Hamas’s Bloodthirsty Rule – “Gazan protests against Hamas’s failed leadership broke out on Tuesday and continued throughout the Strip on Wednesday, the first public opposition shown to Hamas’s rule since the October 7 attacks.” Anti-Hamas Protests Break out across Gaza (The Washington Stand)
Flannery’s Milledgeville – “My view from the road is different from what Flannery saw, but for those with eyes to see, the view from this spot, under this Cross, in communion with the living and the dead – is exactly the same.” Birthday Party (Charlotte Was Both)
Accuracy and Accompaniment – “The weakness…of all of these theologies “from below” is that they begin with the presumption that the faith experiences of most Catholics are unproblematic and are therefore accurate barometers of the Holy Spirit speaking in the sensus fidelium.” True Pastoral Accompaniment Requires an Accurate Reading of the Signs of the Times (What We Need Now)
The Progressive Elite – “Whether the issue was the reproduction of life and the means of death, the characteristics of parenthood or of sexual morality, the meaning of the family, of peace and war, of turning every need into a right, invariably all of Italy that wanted to be progressive embraced the party of the ‘ideologically correct,’ in an attitude of smug superiority, if not of aggressive hostility, toward those who thought differently.” The Rebellion of the Masses Against “Woke” Ideology Gave Trump the Victory. But It Is Also a Lesson for the Church (Diakonos.be)
Artistic Rubbish – “Kitsch is more than bad art; it’s a flight from freedom to servitude.” Notes Toward the Definition of Kitsch (Modern Age)
Assad’s Christian Oppression – “While the mainstream media certainly falls short in its reporting on anti-Christian violence abroad, the narrative advanced by Wolfe and others totally fails to hold Assad accountable for the totality of brutal violence committed under his dictatorship.” A Dangerous Discourse Endangers Syria’s Christians (Providence)
Reagan’s Catholic Speechwriter – “The former Reagan speechwriter and Pulitzer Prize winner brought a devout Roman Catholicism, an abundance of wit, and a wealth of insight to his work, which helped shape our country.” The Man Behind Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’: Tony Dolan, RIP (The American Spectator)
Cardinal Pell Miracle – “George Pell has been credited with the unlikely recovery of a young American boy who stopped breathing for 52 minutes after he fell into a swimming pool.” How prayers to controversial dead Cardinal George Pell ‘brought a little boy back to life’ after he stopped breathing for almost an hour: ‘It’s a miracle’ (Daily Mail)
Teilhard de Chardin and Eugenics – “With one headline describing him as “a Moses of the 20th century,” L’Osservatore Romano devoted two pages of its March 27 edition to Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) … ” Vatican prefect, newspaper pay tribute to Teilhard de Chardin; skirt views on race, eugenics (Catholic Culture)
Women Shifting Left – “Even young women — among the most reliably left-leaning voting blocs — moved away from monolithic support for Democrats, but a significant gender gap of over 20 points persists between Gen Z women and men.” It’s Time to Talk About the Trouble With Young Women (Thomas D. Klingenstein)
The Semitic People – “Anti-Semitism is a demonic hatred, and so is anti-Palestinianism. But here is the difference: the latter is socially accepted, while the former, in most polite circles, is rightly reviled.” My Palestinian Friends Taught Me How to Combat Anti-Semitism (Crisis Magazine)
North Dakota, Taxes, and Private Schools – “Bishops from the Catholic dioceses of Bismarck and Fargo signed a joint letter Sunday urging parishioners across the state to contact their legislators and advocate for Education Savings Accounts.” North Dakota Catholic bishops urge parishioners to advocate for Education Savings Accounts (North Dakota Monitor)
(*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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@ Accuracy and Accompaniment
“They cannot accept a God who seems to be a cipher for either a baseless hope in fairytale happy endings or a bestial agent of oppression, coercion, and torments galore” (Larry Chapp’s sectioning of the dilemma of faith).
He strikes a median: “Thus, a kenotic traditionalism will be at once faithful to the Tradition and creatively open to new insights into that Tradition”. Kenotic may mean among others an emptying out of triumphalism, radicalism, and an overemphasis of the sacrificial nature of redemption. It is this latter that is at the root of fears of everlasting “conscious” suffering, the hope for salvation to have a wider spectrum. Not however to discard the understanding, correct at that, that God would have all mankind saved. That is codependent with man’s cooperation.
Bloody sacrifice with its pain is a non negotiable reality if we are to assume the faith into our heart and intellect as revealed. Polarity between good and evil for God is infinite. Simply because God is infinite good. Diminish this and we diminish the immensity of sin’s effect, and with that the depth and beauty of holiness. Here we find the precise reason for the collapse of faithful practice.
@Teilhard de Chardin and Eugenics
Among the six laudatory articles, we read that Bishop Domenico Pompili and Father Spadaro will speak at a celebratory event in Verona on April 3…
Wondering, here, if these luminaries will mention what Chardin revealed (a revelation!) to Dietrich von Hildebrand when asked what he thought about St. Augustine: “Don’t mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural” (Appendix, “Trojan Horse in the City of God,” Franciscan Herald Press, 1967).
Or, the qualifications offered by the very sympathetic Cardinal de Lubac in his “Religion of Teilhard de Chardin” (Image 1968):
DeLubac alludes, however briefly, to Teilhard’s being less than “infallible,” not always “convincing,” and even to “the inevitable narrowness of his personal point of view”! And this: “the danger of misunderstanding is by no means imaginary” (Teilhard’s actual orthodoxy was not in question). And even this about the difference between theology and Teilhardian poetry: “the closer the thought conforms to the truth of the Universe, itself pure and exuberant poetry, the more the thought too will be a source of poetry, showering poetry on the entranced reader” (Ch. 8, “Scientist, Prophet and Mystic,” and fn. 36, 62).
@ Accuracy and Accompaniment
We read about theologies “from below.” A Jesuit from the 1970s (also an unambiguous Catholic) already had this to say, in a book review of Malachi Martin’s “The Jesuits” (1987). Fr. Gerard Steckler, SJ, wrote:
“In 1965 [Jesuit General Pedro] Arrupe decided to do battle with Pope Paul VI, a kind and weak and tearful man who had made his initial mistake years earlier in listening to Jacques Maritain’s exhortation to work with the world. At General Council 31 [1964-5] the Jesuits decided to transform Paul VI’s commission to fight atheism into the socio-political struggle of the masses. The spiritual and supernatural element in Jesuit Catholicism had been excised [….] General Council 32 [1974-5] converted the Society of Jesus from an arm of the Church engaged in indispensable apostolic works to ‘faith in the service of justice,’ i.e., revolution against the socio-economic-political structure of the capitalist West [….] They succeeded in amalgamating nature with revelation.” (the referenced and early Maritain confides in his later “The Peasant of the Garonne” [1968], that Christians were too much engaging in “a kind of kneeling before the world”.)
@ Teilhard de Chardin and Eugenics
Pope St Paul VI was right in saying that Fatima is the altar of the world (Pittsburg Bishop Waltersheid). Teilhard de Chardin scientist, and theologian, envisioned the Eucharist not just as a church ritual, but as a “Mass on the world,” where the entire cosmos becomes an altar, and human toil and suffering are offered as bread and wine to God (de Chardin Hymn of the Universe).
Beautiful thoughts. How do we square that with the eugenics movement that swept the Western world from the 19th century through WWII reaching its climax in Nazi experimentation on ‘lesser’ humans in the constellation of death camps? Contraception, abortion is still considered a means of decontaminating humanity as it was with Margaret Sanger. It can’t be squared. What’s frightening to this writer is Vatican lionization of de Chardin. He fits in perfectly with the current Vatican environmental cosmology quasi worship. Pachamamma has come a long way since Amazonia.
Although we must give the breakthrough thinkers at the Vatican credit because not only are they intent on saving, but it seems of converting mankind to transexuality. Also de Chardin’s notion of “intus”, this inherent dynamic that inexorably moves all things toward Christ, Christ envisioned as a form of polar axis. Free will and merit aren’t invitees to this new cosmic theology. They require grace. That’s spiritual. Amoris ch 8 dismissed its purpose in the scheme of things. Enjoy the ride if you’re a Teilhardian trekky. I’ll stay with Paul VI and Bishop Waltersheid.
@ Artistic Rubbish
I sent the link for Roger Kimball’s new essay about kitsch to two scholars with an interest in art, and both were quite enthusiastic about it.