Handmaid of Religion – ” Art as mimesis re-presents, makes present again, the sensible and intelligible forms of things in media other than their own, for the sensible and intelligible delight of an audience. ” On Beauty and Imitation (Word on Fire)
Bishops’ Strength and Flaws – “One of the reasons I spent three years writing a recent book on the Church in the United States was to capture the character, challenges, and real concerns of the men who lead us today as bishops.” On the Disunities of Bishop Stowe (The Catholic Thing)
Peculiarly Catholic – “One year, I suggested the possibility of writing a dissertation on the Eucharistic vocation of the Catholic university. The proposal was immediately dismissed by one faculty member who noted that the Catholic university was too ecumenical … ” The Eucharistic Vocation of a Catholic School (Church Life Journal)
Feel-Good Verses – “According to a Premier Christianity article published in 2018, the “verse of the day” feature common on Bible apps could actually ‘be skewing your view of God.’” Algorithmic Spiritualty (First Things)
Protestant Pastors and LGBTQ – “Almost a decade after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country, most pastors remain opposed, and the supporting percentage isn’t growing any larger.” Most Pastors Still Oppose Same-Sex Marriage (Christianity Today)
Eremitical Life Misuse – ‘”A Kentucky bishop’s decision to endorse a hermit who publicly identified as transgender has raised a number of questions and concerns … ” Diocesan Hermit-Theologian Warned Bishop ‘Transgender Hermit’ Proposal Would ‘Misuse’ Church Law (Our Sunday Visitor)
A Changing Society – “The 2024 presidential campaign is taking place amid intense debates over such topics as immigration, growing racial and ethnic diversity in the United States, the changing American family, crime and reproductive issues.” Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election (Pew Research Center)
The Principle of Color Blindness – “After George Floyd’s death in police custody and the ensuing season of rioting, major institutions—from federal agencies to Fortune 100 companies—hastily pledged themselves to the narrative of critical race theory … ” How to Defeat Left-Wing Racialism (City Journal)
Anti-Evangelical Polemics – “far too many quixotic journalists, activists, and academics have tilted at the windmill of Christian nationalism.” Who’s Afraid of Christian Nationalism? (Providence)
Women and Wicca – “Since the spawning of the Sexual Revolution in the 1960s, women in increasing numbers have craved the control promised by pagan or quasi-pagan rituals.” When Womanhood Feels Pagan (Catholic Answers)
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
@ Women and Wicca
“Women open, receive, nurture, and bring forth, almost entirely out of their own control. Experiences of the female make it virtually impossible to ignore the spiritual, in a particular way that men can’t help but have difficulty understanding” Anna Sutton). Something I’ve always felt true, and why when churches are emptying of large congregations there’s a predominantly older to elderly women small congregation. Why Wicca?
Sutton’s answer is in the nurturing feature of women, taking care of things, bringing forth as she says. Interesting she mentions Karl Stern. Stern former president of the Canadian psychiatric association whose book the flight from discusses the deleterious effect on culture when the feminine is suppressed, as happened in Nazi Germany. His thesis the need for a healthy female presence to balance a man led society. Sutton, who turned Catholic is aware, or should be aware because she doesn’t mention the loss of faith in a once Christ centered Western world now itself pagan, paganism and Wicca the available option for the spiritual. It’s bad enough that men our resorting effeminacy. Women to turning to witchery the final death knell.
Wicca seems popular in correctional facilities, too. Commissaries sell pentagrams along with religious items.
I don’t know if paganism got worse under the Covid lockdowns when priests were kept from visiting or if it’s been a longtime issue. But keeping inmates away from the Sacraments & clergy visits couldn’t have helped things.
Occultism is spreading in different forms and places, and surprisingly correction facilities too as you say. Apostasy from faith in Christ is likely the catalyst.
@ Handmade of Religion
We read: “Art disintegrated along with believing communities, leaving elite tastes in art separated from the popular taste for entertainment…”
Worse, still, the analogue universe with art as imitation now has been replaced by a digitized world and virtual reality, and soon by omnivorous and non-intelligent AI.
(All enabled by the “virtual” Second Vatican Council replacing the “real” council of the tangible Documents?)
Regarding the Peculiarly Catholica Article: In the beginning of the article it was not to be ecumenical it was not appropriate to discuss the Eucharist and therefore the Catholic dogma with non Catholics that the Eucharistic is the body and blood of Christ. The only thing I think that ecumenism and other post VC2 actions accomplished was and is to diminish catholic beliefs so even so many Catholics don’t believe in the Eucharist etc.
@Bishops Strengths and Flaws
We read: “Stowe’s statements on questions of sexual morality and identity contradict the Church’s timeless teachings…” And contradict even relevant science?
Two illustrative points:
FIRST, aside from the social and cultural inducements locking in homosexual tendencies, take for example the expanding science of epigenetics. This partly has to do with intergenerational and cultural factors which are likened to computer software—that then instructs the hardwired human DNA. Genome research confirms that DNA does not include a gay gene, but only a few less-than-determining epigenetic “markers.”
Is the fixed hardware the root problem, OR is it the software—which can be rewritten? (The papal “God made you that way” edict is not infallible.)
SECOND, possibly related, a study completed at University College London and using MRI technology (magnetic resonance imagery) strongly implies that a habit of lying tends to suppress the part of the brain (the amygdala) that responds emotionally to a “slippery slope” pattern of small and then larger lies (Nature Neuroscience Journal, October 24, 2016; reported in New York Times, October 25, 2016).
Besides lying, what OTHER behavioral addictions also have this or the dopamine effect? Such is shown to be the case with addiction to even computer games. And, pornography is scientifically reported to be more addictive than heroine or cocaine.
SUMMARY: The LGBTQ phenomenon, is this just another Galileo Moment? And, are Bishop Stowe and Fr. Martin the reincarnation of Ptolemaic “backwardists”?
In any event and as with all temptations, at the level of the whole person the inclination is one thing, and the actual behavior is another.
@ Bishops’ Strength and Flaws
The abuse of the human body involved in transgenderism and its delusions directly and gravely violates Catholic teaching and, for that matter, the guidance of Pope Francis (Francis X Maier). Maier, a flawless Catholic observant of doctrine doesn’t tell us what the strengths are. He does detail the heterodoxy of Bishop Stowe.
Maier follows a pattern of faithful Catholic authors who quote Pope Francis in support of their critique but hesitate to speak to the other side of Francis, the one that supports the Stowaways besides Stowe in the Barque of Peter. Why there are the jettisoned, bishops made to walk the plank, traditional all, while the heterodox stowaways come out of hiding called into the limelight. Red zucchettos and all. If we’re to do something to improve the double dealing that’s destroying the Church we’ve got to address it.
@Eremitical Life Misuse
I am grateful to see that Sister Laurel, the diocesan hermit- theologian, cared enough about Christian Matson’s spiritual well-being and the greater good of the Church to push herself into what must have been a very difficult position. Not that it made a difference. I noticed in particular that the papal nuncio didn’t respond to her appeal.
Matson sounds preoccupied by a need to be at the center of things and the desire to make a big impact on the world. For instance, beginning consecrated life by pointing out how the Church is wrong is a hubris-filled move: “Matson claimed “the church has not taken the time to do the theology” and that “human sexuality is complicated,” with “different factors which go into determining a person’s sexual identity,” and with “being transgender … a category of intersex condition” — although “some people may identify as trans as more of a choice or performance art.”” The last part of that remark is gobbledygook. This self-dramatizing impulse may be common among people drawn to the performing arts but it does not bode well for the life of service and self-emptying expected of those who give their lives to Christ and His Church for the Kingdom of God.
Nor does the tendency to be melodramatic: “The removal from Portsmouth felt like “an attempted abortion,” Matson told OSV News.” Very inappropriate choice of words for a vowed Catholic religious.
I pray that Christian Matson comes to realize soon that religious life is not a vehicle for self-expression and personal validation. Jesus Christ comes first, Matson at best a distant second. If that means giving up the dream of founding a performing arts colony, then you give up the performing arts colony or whatever else is required of you. If that not the life Matson wants, better to get out now.
#5 – Protestant pastors and LGBetc.
Support of Protestant pastors for same-sex “marriage” seems to have plateaued.
Is it too soon to break out the champagne?
Bishop Stowe “Eremitical Misuse” and the pro-LGBT “Protestant Pastors”, are both wrong and Stowe would seem to be leading them in the latest renewal push to keep things going for them.
“Gender identity” and “sexual identity” are corruptions of understanding no matter who you are, believer in God or not. They purport to root and ground “identity” to one’s own “sense” about “sex”. It isn’t just a perversion of understanding for the homosexual/LGBT etc. but also “heterosexual” individual who adapts himself or herself into a (hyper-) sexualization.
I am a man. When a certain free-living type of woman behaves around me in a certain fashion it is not in essence “declaration of deep personal identity” but a dramatization in an intended form of involvement. Turning that into “rights” in “law” having “legalized positive cultural substance” is truly ridiculous, monumentalizes it in society and drives its proliferation.
I mentioned this earlier, that the matter is being informed from the culture. Effort to address it gets thrown when it is not tackled on its own terms and addressed from faith. Christian Revelation declares that man’s identity is found in the offer of redemption from sin including sexual perversion and excess, identity perversion, gender perversion, social perversion, etc.