Visual Heresy – “Rupnik’s art isn’t ‘medieval’ or Byzantine. It’s not really even based on those forms. In fact, it’s a parody of them.” The eyes of Marko Rupnik: black “soulless” holes? (World of Hilarity)
Christian Nationalism – “National Conservatism’s Statement of Principles, released in 2022, generated a flurry of interesting conservative writing on the relationship between religion and public life thanks to its robust endorsement of a ‘public religion.'” The Gods of the City (Acton Institute)
Substantial Doctrinal Problems – “I remain amazed and puzzled by how the publication of Fiducia Supplicans is affecting the Church—and by how the responses to it still seem to be under-perceived, downplayed, or ignored.” Fiducia Supplicans: A Crisis of Trust (Crisis Magazine)
A Remarkable Woman – “A Russian Jew born in Odessa who later moved to Karaganda, Kazakhstan, then converted to Catholicism, lived in Israel, and spent the last years of her life in Sweden, Regina Derieva’s childhood and youth were a blending of the sublime and the terrible.” Swimming Against the Stream (The Imaginative Conservative)
DDF at the center of every Roman controversy. – “It was a shock,” one official close to the liturgy dicastery said, “and quickly followed by an avalanche of questions and problems no one [at the DDF] apparently thought to ask about beforehand, but were entirely foreseeable.” ‘Cardinal Bigfoot’ and the return of la Suprema? (The Pillar)
The Discarded Image – “Where Lewis soars to the heavens, to the very boundaries of the Empyrean, Duffy inches his way across the parishes of a lost England, recreating traditional religious ideas and practice in the period before and after the Reformation.” C.S. Lewis, Eamon Duffy and the Medieval Spirit (First Things)
Outstanding Individuals – “The Herald’s latest survey of US Catholic leaders reveals how lay stewardship continues to shape the narrative of politics and education.” U.S. Catholic Leaders Survey 2024 (Catholic Herald)
She is pregnant! – “The Journal of Medical Ethics is one of the preeminent bioethics journals in the world. So, when an article appears in the publication that is subversive to human decency and basic morality, notice needs to be taken.” Bioethics Journal Article: Pregnancy Equivalent to Catching the Measles (National Review)
Not a Bunny Thing – “If you know anything about world religions, then you know that Easter is a big deal in Christianity.” Farewell, after 20 years: Why we did what we did (Get Religion)
An Elven Mirror – “J.R.R. Tolkien believed that fairy-stories hold up a mirror to man, showing us ourselves. The mirror is not, however, any ordinary mirror; it is an extraordinary mirror . . . ” Tolkien versus Shakespeare (The Imaginative Conservative)
49ers’ Catholic Chaplain – “A lifelong 49ers fan, Father Kim enjoys his role as chaplain, reminding players: ‘Bring Jesus to the people.’” Super Bowl 2024: Meet Father Steve Kim, San Francisco 49ers’ Catholic Chaplain (National Catholic Register)
Chiefs’ Catholic Chaplain – “The Catholic chaplain offers this advice to his players: ‘Keep grounded in your faith and focused on your purpose in life. You are here to know, love and serve God in this life and one day be happy with him in the next.’”Meet Father Richard Rocha, Super Bowl LVIII ‘Team Priest’ For The Kansas City Chiefs (EWTN Great Britain)
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Msgr. Feichtinger’s discussion of the crisis of trust that ‘Sfiducia Supplicans’ represents is clear, concise and compelling, even for a non-theologian like me.
Well worth reading for anyone who’s seeking to defend our faith.
@ Visual Heresy
Like statistics we can shape the findings to our liking. Visual art critique similar, although Hillary White’s exacting tour de force defies glib repudiation. Nonetheless there remains what we are seeking to demonstrate.
Soulless eyes were quickly realized as a universal perception, not unique. Hillary sees the demonic in Rupnik’s art, brilliant in its evil complexity. Of that I’m not convinced, only in that it is purported a demon’s strategic purpose, rather to this writer a Freudian subliminal expression of the artist’s evil view consciously perceived as creative art. His alleged savage intoxication of vulnerable women with his art is religion is erotic life, is the epitome of diabolism. Rupnik, Slovenian [Slovenia a sliver of N territory of former Yugoslavia] imitates the Starets of Slavic Russia, elder holymen who roamed the countryside engaging in religious, ritualistic sexual orgies. Rasputin allegedly was thought a Staret. Photos show his eyes as far from empty, rather fierce and determined. As Fr Rupnik’s eyes would seem seducing with visions of trinitarian erotic love, his victims dazed and soulless. As dazed and soulless as men and women appear in Luciferian predator Rupnik’s art.
We cannot disassociate Fr Rupnik’s spectacular rehabilitation and continued embrace by this Vatican, similar absolution and restitution of unrepentant pathological deviants both small and high ranking, dabbling with idolatry in the chambers of the one true God.
Furthermore, a remark on my comment castigating Rupnik. Fr Marko Rupnik is a fellow priest who was accused by multiple parties in different locales. He’s refused to testify, although he hasn’t admitted guilt. If my comment is harsh it reflects anger at the machinations and duplicity of this pontificate. Although none of us are free of sin. All of us require we answer to God. My prayers, sacrifices include Fr Marko Rupnik, and my own transgressions.
@ DDF at the center of every Roman controversy
Two different Points:
FIRST, from Ed Condon, we read: “’Cardinal Fernández doesn’t wait in line,’ one official told The Pillar, ‘and he doesn’t ask for anyone’s opinion except the pope’s, which he solicits directly and personally’.”
Of the resulting turbulence, why are we reminded of a published interview some years ago with actress Candice Bergen? Wherein she confided how disrupted she was from her father’s behavior. He was the puppeteer and ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Even at the dinner table he spoke to his daughter only through the puppet Charlie McCarthy camped on his knee, and Charlie’s ears were wooden…
So, of course (!) the Vatican’s ghost-writer/speaker Charlie consults only with Edgar when dishing out consumables to a captive audience.
SECOND, as for the other “Bigfoot”, anthropologist Grover Krantz, (Washington State University, RIP), assembled hundreds of plaster casts of all sizes (ages), collected everywhere from lower California into northern British Columbia and over a period of several decades. (An impressive hoax.)
Despite the physical similarities, in his wide-ranging analysis anthropologist Krantz concluded with such as this “There can be no serious question about the intellectual status of the Sasquatch [Bigfoot”] on the basis of all available information. It is not human, nor even semi-human, and its legal status would be that of an animal if and when a specimen is taken” (Bigfoot Sasquatch: Evidence, Hancock House, 1999, pp. 348; p. 173).
As for tracking a living specimen, perhaps a plaster cast should be taken within the Vatican?
@ Not a Bunny Thing
Journalist, author, religious commentator Terry Mattingly’s swan song apologia hits on a phenomenon that has cultural progress as its root. The pathetic ignorance of journalists on religion. For believing Christians Christ’s burial place has import. For the journalist not. Focus is on the Bunny Thing. Mattingly addresses the subject well, no desire to paraphrase.
What strikes me is his title Not a Bunny Thing. Perhaps more depressing is it’s Not an Easter Egg Thing. The dilution into children’s games and frivolity of the universe’s [even including Mankind’s] greatest event, the resurrection of Christ. As with Christmas it’s all about firesales, sellouts, Easter is all about Easter egg hunts for the kids. Easter bonnet parades are slightly in vogue though virtually and thankfully dead. Would that some cold hearted, courageous bishop announce that Easter egg hunts at the Church on Easter Sunday are forbidden. Ignorance of religion, the sacred liturgy is not at all monopolized by journalists.