Saint Cabrini and Women in Missions – “While doing numerous viewers the service of informing them about Cabrini’s legacy, the film presents its protagonist as ‘the first woman ever to lead an overseas mission.’ This betrays a lack of awareness of Catholicism’s already rich history by Cabrini’s time of female-led overseas missions and service to the downtrodden.” The “Cabrini” Film and Catholicism’s History Problem (Sapientia)
Progressive Hard Hearts – “If it were not for the law of gravity, urban America could secede from rural America by rising into the air and floating away.” Wendell Berry: What New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman Gets Wrong About Rural America (Barn Raiser)
Pope Not Celebrating Mass – “Yet he still has enough strength and stamina to preach, to hold two public audiences every week, and to schedule dozens of meetings and private audiences every week.” Why Doesn’t Pope Francis Celebrate Mass? (Catholic Culture)
Orthodox Religion Retreating – “The novel The Damnation of Theron Ware, published in 1896, unspools the tale of a young Methodist minister who, thanks to Catholics, science, bohemianism, and good old American pragmatism, loses his faith.” Theron Ware’s Damnation and Catholicism, Then and Now (Church Life Journal)
Catholic Imagery, Feminist Memes – “‘The film’s producer Eduardo Verastigui said that in filmmaking, the better philosophy is to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell.’ Still, for many faith-based media, it seems any reference to Cabrini’s religious foundations was purposely avoided.” Movie producer of ‘Cabrini’ responds to critics that film fails to show nun’s faith motivation (Fox News)
Ukrainian Catholic Churches Closed Off to Believers – “At the beginning of 2024, the “Cossacks” of the so-called “DPR” sealed off all churches and adjacent territories and did not allow believers of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to enter the churches and the territory to conduct prayers and divine services.” UGCC Churches Sealed Off in Donetsk (Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church)
Incurring Automatic Excommunication – “A permanent deacon in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, whose then-teenage son was molested by the priest he once served alongside, is now excommunicated after leaving his ministry, because he formally left the Catholic Church, according to the recent decree written by his bishop.” After son’s abuse, deacon is excommunicated for joining Anglican church (Our Sunday Visitor)
A Different Unity – “The Secretary General of the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops used an interview with a Swiss newspaper last week to lay out a vision for the Church, which addressed several contentious issues, including women’s ordination, same-sex blessings, and division among the world’s bishops.” Cardinal Grech sets out vision for ‘rainbow’ synodal Church (The Pillar)
Ireland’s Leader Steps Down – “Varadkar, who became Ireland’s youngest and first openly gay taoiseach in 2017, said he would also step down as leader of the Fine Gael party.” Irish Prime Minister Resigns Suddenly (The DailyWire)
Trump’s Takeover – “All of Trump’s challengers have already exited the race and, for the third straight presidential cycle, Trump has secured the Republican nomination.” Thus Far, Trump Has Huge Coattails. The Best Coattails. (The American Conservative)
Public Catholic School – “Even with multiple lawsuits pending that create an uncertain future, St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic School in Oklahoma – the nation’s first state-funded religious school – has begun accepting applications for K-12 education set to begin this August.” Amid lawsuits, nation’s first state-funded Catholic school opens applications (Crux)
Students See Cabrini – “Over 16,000 students representing 107 Archdiocesan high schools, parish and regional elementary schools, schools of special education, and Independence Mission Schools throughout the five-county region attended screenings of the movie Cabrini.”Local Students Attend Screenings of Cabrini Movie (CatholicPhilly.com)
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Regarding Eminence Grech, this question, from the late Fr. Paul Mankowski:
Is sodomy a sin?
A more fundamental question. Independent of the childishly moronic clichés about walking together, are we subservient to the Holy Spirit, or is the Holy Spirit subservient to us?
@ A Different Unity
Cardinal Grech’s Rainbow Church is a homosexual church. According to Grech, resolution is not necessary for the universal Church. That is to be achieved by the dichotomous concept of unity of diversity.
“Instead, the cardinal says that When we speak of unity, of communion, we are not referring to the uniformity of thought”. Wherein then is this unity found? In difference. Unity in difference must have some unifying feature, if not thought, meaning perennial doctrine, then it is unity of sentiment, an example Fratelli Tutti. It cannot be a Catholic Church centered on Jesus Christ, his revelation, passion, death, and resurrection. Which is likely the reason why Pope Francis hasn’t made the plausible effort to offer the sacrifice of the Mass in relative ages.
Wellborn’s essay on ‘The Damnation of Theron Ware’ poses intriguing questions on the nexus of the perennially time-bound yet eternal Catholic Church.*
Theron Ware is a Methodist minister in 19th Century America, around Utica NY, when the modernist movement was wending its way here. Devotees of the TLM will contemplatively spirate with Theron as his previously-known everyday world cracks at experiencing Latin prayer and ceremony. Friends of Pope Francis may well cheer Theron’s awakening via Fr. Forbes and Celia Madden. Theron’s fall is either of damnation or of illumination. The online book is worth a look. Wellborn’s essay is also well worth the read. Read both in any order.
*Wellborn asks: “Everything’s that’s in, stays in. Is it a hopeful, realistic vision or a cynical one? Does the understanding of Catholicism articulated by Frederic’s characters leave us with an institution that is solid and dependable because it is not dependent on the individual qualities of the minister or the local church community—because it exists beyond our individual foibles and desires—or does it leave us with one that, because of those same qualities, is better able to harbor hypocrisy and in the end, enables complacency?”
“If it were not for the law of gravity, urban America could secede from rural America by rising into the air and floating away.”
******
If rural & urban America don’t figure out we’re all dependent on each other & we need sustainable birthrates to fund the social programs mentioned in the article we’ll all float away eventually. You can’t keep things going minus a strong workforce, agriculture, functioning supply chains, etc.
I don’t think we learned very much from 2020. Or perhaps we’re forgetting what we learned.
This reminds me of a faculty member who came to speak to my dorm ages ago when I was an undergrad. He described how economies had evolved and the direction in which he thought they would continue to evolve; he thought we were headed for a (perhaps final form) “fun” economy. I think he thought we would all work on cruise ships or something. I raised my hand and asked, “That all sounds well and good, but what happens when we have the next big war? It seems to me that the people who still have an agricultural economy will eat and the people who still have an industrial economy will make guns.” “Oh,” he said, “I think we have evolved beyond war.” This would have been back around 1989.
I guess it’s like they say: there are some things only a professor can believe.
Thank you Outis, that’s pretty funny.
I actually took my first cruise recently and cruise ship crew members work extremely hard for very long shifts and share cramped cabins either at or below the water level on the ship. Talking with the crew was one of the best experiences of my cruise but I wonder what they might have thought about being part of a “fun” economy?
I wish we might indeed evolve beyond war but sadly Scripture instructs us differently.
Yeah, I get that. The same applies for workers at amusement parks, etc. To that extent, maybe the professor was unintentionally correct; I’m not sure the gap between the wealthy guests and the poor workers isn’t growing. A lot of evidence indicates that it is, but then extravagent vacations seem more common these days than when I was growing up. When I was a child, “vacations” usually meant something like painting the house or putting on a new roof.
A man does not acquire the very first step towards wisdom until he discovers that evolution does not exist in any sense of the word. Sadly, despite providing fine and orthodox abstract definitions for original sin, various sentences, in multiple documents, intentionally and/or unintentionally discouraged actually believing it.
I’m not 100% sure what you’re talking about, but “evolution” means neither more nor less than “change”, and change certainly occurs. It is particularly obvious in microbes Some human traits also change over time. We see this in small differences that make some people better able to live in the heights of the Andes or the Tibetan plateau, or that make some people better able to digest dairy products or to metabolize alcohol.
These changes are obviously real, BUT they change only the accidents, not the essence. We all remain rational animals. We are all (except, of course, for Our Lord and Our Lady) tainted by Original Sin.
One of the most common heresies relates to anthropology, not theology: the idea that some humans are more than human, while others are less than human. Thinking that more recent generations are inherently superior to earlier ones is just as wrong and just as sinful as thinking that some nations or races are inherently superior to others.
When I compose a comment on my phone and send it to my computer to send to this forum, sometimes a word, phrase, or whole sentence gets lost. I was referring to Vatican II when I remarked about documents that downplayed original sin. Somehow that got lost.
As far as “change” is concerned, nothing changes about the human condition. Therefore nothing “evolves.” Every individual is defined by the broken relationship between what God created us to be and what our sins deprived from us. Only God’s mercy, through the Sacrifice of His Son can close this brokenness. But the struggle is a constant. There is no such thing as collective sharing of non-regressive virtue. There is no universal saintliness, but God asks us to pursue universal conversion nonetheless.
As creatures of a creator, we do alter our environment in creative ways, and we can be creative in giving witness to truth, but truth, all truth is the reflection of the mind of God and His creation creates no truth at all. There is no such thing as “new truth”. I happen to personally own a patent on an invention. Nothing too remarkable. No one ever thought of my small invention before, as far as I know, but the conditions of human activity, and all the factors of human productivity are sourced in God, and nothing changes. Nothing evolves.
Biological evolution is also a myth, but given its institutional dominance in elitist thought, it is academic suicide to apply what most non-Western biologists have come to accept for more than half a century. My field is physics, but my uncle, a microbiologist, after retirement, was able to join the chorus of those around the world, especially in Asia, pointing out that the complexity and functionality of biochemical structures at the cellular level, a knowledge greatly advanced in recent decades with electron micrographs, clearly illustrates the impossibility of random mutational evolution, a prerequisite to natural selection.
Some molecular biologists are fond of providing one common sense example of the mechanism of the bacterial flagellum as one of many irreducibly complex systems, a kind of intelligently engineered machine. Of its more than forty different protein parts, all are necessary for functionality. Without a single one, it cannot work, and it could not have accidentally come into existence to be favored by “natural selection.” For functional changes to occur in organisms, “accidents” on the scale of tornados passing through junkyards and leaving behind something as complex as passenger airliners would have to occur. And the “accidents” would have to happen identically, in proximity, trillions of times in succession to affect any meaningful change even at the cellular level. It just doesn’t happen. Hysterical resistance to real science vs. accepted science is rooted in condescension towards religion, even among the pretentiously religious to cowardly to stand for their creator.
Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture asks why the pope doesn’t celebrate Mass. Because he doesn’t comprehend its benefits?? He doesn’t care to learn them? He denies its worth? He thinks it a boring waste of his limited ability to exercise?
We are not mind readers, yet we know much about Francis. Likely he fails to see the value of the Mass: It’s old, backward, and rigid. It contributes nothing meaningful toward his new improved magisterial message of caring for climate and welcoming LGBTQ people to the blessing of Catholicism.
Neither did he see anything inappropriate to interrupt a Mass by Cdl. Mueller just to admonish him against investigating one of his prelates for sexual abuse. Even while waiting in the sacristy and was told by an aide that Mueller was in the middle of the Communion prayers, Francis indicated he did not care and demanded he be brought to his presence.
“Ukrainian Catholic Churches Closed Off to Believers” Both sides have been pulling that kind of stunt. It’s disgusting in both cases.
@ A Different Unity; And, @ https://www.ccee.eu/cardinal-grech-and-the-role-of-the-bishop-in-a-synodal-church/?lang=en About addressing our “new situation,” we read from Cardinal Grech: “The synodal documents will be returned to the bishop, who will be ‘called to ensure the circularity between particular Churches and the universal Church’.”
“Circularity”?
As in the Hegelian synthesis? Or, the Marxian dialectic, or blessing the “irregular,” circular Russian roulette, or whatever? Missing in the incoherent synodal collage of ALL things, large and small, is the now new periphery:
…the non-circular CORNERSTONE (Eph 2:20-22), the “same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8); the real commissioning of apostello or being “SENT” (Mt 28:19); and even the inborn, receptive, and universal (!) NATURAL LAW. Moreover:
“Decisions”?
“In their desire to emphasize the ‘creative’ character of conscience, certain authors no longer call its [the conscience] actions ‘judgments’ but ‘decisions’: only by making these decisions ‘autonomously’ would man be able to attain moral maturity. Some even hold that this process of maturing [now synodality!] is inhibited by the excessively categorical [!] position adopted by the Church’s Magisterium in many moral questions; for them, the Church’s interventions are the cause of unnecessary ‘conflicts of conscience’ [italics].”
“Categorical”?
As in moral absolutes: “The Church is no way the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (Veritatis Splendor, 1993, n.95).
“Female Ordinations”?
“Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful” (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994, n.4).
Summary?
“And thus Bureaucracy, the giant power wielded by pygmies, came into the world “ (Honore de Balzac).
The end run around all these common sense observations is what many fail to give sufficient attention to when trying to unravel the mysteries of this pontificate. Near the beginning, before the St. Galen influence was identified, Walter Kasper was cited as “Francis’ theologian”. With good reason. Early on Francis praised Kasper’s infamous 1968 essay in process theology describing God as incomplete and learning from His creation. When we sobordinate God, everything is possible.
Absolutely correct. Those outside of the inner circle of synodal “experts” surely recall Kasper’s errant two-hour monologue in 2014 kicking off the first session of the Synod on the Family, and setting the stage for all that has followed leading up (down!) to Fiducia Supplicans…
AND, surely, outsiders also recall the truth-telling of Cardinal Erdo who introduced the second session in 2015: “There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family [….].” Then came the 2018 Synod on Young People. While backroom operatives inserted into the draft report the slogan “LGBTQ”, upstaging the Church’s focus on “persons,” this maneuver was rejected (a unanimous “demand”) by all 18 roundtables of bishops. The ringmaster earlier had rejected such a published request by Archbishop Chaput, but then relented and removed the gratuitous edit.
Butt, now where are we? The predictable coupling (!) of Cardinal Kaspers’ mindset with Fiducia Supplicans!
It’s time for any non-amnesiacs in Synod 2024 to connect the dots, and take another look at Cardinal Erdo’s complete remarks dealing with “marriage” and now the globally divisive blessing of “irregular couples” https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/32772/full-text-of-cardinal-erdos-introductory-report-for-the-synod-on-the-family
It seems that synodal “(d)evolution” really is God, so long as an insider vanguard can play Wizard of Oz.
Suggestion: I like to read these comments but it would be helpful to know which item you are responding to.