Record Number of Pilgrims – “Nearly 13 million people visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 11 and 12, the anniversary of the final apparition to St. Juan Diego.” Our Lady of Guadalupe basilica drew record crowd (Aleteia)
The Sacred Liturgy – “New details emerge about the Pope’s agenda for his upcoming meeting with Cardinals” Pope Leo XIV to Cardinals on Liturgy: “Retain Sound Tradition while Opening to Legitimate Progress” (Diane Montagna’s Substack)
Hail, Holy Queen – “The protestors, sometimes on-the-scene outside Butterworth’s Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue, were dressed in black and screaming profanities at them through bullhorns a safe distance away.”Angels vs. Demons: Angry Leftist protesters run away as Ave Maria choir sings Salve Regina at them in DC (Human Events)
The Theology of von Balthasar – “The Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar is a figure at once admired and scorned in U.S. Catholicism.” Raising the Bastions: Why the American Catholic right has turned against Hans Urs von Balthasar (Commonweal)
The Weight of Reformation History – “After divisions over same-sex blessings and women’s ordination, many clerics now feel Rome offers a ‘more enduring’ approach to Christianity” Anglican priests are fleeing to Catholicism. Is the Church of England doomed? (The Telegraph)
Frivolous Studies – “Augustine writes that the works of Homer and Vergil are ‘as empty as they were entertaining’ and ’empty in a thoroughly entertaining way.’ I Would Rather Be a Saint Than a Great Novelist (Dappled Things)
Doorstep Scrums – “What are the advantages, perils and unwanted consequences of Pope Leo XIV’s Tuesday evening ‘doorstep’ exchanges with the press at Castel Gandolfo?” When the Vicar of Christ Joins the Media Scrum (National Catholic Register)
(*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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@ The Theology of von Balthasar
Much to think about here for both the right and the left. For starters, here are a few maybe contrarian thoughts…
Might it be that a “culture” of the transcendental BEAUTIFUL is at least a little bit like the trail of breadcrumbs to lead us forward from the dark forest of post- and anti-Christianity now that the ONE is shattered into a culture of sensate paganism, and now that the TRUE is disfigured into a culture of pointy-headed and street-level ideologies, and now that the GOOD is whatever culture replaces even the traditional (horrors!) family—like fetal infanticide, identity politics, gender theory and borderless sex trafficking?
So, yes about the author’s borderless vulnerability, but also might there still have been one, true and good reason why Joseph fled with the vulnerable Christ child and His Mother, from Judea and across the beautiful border (!) into Egypt?
About what’s left of a Western cross-boundary culture of distinct Faith & Reason….at a panel discussion in 2007 on a secular campus, and on this specific topic, unlike his Dominican counterpart why did the Muslim panelist (from a Jesuit school of theological studies) repeatedly deflect the dialogue, instead, into a platform for assimilationist Islamic… ”culture” as a natural religion? It’s almost as if even the insights of von Balthasar actually call for defense of a remnant Christian culture BECAUSE OF the transcendence and immanent vulnerability, both, of an incarnate Christ—in a still fallen world.
One is reminded of what the ex-Communist and Quaker Whittaker Chambers even had to say about cultural RELICS:
“It is idle to talk about the wreck of Western civilization. It is already a wreck from within. That is why we can hope to do little more now than snatch a fingernail of a saint from the rack or a handful of ashes from the faggots [both meanings?], and bury them secretly in a flowerpot against the day, ages hence, when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there was once something else, that something else is thinkable, and need some evidence of what it was, and the fortifying knowledge that there were those who, at the great nightfall, took loving thought to preserve the tokens of hope and truth” (Whittaker Chambers [author of “Witness,” Random House, 1952], in a letter to William Buckley, August 5, 1954, in “Cold Friday,” Random House, 1964).
Re Balthasar
Has everyone forgotten about GRACE and the litany of saints who touted their nothingness, especially dozens in the last 100 years? We have a crisis of grace… God doesn’t need you to do anything for Him. What can I do to let Him do what He wants in me?
Regarding the article “Doorstep Scrums” I read a comment recently from a saint of several centuries ago who said. “The less that you say the more it is remembered.” I believe that Pope Leo would do well to take that to heart, especially in areas where he has no special expertise.
There was also an error in the article in saying that Pope Leo undercut the U.S. bishops who opposed the planned Lifetime Achievement Award to Pro-Abortion Senator Durbin by Cardinal Cupich. By the time the award was cancelled, ten, that is only ten, U.S. bishops out of over four hundred active and retired bishops had publicly opposed the award.
@ The Theology of von Balthasar
Essayist Anne Carpenter falls at the feet of von Balthasar in ecstasy. Ideas are bandied about as expected in a review with someone as complex and subject to multiple interpretations as the sage of the century.
RR Reno is painted as a radical trad returning the Church to its fortress mentality seen in his book Return of the Strong Gods. She [Carpenter] does give a good look at some of Balthasar’s elusive doctrines, but highlights his Church opening its doors to the world, which is right in line with Vat II, although fraught with various interpretations of what that means.
There are elusive ideas expressed by the Swiss thought giant such as a return to the Gospels, to their very foundation to elicit the truth. This is one of his flamboyant ideas that strikes at the very source of What is said – as if 2000 years of following Christ’s words must be reevaluated [revised?]. I do appreciate much of what he offers, while like others not all [there is also reason for caution regarding mystic Adrienne von Speyr’s alleged aggressive influence on Balthasar’s theology].
Ideas are ideas and much of what the sage similar to other sage theologians are in effect fine sounding ideas subject to what we wish to believe. Considering RR Reno’s transition from Anglicanism’s disassembling and the current similarity within Catholicism I would agree with Reno’s Return to Strong Gods as possessing greater relevance.
Re Crusader above (7:21 a.m.) – Not an error. Leo did undercut the bishops (and the pro-life movement). He should have stopped right after saying he didn’t know the background (a surprising and disappointing statement in itself).
Thanks Cleo, but my point was that he did not undercut them, as they (over 400 bishops) made no statement objecting to the proposed award – only 10 did.
Here we go again. How can you combine same-sex blessings and women’s ordination in the same sentence? The first is a mortal sin. Women priests are not!!!
“…women priests are not…”—as in not priests.
Crusader (1:39 p.m.) – I am quite aware that that was your point.
Who were the ten? They are the ones who count.
Cleo. At ‘least’ ten US Bishops, including James Conley [Lincoln], David Ricken [Green Bay], Michael Olson [Fort Worth], Joseph Strickland [Tyler], James Wall [Gallup], and Salvatore Cordileone [San Francisco], opposed Cardinal Cupich awarding senator Durbin. Gladfully my Bishop is among them. Bishop Tyler as we know was previously removed by Pope Francis.
Jorge Bergoglio, in denying Christ’s teaching on sexual morality, and thus being in a state of schism from The Catholic Church, had neither the ability or the desire to accept the Office Of The MUNUS and thus The Ministerial Office Of The Papacy, and thus, Jorge Bergoglio, having not been validly elected to the Papacy, lacked the authority to remove Bishop Strickland.
“Canon 751 of the Code of Canon Law states that schism is “the refusal of submission to the supreme pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” Canon 1364 stipulates that the penalty for this crime is excommunication “latae sententiae,” i.e., automatically upon the commission of the offense.” Furthermore, “Canon 188 §4 states that among the actions which automatically (ipso facto) cause any cleric to lose his office, even without any declaration on the part of a superior, is that of “defect[ing] publicly from the Catholic faith.”