A Great Book



I think I had queried whether any readers of this blog had read this book somewhere down below and no one responded in the affirmative. So now I've read it or more accurately I'm reading it. I'm about half-way through it and it is absolutely the best book I've read in some time of this ilk. Along with Stalking the Divine by Kristin Ohlson (see below) I'm feeling pretty blessed right now and I must also mention my friend Alexander Schmemann (see my archives).



The Strangest Way: Walking the Christian Path is an excellent critique of our culture and what we who live it in need to do in order to follow Jesus in it. He draws on works of literature from Dante to Flannery O'Connor to flesh out his points. Highly, highly recommended!

Marlins Acquire Jeff Conine (ruff..ruff)



The Marlins pick up one of their original players from the Orioles to give a much needed boost have the lost of Mike Lowell for the regular season. In the old days (early 90's) whenever Conine was introduced they would play a tape of a dog barking, a play on his name being similar to "canine."



From Florida Marlins News:



"Swinging a late-hour deal with the Orioles on Sunday, the Marlins acquired veteran Jeff Conine for two quality minor league prospects -- Double-A right-hander Denny Bautista and Class-A right-hander Donald Levinski.



Conine, known as Mr. Marlin when he wore Florida teal from 1993-97, is batting .290 with 15 home runs and 80 RBIs this season for Baltimore. In 35 games since the All-Star Break, he is hitting .302 and has three homers and 17 runs batted in. "

A Call to Reform...it Begins With Each One of Us



I'm working on a number of talks that I have to give throughout this Fall in places like Chicago, Charleston, and Van Wert (OH). I am speaking a couple of times on the subject "living the Eucharist" with a sub-topic of how the new Mysteries of Light set out an agenda for personal reform. I am speaking on this latter topic exclusively in a talk that I'll give in October at a Diocesan rosary rally in the Diocese of Charleston, SC.



The first Lumionous Mystery is the Baptism of Jesus it brings to mind a number of passages of Scripture:



"It is you who should baptize me." "I am not worthy to unloose the strap of his sandals." "I must decrease, He must increase." "Prepare the way of the Lord." and "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."



Humility opens us to a true experience with God. Humility is a stance of openness to God.



I've heard a hundred talks on humility that all began the same way to the point that one would think that someone had gathered all of my teachers to some central location and said "teach humility in this way--start by writing the word on a blackboard and then point out the root of the Latin word 'humi' means 'on the cround' and then say so someone who is 'humble' has their feet on the ground." Big deal!



Humility is an attitude of expectation and it is exemplified by John the Baptist and his stance toward Christ in the Gospels in the passages quoted above.



How can we reclaim that stance in our own lives? By first repenting of the stance of Adam and Eve that we all have inherited from Original Sin. In the garden, Adam and Eve did not believe what God said, because their senses told them otherwise. The fruit on the tree looked good and desirable---this is true of every sinful choice that you or I can make in life. We need this drilled in our heads "looks good but is bad for you." Obesity is a problem in this country not because of the surplus of cakes but due to the lack of seeing the "cakes" as a bad thing to the point that they are literally poison for me.



So it is the case with just about every other type of sin you can think of inclucing sexual sins. The church proclaims the truth (often in spite of itself) and we are all in the garden of the world. Will we listen or will we "see that the fruit looks good to the eye?"



Just as an aside where does this truth come from and how can we know that it is from God?



1). Natural Law... God created the world and it was "good" so looking to nature is something that Paul in his letter to the Romans says is the "gospel" that is accessible to all people even the "unbelievers." There are many sexual sins that the Church claims to be a "disorder"of Natural Law. All sexual acts not open to procreation are considered disordered by the church.



2). Scripture...Father John Redman has written a massive work on the Gospel of John where the main thesis is that Rudolph Bultman is a modern Arius and that a large number of bishops have bought into a watered down version of the Scriptures robbing them of any real value. Anyone who has been exposed to 'pop-Scripture" study or "getting everyone to share their hidden bread and fish" knows how this leaves the authority of Scripture. However, I would say even if you accept this watered down version there are still fundamental teachings that it doesn't seem one can exclude as coming from Our Lord. Our Lord's teaching on "lust" would be one example. What does lust mean? It strikes me you can play the "culture of the time" deal with a lot of Scripture but you are still stuck with the prohibition of lust which is more sweeping than any of the individual condemnations.



Finally reclaiming a fundamental tenet of Christianity that is hardly ever mentioned. I recall a sacraments class where a bright student once asked the professor, "If baptism is all about 'inclusion in the community' then why should we ever baptize anyone in danger of death?" The professor had no answer, but did stammer for a few minutes.



3) Original Sin...The good world is in a fallen state, there is a basic "disorder" of the world that has chosen "created things" over God. Since this is ignored so much today and really the reality of Christ and the salvation offered by the church through Christ means nothing to many people including a fair number of Christians. It is interesting that several new books on the Creed mention this as the "forgotten truth" of our age.



If we don't remember that there is something basically disordered with the whole mess and the "fruit on the forbidden trees looks good" from where we are standing then we are doomed to remain part of the "fallen world" with little understanding of the salvation offered to us by Christ that can empower us to rise above it all!

Cardinal Rumored to Take Ratzinger's Post Says its Time to Take a Fresh Look at the Liturgy Changes





From Zenit News Agency - The World Seen From Rome:



"'Forty years later, it is right to ask what the liturgical reform itself has represented for the renewal of Christian communities, to what degree the liturgy, reformed according to the indications of the council, is able to mediate between faith and life, so that it forms believers able to offer consistent evangelical testimony,' the cardinal said.



At the same time, 'it is useful to ask oneself with clarity and sincerity if the reform has experienced some weak point and where, and, above all, how it can be relaunched for the good of the Christian people,' he added.



According to the cardinal, the challenge the Church faces today is 'to translate the reform in the life of the believer, called to integrate himself in the communion that the Son desires to establish with each one, a communion that we celebrate constantly in the liturgy.'



Cardinal Sodano presented these questions to the participants in the Liturgical Week and asked them to give thoughtful answers. At the same time, he offered guidelines for their answers.



'Although it can rightly be said that the conciliar reform has been carried out, the liturgical pastoral program represents a permanent commitment which enables one to draw from the richness of the liturgy the vital force that is spread from Christ to the members of the Body, which is the Church,' he said. "

Why the Left Hate the Church



An attempt at an answering the most baffling of questions. Why people who claim to love the poor hate the institution that does the most for the poor.



From FrontPage magazine.com:



So why do leftists hate the Church? In part, because they don’t really care about the poor. If they did, they’d support school choice, the Second Amendment, strict law enforcement in urban neighborhoods, and a restriction of mass immigration that savagely undercuts the wages of the native working class—to mention just a few policies the Left opposes with all the demagoguery it can muster.



No, the contemporary Left knows that fighting poverty isn’t a sexy issue anymore—that the suburban bourgeoisie which stuffs its coffers has pretty much given up on uplifting impoverished Americans, and retreated behind the walls of its gated communities. Instead, the Left has focused on issues which really appeal to its privileged constituency—namely, preserving and extending the sexual libertinism that became respectable in the 1960s. “Progressives” who’d never drop a dime in a beggar’s cup can be counted on to help keep abortion legal up through the ninth month—lest inconvenient pregnancies interrupt their daughters’ sojourns through Barnard, Bard, or Oberlin.

Are Attacks on The Passion Anti-Christian?



Turning the tables.



From WorldNetDaily: In defense of Mel Gibson:



"Nominally, we are supposed to be this Christian country, although even a glancing look over some of the media's recent treatment of religious themes in popular culture does make you wonder. Right now, Mel Gibson's getting it in the neck for, as Time Magazine of Sept. 1 refers to it, his 'eccentric film project' – the 'eccentric' project being of course, 'The Passion,' the filmed recounting of the last day in the life of Jesus Christ.



You get the feeling from the venomous tone of many of the articles written so far about the Gibson film (a number in the New York Times), many of those writing can't forgive him his Christian fervor, and his conservatism, which rather indeed sets him apart from many of his fellows in Hollywood. So they're having something of a field day, nailing him for 'anti-Semitism,' getting real picky about details such as whether the Roman soldiers spoke Latin or Greek in the Holy Land in Christ's day. People magazine after running a cute picture of him frolicking on the beach at Malibu with his youngest child (of seven) devotes two pretty nippy pages to him and 'The Passion.' "

Problems of the Married Priest?



I found this interesting, please read the entire article by Father Wilson. But I did want to comment about some of the objections.



1)Living off campus. This already is happening in many dioceses in the US with the celibate clergy.



2) Office hours. Ditto and for some years. I remember when the pastor in my parish posted office hours in the 1970's people were scandalized. But now this is pretty standard. A married priest can respond to an emergency just as well as a celibate one. Do we think that parents don't respond to the emergencies of their children if they don't occur during "office hours." Ever hear of doctors, dentists, etc responding to emergencies. The fact is I know of plenty of cases where celibate clergy haven't been available in emergencies, have been impossible to reach (employing answering services off campus, etc.) This is a red herring.



3). Divorced Priests. Father mentions one that he thinks exists in TN. I wonder how many people are aware of the presence of not a few "celibate" priests who were once married and have divorced. There are divorced priests serving right now, a few have been very public about it, a pastor in a large Florida parish had an article written about his strange path to ordination a few years ago.



4) Compensation. Another red herring. Almost every parish in the country now employs a heft staff of married people to function as business managers, DRE's, Youth Ministers etc. The average salary of celibate priests is $18,000 including food and housing, plus stipends for weddings, funerals and other additional means. Parishes can afford and in fact do pay out a lot more than is commonly realized. Recently a "celibate" priest in Florida was jailed for having embezzled $400, 000 dollars over a period of three years in a rather small parish. This went unnoticed until an audit of the parish. If a parish of that size didn't miss that much money, I think it is clear that this is a non issue.



Father Wilson rightly notes that there have always been married clergy in the Church and that this is not an innovation. It is something that has been the exception in the West but it is nothing akin to other issues that it often gets lumped with that are clearly against the tradition of the Church.



Anyway give it a read.



From The Wanderer, Father Joseph Wilson:



"For one thing, Catholics would need to get used to their priests living off-campus (in the northeast at least, this is still unusual), away from the parish plant, and many priests serving in troubled areas would be living significantly far away in places where they could raise their families. Compensation would have to be looked at, stewardship and Catholics’ poor level of giving addressed. In Protestant congregations, typically far smaller than ours, individual parishioners know that if they do not give significantly, their churches will not be able to afford a full program and, likely, a pastor. Catholics who are members of large congregations can avoid feeling that same responsibility.



Catholics would have to get used to the fact that their priest would have something approaching 'business hours,' and live with the consequence of troubled clergy families if they didn’t. We’d also have to face the fact of clergy family divorce (there already is a divorced Catholic priest, I think in Tennessee — a married former Episcopal priest who divorced after being received into the Church and ordained)."