The self-loathing ivory tower – “Age-old antisemitism is a very real but subordinate phenomenon. What comes first is Western self-loathing, the obscene conviction that the Western world, and it alone, is the source of colonialism, slavery, racism, injustice, totalitarianism, and economic exploitation.” Wretched of the University (The American Mind)
140 murdered in Nigeria on Christmas Eve – “Armed groups kill scores of villagers in Nigeria’s north-central Plateau state in the long-running conflict between nomadic herders and farmers.” Nigeria: Over 140 people killed in Christmas Eve attacks on remote villages (Vatican News)
Steal a page from Obergefell–“The wider purpose of the declaration is plain enough. It restores the trajectory established in the early years of this pontificate, a trajectory laid out already in the notorious eighth chapter of Amoris laetitia…” The Pope and his Prefect (Desiring a Better Country)
Papal Erasure? – “Benedict trusted Francis. But he was bitterly disappointed several times.” Seewald: Francis wants to erase Benedict XVI’s legacy (Daily Compass)
Contradictory blessing – “There is no blessing, not only in public but also in private, for sinful living conditions that objectively contradict God’s holy will. ” Müller – ‘Fiducia supplicans’ is ‘self-contradictory’ (The Pillar)
Chaos and Communion – “Confusion among the faithful can often be a matter of innocent individuals who hear but fail to understand the Word. Confused teaching, however, is another matter. It’s never excusable.” The Cost of Making a Mess (First Things)
A wonderful life and George’s wife – “George’s vision of his wife without him is essential to the film, but critics continue to miss its true—and profound—meaning.” There Is No Mary Problem in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (The Bulwark)
Shallow discourse and the two-state solution – Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See Raphael Schutz said talk about a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine “is part of what I call the ‘shallow discourse’ surrounding this conflict.” Israeli envoy says Palestinians don’t want two states, they want genocide (Crux)
Mythical Muslim multiculturalism – “We must refute the myth that Muslim-occupied medieval Spain was a bastion of peace and multiculturalism.” The Islamization of Spain: From al-Andalus to the Migration Crisis (The European Conservative)
Middle-earth and the true spirit of Christmas – “The more we love characters like Scrooge and Gollum, the more we hate the sins that keep them in agony.” Gollum and the Spirit of Christmas (National Catholic Register)
Governor Grump – “In canceling one of California’s most cherished holiday traditions and skipping another, Newsom can rightly be dubbed the Governor who stole Christmas and Hanukkah…” Gavin Newsom: Scrooge of the Year (National Review)
Beautiful Dominican Videos – “The YouTube channel of the Dominican Friars Foundation has been producing captivating videos that show the beauty of vocational discernment.” The Dominican Friars have stepped up their game on YouTube (Aleteia)
800th Anniversary – “I want to do something that will recall the memory of that Child who was born in Bethlehem, to see with bodily eyes the inconveniences of his infancy, how he lay in the manger, and how the ox and ass stood by (St Francis of Assisi).”Why Catholics Should Visit a Franciscan Church this Christmas Season (Catholic Stand)
The Dickens Way – “A funny thing: in the twenty-first century, no one uses the old-fashioned word ‘merry’ except around Christmastime, when for a few weeks it fills the air—uttered billions of times and then, on December 26, abruptly abandoned until the next December.” Keeper of Christmas (City Journal)
(*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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@ Mythical Muslim multiculturalism
Multicultural-ISM, the very nature of monotheistic but syncretic Islam? Are Hilaire Belloc and others correct in identifying Islam as a Christian heresy? Or, is Islam more of a polyglot accident of narrative and historical accumulation?
…A SYNCRETIC combination of pagan and tribal culture (e.g., absorption of the jihad warrior code and pilgrimage to the Ka’ba, openness to polygamy, the mystical and transnational megatribe–the umma); plus Jewish elements (from the Pentateuch; parts of the Decalogue); plus Christian elements (limited to Monophysite and Nestorian accretions, and with fragments inserted later by converted Christian scribes); plus overlaid/ramped-up violence by converted 10th-century Seljug Turkish invaders in Anatolia; plus today the alchemy between the transnational ummah and the overlaid nation-state political idiom; plus 21st-century oil revenue and Western technology (earlier, the Seljugs were expert archers)?
Just a QUESTION…syncretism, old and new? About modernism’s default into such multiculturalism, as imagined for Andalusia…maybe Islam IS multiculturalism? And vice versa?
The correct symmetry lies NOT in a comparison among the several scriptures, as between the Bible and the Qur’an but, rather, in the fact that Islam REPLACES (!) the Incarnation with the Qur’an–the “Word made flesh” is replaced by “the word made book.” And, then, abrogates its own tenets under a kind of monotheism where the Deity, finally, is ever distant, and inscrutable, and therefore arbitrary. (Not unlike Secularism devolving from the Enlightenment, or now a clericalist “paradigm shift,”?)
No COHERENCE between Faith & Reason? The irreducible difference between Christian anthropology and the cultural anthropology of Islam?
What a narrow but coherent PATH, for a Triune God to concretely show Himself at “the fullness of time,” not exhaustively but still definitively—in Person as “the Word made flesh” and “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” The supernatural grafted onto and perfecting nature—and always more than any terrestrial invention. Something always more than “time is greater than space.”
HOW, then, for the Church to evangelize true “fraternity”–more than religious “pluralism” because NOT forgetting the Presence, not forgetting the living past (“backwardist”?), not abdicating or only deferring its divine commission as guardian of the Deposit of Faith?
@ Papal Erasure?
Peter Seewald journalist, Benedict XVI biographer offers us, if verbatim a quite startling insights into the intensified theological doctrinal distancing between Benedict and Francis. First is that Benedict is perceived by philosopher Giorgio Agamben as a katechon, the Apostles word description in 2 Thess 2 6-7 of a hindrance to the implementation of the ‘dark Church’, and full manifestation of the Antichrist. Second is that pope emeritus Benedict seems to have allegedly confirmed this. When asked by Seewald why he couldn’t die, having survived 11 years after resignation of the papacy, Benedict said he couldn’t because of what was occurring in the Church.
If it takes time to process it’s certainly warranted. Commenters have alluded to the like here and elsewhere. If anything we gain by drawing closer to Christ.
@ Papal Erasure?
Peter Seewald had a friendly relationship with Benedict XVI as well as with Archbishop Gänswein and would seem a trustworthy witness to what’s purported. The issue of the Declaration by the DDF after one year of Benedict’s death would be consistent with a restraint on the Vatican. Presumably Benedict would have been incited to react [as is the opinion of Seewald]. The Declaration, in the opinion of most faithful Catholics, is a ruse to advance the homosexual normalization agenda. The wording of the Declaration is a first time open endorsement of the situational ethics of former Cardinal Mario Martini, Martini instrumental in establishing the Saint Gallen Group of radical progressives. That wording of principles that undermined the spectrum of Catholic moral doctrine based on Christ’s revelation.
@ Contradictory Blessing
The Pillar presents Cardinal Muller’s critique of Cardinal Fernandez’s inventive blessing of so-called “irregular” sexual lifestyles.
Clear, cogent, principled, precise, systematic—and reader-friendly. On the meaning of words, when asked what he would do to save his country, the Chinese emperor responded: “I would restore the meaning of words”. . . So, now this side comment from the hand of Muller (a qualified former Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith):
“Here Humpty Dumpty’s famous line from Alice in Wonderland comes to mind: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’ Alice replies, ‘The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ And Humpty Dumpty says: “The question is which is to be master; that’s all’.”
Not exactly Scripture, but no less so than ghost-writer Fernandez quoting himself.