The end of literacy isn’t here … yet | Opinion (USA Today): “Even as we must be on the forefront of innovation and conversations around the ethics of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, we must not cut off the very branch on which we sit.”
Chesterton and the Psychological State (The Paradox Press): “The end result is that popular psychology becomes a matter of half-baked theories known only through sloganeering.”
What Happens During a Beatification? (Our Sunday Visitor): “Beatification is the penultimate stage in the process that seeks canonization, whereby the pope solemnly and irrevocably proclaims that the person is truly in heaven.”
The Allure of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (First Things): “During the fall semester of 2013, I began to teach a new course here at Yale: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition.”
The Church in Crisis — and How We Must Not Save Her: Twelve Issues (Rotate Caeli): “I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that the Catholic Church is in crisis. The good news is that she has been here before.”
Greta Gerwig’s War On Masculinity, Narnia, And C.S. Lewis’s Intent” (Daily Wire): “‘Translan’ is anathema to Lewis’s vision.”
Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Freak-out Edition (Miller’s Book Review): “Last week Empire magazine revealed that Meryl Streep would voice Aslan in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Netflix adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s beloved classic The Magician’s Nephew, and people lost their everlovin’ minds.”
Craig on Thomism and divine simplicity, Part I (Edward Feser – Blogspot): “I am well aware that critics of Thomism often complain that Thomists frequently accuse them of misunderstanding Aquinas. But if the accusation is just, it really doesn’t matter how many times it is leveled.”
Pope Leo publishes first book of his pre-papal writing (Crux): “On Tuesday, Pope Leo XIV’s first ever book of his writings before he became pope was published in English, a collection of his homilies, messages and addresses from his 12 years as the head of the Augustinian Order.”
Here’s How We Can Turn the Tide on the Dating Recession (Institute for Family Studies): “It is so easy to look at the landscape of modern romance—dominated by endless swiping and non-committal situationships—and conclude that young Americans have simply abandoned the traditional ideals of love and marriage.”
The Fall of Catholic Colleges (Crisis Magazine): “Catholic colleges that have largely given up their Catholic identity are finding that they can’t compete with their secular counterparts.”
(*The posting of any particular news item or essay is not an endorsement of the content and perspective of said news item or essay.)
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
READERS: If you don’t have unlimited time to read all the articles referenced here, use your time to read the article by Bishop +Rob Mutsaerts. It is MASTERFUL and right on target. Most of all it is PASTORAL.
Agreed! Such straightforward commonsense! From a bishop no less. There is something here for everyone. Many sentences are strikingly memorable, but this vignette gives an inkling:
‘A small observation for my brother bishops: Use synodality, but be a bishop. A bishop has not been elected to serve as a permanent facilitator of group processes. He is a successor of the Apostles. That means: teaching, sanctifying, governing, and sometimes saying: “No. This we cannot change.” The word “no” has a poor reputation these days. But parents know: the one who never says no does not love his children more deeply.’
Hebrews 12:6 — “For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.”
“That last fact strikes me as evidence above all of the Church’s divine origin. A purely human organization governed the way the Church has sometimes been governed would probably have gone bankrupt around the fourth century.”
Echoes of Belloc’s “knavish imbecility” quote.
Until today, I’d never heard of Greta Gerwig. The new word I learned only now describes her: “Mumblecore!”
I think of “mumblecore” the same way I think of “balderdash.” Both words are good. Greta’s treatment of Aslan is balderdash to its core of mumbled jumbo. “Bah Humbug” back atcha, Greta.
Until today, I’d never heard of Greta Gerwig. I learned a new word because of her: “Mumblecore!”
Think of “mumblecore” the same way you think of “balderdash.” Both words are good, and both apply equally well to Greta’s treatment of Aslan: Balderdash to its core of mumbled jumbo.
“Bah Humbug” back atcha, Greta.
@ Pope Leo publishes first book
We read: “’Respect for the human person and his or her dignity, sensitivity to what is truly human, dialogue with diverse cultures, the acceptance of human values and legitimate autonomy, living in tune with the deepest longings of humanity – all these are indicators of what must be the spirituality of persons of faith who seek to imitate Augustine’s style of life,’ says the pontiff.”
Not so clear is how the 5th-century Augustine would approach a “diverse culture” invented two centuries after his death, in 7th-century Arabia… A culture that sees humanity’s “legitimate autonomy” too much as a separate autonomy, and therefore as a blasphemy against “the autonomy of Allah who alone is great.” A culture that rejects a relational (Triune) God and, therefore, the divine gift of human freewill. A culture that bifurcates Augustine’s “style of life” into a separated and interior journey (early jihad) versus exterior conquest (later jihad) under the inventive “principle of abrogation.” No room for real philosophy (as in the coherence of faith & reason) and the non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction.
No room, either, for Augustine’s reflection on the abuse of freewill in a sin “original” to ourselves, rather due–alternatively–to the inscrutable and deterministic will of an arbitrarily transcendent Allah. Radical Islam, especially, seeks impose an imaginary and Original Innocence on a fully human world very much in need of interior conversion and Redemption. Islam replaces (!) the eternity of the incarnate and redemptive Jesus Christ with the “uncreated” and dictated Qur’an (the symmetrical comparison is not between the two scriptures as such).
Despite this alternative universe of Islam–more divergent (!) than “diverse”–there can be possible windows for “dialogue” between individual “witnesses to Christ” and individual “followers of Islam”–as “persons”. But this particular terrain seems pretty much unexplored by St. Augustine.
Until today, I’d never heard of Greta Gerwig. I learned a new word today because of her: “Mumblecore!”
I think of “mumblecore” the same way I think of “balderdash.” Both words apply equally well to Greta’s treatment of Aslan: Balderdash to its core of mumbled jumbo.
“Bah Humbug” back atcha, Greta.
The Allure of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (First Things): “During the fall semester of 2013, I began to teach a new course here at Yale: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition.”
I confess. Most mentions of Yale close my curiosity door. However, in this instance, the writing is easily conversational, the beginning of the tale enticing, and the subject interesting. This article refreshes and gladdens. Its message is Hope fulfilled.
The pie-in-sky objective for the class is daunting, but apparently enough students accept the challenge. Course enrollment continues to climb.
Yes, even at Yale, God lives.
Oh I’d heard of Greta Gerwig before. She directed a mutilated version of Little Women a few years ago. I found her Barbie more enjoyable than expected but Barbie is just a doll, a commercial product, not a classic work of children’s literature. Miller’s defense of her casting is just a re=tread of arguments about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. Apparently, Gerwig is unaware that Aslan is represented as a lion–a male animal. He specifically “identifies” himself as a lion at one point and his mane is a significant feature in the first book. He is not a composite being with a female voice. Miller’s argument that critics who want a male Aslan should make their own movie is easily flipped: Gerwig can go make up her own story with whatever gender arrangements she pleases, as a different work under a different name. The CS Lewis estate was extremely foolish to sell her the rights, given her track record.
Also, he is the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Son, not daughter. (And Emperor, not Empress).
@ Pope Leo publishes first book
We read: “’Respect for the human person and his or her dignity, sensitivity to what is truly human, dialogue with diverse cultures, the acceptance of human values and legitimate autonomy, living in tune with the deepest longings of humanity – all these are indicators of what must be the spirituality of persons of faith who seek to imitate Augustine’s style of life,’ says the pontiff.”
Not so clear is how the 5th-century Augustine would approach a “diverse culture” invented two centuries after his death, in 7th-century Arabia… A culture that sees humanity’s “legitimate autonomy” too much as a separate autonomy, and therefore as a blasphemy against “the autonomy of Allah who alone is great.” A culture that rejects a relational (Triune) God and, therefore, the divine gift of human freewill. A culture that bifurcates Augustine’s “style of life” into a separated and interior journey (early jihad) versus exterior conquest (later jihad) under the inventive “principle of abrogation.” No room for real philosophy (as in the coherence of faith & reason) and the non-demonstrable first principle of non-contradiction.
No room, either, for Augustine’s reflection on the abuse of freewill in a sin “original” to ourselves, rather due–alternatively–to the inscrutable and deterministic will of an arbitrarily transcendent Allah. Radical Islam, especially, seeks impose an imaginary and Original Innocence on a fully human world very much in need of interior conversion and Redemption. Islam replaces (!) the eternity of the incarnate and redemptive Jesus Christ with the “uncreated” and dictated Qur’an (the symmetrical comparison is not between the two scriptures as such).
Despite this alternative universe of Islam–more divergent (!) than “diverse”–there can be possible windows for “dialogue” between individual “witnesses to Christ” and individual “followers of Islam”–as “persons”. But this particular terrain seems pretty much unexplored by St. Augustine.
“’Respect for the human person and his or her dignity, sensitivity to what is truly human, dialogue with diverse cultures, the acceptance of human values and legitimate autonomy, living in tune with the deepest longings of humanity – all these are indicators of what must be the spirituality of persons of faith who seek to imitate Augustine’s style of life,’ says the pontiff.”
Oh my Lord. He plagiarized every pant-suited HR Karen in America.
Next time I’m summoned to HR, I’ll look for a Pachamama.
Another Augustinian without an understanding of Augustine, like numerous Jesuits with no understanding of Jesus.
Re #5 The Church in Crisis –
Haven’t read this from Bishop Mutsaert yet but am familiar with his thinking.
I’m quite sure that his co-prelate has distanced himself from Mutsaert – too rigid, I think is the gist of the objection.
@ Craig on Thomism and divine simplicity, Part I
A note on the controversy of the doctrine of real distinction between essence and existence. To understand this saint Thomas Aquinas doctrine we take as a first premise that God is perfect simplicity in that he has no metaphysical parts. He is perfectly One. His essence is identical with his existence.
W. Norris Clarke, S.J. addressed the problem that in created beings, such as man, his essence, what he is, is not identical with existence. Which philosophically results in our ability to identify that this man exists, although we cannot find in his essence the cause of his existence.
Norris Clarke questioned Aquinas’ strict formula on essence and existence arguing that essence as such is a “thin” conceptual understanding, that as such it possesses its own dynamism. Thus, Clarke assumed we cannot hold that this man’s existence cannot be proved. That was a mistaken understanding of Aquinas who taught that man’s esse, his act of existence is provided by God. As such, in created beings, essence is distinct from existence, whereas in God it is simple and One.
@ Craig on Thomism and divine simplicity, Part I
A note on the controversy of the doctrine of real distinction between essence and existence. To understand this saint Thomas Aquinas doctrine we take as a first premise that God is perfect simplicity in that he has no metaphysical parts. He is perfectly One. His essence is identical with his existence.
Fordham’s W. Norris Clarke, S.J. addressed the problem that in created beings, such as man, his essence, what he is, is not identical with existence. Which philosophically results in our ability to identify that this man exists, although we cannot find in his essence the cause of his existence.
Norris Clarke questioned Aquinas’ strict formula on essence and existence arguing that essence as such is a “thin” conceptual understanding, that as such it possesses its own dynamism. Thus, Clarke assumed we cannot hold that this man’s existence cannot be proved. That was a variation of Aquinas who taught that man’s esse, his act of existence is provided by God. As such, in created beings, essence is distinct from existence, whereas in God it is simple and One.
Yes, God is what he does and does what he is. No subject and predicate. God is love. Not another existent Being but the self-subsisting ground of all beings.
Yes, God is what He does and does what He is. No composition of subject and predicate. The absolute simplicity of “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). Not yet another existent being, but the self-subsisting ground of all existent beings.
“That last fact strikes me as evidence above all of the Church’s divine origin. A purely human organization governed the way the Church has sometimes been governed would probably have gone bankrupt around the fourth century.”
Echoes of Belloc’s “knavish imbecility” quote.
@ The Church in Crisis — and How We Must Not Save Her
Nederlands Aux Bishop Rob Mutsaerts: The crisis is serious because within the Church there exists uncertainty about precisely those matters on which she ought to provide certainty: What is true? What is sin?
Bishop Mutsaerts proceeds with a well thought out list for reshaping and reviving the Church. Reviving because the Church is presently in the Emergency Room physicians applying resuscitation with bare results.
There are signs of life, our new pontiff drawing crowds and enthusiasm. That spells hope, not necessarily conviction of robust health. Truth, what is true, what is sin is compromised by the Church turned discussion forum called Synodality. And behind it is Francis I devotee Pope Leo XIV.
It’s more than venture to repeat what is an immediate antidote. What Cardinals Brandmuller, Sarah, Burke, Muller have been steadily advising. Dissolve Synodality both in Rome and in its template Germany.
@ The Church in Crisis — and How We Must Not Save Her
This premise deserves a separate comment. We as a body, if we are faithful to the title Body of Christ are consigned by our Savior God to believe and hold fast to what he revealed.
Mutsaerts asks the ultimate question regarding truth. Do we believe that the truths Christ revealed are unchangeable? Do we or do we not believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, and that he alone reveals who God Is and what God has commanded? If not we have no business representing the Church.