1700 Years of Unity – “On Sunday, just ahead of his trip to Türkiye and Lebanon, Pope Leo XIV wrote about the 1700th Anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which is the reason for his journey.” Pope Leo says Council of Nicaea still has role to play for Christian unity (Crux)
Taking Religion Seriously – “Despite presenting themselves as the apotheosis of open-minded inquiry and debate, soft-science departments at the vast majority of our nation’s colleges and universities are possessed of an aggressive, self-satisfied groupthink.” Charles Murray’s Return to Faith (First Things)
The Trinity of Comings – “Christ does not say, ‘Think about being ready,’ or, ‘Consider ways that may help you be ready,’ but simply: ‘you also must be ready.’ He has come. He will come again. And He is coming now.” Embracing the Embarrassment of Advent (What We Need Now – Substack)
Political Theater Newsrooms – “Subscriptions and ideological loyalty replaced mass advertising. Journalism learned to sell not information but identity.” The Future of Journalism: Reconciling abundance with authority (City Journal)
No Trust in Princes – “If we want to be ‘true and honest,’ shouldn’t we acknowledge that Catholics are not supposed to find themselves at home in this world, politically or otherwise?” Should Catholics Expect to Find a ‘Political Home’? (The Catholic Thing)
Mother of Medieval Monasticism – “Before Cluny helped to shape medieval Europe, it was simply a house in the woods, founded by a duke who seems to have grasped, almost prophetically, what the age required.” How we got to Romanesque; Cluny and the “mad” new monastic idea (The Sacred Images Project – Substack)
The Book of Donald – “Donald Trump’s straightforward explanations sometimes are right: Islamists are waging a war of religion in northern Nigeria …” It really is that simple: Christians are being killed for being Christians (The Telegraph)
Country of Particular Concern – “[M]ilitary ethicists have recognized a right—indeed a responsibility—for the nations of the world to intervene militarily when the government of a sovereign nation is complicit in or incapable of stopping severe atrocities.” The US Has a “Responsibility to Protect” Persecuted Christians and Muslims in Nigeria (Providence)
Treating People Humanely – “Pope Leo was recently asked by a reporter about the deportation and detention of illegal immigrants. In response, he made the following remarks …” Pope Leo on immigration enforcement (Edward Feser – Blogspot)
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@ Treating People Humanely
Agreement with Feser’s well researched response to illegal migration and the difference between recent and long term residency.
Insofar as the latter most long term have at large integrated with US culture, and contributed to the nation by their labor, and expertise. Ligouri, one of,if not the best of legal scholars offers the reasonable principle of treating long term with greater leniency. Personally this has been my position in respect to the balance between justice and compassion.
My suggestion is a variant of yours. Those who invaded our country PRIOR TO the beginning of the Biden Administration which flouted the law to the nth degree must return to their own country, file for residency in the USA and be given EXPEDITIOUS re-entry upon review of their application. All others must leave immediately and be given no re-entry preference.
Agreed. Feser sets up a false dichotomy of recent immigrants being somehow more culpable than illegals who have been here for 10 or 15 years. At the end of the day, illegal is illegal. No amnesty.
Guy that’s too harsh.
From PLXIV:
“But when people are living good lives, and many of them for ten, fifteen, twenty years”
So getting away with an illegal act ratifies it ex post. I would say that would be an interesting theory in litigating tax evasion-but I already know that doesn’t fly.
Honesty n facts must come first. Compassion is needed, in many cases , thousands but, murder, child trafficking, and mass criminality has to faced. Or the Country n people we love will cease to exist.
It seems to me, that ” moderation ” has its own built-in prejudice. I wonder how it is possible to be honest ,when issues are so deep. We want to share love n better life for people – but at what Cost ?
Pope Leo on immigration enforcement (Edward Feser – Blogspot)
Thank you for sharing this. There were some good points made.
A tribute Leo XIV on this one. As Feser dissected and analyzed Leo’s remarks on illegal migration the Pope got it right.
@ 1700 Years of Unity
About the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and the possibility in the future of removing the Filioque, St. John Paul II obliquely addressed this question, already, at a general audience on Nov. 7, 1990.
Three points and a question:
FIRST, St. John Paul II indicates the history and cites Scripture and the fleeting agreement at the Council of Florence (July 6, 1439), as these relate to both the Latin idiom (that the Son, like the Father is the “principle” of the subsistence of the Holy Spirit) and the Greek idiom (that the Son is the “cause” of this subsistence). St. John Paul II concluded that “the formula ‘Filioque’ does not constitute an essential obstacle to the dialogue itself and to its development, which all hope for and pray for to the Holy Spirit” (Quando professimo, “The Filioque Debate,” in “The Pope Speaks,” Our Sunday Visitor, vol. 36:2, March/April 1991, pp. 114-117). Imagine the historic Christian event of Latin-Orthodox unity covering a geography including and reaching far beyond the post-Christian European Union.
SECOND, but from the Latin perspective and references to the needs of earlier times for the Filioque, as possibly different from the needs of our time—what, in fact, about the persistence of Arianism in the West as reported above—but also and more so in East?
The multiplicity of heresies in the Byzantine Empire seeped out into 7th-century Arabia at the periphery. Especially Nestorianism which is only one of the branches from the Arian root. Islam is partly an offspring from Arianism (!) in the sense that the monotheist Muhammad viewed fractious Christianity as simply another polytheistic bundle—in the same camp as the polytheism that he expunged from the Ka’ba in Mecca. Viewing the Christian Trinity, too, through still lingering pagan eyes (!), he saw only a pagan “triad” of Father, Son…and Mary. The Holy Spirit of the Creed disappears altogether, with the prophet Christ (Arianism on steroids?) predicting not the coming of the Holy Spirit/Paraclete, but instead only Muhammad and his natural religion of Islam.
THIRD, if the later “Filioque” is eventually deleted in the interests of a pristine Creed (A.D. 325-381) and greater harmony with the Orthodox Churches, this must be done in a way that still admits the much larger problem of ubiquitous Arianism. Especially as mutated in 7th-century Arabia and persisting today in the entire Muslim world (ten times the population of the Orthodox world).
QUESTION: How to advance Christian ecumenism with the Orthodox Churches without unwittingly unraveling substantive (more than procedural) interreligious/intercultural communications with the 1.8 billion followers of resurgent Islam?
@ 1700 Years of Unity
@ 1700 Years of Unity
Although “unity” in quotation marks. 1500 years of schism since 1054 and the Great Schism.
It’s better now. We’re no longer hurling excommunications and allegations of blasphemy at each other [at least not so openly]. Much better now since Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople met 1964 with Pope Paul VI at Jerusalem. Our Nicaean Creed is one of those iconic religious documents similar to other great institutional documents that express unchangeable standards of belief and practice.
1054 and the Great Schism has two interpretations. The Eastern Greek version is that the Latin West made unlawful, even an heretical addition. The Latin West argues that it was necessary to emphasize the complete humanness of Christ because of Fr Arian and the initial, and unfortunate lingering Arianism in the Eastern Churches.
The term historical Jesus refers to Christ understood as Man, the Son of Man, in large part Christ as understood by Fr Arius. A human body used by the Divine Word. Was he aware of his divinity, what did he know? “Historically, this view was held by a group known as the Agnoetae – from the Greek word for ‘unknowing’ – and was condemned by Pope Gregory I in 599” (Essayist Charles Collins). In recent years scripture scholars, theologians reference this to the ‘hidden Christ’, Christ purposely subduing his divinity to introduce the essential role of a human in the diagram for Mankind’s salvation.
This would offer a resolution to the Agnoetae heresy. Perhaps, perhaps not. The Schism extends further into the Person of Jesus of Nazareth. That he was true God, and true Man. That each nature divine and human were complete natures. As such, Christ’s human nature requires a human will. That the Holy Spirit flows from Jesus of Nazareth as well as from the Father.
If not, we cannot reasonably profess that our redemption was achieved by the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Which is why Benedict XVI final and greatest opus Jesus of Nazareth was providential and essential to knowing who Christ is.
Some things are beyond comprehension even by the greatest minds(and now even AI) , and must remain mysteries. Scripture is opaque and tangential and can’t always be understood literally. Even Christ’s recorded words in scripture are many times vague and hard to understand, and the Apostles were forever putting their feet in their mouths trying to make sense of it. The great councils , theologians and philosophers may argue about it all, but at the end of the day they must humble themselves and take a simple leap of faith. Humility of mind is necessary for conversion.
Yes James. The mystery of God becoming Man is and will always remain an unfathomable mystery. Beyond human comprehension. Whereas our intellect, gifted to us by God, helps us understand on a human level those identifiable dimensions of the mystery that assist us in how the mystery affects both understanding and response.
For example, that we know God through his human nature, that this human nature expresses the beauty and depth of God’s essence, which is love. Although the apprehension is self evident knowledge the gift of grace, an act of faith rather than a reasoned, discursive knowledge.
The mystery of grace and unity when we are taken in the Will of God while yet without the conscious knowledge and reasoning.
The right sense of it shunted and put down in AL and a sham inserted and foregrounded.
Yes Elias. It is self evident knowledge inspired by grace, although it requires an act of faith to identify this knowledge with the man Jesus of Nazareth. That he is the son of God.
The Roman centurion who was in charge of the detail of soldiers that crucified Christ, observing all that occurred, was given the grace to identify the extraordinary gentleness, patience, intercessionary love of Christ with the divinity, exclaiming after his death, Indeed, this was the Son of God.
Conditional yes Fr., the effect of the Mass not yet identifiable by the centurion.
A lot to ponder here. Thank you sir.
Concerning 1700 years and Filioque, it is acknowledged -recognized- that Filioque is not constituting any obstacle to unity, where it then is retained and focused on the more auspiciously not sidelined.
The Orthodox side(s) must uncover to and relate with us about what it is that moves them to resist the Filioque.