Not Another Secular Holiday – “The world still needs—urgently needs—’the birth of the Savior’ and ‘the cure for its wounds in the peace of Christ.’ “God Is with Us”: Christmas 2024 (What We Need Now – Substack [Archbishop Charles J. Chaput])
Undermining Priestly Morale – “Has theology become devalued in the contemporary Catholic Church? I sometimes fear that this is the case—and for the following reasons.” Is Theology Still Queen? (First Things)
Child of Diplomats – “A professional philosopher my friend Siobhan Nash-Marshall certainly was. But her own love of wisdom included the desire to change the world as well as interpret it.” Crazy Love: Siobhan Nash-Marshall, In Memoriam (The Imaginative Conservative)
Biden’s Mental Health – “The Wall Street Journal is out today with a toweringly important story documenting how President Joe Biden’s close-knit circle of advisers sought to swindle the public … ” For Four Years We Have Had a Ghost for a President, and We Were Lied to about It All Along
Pending Biden Regulations – “President Joe Biden is abandoning his efforts to provide some protections for transgender student-athletes and cancel student loans for more than 38 million Americans … ” President Biden drops unfinished protections for trans athletes (ESPN)
Cultural and Political Revolution – “American politics exists downstream of American culture, which is a deep and broad river.” Rapid Onset Political Enlightenment: How Barack Obama Built an Omnipotent Though-Machine, and How It Was Destroyed (Tablet)
Our Current Corruptions – “What we need now is a discalced Church that has divested itself of all pretensions and which embraces the evangelical counsel to holy poverty.” Mammon and the Church We Need (What We Need Now – Substack)
Questions of Accountability – “The recently appointed president of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, Msgr. Joseph Reilly, “knew of sex abuse allegations on campus” and failed to follow proper procedures … ” Why is there a row over Seton Hall’s president? (The Pillar)
(*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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@ Undermining Priestly Morale
Citing Vincent of Lerins and Cardinal Newman, Guarino restores theology to its queenly place as compared to recent ambiguous pronouncements….and, yet, the issue now may be the ascendancy of zeitgeist theologians as above–rather than serving and deepening–the deposit of faith itself (including inseparable morals). This, by a self-referential synodal process which discerns itself to be the new dispensation…a tautological/self-validating (!) Synod on Synodality.
@ Undermining Priestly Morale
Seton Hall Prof Msgr Guarino addresses the absence of theological erudition in the modern Church, resulting in multiple deleterious outcomes. One is Otto von Bismark’s forecast [a value judgment] that Vat I empowerment of the papacy would relegate bishops to branch managers. Had earlier begun drawing a response then realized it’s been said before along the lines of Beaulieu’s comment.
What we really need is a sea change. For example, if bishops are undermining priests, priests [although not all] are undermining the faith of the faithful, if not by error by omission. His Holiness has openly confessed his contrariness. Synodality a perfect platform for theological gossip, here defined as tittle tattle, canards, goss, stories, whisper, blather, confabulation.
Priests arise. Be Apostolic [like]. If hierarchs have lost their savor, what’s there to lose that hasn’t been lost? What precious gain may be had that awaits to be gained?
@ Undermining Priestly Morale
Msgr makes an excellent case for
@ Cultural and Political Revolution
“During the Trump years, Obama used the tools of the digital age to craft an entirely new type of power center for himself, one that revolved around his unique position as the titular, though pointedly never-named, head of a Democratic Party that he succeeded in refashioning in his own image” (David Samuels).
A most intensive, perceptive analysis of the political power empire built by Obama, that reveals a shadowy contrivance that many of us were aware of if only by instinct. On that score Samuels rationale for the collapse of the Barack Obama new world order is awarded to an undefined American inevitability – likened to a flowing river. Whereas the stubbornness he accredits to empire wrecking balls Musk, Trump, Netanyahu is that intuitive instinct. The end principle of intelligent inference. And perhaps the fortuitous prayers of the many.