Pass on the Flame – “The world would be a poorer place with fewer cultural practices, in somewhat the same way that it is impoverished by the loss of animal species. This, I hope, is uncontroversial.” The problem of religious traditionalists (The Critic)
Magisterial Authority – “Víctor Manuel Fernández has been busy during his first year in office. But has he been effective?” Cardinal Fernández’s First Year: Undermining His Own Magisterium (The Catholic Thing)
History, Authority, and Tradition – “Fr. Thomas Weinandy has recently penned a fine article on The Catholic Thing that begins by noting how saturated our culture and even our Church have become with the symbols of the LGBTQ ‘Pride’ movement.” Heidi Schlumpf’s Great Disservice to Aquinas’ Charism and Theology (Word on Fire)
After the Fall – “[W]hat we need now is a robust account of the nature of man and woman, one grounded in science, philosophy, and Scripture.” Man, Woman, and the Fall from Grace (What We Need Now – Substack)
FBI Whistleblower – “According to a whistleblower, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is revoking the security clearances of agents who lean conservative or who decided not to take the COVID shot.” FBI reportedly revoking clearances of conservative, ‘unvaccinated’ agents (CatholicVote)
Revitalizing the Church – “Are the parish closings and consolidations occurring regularly in archdioceses and dioceses of the United States, a simple function of the absence of material resources?” Material Poverty, or an Impoverished Spirituality? (Catholic Stand)
Bioethics Novel – “They want to tell you it’s not the right time to have children. And as far as they’re concerned, there is no right time to have children.” Totality: A Fictional Catholic Approach to Bioethics (Building Catholic Culture)
Wishful Thinking – “[W]hile solar and wind power primarily generate electricity, fossil fuels offer versatility by being suitable not only for generating electricity but also for transportation, heating, industrial processes, and materials.” Why the World Needs Fossil Fuels (Intellectual Takeout)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
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#3 – History, Authority, and Tradition
Thanks to Larry Chapp for this articulate take-down of a National “Catholic” Reporter article.
Agree, Cleo. Also thankful for another excellent piece by Larry Chapp.
My layman’s response to the mindless theology pushed by Schlumpf is who needs it or you? We can get that very readily from the godless secular culture.
@ After the Fall
An insightful essay on the inherent motivational relation between Man and Woman. Deborah Savage PhD depicts equality before the Fall and male domination after. Man by nature occupied with his environment, lonely in his effort. Woman by nature person oriented, a seeker of relationship. Their complimentary dynamic is found in woman fulfilling Man. Dr Savage ties in God’s will for both, that Man must listen to God [after the Fall the estrangement due to his listening to his wife rather than God]. She [Dr Savage] then discusses Man’s failure in listening to God and the myriad abuses of Woman, her moral degradation.
What’s also missing [an essay subtitle] is women’s collaboration with men’s effeminization and the dynamic of retaliatory victimhood. While men are natural leaders, much of women’s ills are their responsibility, nonetheless, the air of victim seems apparent in that lacuna of acknowledgement.
Re: Pass On the Flame. The Critic’s “The Problem of Religious Traditionalists” clearly and cogently expounds the spiritual-religious and cultural-progressive attacks on persons holding traditionalist beliefs and practices. The surprise? Cultural and religious powers waste their energy and time in attempts to suppress, oppress, reject, deny, or persecute traditionalist belief and practice. The Spirit of the Lord’s Holy Fire will free His captives just as He freed Sts. Peter and Paul from their chains and bars. Images of those two saints may be found in museums, but if anyone claims the Spirit of those two has dead or has been wiped free from the face of the earth, he errs.
died, not dead.
@ History, Authority, and Tradition
“She even drags in the old canard that Aquinas himself did not believe that ensoulment occurs until quickening”.
Well, it wasn’t a fair match. Larry Chapp uppercuts Heidi Schlumpf in the Battle of the Thomists. Schlumpf parrots Joe Biden’s long held opinion that Aquinas believed life in the womb begins with self-motivation. An ancient Greek belief that all self motivating creatures exhibit a soul. That includes minnows as well as elephants, and Man. Whereas human life begins at conception. Aquinas, as Chapp says, was not a scientist nor was his knowledge of science adequate since it was dependent on the deficient knowledge of the time. Although such rarities of simple logic are foreign to the mindset of the progressive with a cause.
Chapp makes short work of Ms Schlumpf. Her strength is more in her intellectual sophistry, the finessing of truths reduced to half truths to give the appearance of the sage. Lots of vagaries without substance. But this is what draws many into their sphere of sophisticated relativism. Mindless leading the mindless. Persons with a gifted intellect who violate their own soul’s integrity for sake of a lie.
On Religious Traditionalists
“Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” This distinction made by the Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan spotlights the fundamental problem traditionalists exhibit. The problem is that they demonstrate a basic misunderstanding of what tradition is. Their confusion can be viewed from Pelikan’s crucial differentiation: a living tradition is dynamic, active, and evolving, whereas a dead tradition is static, fossilized, and frozen. By equating tradition solely with fixed forms from the past, traditionalists erroneously perceive the reforms of Vatican II, particularly in the liturgy, as a betrayal of tradition. By highlighting this mistaken view of the Novus Ordo’s perceived rupture of the traditionalist sense of sacredness and reverence in contrast to the Vetus Ordo’s, they show that traditionalists wrongly equate tradition as the “dead faith of the living.”
My post on the same article broke a cardinal rule of critical comment by making mention of items not in the article. Your post suffers the same but more offensive tendency. In addition to breaking the same cardinal rule as I did in my post, you manage to go further. Your post offends common sense and truth of objective reality.
The article does not mention Sts. Peter and Paul. It definitely does not mention the NO or VO. The article in no way highlights ANY, let alone MISTAKEN view of the NO.
In addition, your Pelikan quote bespeaks something solidly stale, unoriginally cliche, and downright dumb. This old English teacher red- and flat-lined it with such force that it betook itself directly down, deep into Gehenna.
So I’ll simply henceforth presume your posts as derivatives of thin air, against truth, and consequently not even worth a glance in the tomb in which I’ll place them.
Deacon Dom all that could merely amount to a Modernism where Pelikan attributes to others -the selected target- what he comprises for the topic and the victims. The reason it gets so long-winded is, the Modernist hopes to conjure objectivity and “connection” through density.
Modernists have many, many, many tricks. I have a little book of them.
I hope Carl Olson never allows Slam Effect in CWR comboxes.
@ Magisterial Authority
Perhaps it’s somewhat discordant to Fr de Souza that Cardinal Grech initiated a far more liberal approach on communion for divorced and remarried in Malta [Maltese told to follow their conscience as seen fit] compared to the more stringent Argentine rendition of Amoris Laetitia in context of Pope Francis’ “no other interpretation” inferring Grech was wrong. Although the common denominator for judgment on this is that both the Maltese version and the Argentine were permitted by the Vatican.
Early on, prior to Card Fernández’ appointment to the DDF Pope Francis laid out the new, virtually opposite mission of the DDF from the former CDF, the latter the defense of doctrine and prosecution of abrogations – the new DDF’s mission “the breaking of new ground”, to wit, change of doctrine. If Fr de Souza believes Cd’l Fernández is ineffective, botching things up with FS and DI et al, he’s actually doing a crackerjack job for His Holiness. The DDF is no longer the CDF. Any resemblance to the latter is purely coincidental.
@ FBI Whistleblower
Former Catholic FBI agent Kyle Seraphin “noted that this ‘purge’ of conservatives should especially surprise those on the Left who claim to be liberal and want to ensure civil liberties”. Actually not. Though Seraphin is likely speaking ironically. The Left, now dominant in virtually every government agency, the media, education, an ideological cleansing mission as undemocratic, perhaps almost as venomous as a KGB purge in the former Soviet Union.
What’s fearsome is this frenetic effort at total control. It endangers everything America was destined to be by the founding fathers. The coming presidential election is by no means in the bank for Trump despite his large lead. Indeed there’s likely a draconian undercover effort to ensure the Republicans will not win the Whitehouse. The end of America as a constitutional republic may well end November 5. Less than ironic is a similar cleansing of Catholicism both in terms of personnel, and traditional doctrine. What times are these O Lord? Yet there remains hope.
(Wishful Thinking) When I needed money as an undergrad many years ago, I did some work as an auto mechanic. An intelligence challenged girl I knew, who knew I was handy with cars, asked me the favor of installing an item on her car. I agreed until I saw that it was a simple chrome round cap sold at the auto parts store as a gag from a box with a sign that said, Don’t pollute, close off your car’s tailpipe. She actually believed it could work.
We now have people running the country on this intelligence level.
@ Pass on the Flame
The Critic passes itself off as Britain’s most civilized magazine. Writer Joseph Shaw’s critique of Traditionalists categorizes a wide, complex, ever self-modifying number of Catholic persons with traditional beliefs as a fixed group. Shaw juxtaposes the ‘group’ to a Pope Francis who has a markedly narrower perception of persons who hold to tradition.
Their difference is the pejorative assessment of Francis and Shaw’s more enlightened that reflects most of us who hold tightly to our sacred untouchables. Although Shaw asks the common question, why are those who hold to tradition perceived as psychologically compromised, countering that they add so much beauty to religion.
Aside from any limited categorization of what a ‘traditionalist’ is [for example the Novus Ordo people with conservative, traditionally oriented faith], Shaw adds British long tradition and wit to the argument, that “Religious traditionalists have displayed a cockroach-like ability to survive in the most hostile environment”. Albeit that the traditionalist cockroach is perceived as such through the jaundiced glance of the morally deranged secularist.
My indecipherable “sacred untouchables”, meant my sacred beliefs.