge denies gay motion to overturn NV marriage law

This interesting account of legal reasoning from Judge Robert Jones in his decision to deny gay activists motion to redefine marriage:

Nevada is willing to gamble on a lot of things, but marriage isn't one of them. In federal court yesterday, Judge Robert Jones dealt a big setback to state activists hoping to redefine marriage. His opinion, which he issued just days after oral arguments, may be one of the most compelling yet on the question of "equality" for homosexual couples. The lead plaintiffs in the case are two lesbians, both grandmothers, who argued that Nevada's 10-year-old marriage amendment is discriminatory. Judge Jones emphatically disagreed in a 41-page masterpiece that thoroughly dismantled the Left's legal logic. Homosexuals aren't being denied the right to marry, Jones explained. They simply have to abide by the same criteria as everyone else.

"Like heterosexual persons, they may not marry members of the same sex." In fact, Jones wrote, "A homosexual man may marry anyone a heterosexual man may marry, and a homosexual woman may marry anyone a heterosexual woman may marry." In other words, this isn't about discrimination or equal protection. "Homosexuals have not historically been denied the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, or the right to own property," he pointed out. "The protection of the traditional institution of marriage, which is a conceivable basis for the distinction in this case, is a legitimate state interest," he said, adding that if the state recognized same-sex couples' marriages, heterosexuals might "cease to value the civil institution as highly as they previously had and hence enter into it less frequently... because they no longer wish to be associated with the civil institution as redefined."

Read more >>

[Hat tip to E. Echeverria]

Amusing post on inter-religious liturgical orientation

"Interreligious dialogue 101: Ad Flip-flopem" (Rorate Caeli, November 30, 2012) . . . on Post-Temple Judaism, Islam, and Post-1970 Catholicism.

Laudamus Te -- the "Magnificat" for the TLM

Fr. Z. today posted the following: "REVIEW: Laudamus Te – The Magazine of the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite" (WDTPRS, November 28, 2012). He writes:

"Many of you subscribe to or know the small booklet Magnificat, an aid for the post-Conciliar form of Holy Mass. It is pocket-size and it is sent to you each, I believe, month.

"There is now a similar aid for the Usus Antiquior, or Extraordinary Form, the Traditional Latin Mass.

"Laudamus Te. The Magazine of the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite [website for orders HERE]

"Since that says “Latin Liturgy”, I assume that they will eventually have something about, say, Vespers. Latin Liturgy means a lot more than Mass.

"In any event, the little booklet is very attractive at fist glance.

"You can tell from the shine that it is glossy.

"This for Advent 2012, Volume 1, Issue 1."

Read the entire review with many more photos HERE >>

Russia's take on Obama

Xavier Lerma, "Obama's Soviet Mistake" (Pravda, November 19, 2012) writes:

Putin in 2009 outlined his strategy for economic success. Alas, poor Obama did the opposite but nevertheless was re-elected. Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake.

... Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them. He gives speeches of peace and love in the world while he promotes wars as he did in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He plans his next war is with Iran as he fires or demotes his generals who get in the way.

After Mr. Obama's first election, the then Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of 2009. Ignored by the West as usual, Putin gave a speech with a markedly Reagan-esque tone, suggesting that the world should avoid the Soviet mistake.

Putin chided Western military adventurism, suggesting that the vast economic resources poured into warfare could be used more constructively elsewhere. Mr. Lerma's article turns downright comic at this point:

Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O'bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like "fast and furious" and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama's fools and Stalin's fools share the same drink of illusion.

Reading Putin's speech without knowing the author, one would think it was written by Reagan or another conservative in America. The speech promotes smaller government and less taxes. It comes as no surprise to those who know Putin as a conservative. Vladimir Putin went on to say:

• "...we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimizing state expenses.
  
• The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country and the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state.
  
• There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results.
  
• Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt - are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game.
  
• During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure no one would want history to repeat itself."

President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don't they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda.

But of course we shouldn't trust anything Pravda says, because Russian media -- unlike ourse -- is nothing but an instrument of government propaganda. Read more >>

The banality of evil

As my friend Jerry Bowyer says, "What is most amazing is how put together they look. We're raising a generation urged to put almost all effort into the outside and no effort into the inside. We have a national narcissism epidemic: my strong advice it so learn to protect yourself from it."

"America" is no longer America. The barbarians are not outside the gates. The barbarians are your neighbours, drive drive SUV's, use iPhones, shop at Nordstrom's, and have children who shoplift from Bloomingdale's and steal money from little Girl Scouts. They elect our unprincipled politicians, occupy the highest offices in the nation, hold academic chairs in colleges and universities, dominate our media, populate our entertainment industry, produce our TV shows, magazines, and tabloids. The barbarians are upon us. We are the barbarians.

More commentary by David McElroy, "Is this what happens when you teach children there are no absolutes?" (Recovering Political Prostitute, June 1, 2012).

[Hat tip to Jerry Bowyer]

The Orientalism of Barack Obama

By Terry Scambray

Of course the new documentary movie 2016: Obama's Americawas timed by conservative intellectual and bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza to discredit President Barack Obama. Nonetheless, there can’t be much doubt that the President’s vision of America is driven by his attitude toward the perceived sins of European colonialism and his fear that America has now assumed that mantle. The film offers evidence that this is Obama’s vision while suggesting what America would look like by the year 2016 should he be re-elected.

To support this portrayal of Obama, the film begins by showing that he returned a bust of Winston Churchill that was given to President George W. Bush by the British after 9/11. According to President Obama, his Kenyan grandfather was tortured and imprisoned by the British, though David Maraniss, a sympathetic Obama biographer, discounts that story. Nonetheless, Churchill was Britain’s prime minister during a later uprising that led to Kenyan independence. D’Souza argues that this bad blood has caused Obama to hate colonialism, especially the British version. This hatred was passed on to the President by his father, Barack Obama Sr.

But Obama’s father deserted him and later only saw him once more during a month-long visit when the future President was ten years old. Besides that, psychological explanations based on long-ago events are always tricky, permitting observers to come to opposite conclusions based upon exactly the same evidence.

A simpler and more direct explanation is that Oba­ma’s attitude toward colonialism was influenced by his professors and the intelligentsia, that herd of independent thinkers who passionately share the same view and around whom Obama has spent his adult life.

The film, for its part, does name the individuals who helped shape the geopolitical outlook of the young Barack Obama, the most important of whom is Edward W. Said, whose 1978 book Orientalismcontinues to be an enduring influence in the academy. Though the book begs to be taken seriously as a complex explanation of what divides East from West, Said’s thesis is that the West has created a mythology about the peoples of Asia and Africa that portrays them, in the final analysis, as inferiors; consequently, Asians and Africans have an inferiority complex.

2016 arguably spends too much time making the case for the influence of Obama’s father, but the film does open to a wider audience the reasons why Western civilization and America are reviled by the intelligentsia. As the argument goes, Third World poverty is the direct result of exploitation by richer countries with histories of colonialism. “Inequality” within America, a comparison the film tidily bundles together with global inequality, is also explained by such poor logic.

Yet this argument ignores the fact that the impoverished conditions in the Third World existed prior to the colonialists’ arrival. That is, if the colonialists encountered an underdeveloped world, some entity or events besides colonialism must have underdeveloped it.

So too did slavery exist in Asia and Africa hundreds of years before the Europeans arrived, and slavery continued in those regions long after it had been abolished in the West. One fact stands out: Most societies had slaves, but only the English, at great personal and financial risk, outlawed slavery in their territories, which eventually led to its worldwide abolition.

So heavy is the guilt that has been laid on England that this prodigious fact was not even alluded to in its Olympic opening celebration in London this past July.

Yes, colonialists did exploit and brutalize native peoples, such as the Belgians did in Central Africa and the Portuguese in Angola. But, as in many comparable situations, if European colonizers are to be blamed for anything, it should be for failing to live up to their own Judeo-Christian standards. Certainly by the standards operating among the subject peoples the West did nothing wrong because the various tribal societies saw slavery, as well as the exploitation of others and the environment, as normal.

If the critics of colonialism were sincere, they would also be critical of, say, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which lasted over six hundred years and engaged in incessant wars of aggression and genocide. Nor does the Soviet empire ever seem to be included in this criticism, what with its policies of starvation, torture, enslavement, and mass murder of millions of its subject people.

Ignoring the savagery of others while demeaning the West is but another example of the way in which “hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” That is, hypocrites acknowledge virtue each time they rely on it as a standard against which to measure vice.

For neither the Ottomans, the Soviets, nor assorted others contributed a religious ethic, a democratic system, or technology that improved the lot of their subject people. In fact, nobody would even expect these evil empires to be measured by such a standard! By contrast, Western colonialism was like the bee that takes nectar from a flowering plant, but in doing so it also deposits pollen that insures the fecundity and productivity of the plant.

In the most intriguing scene in the film, this point is made when D’Souza interviews the President’s half-brother, George Obama, who lives on a few dollars a month in a hut in Nairobi. George Obama, himself an author with a mellow sense of irony, argues in his book Homelandthat Kenya would have been better off if it had stayed longer under British rule. He concludes that Malaysia and Singapore are more advanced economically than Kenya precisely because they remained colonies for longer periods of time.

Another memorable moment in the film is the dramatized re-enactment of a young D’Souza departing his native India to come to the U.S. We see him hugging his parents and others, then getting into a taxi and, as the taxi pulls away, waving soberly back at his family and friends, closing that chapter of his life forever.

Though the scene is a bit chalky, it stirs memories of the emotions with which our ancestors must have struggled when they left their families to come to America. And just as D’Souza’s attitude toward America conflicts with Obama’s, this scene intensifies the main conflict in the film, a conflict between the hope and expectation in this farewell scene and those individuals in the rest of the film who have a grudge against the West and particularly America.

As 2016 shows, America itself has a strand of anti-colonialism dating back to the Revolutionary War. But the “anti-colonialism” explored in 2016 is an alien concoction composed mostly of neo-Marxism mixed with a smidgen of post-Victorian disillusionment, a leftover from British elites who self-righteously presided over the decline of their own colonial empire.

As for Karl Marx, he had no animus against colonialism, seeing it as merely another stage in society’s evolution, preparing the way for the “inevitable” international socialist revolution that would overthrow the capitalist system. But by the end of the nineteenth century, contrary to Marx’s predictions, conditions in capitalist nations were improving, especially in the U.S., where our immigrant ancestors were arriving by the millions.

By the 1920s, Lenin, ensconced in the Kremlin, realized that his “worker’s paradise” was being upstaged by America’s “melting pot.” By then he had read John A. Hobson, one of those British intellectuals disillusioned with colonialism. Despite capitalism’s apparent success, Hobson offered the thesis that capitalism was actually riding on the backs of colonized peoples. Needing some oxygen to revive his theories of oppression, Lenin seized upon the concept of colonized peoples as “victims” of capitalism’s global reach. Others then parroted the same line.

Too bad Barack Obama is among them.

Terry Scambray lives and writes in Fresno, California. The foregoing article, "The Orientalism of Barack Obama," was originally published in the New Oxford Review (November, 2012), and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.

Related: Dinesh D'Souza, Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream.

From inside the flap: "To Obama, the hated 'one percent' isn't just wealthy Americans; it is America itself.

"Building on his previous bestseller on Barack Obama, The Roots of Obama's Rage, . . .D'Souza shows how Obama's goal to downsize America is in plain sight but ignored by everyone.

"D'Souza lays out what Obama plans to do in a second administration -- a makeover of America so drastic that the "shining city on a hill" will become a shantytown in a rather dangerous global village."

Karl Rahner's Baneful Impact on Theology

By Charles W. James

Karl Rahner is, without debate, the most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century. During the course of his spectacular career he wrote or spoke on almost every subject of the Christian faith. When I studied theology at the Jesuit-run University of Santa Clara, Rahner was quoted with more authority than St. Thomas Aquinas. As an Anglican, that gave me pause, so I decided to dig deeper into Rahner's thought. What struck me immediately was Rahner's insistence on interacting with modern European philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant. Rahner was unwilling to carry out his theological task in the vacuum of a biblical positivism. He engaged modern philosophy in theological debate, forcing philosophy and theology to speak to each other. Some found this conversation threatening while others found it refreshing. This ambiguous response toward Rahner was reflected in the way he was treated during the Second Vatican Council. At the start of the Council, Rahner was not allowed to act as a peritus -- a theological expert who consults with the Council Fathers. But this semi-ban was lifted from Rahner when Pope John XXIII intervened and gave him the status of theological consultant.

But Rahner's influence has grown even further in the postconciliar period. First, most of his substantive theological works have been translated from the German so that the sheer weight of his theological system is felt by many. The second reason Rahner is so influential today is that he fits our postmortem mentality. Rahner would rather describe God as "holy mystery" than as absolute being. In the developed theology of Rahner, God is not so much the esse absolutum as the mysterium absolutum. This shift from metaphysics to mystery is Rahner's central contribution to the theology of God, but also his greatest liability. To be sure, we sense a subtle attraction to this theology of mystery because the Church has always acknowledged the incomprehensibility of God. We realize that our finite minds can only speak of God analogously. We know that we can have no direct, clear, or full idea of our Creator. "We see through a glass, darkly," as St. Paul said.

But Rahner's use of the notion of mystery goes further than merely a description of God. He wishes to use mystery as a criterion of theological truth. This mystery, which is God, becomes Rahner's theological touchstone. He sees mystery not only as a description of God, but as the nature of human consciousness as well. Following Martin Heidegger, Rahner says that the human being is the questioning being because the person himself is a question. And this questioning nature of the human person guarantees that mystery will remain an intrinsic part of human knowing. Rahner is thus able to argue that the mystery of God and the mystery of the human spirit are in continuity. Rahner says that the very way we come to verify and clarify our everyday knowledge is by illuminating our sensations with the mystery beyond us. We somehow already recognize this mystery, our minds move toward it by the universal grace of God, and we use it to give meaning to what confronts us in the world. Hence, for Rahner, mystery serves as a criterion of truth, a backdrop to all our finite thought. The mystery, which is God, answers the human quest for truth. Absolute mystery serves as a measure for the all-too-human striving of our intellect. In short, Rahner replaces the Thomistic analogy of being with an analogy of mystery (analogia mysterii).

This is all very postmodern because it agrees with the postmodern turn away from the metaphysical foundations of thought. The postmodern attitude eschews Plato's forms as well as Aristotle's teleology. It is even ill-at-ease with Darwin and Marx because both held to the 19th-century metaphysical idea of inevitable progress. Rahner fits well within this postmodern attitude because he does not attempt to ground his theology in a metaphysical constant, but rather in mystery. Mystery is his ground as well as his criterion of the validity of theological truth. One may wonder why any Christian would disagree with Rahner's description of God as "holy mystery," or with validating our thought by this mystery. At first look, it appears to provide the spiritual orientation that much of our contemporary theology needs.

But does Rahner's criterion of mystery serve to validate our beliefs or merely relativize them? Can mystery validate thought? Can it serve as a measure of clarity against which we may compare our very unclear ideas? By its very nature Rahner's notion of mystery cannot possibly serve this function. Permanent mystery can neither validate nor clarify our thought, it can only reveal its finitude. Granted, Rahner's stance has given us a needed pastoral warning against conceptual arrogance, but he has not given us a usable criterion of theological truth. What we need in order to validate our thought and our theological statements is not mystery, but a criterion that is substantial and specific enough to serve as a practical guide for our groping intellects. We need a portrait of truth and reality that shares in both the contingencies of history and the absoluteness of divinity. This criterion, marked by both radical contingency and radical divinity, is what the Church calls revelation. Should the Church attempt to go "behind" revelation -- try to validate her message by an appeal to mystery? The very opaqueness of mystery makes it difficult to see how we could ever connect revelation, much less our paltry thoughts, with the infinite otherness of this "holy mystery."

In fact, Rahner tells us that we cannot even conceive of this mystery; it must be experienced in its infinite silence. But if this is so, how can a nonconceptual (experiential) criterion serve to clarify, much less validate, our conceptual thought? It may be possible to find a home for our feelings in this "holy mystery," but what about our ideas? For all of Rahner's lip service to history and contingency, it seems that he has imprisoned truth in a heaven of mystery which can only be penetrated by the experiential and affective sides of human nature. But if we desire the clarification of our concepts or the validation of our theo-logy, we are left standing before the obscurity of this heaven, outside the gates.

We might ask Rahner just how he would go about clarifying or validating a theological statement with his criterion of mystery. In his essay "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," he argues that the propositions of theology must constantly be referred back to religious experience. The job of the theologian is reductio in mysterium -- i.e., a referring of the theological statement back to the theologian's (or the Church's) experience of absolute mystery. In his essay "What is a Dogmatic Statement?" Rahner says that a true theological statement "leads into the mysterium." Rahner makes our experience of mystery the criterion of theological truth. Only those theological statements which reflect this experienced mystery are valid statements. Hence, the experience of mystery is the measure of theology.

But notice what Rahner is really saying. It is not even the "holy mystery" itself that functions as a criterion of theological truth for Rahner, but rather our experience of this mystery. Rahner has ironically allowed his criterion of mystery to become no more than an experience emanating from the subjectivity of religious feeling. We can only "know" mystery by experiencing it and this experience becomes the criterion of theological truth. Rahner has not successfully surpassed Kant's subjectivity which led straight to the Romantic piety of Schleiermacher. Rather than helping us integrate our thought and our religious experience, Rahner hopelessly dichotomizes them, leaving thought to fend for itself without any theological rationale.

* * * * * * *

Robert Coles has recently stated that we live in an age of "applauded subjectivity." The postmodern age emphasizes subjectivity out of its fear of objectivity. The postmodernist, whether theological or not, lazily prefers the wide open spaces of obscurity to the hard, narrow road of clarity.

* * * * * * * Robert Coles has recently stated that we live in an age of "applauded subjectivity." The postmodern age emphasizes subjectivity out of its fear of objectivity. The postmodernist, whether theological or not, lazily prefers the wide open spaces of obscurity to the hard, narrow road of clarity. Rahner's criterion fits well with this attitude since his principle of mystery precludes conceptual clarity. The central problem is: Given that people have wildly differing religious experiences, how will we adjudicate between one theology and another? Also: How will we ever be able to develop a criterion of theological truth that is more than the mirror-image of ourselves? Human beings need a criterion that will give them a worldview that acknowledges both the real contingencies of their existence and the objective grace that pervades that existence.

The Church finds her criterion of truth in revelation, which means that there is a source of knowledge outside human consciousness. For anyone with commitments to postmodern humanism, this is anathema. To claim that knowledge could come from any source apart from human creativity is to contradict flatly the postmodern mentality. But the Church's acknowledgment of divine revelation makes just that claim. The belief in divine revelation serves as a warning against our self-congratulatory intellectual subjectivity. The idea that the "Word of God" is disturbingly and freely present within the world of contingent history makes our privatization of religion in modern Western culture a rather absurd attempt at domesticating the giant. What disturbs many postmodernists about revelation is not its divine nature, but its historical presence. If revelation were confined to the heaven of pure spirit, all would be well. But the Church insists that revelation is, by its nature, historical. It participates in the radical contingency which is part of human experience. It is not a purely formal and limitless category, nor is it conveniently obscured by the mysteriousness of its absoluteness. Revelation is incarnational, sharing in both the contingency of our history and absoluteness of divinity. In order to verify her thought, the Church does hot look up to absolute mystery; rather, she looks out to history, to "deeds and words." As the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation states, "This economy of revelation is realized by deeds and words, which are intrinsically bound up with each other." This Vatican II document goes on to state that the deeds of God in history reveal the doctrine in the words. But also, the words "bring to light the mystery they [the deeds] contain." Note the restricted use of mystery here. The locus of mystery is history, not, as in Rahner, the limitless mysterium absolutum.


Kart Rahner, S.J., with his colleague Joseph Ratzinger, at the Second Vatican Council If the Church wants to validate or clarify her theology, she cannot do so by piercing through the appearance of revelation toward some formless mystery. She must patiently pay attention to the events of history and the words of Scripture and Tradition in order to relate her experience to her inherited concepts. In the ongoing work of the mutual interpretation of deeds and words, the Church faces the mystery of God. This mystery, however, is not her criterion of truth, but the inspiration to continue her journey. To use a nautical metaphor, mystery fills the sails of the Church, but something else must serve as her compass.

If we follow Rahner's use of mystery as a criterion of theological truth, we will be forcing the experiential and affective nature of our lives to play a conceptual role -- forcing our feelings to function as concepts. But even more confusing, if we appeal to absolute mystery as our theological criterion, we will be deliberately looking away from the place we are most likely to discover our proper criterion, revelatory history. Our compass cannot be found in the ahistorical realm of mystery, but in the contingency of existence into which God has chosen to enter. The incarnation of Christ proclaims that God has entered history and infused it with meaning. The Church is, then, well advised not to look away from this history, but to find the light of her guidance embedded within it. The Church finds this light in the reality of divine revelation. In revelation the Church sees the integration of historical contingency and conceptuality.

In revelation, we find the integration of experiential and conceptual knowledge, the two modes of human knowledge which Western philosophy has been trying to integrate since Plato. Modeled by this reality of revelation, the Church defines truth as both contingent and conceptual. Our understanding of truth is modeled after our understanding of revelation. The incarnation of Christ historicized God and impregnated our history with revelation. We must, therefore, look to this revelatory history if we are to find the recognizable face of holy mystery. We will find our criterion there, as Jesus did. But what kind of criterion may we hope to find?

First, it will not be a single criterion, but a multifaceted one. Second, our criterion will most likely not be apprehended in an instantaneous intuition. Rather, it will emerge as we patiently interpret event with word and word with event. It will be a criterion for pilgrims. But what we lack in singularity we will gain in well-roundedness. And what we lack in immediacy, we will gain in detailed familiarity.

Let us call our criterion the criterion of contingency, and let's replace Rahner's analogy of mystery with an analogy of history. Knowledge of God is made possible not by a continuity of mystery, but by the continuity of history that the incarnating God initiated between Himself and His creation. Man can know God because both participate in history. But what are the specifics of our criterion? How can we use it, say, to validate a theological statement? Here are some guidelines.

(1) Does our theological statement adequately integrate the experience and the knowledge of the Church? If it is true that revelation is both historical (experiential) and conceptual (thought-like), then our theology ought to reflect this partnership and integrate the experience of grace and the conceptualization of grace. In brief, does our theology help to wed our experience with our doctrine, or divorce them? (It is not accidental that Rahner's experientialism has been deployed by certain Catholic leaders at the parish level to downplay or jettison Catholic doctrine.)

(2) Does our theological statement illuminate the revelatory truth found in the particularities of history? If history without revelation is dark, surely revelation without history is too bright for us to see.

(3) Does our theological statement encourage the growth of the Church's knowledge? By its nature, revelation allows history and word to interpret each other, thus providing for the possibility of understanding. Our theological statements, by reflecting this interaction, should themselves promote the growth of our understanding of that revelation. Theology is not merely the repetition of historical dogma, but the growing understanding of dogma through history.

Rahner's criterion of mystery lacks the specificity of history, and that is why it is not a usable criterion. Rahner consistently points us beyond history toward absolute mystery. In so doing, he doesn't even give us a meaningful criterion of mystery -- he just gives us obscurity.

Charles W. James is an Episcopal priest who has just finished his Licentiate in Sacred Theology at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. The foregoing article, "Karl Rahner's Baneful Impact on Theology," was originally published in the New Oxford Review (September 1995), and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Inter-seminary video competition

This video was made by Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, Michigan, USA, for the Inter-Seminary Theological Competition in which it was competing with two other seminaries from Canada. The competition was based, in true Facebook fashion, on acquiring the most number of "likes" on video before Sunday morning (11/18).


And here's the video that won, produced by St. Peter's Seminary in London, Ontario:

Scoring:

• St. Peter's Seminary (343 Likes)
  
• Sacred Heart Major Seminary (294 Likes)
  
• St. Augustine's Seminary (186)

THE APOLOGIST AND THE CRITICS, 50 YEARS AFTER THE COUNCIL

THEN

[From an as-yet unpublished dissertation by a reader]:

A stubborn dissent from popular scriptural theories was evident in annotations Sheed appended to a letter on the same subject from Bruce Vawter, a scholar Sheed & Ward had actually previously published:

Vawter: [Mary] was given some information and some choice in the matter of her pregnancy: how that came about we don’t know, and Luke isn’t telling us: what he is doing is presenting that information in such a way as to get across also all sorts of theological points about the divinity of Our Lord ...

Sheed: What about history?

Vawter: The whole point is in those words “historical narrative”: all that the scholars are doing is trying to decide when a narrative is a historical one ...

Sheed: How? Re Annunciation? No parallels.

...

Vawter: I can only say that I find it very difficult to reconcile with God’s normal way of dealing with us.

Sheed: What is God’s normal dealing in this situation?¹

Sheed was willing to admit that differences of cultures and literary genres meant that Scriptures written centuries ago must be read carefully and with scholarly awareness. But he was unwilling to discard what he read as the intentional meaning of the text in acquiescence to tenuous interpretive grids. After receiving a scholarly critique of To Know Christ Jesus from Charles Davis, he told Maisie,

“I read it comfortably. Some of what he wants, I’ve already attended to… On some I just disagree but I can take the poison out of the disagreement.” Underscoring the depth of deeper disagreement, however, he capped his conciliatory comments with the complaint: “...[W]hat the devil gets into them about the Magnificat?”²

...“Certainly I do not press the historical truth of every word or deed,” Sheed would explain to Edward Watkin. “The only thing I am sure of is that the evangelists did not invent thoughts Our Lord never uttered or deeds he never did.”³

Davis later wrapped up his dialog with Sheed with some polite condescension that vividly highlighted the widening chasm, between an increasingly-accepted liberal scholarship and its dwindling conservative counterpart, that would increasingly plague the post-Conciliar Church.

I am afraid there is a very great difference between us over the interpretation of the gospels. I don’t think that it would be helpful to minimize the difference… Presumably what is wanted is an account of what the gospels give and not an account of what it thought they ought to give. Popular books always lag behind the work of scholarship… but they must keep pace to some extent, if they are to be genuinely helpful. I grant, then, as I said before, that you know what at present would help your audience, but you must pardon me if I would welcome even more a book in line with recent trends...⁴

Four years after writing these telling lines, the editor of England’s esteemed Catholic periodical Clergy Review disavowed his priesthood and left the Catholic Church.⁵

NOW

Sandro Magister reports, in "The Child Jesus Recounted by Joseph" (www.chiesa, November 20, 2012):

ROME, November 20, 2012 – "The childhood of Jesus" by Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI goes on sale tomorrow in the original German and in eight other languages: Italian, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Croatian. In all, the first printing exceeds one million copies. Over the next few months, the book will be translated into another eleven languages and released in 72 countries.

It is a short book, written in a simple and linear form. Easier to read than the two larger volumes of "Jesus of Nazareth." And it is the last to be released, but in the declared intention of the author "it is a sort of little 'entrance room' for the two previous volumes on the figure and message of Jesus of Nazareth."

Before the book was released, the biggest question was about how Benedict XVI would reply to the question of whether the virgin birth, the adoration of the Magi, and the other accounts of the childhood of Jesus, in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, are "history that really happened" or instead "only a theological meditation expressed in the form of stories."

The author inclines decisively toward the first of the two answers. But without denying citizenship in the Church for the second position.

At the end of the chapter on the Magi, Benedict XVI agrees with what Jean Daniélou wrote in "Les Évangiles de l'Enfance":

"Unlike the account of the annunciation to Mary, the adoration on the part of the Magi does not touch upon any essential aspect of the faith. It could be a creation of Matthew, inspired by a theological idea: in this case, nothing would fall apart.

"Daniélou himself, however," Pope Ratzinger continues, "arrives at the conviction that these are historical events whose significance has been interpreted theologically by the Judeo-Christian community and by Matthew."

And he continues:

"To put it simply: this is also my conviction."

Footnotes

1. Leonard Johnston, Upshaw College, Durham England, to Frank Sheed, n.a., 1ALS, 16 Oct. 1961, UNDA, CSWD 003/13. [back]
2. Frank Sheed, New York, to Maisie Ward, London, England, 24 May 1962, UNDA, CSWD 001/13. [back]
3. Frank Sheed, London, England, to Edward I. Watkin, Torquay, England, ALS, 3 Jul. 1962. UNDA, CSWD 001/13. [back]
4. Charles Davis, ST. Edmund’s College, Ware, England, to Frank Sheed, London, England, ALS, n.d., TL, 20 Jun. 1962, UNDA, CSWD 001/13. [back]
5. James MacLucas, Frank Sheed: Apologist, 1991, Dissertatio ad Lauream in Facultate S. Theologiae apud Pontificiam Universitatem S. Thomae in Urb. [back]

Related: Andrea Tornielli on Benedict XVI's new book on Jesus' birth (Vatican Insider, November 23, 2012).

[Hat tip to J.M. for dissertation extract and Magister link]

"Stir-up Sunday"

The collect for the last Sunday after Pentecost in the Roman Missal begins with the words "Stir up, O Lord" (Excita, quaesumus, Domine). The whole collect reads as follows:

Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the wills of Thy faithful to seek more earnestly this fruit of the divine work, that they will receive more abundantly healing gifts from Thy tender mercy. Through our Lord, etc.

"Stir up Sunday" is an informal term that arose in Anglican churches for the last Sunday before Advent. The day is also associated with the stirring up of traditional English Christmas puddings, since most recipes call for the mixture to stand for several weeks before cooking.

OWN IT: Top 5 States to be Hit Hardest by 2013 Tax Increases -- Supported Obama!

Sad but true: Christopher Goins, "Sandy-Ravaged New Jersey Families Face $6,933 Tax Hike in Fiscal Cliff Stalemate" (CSNews.com, November 12, 2012).

Heh. You'll get this, or you won't.

[Credit: WDTPRS]