The Greatness of Henri de Lubac – “Through my years of theological study in Rome and long years of teaching, Henri de Lubac has been a cherished theological mentor and companion.” Henri de Lubac: Pilgrim of Hope, Witness to Jesus Christ (What We Need Now – Substack)
Not-So-Woke Notre Dame – “‘Woke’ progressive events at Notre Dame attract far lower student participation than solid Catholic programming.” The ‘Woke’ Participation Grade (Irish Rover)
Still Banned on Amazon – “When Harry Became Sally is still banned on Amazon, even as the vibes have shifted and Trump successfully campaigned against gender ideology.” The Woke Fever Broke, So Why Is Bezos Still Banning Ryan Anderson’s Book On Transgenderism? (The Federalist)
Speaking Through Music – “Weng Yirui, 31, grew up in a communist atheist family in China. But this talented pianist discovered God through music, in particular Vivaldi’s ‘Gloria.’” How music led a Chinese pianist to the Catholic Church (Aleteia)
The Centre Cannot Hold – “John Kekes and Aurelian Craiutu ask what virtues make a society truly good.” Moderation as Pursuit of Justice (Modern Age Journal)
Xe/Xir No More – “The Trump administration has dealt a significant blow to gender ideology within the federal government, with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issuing a memorandum that, among other requirements, apparently instructs all federal employees to remove their pronouns from email signatures.” Trump Eradicates Gender Ideology From Federal Government (The Federalist)
Pardons and ‘Preemptive’ Pardons – “Just hours after his inauguration on January 20, President Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the events of January 6, 2021. He commuted the sentences of fourteen additional people whose cases for a full pardon are still under review.” What We Know and What We Don’t About January 6 (Imprimis)
Empires of the Mind – “The Baby Boomer generation is animated by a mythic worldview in which progress necessitates the tearing down of all boundaries, hierarchies, systems of belief, restraints, and controls upon the ultimate good of self-expression.” The Boomer Truth Regime (Chronicles)
Authentically Catholic Schools – “While the Civil War raged in the early 1860s, a small brick Catholic schoolhouse named St. Benedict School went up in Nebraska City. Its students were boys and girls, Catholic and non-Catholic, largely the children of immigrants and pioneers.” The Joy and Wonder of Catholic Education (Most Reverend James D. Conley, STL, Bishop of Lincoln)
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@ The Greatness of Henri de Lubac
Fr. Robert P. Imbelli credits de Lubac spiritual-theological vision for lines of clarity in the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” (Gaudium et Spes).
Three different quotes, and more:
FIRST, Imbelli writes: “The Council teaches: [T]he Church has a single intention: that God’s kingdom may come, and that the salvation of the whole human race may come to pass. For every benefit which the People of God during its earthly pilgrimage can offer to the human family stems from the fact that the Church is ‘the universal sacrament of salvation’ simultaneously manifesting and exercising the mystery of God’s love.”
SECOND, about this clarity, the wider and still unresolved tension in the whole of Gaudium et Spes is found in other cobbled-in and Teilardian thoughts, such as:
“Thus the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one (GS, n. 5) [and] The Church further recognizes that worthy elements are found in today’s social movements, especially an evolution toward unity, a process of wholesome socialization and of association in civic and economic realms” (n. 42).
THIRD, in 1962 de Lubac had published in the French,“The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin” (later: Image, 1968) where he explains Chardin’s particular effort to bridge between modern science and Christian faith. About the continuing ambiguity, de Lubac writes:
“From this [‘the universal transforming Christ’] is derived Pere Teilhard’s bold, if sometimes oversimplified, synthesis between Christianity and evolution. At the same time he rejects any Concordism between science and religion, which are ‘two different meridians on the mental sphere’: what he wishes to establish between them is a coherence, for ‘these two different meridians must necessarily meet somewhere at a pole of common vision’ (Les Etudes philosophic, 1955, p. 581), ” from De Lubac, Ch. 9, fn. 84.
AND SO, TODAY? A “common vision”—as now attempted by juxtaposing the magisterium with the social sciences; by juxtaposing a roundtable synod of bishops with the laity; by juxtaposing St. Peter’s Basilica with Pachamama in the Vatican Garden; and by juxtaposing blessings under Fiducia Supplicans with reaffirmations of the sacramental meaning of real marriage?
About such evangelization: can oversimplified “meridians on the mental sphere” be so simplistically concordized?
“About such evangelization: can oversimplified “meridians on the mental sphere” be so simplistically concordized?”
Although, with Time, our understanding of God’s Created Universe may be evolving, The Laws of Nature, and Nature’s God remain the same.
Let us not forget that we can know through both Faith and reason that speciation occurs at the moment of conception, thus it is not possible for human persons to conceive a son or daughter, who is not, in essence, a human person. Thus the erroneous notion that man evolved from ape/man who evolved from ape, or vice versa, is simply nonsense.
https://www.lepantoin.org/wp/teilhard-de-chardin-and-the-fraud-of-the-piltdown-man-was-followed-by-the-bluff-of-the-peking-man/
This does not change the fact that The Catholic Church is ‘the universal sacrament of salvation’ , Through, With, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost ( Filioque), simultaneously manifesting and exercising the mystery of God’s love, or that “It Is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesiastical Communion”, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost(Filioque), for it Is “
“The Center cannot hold”, without The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque)
I apologize, as that should read:
Although, with Time, our understanding of God’s Created Universe may be evolving, The Laws of Nature, and Nature’s God remain the same.
Let us not forget that we can know through both Faith and reason that speciation occurs at the moment of conception, thus it is not possible for human persons to conceive a son or daughter, who is not, in essence, a human person. Thus the erroneous notion that man evolved from ape/man who evolved from ape, or vice versa, is simply nonsense.
https://www.lepantoin.org/wp/teilhard-de-chardin-and-the-fraud-of-the-piltdown-man-was-followed-by-the-bluff-of-the-peking-man/
This does not change the fact that The Catholic Church is ‘the universal sacrament of salvation’ , Through, With, And In Christ, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost ( Filioque), “simultaneously manifesting and exercising the mystery of God’s Love”, or that “It Is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesiastical Communion”, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost(Filioque), for it Is “Through Christ, With Christ, And In Christ, Oh God, Almighty Father, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost”, that Holy Mother Church, outside of which, there is no Salvation, due to The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque) exists
“The Center cannot hold”, without The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque)
Thus we can know through both Faith and reason:
The Sacrifice Of The Cross, The Sacrament Most Holy, Is The Sacrifice Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, “For God So Loved us that He Sent His Only Son…“
At the heart of Liberty Is Christ, “4For it is impossible for those who were once illuminated, have tasted also the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5Have moreover tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come…”, to not believe that Christ’s Sacrifice On The Cross will lead us to Salvation, but we must desire forgiveness for our sins, and accept Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy; believe in The Power And The Glory Of Salvation Love, and rejoice in the fact that No Greater Love Is There Than This, To Desire Salvation For One’s Beloved.
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
“Blessed are they who are Called to The Marriage Supper Of The Lamb.”
“For where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”
“Behold your Mother.” – Christ On The Cross
“Penance, Penance, Penance.”
“Do not let your hearts be hardened, like a pillar of salt.”
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope.”
#8 Empires of the Mind – About sums it up. What was wrong with us??
#6 Xe/Xir No More – Trudeau – Take note for your next stupid census.
@ The Greatness of Henri de Lubac
Christian mysticism is being personally conformed to the person of Christ and thus coming into possession of our true inheritance as sons and daughters of the Triune God of Love (de Lubac in accord to Imbelli). This is prefaced by “St. Irenaeus of Lyons, [who] serves as the fecund leitmotif of all de Lubac’s varied writings. Omnem novitatem attulit, semetipsum afferens: Christ brought all newness in bringing himself” (Imbelli).
Precis: Christ is the focal point of Man’s realization in the self revelation of the Word in Christ. Likely de Lubac’s insight contributed to Irenaeus’ recent title of doctor of the Church. Imbelli isolates the trinitarian sequence of the Christ event [epiphany] 1 Incarnation and passion, 2 resurrection into new life, 3 ascension into glory. An envisioned diagram of this sequence as understood by this writer for the Christian to emulate, 1 baptism and the cross 2 resurrection in this life from mediocrity and addiction to the world 3 ascension to the heavenly banquet.
Imbelli’s citation of Benedict XVI and the transformational Eucharist Church, Christ’s real presence a causal factor of unity in love. Here Imbelli makes a paramount observation regarding de Lubac’s premonition of danger as it relates to the Council, and the vision of mystic Joachim of Fiore [Gioacchino da Fiore] who foretold a third dispensation in his triune historiography. We are living in a moment of history during which a pontificate has been propagating a form of new dispensation, a new paradigm in which mercy absorbs Man in his condition sans the Christ requisite for repentance and penance and for sins. Baptism and the cross is transformed into baptism and validation.
The article discussing the Boomer Mind Virus is interesting and telling. The greatest generation survived the Depression and fought overseas to protect our way of life from totalitarian systems. Boomers ignored and abandoned that legacy and, motivated by ignorance or malevolence, or maybe a combination of both, proceeded pull down the values the culture stood for. We are living with the consequences of those ideas and behaviors to this day. Thanks boomers.
Who were the Boomers’ parents and teachers?
How many Boomers were on the Supreme Court when it decided and wrote Griswold and Roe?
How many Boomers were there among the bishops and periti at Vatican II? Among the Popes, bishops and priests who trashed TLM and “replaced” it with the NO? Among the theologians who dissented from Humanae Vitae, beginning in 1968?
We now have our last Boomer President (after the interregnum with the pre-Boomer, Biden), who set some things straight in his first term (e.g., getting enough justices appointed to overturn Roe). Looks like he’s going to get a lot more straightened out this time.
Here’s hoping we get our first Boomer Pope at the next Conclave.
Yes . Thank you Mr. Miller.
The article about the Baby Boomers features photos of Churchill and John Lennon. John Lennon was born 6 years before the Baby Boomer era began.
Things like Vatican II,for better or worse , were not presided over by Boomers but by the previous generations. The oldest of the Baby Boomers were still in their teens in 1965 .
It’s not that simple. Reproducing my opening observations for the negative review I wrote for Francis’ latest autobiography, “Hope”, on Amazon, I’ll repeat that it is human for all of us to form our belief systems, initially at least, less from what we think we believe about God than what we decide to believe about the nature of evil.
If evil is viewed as personal, then we accept that the human condition is permanently imperfectible, and we can only hope to inspire individual reform. If we decide to believe evil is determined by the tides of history, possibly to escape confronting our own reform, we are more inclined to side with cultural whims in times of crisis less critical or side with ideological movements in times of greater crisis. Ideologies enable us to trust elites who view evil as a management problem, which they promise to eliminate once they are allowed to impose their self-anointed vision on the rest of humanity.
Responses of human nature towards right and wrong and good and evil and whether we respond honestly or dishonestly is an individual matter and remains the same across all times and all places. It never changes with generations.
If the cause for de Lubac will proceed there will be a devil’s advocate. May I suggest some material or approaches. I am not read up on de Lubac.
From the material I see in WIKIPEDIA, as it shows today, it would seem that he maintained support for de Chardin and Blondel. Fr. Imbelli suggests also de Lubac leaning to Pascal, in the “Pascal-like” Paradoxes -Pascal, whom I have considered to have been unrepentant Jansenist.
Also, the de Lubac “tri-form”. Again, I am unread. Could it be a problem is indicated of too much abstractionism /cosmologicalism that separates us from the unity and living reality of Christ’s natures in which we are redeemed? as to which, contra, Gilson’s “systems of philosophy”?
If I were to go deeper into de Lubac, these could excite a concern for me over things possibly charted on wrong courses.
The material in WIKIPEDIA quoted below, first link, on de Lubac, brings to mind the dictum in Evangelii Guadium, “The whole is greater than the part”. For two things.
First, it could be that a certain “whole” grouping or community is being set up in a formation around Martini for legitimizing it -that grouping- for the Church over a long-range, at the same time no-one can tell which aspects and teachings therein are being esteemed as orthodoxy or where the grouping’s peripheries extend.
Second, there seems to arise a spectre of one grouping being held against another where at the very least they comprise 2 constituents, “parts” not “whole”; however, one is said to be “the whole” that is “greater” and the other is said to be “the part” that is “the lesser” or perhaps “non-essential” or perhaps “misled” or perhaps “outdated”.
Trabbic was supposed to have written a Part 2 to this article of his, second link, on arguments for God’s existence, but I can’t find it anywhere in CWR searches. If it is still in the works maybe it’s time is now for tackling current issues involving subsistence, substance, perception and discovery. It could be you know, that a valid argument for God’s existence is the unfolding of what is true showing that it is incontrovertible.
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de Lubac – WIKIPEDIA
‘ What de Lubac called the “dark years” lasted nearly a decade. It was not until 1956 that he was allowed to return to Lyon and not until 1958 that the university got verbal approval from Rome for de Lubac to return to teaching the courses he previously taught.
Although everything de Lubac wrote during these years was subject to censorship in Rome, he never ceased to study, write, and publish. During these years he brought out a study of Origen’s biblical exegesis (1950), three books on Buddhism (1951, 1952, 1955), Méditations sur l’Église (1953 – a text which would have great influence on Lumen Gentium, the document produced at Vatican II on the nature of the church) and Sur les chemins de Dieu (1956).
Return to acceptance
His pioneering study Exégèse médiévale (1959–1965) revived interest in the spiritual exegesis of scripture and provided a major impetus to the development of covenantal theology.
Just before and during the conciliar years, with the blessing of his order, de Lubac also began to write and publish books and articles in defense of the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, his older friend and fellow Jesuit, who had died in 1955. Teilhard’s ideas had influenced several of the theologians of the nouvelle théologie and had also met with extreme disfavour in Rome. ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Lubac
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Fr Peter Morello, PhD
December 11, 2021 at 7:11 am
‘ ….. When we perceive through the phantasm it’s a quasi reflection, not a consequent moment in time. ‘
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2021/11/28/arguing-for-gods-existence-st-thomas-vs-st-anselm-part-1/
I recommend reading some de Lubac. As a young Evangelical Protestant, I read his Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, and was deeply—intellectually and spiritually—moved and challenged by it.
Thank you Carl Olson, I will do that. The perspective I share could be from my age tool; eg., I read Danielou on angels and it felt to me they got underserved. Or it could be “spiritual character” in the sense of one’s vocation orientation or basic human fibre. Then again, it could be from the other general reading I was exposed to up to now.
Or it could be from all those and from which I raised some pressing questions with their own validity nonetheless!
‘ Received into the Catholic Church at the Abbey of Saint Wandrille (Seine-Maritime) in 1944, Bouyer entered the congregation of the priests of the Oratory of Jesus and remained with them the rest of his life. He was a professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris until 1963 and then taught in England, Spain, and the United States. In 1969 he wrote The Decomposition of Catholicism, which presented what he saw as important liturgical and dogmatic problems in the church. ‘
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bouyer
Carl Olson, will there be a Part 2 to Trabbic’s article then?
Also consider “The Splendor of the Church” (Ignatius, 1999), originally published as “Meditation on the Church” (Paris, 1953) and several years after “Catholicism: Christ and the Destiny of Man,” 1938).
Focusing on the Church as the “Mystical Body of Christ,” and enlightening today in terms of understanding post-Vatican II and current tendencies to bifurcate the hierarchical Church from a Church of the Spirit (see below). This theme dates from St. Paul and is the subject of recent papal encyclicals under Pope Pius XI in 1928/1932/1935 and especially Pope Pius XII in 1943 (Mystici corporis Christi: https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_29061943_mystici-corporis-christi.html
Now this, from de Lubac’s “Splendor of the Church”:
“It is to be feared that among those who advocate a ‘return to the spiritual’ there are some who, led astray by a dangerous ambiguity, really have in view not so much purity of the apostolate as an obscuring of Christianity and its own very spirit by the gods of the age; and that, in aiming at the liberation of a Gospel that they believe to be in captivity, some well-mentioned Christians are doing little more than striking a compromise—without wishing to do so—with the forces that wish to suppress it by either suppressing or subjugating the Church. Thus, although their point of departure is a real desire to break with real abuses, rejecting alliances [originally meaning state influences restricting the Church’s action, but now applicable to secularism embedded within the Church, yes?] that are unjustifiable and disentangling the faith in all its austere transcendence, they would in fact compromise that very achievement at which they have aimed” (p. 175).
The problem with “arriving” so fast to “the heavenly banquet” part, see Fr. Morello above, is that Christ is still to return in Judgment, the Second Coming; also missing from the “tri-form” depiction. Considering how de Lubac would be read by new movements of today and tomorrow who “wish to avoid being frowning Christians and to avoid being seen as frowners”.
Further, there is theology in which the Cross in the life of Jesus is made paramount not merely sequential, it informs His being.
Again, a distinct place is needed for the Proclamation of the Gospel.
But thank you for those references.
@ The Centre Cannot Hold
In modern times, writes Yeats, ‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned’: mercy and decency are under assault as never before as ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity’ (essayist Mahoney).
Recently, a comment made in bold capital letters, THERE IS NO MEDIAN BETWEEN RIGHT AND WRONG! struck an image of the black flag of no quarter, take no prisoners polarity that has developed in Church and politics.
William Butler Yates, Irish Protestant poet, mystic of sorts Yeats poem The Second Coming reflects the murderous, apocalyptic WWI. “The center cannot hold”.
For politics, secular and religious, there must be a median for any semblance of peace to prevail.
Regarding morality there is a required median subject to measure regarding the virtues. Excess and defect measure excessive giving to the detriment of familial needs. Self defense requires a limit regarding excessive force. A prayerful life for a father or mother mustn’t exclude the needs of providing and caring. There are areas that are not negotiable and these refer to intrinsic good or evil. These are the negative moral absolutes, for example: murder, false witness, adultery; and the positive: forgiveness, faith, hope, and charity, which all fall under the primary virtue Justice.
At present president Trump’s blitzkrieg politics of mass deportation, mass FBI firings, shutting down the Department of Education, US takeover of Gaza would putatively threaten the center. Is there a center to begin with?. There is a tentative center within the Church. Perhaps politics. From this writer’s perspective deportation, shutting down the Department of Education, cleaning up the Justice Department is a good. It’s needed. Moderation, a just median is also a vital consideration if we are to avoid excess and its unjust consequences. Otherwise it’s apocalyptic chaos
@ The Centre Cannot Hold
It should be added that the US takeover of Gaza proposal is not one of the objectives that should be done. Despite Trump’s, and conspicuously Netanyahu’s euphoria, the world is alarmed. Alarm bells are ringing everywhere. Except from Trump supporters in the media and elsewhere. If both Trump and Netanyahu envision a Middle East Riviera the Arab nations will perceive it as it appears, a Western seizure.