tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83938394590840271682024-03-05T19:59:07.855+00:00From A Traditional Catholic PerspectiveNews, articles and other items of interest from a traditional Irish Catholic viewpointTrad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.comBlogger920125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-31226508606999089762015-07-17T19:40:00.002+01:002015-07-17T19:40:33.781+01:00The Earliest Alleged Marian Apparition Dates to… A.D. 40<b>From <a href="http://www.churchpop.com/2015/07/16/the-earliest-alleged-marian-apparition-dates-to-a-d-40/">http://www.churchpop.com/2015/07/16/the-earliest-alleged-marian-apparition-dates-to-a-d-40/</a></b><br />
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Our Lady of Guadalupe dates to 1531. Our Lady of Lourdes dates to 1858. Our Lady of Fátima dates to 1917.</div>
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The most popular Marian apparitions all occurred in the last few centuries, which, in the greater perspective of Church history, is fairly recent. But there was a whole other millennium and a half of Church history before that. Did Mary only start appearing to people recently?</div>
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Not at all! Amazingly, the first alleged Marian apparition dates all the way back to <strong>A.D. 40</strong>.</div>
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Yes, in the first century, just a few years after the Ascension of Jesus.</div>
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The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_the_Pillar" style="color: #4db2ec; text-decoration: none !important;">story goes</a> that the Apostle St. James the Greater was in modern-day Spain preaching the Gospel, but without great success. After a lot of work, he had only made a few converts, and he was beginning to lose heart. So, on October 12th, A.D. 40, he gathered a small group of his disciplines and started praying.</div>
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Suddenly, Mary miraculously appeared to them. She was standing on top of a pillar, surrounded by angels. She assured them that the people to whom they were preaching would eventually be converted and that their faith would be as strong as the pillar she was standing on. She instructed James to build a chapel in that spot, and she then vanished, leaving the pillar where it was, as well as a wooden image of herself atop the pillar where she had stood.</div>
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St. James did as he was instructed and built a chapel around the pillar and statue. He then returned to Jerusalem, where he was martyred in A.D. 44.</div>
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<strong>What makes this story even more incredible</strong> is the fact that Mary may have been still living in Ephesus at the time. We don’t know the exact year of her Assumption, but if she was still living in Ephesus, it would mean her appearance may have been an instance of bi-location.</div>
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The pillar and statue remain in Spain to this day and can be seen in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_the_Pillar" style="color: #4db2ec; text-decoration: none !important;">Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar</a>. Our Lady of the Pillar is venerated today as the patroness of Spain and the whole Hispanic world.</div>
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The current Basilica was built between the 17th and 19th centuries.</div>
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As it the case with lots of old stories, it’s hard to tell. Many popes have approved of the devotion and encouraged pilgrims to visit the pillar and statue. But according to the<em><a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12083b.htm" style="color: #4db2ec; text-decoration: none !important;">Catholic Encyclopedia</a></em>, the earliest recorded testimony of the devotion dates back only to the 12th century.</div>
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There’s also a dispute about whether or not the current statue is even the original statue (whenever it was first created). Some traditions say the original wooden statue was lost when the church it was in burned down in 1434 and that the current statue is a replica. Others say the statue survived.</div>
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The Catholic faith does not stand or fall on the veracity of this particular story. And either way, I think we can be sure that Our Lady loves us and wants us to lead more people to her Son!</div>
Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-67771147124484151842015-07-13T21:49:00.001+01:002015-07-13T21:49:18.261+01:00Gay Marriage-Nothing New Under the Sun<div>
<b><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;">From </span><span style="color: #252525; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;"><a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1367/gay_marriagenothing_new_under_the_sun.aspx">http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1367/gay_marriagenothing_new_under_the_sun.aspx</a></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: #eeeeee; color: black; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">Benjamin Wiker</span></div>
Given that the gay marriage agenda will be increasingly pressed upon Catholics by the state, we should be much more aware of what history has to teach us about gay marriage—given that we don’t want to be among those who, ignorant of history, blithely condemned themselves to repeat it.</span><div style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px;">
Contrary to the popular view—both among proponents and opponents—gay marriage is not a new issue. It cannot be couched (by proponents) as a seamless advance on the civil rights movement, nor should it be understood (by opponents) as something that’s evil merely because it appears to them to be morally unprecedented.</div>
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Gay marriage was—surprise!—alive and well in Rome, celebrated even and especially by select emperors, a spin-off of the general cultural affirmation of Roman homosexuality. Gay marriage was, along with homosexuality, something the first Christians faced as part of the pagan moral darkness of their time.</div>
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What Christians are fighting against today, then, is not yet another sexual innovation peculiar to our “enlightened age,” but the return to pre-Christian, pagan sexual morality.</div>
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So, what was happening in ancient Rome? Homosexuality was just as widespread among the Romans as it was among the Greeks (a sign of which is that it was condoned even by the stolid Stoics). The Romans had adopted the pederasty of the Greeks (aimed, generally, at boys between the ages of 12 to 18). There was nothing shameful about such sexual relations among Romans, if the boy was not freeborn. Slaves, both male and female, were considered property, and that included sexual property.</div>
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But the Romans also extended homosexuality to adult men, even adult free men. And it is likely that this crossing of the line from child to adult, unfree to free—not homosexuality as such—was what affronted the more austere of the Roman moralists.</div>
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And so we hear from Tacitus (56-117 AD), the great Roman historian, of the shameful sexual exploits of a string of Roman emperors from Tiberius to Nero. Nero was the first imperial persecutor of the Christians. His tutor and then advisor was the great Stoic moralist Seneca himself. Unfortunately, Seneca’s lessons must have bounced right off the future emperor. When he took the imperial seat, complete with its aura of self-proclaimed divinity, no trace of Stoic austerity remained.</div>
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In Nero, Tacitus tells the reader, tyrannical passion, the hubris of proclaimed divinity, the corruption of power, and “every filthy depraved act, licit or illicit” seemed to reach an imperial peak. He not only had a passion for “free-born boys” but also for quite literally marrying other men and even a boy, sometimes playing the part of the woman in the union and sometimes the man.</div>
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As Tacitus relates one incident (Grant’s translation): “Nero was already corrupted by every lust, natural and unnatural. But he now refuted any surmises that no further degradation was possible for him. For…he went through a formal wedding ceremony with one of the perverted gang called Pythagoras. The emperor, in the presence of witnesses, put on the bridal veil. Dowry, marriage bed, wedding torches, all were there. Indeed everything was public which even in a natural union is veiled by night.”</div>
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Such was only one instance. We also have from historian Seutonius, a contemporary of Tacitus, a report of Nero’s marriage to Doryphorus (who was himself married to another man, Sporus).</div>
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Martial, the first-century A.D. Roman poet, reports incidences of male-male marriage as kinds of perversions, but not uncommon perversions, speaking in one epigram (I.24) of a man who “played the bride yesterday.” In another (12.42) he says mockingly, “Bearded Callistratus gave himself in marriage to…Afer, in the manner in which a virgin usually gives herself in marriage to a male. The torches shone in front, the bridal veils covered his face, and wedding toasts were not absent, either. A dowry was also named. Does that not seem enough yet for you, Rome? Are you waiting for him to give birth?”</div>
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In Juvenal’s <em>Second Satire</em> (117), we hear of one Gracchus, “arraying himself in the flounces and train and veil of a bride,” now a “new-made bride reclining on the bosom of her husband.” Such seems to have been the usual way of male-male nuptials among the Romans, one of the men actually dressing up as a woman and playing the part of a woman.</div>
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The notoriously debauched emperor Elagabalus (ruled 218-222) married and then divorced five women. But he considered his male chariot driver to be his “husband,” and he also married one Zoticus, an athlete. Elagabalus loved to dress up as a queen, quite literally.</div>
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Our reports of homosexual marriage from Rome give us, I hope, a clearer understanding of what is at stake. As is the case today, it appears that the incidence of male-male marriage followed upon the widespread acceptance of homosexuality; that is, the practice of homosexuality led to the notion that, somehow, homosexual unions should share in the same status as heterosexual unions.</div>
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We must also add that heterosexuality among the Romans was also in a sad state. Both concubinage and prostitution were completely acceptable; pornography and sexually explicit entertainment and speech were entirely normalized; the provision of sex by both male and female slaves was considered a duty by masters. Paeans to the glory of marriage were made, not because the Romans had some proto-Christian notion of the sanctity of marriage, but because Rome needed more citizen-soldiers just when the Romans were depopulating themselves by doing anything to avoid having children.</div>
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The heterosexual moral disrepair in Rome therefore formed the social basis for the Roman slide into homosexual marriage rites. We hear of them from critics bent on satirizing such unions. The problem for the Romans wasn’t homosexuality as such, but that a Roman man would debase himself and play the part of a woman in matrimony.</div>
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Christians had a problem with the whole Roman sexual scene. We are, of course, not surprised to find that the first Christians accepted and carried forward the strict rejection of homosexuality inherent in Judaism, but this was part of its more encompassing rejection of any sexuality outside of heterosexual, monogamous marriage. Christians are not to be lauded for affirming that marriage must be defined as a union of a man and a woman, because that is the natural default of any people intent on not disappearing in a single generation. What was peculiar to Christianity (again, not just following Judaism, but intensifying it) was the restriction of sexuality <em>only</em> to monogamous, heterosexual marriage.</div>
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The Christians found themselves in a pagan culture where there were few restrictions on sexuality at all, other than the imagination—a culture that, to note the obvious but exceedingly important, looks suspiciously like ours.</div>
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The first-century A.D. catechetical manual, the <em>Didache</em>, makes refreshingly clear what pagans will have to give up, in regard to Roman sexuality, once they entered the Church. It begins with the ominous words, “There are two ways: one of life and one of death—and there is a great difference between the two ways.” The pagan converts are then confronted with a list of commands. Some of which would have been quite familiar and reasonable to Romans, such as, “You will not murder” and, “You will not commit adultery” (although for Romans, abortion wasn’t murder, and a husband having sex with slaves or prostitutes was not considered adulterous).</div>
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But then followed strange commands (at least to the Romans), “You will not corrupt boys”; “You will not have illicit sex” (<em>ou porneuseis</em>); “You will not murder offspring by means of abortion [and] you will not kill one having been born.” Against the norm in Rome, Christians must reject pedophilia, fornication and homosexuality, abortion, and infanticide. The list also commands, “You will not make potions” (<em>ou pharmakeuseis</em>), a prohibition against widespread practices in the Roman Empire which included potions that stopped conception or caused abortion.</div>
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I include the prohibitions against sexual practices heartily affirmed by the Romans alongside prohibitions against contraception, abortion, and infanticide for a very important reason. Christians defined the goal of sexuality in terms of the natural ability to procreate. What was different, again, was not recognizing the obvious need for a man and a woman to make a child—Stoics argued along the same lines. What was peculiar to Christianity was removing <em>all other</em> expressions of sexuality from legitimacy (many Stoic men had male paramours). The Roman elevation of sexual pleasure above procreation, and hence outside this tightly-defined area of sexual legitimacy defined by Christianity, led to the desire for contraceptive potions, abortifacients, and infanticide.</div>
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It also led to seeing marriage as nothing but an arena for sexual pleasure, which in turn allowed for an equivalency of heterosexual and homosexual marriage.</div>
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The Theodosian Code, drawn up by Christian emperors in the fifth century, A.D. made same-sex marriage illegal (referring, as precedent, to edicts published under fourth-century emperors Constantius II and Constans).</div>
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We can see, then, that Christians face nothing new in regard to the push for gay marriage. In fact, it is something quite old, and represents a return to the pagan views of sexuality that dominated the Roman Empire into which Christianity was born.</div>
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[Editor's note: The years for the reign of Elagabalus were incorrect in the original posting; his reign ended in AD 222, not AD 212.)</div>
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Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-57110794897707153972015-06-03T19:37:00.002+01:002015-06-03T19:37:48.740+01:00What Really Happened in Ireland’s Gay ‘Marriage’ Referendum?<div style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<b>LifeSiteNews.com</b> <b>May 29, 2015:</b></div>
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Last Friday’s 62% vote in Ireland to legalize “gay marriage” has been hailed as a triumph of progressive thinking by the mainstream media and the political establishment. The outcome shocked many in the pro-family movement. But what the mainstream press <em>isn’t</em> reporting is even more shocking.</div>
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There is no question that the secularization of Ireland, the weakness of the Catholic Church and refusal of the Pope to intervene, the corrupt political class, and the relentless pro-gay media were all contributing factors to the “gay marriage” vote.</div>
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But the “Yes” vote would still have most likely failed if it had been a normal Irish election. Those same general conditions existed in many places here in the U.S. from California to Maine where “gay marriage” failed to win a popular vote.</div>
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This “culture war” election was conducted under extraordinary conditions that have never been seen anywhere before in the West. As we described <a href="http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen2/15b/Ireland-marriage-vote/index.html">in our pre-election article</a> virtually all of the effort to pass “gay marriage” in Ireland came from massive funding from the United States – primarily a billion-dollar pro-gay foundation, <a href="http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/" target="_blank">Atlantic Philanthropies</a> – in a sophisticated campaign spanning over a decade.</div>
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Background: Years of referendum losses by the LGBT movement</h4>
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To understand how this Irish election was won, a bit of history from the U.S. is in order.</div>
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Most of us forget that for over 20 years, the idea of a “gay marriage” referendum passing anywhere seemed next to impossible. From 1998 to 2009, there were 31 statewide votes to completely ban “gay marriage.” All of them won. Some won by majorities as high as 80%. Even in Massachusetts, the LGBT lobby fought furiously to keep a “gay marriage” ban from coming to a vote. Their own leaders had come to believe that the only way they would make any “progress” in the U.S. was through the courts.</div>
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The big LGBT turnaround in 2012</h4>
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Then, after the their 2009 “gay marriage” referendum defeat in Maine, the homosexual movement decided to craft an entirely new approach toward elections.</div>
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They brought together groups of political strategists, psychologists, pollsters, organizing experts, and various “think tank” types. They meticulously studied the data and their election experiences and designed a new set of strategies and tactics to win against their “right wing” adversaries.</div>
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They created a sophisticated propaganda campaign. They shipped thousands of activists into key voting areas to canvass door to door. In order to soften the average people toward homosexuality and create an animus against traditional religious values, they resurrected many of the “big lie” techniques used by the 20th century totalitarian movements. For example, people were told over and over that not allowing “gay marriage” was bad for the economy and that only backward, ignorant, and superstitious people still were against it. Homosexuality was said to be the next phase of the Civil Rights movement. A key talking point was that by supporting “gay marriage” you are “on the right side of history” – a Marxist concept (later used by the Third Reich).</div>
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Fundraising became a major part of the strategy. For earlier elections they had casually raised about the same amount (or less) than the pro-family side. But now, they would tap the “gay” moneymen for very large sums of money.</div>
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And it all worked. In November 2012 they won all four statewide “gay marriage” referendum votes: Maine (a re-vote), Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington. In those races they spent between five and ten times as much as the pro-family side. Their propaganda was shrewd – for instance, putting forward friendly faces of “gay” couples who seemed just liked everyone else. Their winning margins were not large (between 51% and 53%), but they won.</div>
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Shortly after the 2012 wins, the LGBT movement<a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2012/11/07/opinion/how-gay-marriage-finally-won-at-the-polls/" target="_blank"> published an article in a Maine newspaper</a> describing much of their “turnaround” process. And since then, they’ve been virtually unstoppable.</div>
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Laying the groundwork in Ireland over a decade earlier</h4>
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Funded primarily by Atlantic Philanthropies, the Irish LGBT lobby groups started laying the groundwork over a decade in advance. Their ambitions multi-year plan (<a href="http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/sites/default/files/uploads/GLEN_WEB%20copy.pdf" target="_blank">which they later outlined HERE</a>) included a very sophisticated and aggressive lobbying effort targeting Ireland’s key politicians, which resulted in a long string of “incremental” parliamentary successes for the LGBT movement.</div>
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The National Catholic Register recently published <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/how-catholic-ireland-became-the-first-country-to-vote-for-same-sex-marriage/" target="_blank">a very good article chronicling this.</a> Also, the <em>Catholic Action League of Massachusetts</em> has compiled a complete list of <a href="http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen2/15b/Ireland-marriage-vote/images2/Catholic-Action-League-analysis2.pdf" target="_blank">the major anti-family political actions</a> over the past decades that helped bring Ireland to the state it’s in.</div>
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However, from the beginning the main goal from all of this for both the Irish LGBT groups and their American funders was to soften up the Irish citizenry to eventually win a nationwide “gay marriage” vote, which for constitutional reasons had to be done by a nationwide referendum. The referendum finally took place on May 22, 2015.</div>
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Ramping up for a nationwide “gay marriage” vote in Ireland</h4>
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It’s one thing to get a country’s parliament to chip away at the moral underpinnings through legislation. But it’s a much different challenge to get a country with a thousand-year Catholic culture to accept “gay marriage” through a nationwide vote.</div>
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So to take on the Irish election, the LGBT movement ramped up their effort tremendously over what they did for the elections back in the U.S.</div>
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The total LGBT funding to achieve “gay marriage” in Ireland has been estimated at between $17 and $25 million – roughly 50 times what was raised and spent by the pro-family side. Their execution was planned and focused rather than scattered and haphazard as our side’s tended to be.</div>
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The campaign with lengthy and intense (and expensive) nationwide propaganda using psychological manipulation techniques to pound the entire country. The average person could barely grasp the force that was coming at him. And that was just the beginning.</div>
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The arguments were not rational or truthful, but completely emotional.</div>
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People were told over and over that those opposed to “gay marriage”:</div>
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<li>Are opposed to democracy</li>
<li>Will damage lives</li>
<li>Are against human rights</li>
<li>Will hurt Ireland’s international reputation</li>
<li>Will hurt Ireland’s economy</li>
<li>Are in favor of discrimination</li>
<li>Are against love</li>
<li>Are hateful and bigoted</li>
<li>Are stupid and backwards</li>
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This all had a horrible effect on our side while galvanizing their supporters. It got to a point where people who persisted in holding these “backward” beliefs were considered inferior humans by the supporters. One could literally lose his job over it. A particularly nasty venom was directed at religious believers and the Catholic Church. Many of our people became frightened and confused, while the other side became bolder and more vicious.</div>
<h4>
Ireland gets a lesson in ‘election mechanics’</h4>
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As the election neared, the polls showed a 78% “Yes” vote coming up. But the homosexual movement knew they still weren’t safe.</div>
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Their brain trust realized early on that a great many people would simply “go underground” with their views and would vote their conscience on election day, but would respond to pollsters in a “politically correct” manner. They also knew that the bulk of hardcore “gay marriage” supporters were young people who had a terrible record of voting or even being registered.</div>
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They could still lose if those they really needed (those responding emotionally) didn’t register or vote. So months before the election – with the help of the country’s police force – they set up pro-gay marriage voter registration areas at college campuses. According to eyewitness reports, these booths illegally skipped required steps in the registration in order to process more people. Over 50,000 college students were registered in this manner, and others already registered were identified. In addition, according to reports, they also had paid canvassers make sure that their likely supporters in the cities were registered to vote.</div>
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Then on election day, using sophisticated social media and other techniques, they had the most massive “get-out-the-vote” effort ever seen in Ireland. As a result, over 90% of known pro-gay marriage supporters voted, and 95% of registered college voters, according to one report. On the other hand, many pro-family people, we were told, feeling overwhelmed and beaten down by the psychological techniques used against them and with no overall get-out-the-vote organization, never made it to the polls.</div>
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Nobody in Ireland had ever seen anything like this. There is no question that if the election had been conducted on an even playing field from the beginning (or even with just a 2-1 funding advantage) the “Yes” side would not have prevailed. As one Irish voter observed, "If usual voing patterns had prevailed this would have been easily defeated."</div>
<h4>
The pro-family Irish opposition – a valiant stand</h4>
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Given the odds against them and the terrible psychological battle focused against religious believers, the Irish pro-family people stepped up quite admirably. But they were on their own. "These groups received their funding from personal donations by private individuals. There was no big financial backing coming from anyone," we were told by one of the Irish pro-family people.</div>
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They put up as many signs as possible, even though a great many were vandalized. They passed out many thousands of leaflets in cities and also went door to door in rural areas. one organization distributed over 91,000 pamphlets. A group of 12 Baptist churches put some ads in newspapers.</div>
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We were told that the Catholic Church was very weak on this issue and did not officially call for a "No" vote. According to the Catholic Action League, at least 15 priests publicly endorsed the "Yes" campaign and at least one bishop criticized the pro-family "efforts. Nevertheless, many individual Catholic priests were outstanding in their outrcy for a "No" vote.</div>
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Lacking sophisticated planning, there was no unified message. “Every child needs a mother and father” was the common refrain, which has a much stronger meaning in Europe because of outrage over the child trafficking. Others used MassResistance information on what “gay marriage” brings to the schools and other social institutions. A few focused on the dangers of homosexual behavior.</div>
<h4>
Can this be stopped in the future?</h4>
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There is talk about Italy being their next “gay marriage” target. They are also eying some of the African countries that have been holding out on “LGBT rights”. </div>
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Can this juggernaut be stopped? Of course it can – with proper resources. Everything the other side does can be picked apart and be countered. Plus, working with the truth normally has a big natural advantage. Their lies, irrationality, and thuggish tactics only work because there’s no effective opposition.</div>
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Their biggest triumph has been the LGBT movement’s ability to cut off the money supply to frontline groups. The millionaires and billionaires ostensibly on our side could easily donate many times the money necessary to fight this effectively. But they have virtually all become emasculated by fear of the “gay mafia”. It’s quite pathetic to see, and it has had terrible consequences. So we need to create new methods of funding. Average people are more becoming more important than ever.</div>
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Also, many people in the pro-family movement (and many donors) still do not see this as a “war” to subvert society, but as a kind of religious/secular disagreement among individuals. This often causes our tactics to be skewed and usually only marginally effective. So even when we have the money, it often gets squandered on dumb things.</div>
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Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-50372879921121919522015-05-28T19:21:00.002+01:002015-05-28T19:21:14.228+01:00Ireland is worse than the pagans for legalising gay marriage, says senior cardinal<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/2108/0/ireland-is-worse-than-the-pagans-for-legalising-gay-marriage-says-senior-cardinal">http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/2108/0/ireland-is-worse-than-the-pagans-for-legalising-gay-marriage-says-senior-cardinal</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-9572558284919233832015-05-28T19:20:00.003+01:002015-05-28T19:20:28.998+01:00The Irish vote is worse than perverse. It is blasphemous<b>From <a href="http://blog.newadvent.org/2015/05/the-irish-vote-is-worse-than-perverse.html">http://blog.newadvent.org/2015/05/the-irish-vote-is-worse-than-perverse.html</a></b><br />
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"><i>By Father George Rutler</i></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">The Constitution of Ireland begins: “In the name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred, / We, the people of Éire, / Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, . . .” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">The landslide vote in Eire for legalizing the fictitious form of marriage between persons of the same sex, in contradiction of all laws natural and divine, unearths the pulsating Druidism that Saint Patrick and his fellow saints defied. The estimated $17 million from pressure groups in the United States is no excuse, for people will only be pressured if they are willing to be pressured. The other dismal fact is that over 90% of the young people influenced to subscribe to this vote were formed in Catholic schools. The vote was less in favor of perversion and more in hostility to a Church whose Jansenism and clericalism had incubated corruption and lassitude. While most of Europe suffers from the deadly sin of indifference, or sloth, Ireland is in adolescent rebellion, virulent and irrational. This was exploited by political interests hostile to Christian civilization, and their propaganda combined legitimate accusations against ecclesial failings with a left-wing, secularist agenda. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Ireland helped to bring the Faith to America, and when the flourishing of that Faith degenerated here, that donation was returned in the form of a bacillus. Ireland today has one of the highest rates of suicide and mental illness in all Europe, and one-third of children there are born out of wedlock. Things are worse in the United States. Look at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City to see what happens when the honor of a saint is dishonored, and when ambassadors for Christ become nothing more than goodwill ambassadors. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">What happened in Ireland was not sudden. Like a dead elephant that remains standing for a sort while before collapsing, so the Flame that Patrick kindled on Tara had died long before Catholicism was mixed up with political causes, and ethnic drollery replaced dogma. In mordant irony, just a few weeks ago the Stormont in Northern Ireland rejected a motion favoring same–sex unions, a motion more indicting for having been introduced by the Sinn Fein, which had long persuaded naïve Americans that it was a Catholic cause. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">The Archbishop of Dublin, hardly a firebrand, said: “Marriage is not simply about a wedding ceremony or about two people being in love with each other. Marriage, in the Constitution, is linked with the family and with a concept of family and to the mutuality of man and woman as the foundation for the family.” </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">In light of the fine invocation of the Irish Constitution, the Irish vote is worse than perverse: it is blasphemous. All the great saints of once-verdant Ireland would have used stronger language. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Father Rutler is pastor of the Church of Saint Michael in New York City.</i>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-13966456064184893922015-05-25T19:30:00.005+01:002015-05-25T19:30:53.363+01:00Secularism has filled the vacuum left by the decline of Irish Catholicism<b>From <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2015/05/25/the-irish-churchs-failures-have-caused-its-people-to-choose-secularism-over-faith/">http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2015/05/25/the-irish-churchs-failures-have-caused-its-people-to-choose-secularism-over-faith/</a></b><br />
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Saturday’s vote for same-sex marriage in Ireland is one for the history books. It’s the first time a country has legalised gay marriage by popular vote.</div>
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The question on everyone’s lips is: what changed Catholic Ireland into a post-religious country where gay marriage has been enshrined in law by the will of the majority of people?</div>
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The vastly diminished role of the Church has left an elephantine emptiness in Irish life. One very important factor is how ashamed many Irish people feel about the sexual abuse crisis. Perhaps the people who ought to feel that shame are the guilty priests and nuns. But Benedict XVI was right, in his book-long interview with Peter Seewald, when he pointed out that most Irish families had a member who had a vocation either as a priest or a nun. Therefore most Irish people felt very deeply the disgrace caused by the revelations of clerical sexual abuse. This was the case even if the priest or nun in a family was totally innocent.</div>
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Growing up in Ireland, I saw this first-hand, when a friend or acquaintance who had a brother who was a blameless priest, they would feel embarrassed to say that their sibling was a good priest, for fear that people would think they were “covering up”.</div>
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Humiliation and regret have gone hand in hand, and increasingly in the past few decades, the Irish, who have, by an average margin of two to one, legalised gay marriage, convinced themselves that if the Church was wrong, then the opposite of the Church’s teaching must be right.</div>
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When the Church lost power and influence in Irish life, that same power and influence was inherited by the forces of secularism. Have no doubt: the vacuum was filled by secularism: The Irish did not turn to another religion such as Pentecostal Christianity. When tens of thousands of people stopped practising as Catholics, they did not en masse convert to any other Christian denomination.</div>
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Jon Anderson hit the nail on head <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/may-8th-2015/post-crash-ireland-desperately-needs-the-faith/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #af382e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">when he recently wrote</a>: “Many Irish believe in Jesus in the same way that Hindus believe in Gandhi, an interesting historical figure.”</div>
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It’s not as simple as saying that the Irish have rejected the Catholic Church. It goes much deeper: the truth is that the majority have abandoned traditional Christianity and will not let it guide their choices and their way of life.</div>
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It’s a strange irony that the Irish constitution, <a href="https://twitter.com/roccopalmo/status/602185360299405313" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #af382e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity</a>, will now enshrine same-sex marriage. An austere portrayal that even the most formally Catholic legal charters for a formally Catholic country can be usurped by secularism. </div>
Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-57036170168171600242015-05-23T15:05:00.000+01:002015-05-23T15:05:06.269+01:00Ashamed to be Irish: Ireland set to vote Yes to same-sex marriage<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/vote2015/2015/0523/703205-referendum-byelection/">http://www.rte.ie/news/vote2015/2015/0523/703205-referendum-byelection/</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-417181780402390492015-05-19T20:06:00.001+01:002015-05-19T20:06:34.489+01:00Christian bakery found guilty of discrimination by refusing to make pro-gay marriage cake<b>From <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/05/19/christian-bakery-unlawfully-discriminated-by-refusing-to-make-pro-gay-marriage-cake/">http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/05/19/christian-bakery-unlawfully-discriminated-by-refusing-to-make-pro-gay-marriage-cake/</a></b><br />
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Ashers Bakery refused to make a cake with an image of Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie and the phrase, 'Support gay marriage'<br /><br />A judge has ruled that a Christian-owned bakery in Northern Ireland discriminated against a customer after it refused to make a cake bearing a pro-gay marriage slogan.<br /><br />The Northern Ireland Equality Commission brought the case against Ashers Baking Company, which is based in Co Antrim, on behalf of Gareth Lee, whose order was declined.<br /><br />District judge Isobel Brownlie delivered the guilty verdict at Belfast County Court earlier today.<br /><br />“The defendants have unlawfully discriminated against the plaintiff on grounds of sexual discrimination,” she said.<br /><br />“This is direct discrimination for which there can be no justification.”<br /><br />The judge said Ashers was not exempt from discrimination law because they were “conducting a business for profit” and are not a religious group.<br /><br />She added that she accepted that Ashers have “genuine and deeply held” religious views, but that they were not above the law.<br /><br />“The defendants are not a religious organisation. They conduct a business for profit. I believe the defendants did have the knowledge that the plaintiff was gay,” Judge Brownlie said.<br /><br />“As much as I acknowledge their religious beliefs this is a business to provide service to all. The law says they must do that.”<br /><br />Both parties have agreed that £500 of damages are to be awarded to Mr Lee.<br /><br />Ashers Bakery, run by the McArthur family, was accused of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation after it refused to make a cake carrying an image of Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie below the phrase ‘Support Gay Marriage’.<br /><br />Mr Lee had ordered the cake for an event marking International Day Against Homophobia last May.<br /><br />Ashers, which employ 80 staff across nine branches, have had their legal fees paid by the Christian Institute.<br /><br />Speaking outside court on Tuesday morning before the ruling was announced, Ashers general manager Daniel McArthur said: “We happily serve everyone but we cannot promote a cause that goes against what the Bible says about marriage. We have tried to be guided in our actions by our Christian beliefs.”Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-36686606391576700392015-04-30T20:02:00.002+01:002015-04-30T20:02:30.123+01:00Only One Group supporting No Vote in the Gay Marriage Referendum in Ireland<b><span style="font-size: large;">Please see <a href="http://mothersandfathersmatter.org/">http://mothersandfathersmatter.org/</a> for more information</span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-64104323602069192712015-04-30T19:59:00.001+01:002015-04-30T19:59:11.992+01:00Father Nicholas Gruner, Crusader of Fatima Message, Rest in Peace<div style="text-align: center;">
<img alt="In Loving Memory" src="http://fatima.org/images/In_Loving_Memory.png" /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://fatima.org/">http://fatima.org/</a></span></b></div>
Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-91988155782589664932015-04-14T18:50:00.002+01:002015-04-14T18:50:24.184+01:00Catholic Church in Ireland may no longer perform civil marriage part of weddings if gay marriage referendum passes<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0414/693972-same-sex-marriage/">http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0414/693972-same-sex-marriage/</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-58368635266277194192015-04-06T13:49:00.002+01:002015-04-06T13:49:31.734+01:00Christ is Risen!<div align="left">
<b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><i>From </i>The Liturgical Year<i> by Abbot Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.</i></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><i>He is risen: He is not here!</i> The Corpse, laid by the hands of them that loved their Lord, on the slab that lies in that cave, is risen; and, without removing the stone that closed the entrance, has gone forth, quickened with a life which can never die. No man has helped Him. No prophet has stood over the dead Body, bidding it return to life. It is Jesus Himself, and by His own power, that has risen. He suffered death, not from necessity, but because He so willed; and again, because He willed, He has delivered Himself from its bondage. O Jesus! Thou, that thus mockest death, art the Lord our God! We reverently bend our knees before this empty tomb, which is now forever sacred, because, for a few hours, it was the place of Thy abode. <i>Behold the place where they laid Him! </i>Behold the winding-sheet and bands, which remain to tell the mystery of Thy having once been dead! The angel says to the women: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified! The recollection makes us weep. Yes, it was but the day before yesterday that His Body was carried hither, mangled, wounded, bleeding. Here, in this cave, from which the angel has now rolled back the stone--in this cave, which His presence fills with a more than mid-day brightness--stood the afflicted Mother. It echoed with the sobs of them that were at the burial, John and the two disciples, Magdalen and her companions. The sun sank beneath the horizon, and the first day of Jesus' burial began. But the prophet has said: 'In the evening weeping shall have place; and in the morning gladness' (Psalm 29:6). This glorious, happy morning has come, O Jesus! and great indeed is our gladness at seeing that this same sepulchre, whither we followed Thee with aching hearts, is now but the trophy of Thy victory! Thy precious wounds are healed! It was we that caused them; permit us to kiss them. Thou art now living, more glorious than ever, and immortal. And because we are resolved to die to our sins, when Thou wast dying in order to expiate them, Thou willest that we, too, should live eternally with Thee; that Thy victory over death should be ours; that death should be for us, as it were for Thee, a mere passage to immortality, and should one day give back, uninjured and glorified, these bodies which are to be lent for a while to the tomb. Glory, then, and honor and love, be to Thee, O Jesus! who didst deign not only to die, but to rise again for us!</span></div>
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Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-1625064764415319102015-04-03T18:46:00.003+01:002015-04-03T18:46:35.977+01:00Divine Mercy Novena Begins Today<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/mercy/novena.htm">https://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/mercy/novena.htm</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-47471871065778288662015-04-03T18:41:00.001+01:002015-04-03T18:41:22.385+01:00Good Friday<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><i><b>From <u>The Liturgical Year</u> by Abbot Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.</b></i></span><br />
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THE MORNING: The sun has risen upon Jerusalem. But the priests and scribes have not waited all this time without venting their rage upon Jesus. Annas, who was the first to receive the divine Captive, has had Him taken to his son-in-law Caiphas, the high priest. Here He is put through a series of insulting questions, which disdaining to answer, He receives a blow from one of the high priest’s servants. False witnesses had already been prepared: they now come forward, and depose their lies against Him who is the very Truth: but their testimony is contradictory. Then Caiphas, seeing that this plan for convicting Jesus of blasphemy is only serving to expose his accomplices, turns to another. He asks Him a question, which will oblige our Lord to make an answer; and in this answer he, Caiphas, will discover blasphemy, and blasphemy will bring Jesus under the power of the Synagogue. This is the question: ‘I adjure Thee, by the living God, that Thou tell us, if Thou be the Christ the Son of God! [1] Our Saviour, in order to teach us that we should show respect to those who are in authority, breaks the silence He has hitherto observed, and answers: Thou hast said it: I am: and hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of the power of God, and coming in the clouds of heaven.’ [2] Hereupon, the impious pontiff rises, rends his garments, and exclaims: ‘He hath blasphemed! What further need have we of witnesses? Behold! now ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye?’ The whole place resounds with the cry: ‘He is guilty of death!’ [3] </div>
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The Son of God has come down upon the earth in order to restore man to life; and yet, here we have this creature of death daring to summon his divine Benefactor before a human tribunal, and condemning Him to death! And Jesus is silent, and bears with these presumptuous, these ungrateful, blasphemers! Well may we exclaim, in the words wherewith the Greek Church frequently interrupts to-day’s reading of the Passion: ‘Glory be to thy patience, O Lord!’ </div>
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Scarcely have the terrible words, ‘He is guilty of death,’ been uttered, than the servants of the high priest rush upon Jesus. They spit upon Him, and blindfolding Him, they strike Him, saying: ‘Prophesy, who is it that struck Thee?’ [4] Thus does the Synagogue treat the Messias, who, they say, is to be their glory! And yet, these outrages, frightful as they are, are but the beginning of what our Redeemer has to go through. </span><br />
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But there is something far more trying than all this to the heart of Jesus, and it is happening at this very time. Peter has made his way as far as the court of the high priest’s palace. He is recognized by the bystanders as a Galilean, and one of Jesus’ disciples. The apostle trembles for his life; he denies his Master, and affirms with an oath that he does not even know Him. What a sad example is here of the punishment of presumption! But Jesus has mercy on His apostle. The servants of the high priest lead Him near to the place where Peter is standing; He casts upon him a look of reproach and pardon; Peter immediately goes forth, and weeps bitterly. From this hour forward he can do nothing but lament his sin; and it is only on Easter morning, when Jesus shall appear to him after His Resurrection, that he will admit any consolation to his afflicted heart. Let us make him our model, now that we are spending these hours, with our holy mother the Church, in contemplating the Passion of Jesus. Peter withdraws, because he fears his own weakness; let us remain to the end, for what have we to fear? May our Jesus give us one of those looks, which can change the hardest and worst of hearts! </div>
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Meanwhile, the day-dawn breaks upon the city, and the chief priests make arrangements for taking Jesus before the Roman governor. They themselves have found Him guilty; they have condemned Him as a blasphemer, and according to the Law of Moses a blasphemer must be stoned to death. But they cannot apply the law: Jerusalem is no longer free, or governed by her own laws. The power over life and death may be exercised only by her conquerors, and that in the name of Cæsar. How is it that these priests and scribes can go through all this, and never once remember the prophecy of Jacob, that the Messias would come when the sceptre should be taken away from Juda? [5] They know off by heart, they are the appointed guardians of, those prophecies, which describe the death to which this Messias is to be put; and yet, they are the very ones who bring it about! How is all this? They are blind, and it is jealousy that blinds them. </span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">The rumour of Jesus’ having been seized during the night, and that He is on the point of being led before the Roman governor, rapidly spreads through the city, and reaches Judas’ ears. This wretched man had a passion for money, but there was nothing to make him desire the death of his divine Master. He knew Jesus’ supernatural power. He perhaps flattered himself that He, who could command nature and the elements, would easily escape from the hands of His enemies. But now when he sees that He does not escape, and that He is to be condemned to death, he runs to the temple, and gives back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests. Is it that he is converted, and is about to ask his Master to pardon him? Alas, no! Despair has possession of him, and he puts an end to his existence. The recollection of all the merciful solicitations made to him, yesterday, by Jesus, both during the last Supper, and in the garden, gives him no confidence; it only serves to increase is despair. Surely, he well knew what a merciful Saviour he had to deal with! And yet, he despairs, and this at the very time when the Blood, which washes away the sins of the whole world, is about to be shed! He is lost, because he despaired. </span><br />
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The chief priests, taking Jesus with them, present themselves at the governor’s palace, demanding audience for a case of importance. Pilate comes forward, and peevishly asks them: ‘What accusation bring ye against this Man?’ They answer: ‘If He were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered Him up to thee.’ It is very evident, from these first words, that Pilate has a contempt for these Jewish priests; it is not less evident that they are determined to gain their cause. ‘Take Him you,’ says Pilate, ‘and judge Him according to your Law.’ The chief priests answer: ‘It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.’ [6] </div>
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Pilate leaves the hall, in order to speak with these men. He returns, and commands Jesus to be brought in. The Son of God and the representative of the pagan world are face to face. Pilate begins by asking Him: ‘Art Thou the King of the Jews?’ To this Jesus thus replies: ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now My kingdom is not from hence’. ‘Art Thou a King, then?’ says Pilate. ‘Thou sayest,’ answers Jesus, ‘that I am a King.’ Having, by these last words, confessed His august dignity, our Lord offers a grace to this Roman; He tells him that there is something worthier of man’s ambition than earthly honours. ‘For this,’ says Jesus, ‘was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice.’ ‘What is truth?’ asks Pilate; but without waiting for the answer, he leaves Jesus, for he is anxious to have done with this case. He returns to the Jews, and says to them: ‘I find no cause in Him.’ [7] Pilate fancies that this Jesus must be a leader of some Jewish sect, whose teachings give offence to the chief priests, but which are not worth his examining into them: yet at the same time, he is convinced that He is a harmless Man, and that it would be foolish and unjust to accuse Him of disturbing the state. Scarcely has Pilate expressed his opinion in favour of Jesus, than a long list of accusations is brought up against Him by the chief priests. Pilate is astonished at Jesus’ making no reply, and says to Him: ‘Dost Thou not hear how great testimonies they allege against Thee?’ [8] These words are kindly meant, but Jesus still remains silent: they, however, excite His enemies to fresh fury, and they cry out: ‘He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, even to this place.’ [9] This word Galilee suggests a new idea to Pilate. Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee, happens to be in Jerusalem at this very time. Jesus is his subject; He must be sent to him. Thus Pilate will get rid of a troublesome case, and this act of courteous deference will re-establish a good understanding between himself and Herod. </span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">The Saviour is therefore dragged through the streets of Jerusalem, from Pilate’s house to Herod’s palace. His enemies follow Him with relentless fury; but Jesus still observes His noble silence. Herod, the murderer of John the Baptist, insults Him, and ordering Him to be clothed in a white garment, as a fool, he sends Him back to Pilate. Another plan for ridding himself of this troublesome case now strikes the Roman governor. At the feast of the Pasch, he had the power of granting pardon to any one criminal the people may select. They are assembled together at the court-gates. He feels sure that their choice will fall upon Jesus, for it is but a few days ago that they led Him in triumph through the city: besides, he intends to make the alternative one who is an object of execration to the whole people; he is a murderer, and his name Barabbas. ‘Whom will you that I release to you?’ says Pilate: ‘Barabbas, or Jesus, that is called the Christ?’ He has not long to wait for the answer: the crowd exclaim: ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ ‘What then,’ replies Pilate, ‘shall I do with Jesus, that is called the Christ?’ ‘Crucify Him.’ ‘Why, what evil hath He done? I will chastise Him, therefore, and let Him go.’ But they, growing irritated at this, cry out so much the louder: ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ [10]</span><br />
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Pilate’s cowardly subterfuge has failed, and left him in a more difficult position than he was before. His putting the innocent on a level with a murderer was in itself a gross injustice; and yet, he has not gone far enough for a people that is blind with passion. Neither does his promise to chastise Jesus satisfy them: they want more than His Blood; they insist on His death. </div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Here let us pause, and offer our Saviour a reparation for the insult He here receives. He is put in competition with a murderer, and the murderer is preferred! Pilate makes an attempt to save Jesus: but on what terms! He must be put on a footing with a vile wretch, and even so be worsted! Those very lips that, a few days back, sang ‘Hosannah to the Son of David,’ now clamour for His crucifixion! The city magistrate and governor pronounces Him innocent, and yet condemns Him to be scourged, because he fears a disturbance! </span></span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Jesus is made over to the soldiers to be scourged. They rudely strip Him of His garments, and tie Him to the pillar which is kept for this kind of torture. Fiercely do they strike Him; the Blood flows down His sacred Body. Let us adore this the second bloodshedding of our Jesus, whereby He expiates the sins we and the whole world have committed by the flesh. This scourging is by the hands of Gentiles: the Jews delivered Him up to be punished, and the Romans were the executioners: thus have we all had our share in the awful deicide.</span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">At last the soldiers are tired; they loose their Victim; but it is not out of anything like pity. Their cruelty is going to rest, and their rest is derision. Jesus has been called King of the Jews: a king, say they, must have a crown! Accordingly, they make one for the Son of David! It is of thorns. They press it violently upon His head, and this is the third bloodshedding of Our Redeemer. Then, that they may make their scoffing perfect, the soldiers throw a scarlet cloak over His shoulders, and put a reed, for a sceptre, into His hand; and bending their knee before Him, they thus salute Him: ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ This insulting homage is accompanied with blows upon His face; they spit upon Him; and, from time to time, take the reed from His hand, wherewith to strike the thorns deeper into His head. </span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Here, the Christian prostrates himself before his Saviour, and says to Him with a heart full of compassion and veneration: ‘Yes! my Jesus! Thou art King of the Jews! Thou art the Son of David, and therefore our Messias and our Redeemer! Israel, that hath so lately proclaimed Thee King, now unkings Thee; the Gentiles scoff at Thy royalty, making it a subject for keener insult; but reign Thou must, and over both Jews and Gentiles: over the Jews, by Thy justice, for they are soon to feel the sceptre of Thy revenge; over the Gentiles, by Thy mercy, for Thine apostles are soon to lead them to Thy feet. Receive, dearest King! our homage and submission! Reign now and for ever over our hearts, yea, over our whole being!’ </span><br />
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Thus mangled and bleeding, holding the reed in His hand, and with the scarlet tatters on His shoulders, Jesus is led back to Pilate. It is just the sight that will soften the hearts of the people; at least, Pilate thinks so; and taking Him with him to a balcony of the palace, he shows Him to the crowd below, saying: ‘Behold the Man!’ [11] Little did Pilate know all that these few words conveyed! He says not: ‘Behold Jesus!’ nor, ‘Behold the King of the Jews!’ He says: ‘Behold the Man!’ Man—the Christian understands the full force of the word thus applied to our Redeemer. Adam, the first man, rebelled against God, and, by his sin, deranged the whole work of the Creator: as a punishment for his pride and intemperance, the flesh tyrannized over the spirit; the very earth was cursed, and thorns were to be its growth. Jesus, the new Man, comes into this world, bearing upon Him, not the reality, but the appearance, the likeness, of sin: in Him, the work of the Creator regains the primeval order; but the change was not wrought without violence. To teach us that the flesh must be brought into subjection to the spirit, Jesus’ Flesh was torn by the scourges; to teach us that pride must give way to humility, the only crown that Jesus wears is made of thorns. Yes, ‘Behold the Man!’ the triumph of the spirit over the flesh, the triumph of humility over pride. </div>
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Like the tiger that grows fiercer as he sees blood, so is Israel at the sight of Jesus after His scourging. ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’—The cry is still the same. ‘Take Him you,’ says Pilate, ‘and crucify Him; for I find no cause in Him.’ And yet, he has ordered Him to be scourged enough to cause His death! Here is another device of the base coward; but it, too, fails. The Jews have their answer ready; they put forward the right granted by the Romans to the nations that are tributary to the empire. ‘We have,’ say they, ‘a law, and according to the law He ought to die; because He made Himself the Son of God.’ Disconcerted by this reply, Pilate takes Jesus aside into the hall, and says to Him: ‘Whence art Thou?’ Jesus is silent; Pilate was not worthy to hear the answer to his question. This silence irritates him. ‘Speakest Thou not to me?’ says he. ‘Knowest Thou not, that I have power to crucify Thee, and I have power to release Thee?’ Here Jesus deigns to speak; and He speaks in order to teach us that every power of government, even where pagans are in question, comes from God, and not from a pretended social compact: ‘Thou shouldst not have any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that hath delivered Me to thee, hath the greater sin.’ [12] </span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">This dignified reply produces an impression upon Pilate: he resolves to make another attempt to save Jesus. But the people vociferate a threat which alarms him: ‘If thou release this Man, thou art not Cæsar’s friend; for whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Cæsar.’ Still, he is determined to try and pacify the crowd. He leaves the hall, sits upon the judgment-seat, orders Jesus to be placed near him, and thus pleads for Him: ‘Behold your King!’ as though he would say, ‘What have you or Cæsar to fear from such a pitiable object as this?’ The argument is unavailing, and only provokes the cry: ‘Away with Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him!’ As though he did not believe them to be in earnest, Pilate says to them: ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ This time the chief priests answer: ‘We have no king but Cæsar.’ [13] When the very ministers of God can talk thus, religion is at an end. No king but Cæsar! Then, the sceptre is taken from Juda, and Jerusalem is cast off, and the Messias is come! </span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Pilate, seeing that nothing can quell the tumult, and that his honour as governor is at stake, decides on making Jesus over to His enemies. Though against his own inclination, he passes the sentence, which is to cause him such remorse of conscience that he will afterwards seek relief in suicide. He takes a tablet, and with astyle writes the inscription which is to be fastened to the cross. The people demand that two thieves should be crucified at the same time; it would be an additional insult to Jesus: this, too, he grants, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaias: And with the wicked was He reputed. [14] Having thus defiled his soul with the most heinous of crimes, Pilate washes his hands before the people, and says to them: ‘I am innocent of the Blood of this just Man; look ye to it!’ They answer him with this terrible self-imprecation: ‘His Blood be upon us and upon our children!’ [15] The mark of parricide here fastens on this ungrateful and sacrilegious people; Cain-like, they shall wander fugitives on the earth. Eighteen hundred years have passed since then; slavery, misery, and contempt, have been their portion; but the mark is still upon them. Let us Gentiles—upon whom the Blood of Jesus has fallen as the dew of heaven’s mercy—return fervent thanks to the goodness of our heavenly Father, who hath so loved the world, as to give it His only-begotten Son. [16] Let us give thanks to the Son, who, seeing that our iniquities could not be blotted out save by His Blood, shed it, on this day, even to the very last drop. </span><br />
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Here commences ‘the way of the cross’: the house of Pilate, where our Jesus receives the sentence of death, is the first station. Our Redeemer is consigned, by the governor’s order, into the hands of the Jews. The soldiers seize Him, and drag Him from the court. They strip Him of the scarlet cloak and bid Him clothe Himself with His own garments as before the scourging. The cross is ready and they put it on His wounded shoulders. The place where the new Isaac loads Himself with the wood of His sacrifice, is the second station. To Calvary!—this is the word of command, and it is obeyed: soldiers, executioners, priests, scribes, people—these form the procession. Jesus moves slowly on; but after a few paces, exhausted by the loss of Blood and by His sufferings, He falls under the weight of His cross. It is the first fall, and marks the third station. </div>
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He falls, not so much by the weight of His cross, as by that of our sins! The soldiers roughly lay their hands on Him, and force Him up again. Scarcely has He resumed His steps, than He is met by His afflicted Mother. The ‘valiant woman’, whose love is stronger than death, was not to be absent at such an hour as this. She must see her Son, follow Him, keep close to Him, even to His last breath. No tongue can tell the poignancy of her grief. The anxiety she has endured during the last few days has exhausted her strength. All the sufferings of Jesus have been made known to her by a divine revelation; she has shared each one of them with Him. But now she cannot endure to be absent, and makes her way through the crowd. The sacrifice is nigh its consummation; no human power could keep such a Mother from her Jesus. The faithful Magdalene is by her side, bathed in tears; John, Mary the mother of James the Less, and Salerno the mother of John, are also with her: they weep for their divine Master, she for her Son. Jesus sees her, but cannot comfort her, for all this is but the beginning of what He is to endure. Oh! what an additional suffering was this for His loving Heart, to see His Mother agonizing with sorrow! The executioners observe the Mother of their Victim, but it would be too much mercy in them to allow her to speak to Him; she may follow, if she please, with the crowd; it is more than she could have expected, to be allowed this meeting, which we venerate as the fourth station of the way of the cross. </div>
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">But from this to the last there is a long distance, for there is a law that all criminals are to be executed outside the city walls. The Jews are afraid of Jesus’ expiring before reaching the place of sacrifice. Just at this time, they behold a man coming from the country, by name Simon of Cyrene; they order him to help Jesus to carry His cross. It is out of a motive of cruelty to our Lord, but it gives Simon the honour of sharing with Him the fatigue of bearing the instrument of the world’s salvation. The spot where this happens is the fifth station. </span><br />
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A little farther on, an incident occurs which strikes the executioners themselves with astonishment. A woman makes her way through the crowd, and setting the soldiers at defiance, comes close up to Jesus. She holds her veil in her hands, and with it respect-fully wipes the face of our Lord, for it is covered with blood, sweat, and spittle. She loves Jesus, and cares not what may happen to her, so she can offer Him this slight comfort. Her love receives its reward: she finds her veil miraculously impressed with the likeness of Jesus’ Face. This courageous act of Veronica marks the sixth station of the way of the cross. </div>
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">Jesus grows weaker at each step: He falls a second time: it is the seventh station. Again do the soldiers violently raise Him up, and push Him along the road. It is easy to follow in His footsteps, for a streak of Blood shows where He has passed. A group of women is following close behind the soldiers; they heed not the insults heaped upon them; their compassion makes them brave. But the last brutal treatment’ shown to Jesus is more than they can bear in silence; they utter a cry of pitiful lamentation. Our Saviour is pleased with these women, who, in spite of the weakness of their sex, are showing more courage than all the men of Jerusalem put together. He affectionately turns towards them, and tells them what a terrible chastisement is to follow the crime they are now witnessing. The chief priests and scribes recognize the dignity of the Prophet that had so often spoken to them: they listen with indignation; and, at this the eighth station of the great way, they hear these words: ‘Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not over Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold the days shall come, wherein they will say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us! And to the hills: Cover us!’ [17] </span><br />
<span class="style2" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: small;">At last, they reach the foot of the hill. Calvary is steep; but it is the place of Jesus’ Sacrifice. He begins the ascent, but falls a third time: the hallowed spot is counted as the ninth station. A third time the soldiers force Jesus to rise and continue His painful journey to the summit of the hill, which is to serve as the altar for the holocaust that is to surpass all others in holiness and power. The executioners seize the cross and lay it upon the ground, preparatory to nailing the divine Victim to it. According to a custom practised both by the Romans and the Jews, a cup containing wine and myrrh is offered to Jesus. This drink, which had the bitterness of gall, was given as a narcotic, in order to deaden, in some degree, the feeling of the criminal, and lessen his pain. Jesus raises to His lips the cup, which is proffered Him rather from custom than from any idea of kindness; but He drinks not its contents, for He wishes to feel the full intensity of the suffering He accepts for our sake. Then the executioners, having violently stripped Him of His garments, which had fastened to His wounds, lead Him to the cross. The place where He was thus stripped of His garments, and where the cup of bitter drink was presented to Him, is venerated as the tenth station of the way of the cross. The first nine, from Pilate’s hall to the foot of Calvary, are still to be seen in the streets of Jerusalem; but the tenth and the remaining four are in the interior of the church of Holy Sepulchre, whose spacious walls enclose the spot where the last mysteries of the Passion were accomplished. </span><br />
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But we must here interrupt our history: we have already anticipated the hours of this great Friday, and we shall have to return, later on, to the hill of Calvary. It is time to assist at the service of our holy mother the Church, in which she celebrates the Death of her divine Spouse. We must not wait for the usual summons of the bells; they are silent; we must listen to the call of our faith and devotion. Let us, then, repair to the house of God. </div>
<u><i><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;">References:</span></b></i></u><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;">1. St. Matt. xxvi. 63<br />2. Ibid. 64.—St. Mark xiv. 62.<br />3. St. Matt. xxvi. 65, 66.<br />4. St. Luke xxii. 64. <br />5. Gen. xlix. 10.<br />6. St. John xviii. 29-31.<br />7. Ibid.33, 36, 37, 38<br />8. St. Matt. xxvii. 13.<br />9. St. Luke xxiii. 5. <br />10. St. Matt. xxvii.—St. Luke xxiii.—St. John xviii.<br />11. St. John xix. 5.<br />12. St. John xix.<br />13. Ibid.<br />14. Is liii. 12.<br />15. St. Matt. xxvii. 24, 25.<br />16. St. John iii. 16 <br />17. St. Luke xxiii. 28-30.</span></blockquote>
Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-60460339629998052762015-03-30T18:52:00.003+01:002015-03-30T18:52:28.934+01:00Palm Sunday<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;"><i><b>From <u>The Liturgical Year</u> by Abbot Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.</b></i></span><br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">EARLY in the morning of this day, Jesus sets out for Jerusalem, leaving Mary His Mother, and the two sisters Martha and Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus, at Bethania. The Mother of sorrows trembles at seeing her Son thus expose Himself to danger, for His enemies are bent upon His destruction; but it is not death, it is triumph, that Jesus is to receive today in Jerusalem. The Messias, before being nailed to the cross, is to be proclaimed King by the people of the great city; the little children are to make her streets echo with their Hosanna to the Son of David; and this in presence of the soldiers of Rome's emperor, and of the high priests and pharisees: the first standing under the banner of their eagles; the second, dumb with rage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The prophet Zachary had foretold this triumph which the Son of Man was to receive a few days before His Passion, and which had been prepared for Him from all eternity. ' Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion! Shout for joy, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold thy King will come to thee; the Just and the Saviour. He is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.' [Zach. ix. 9.] Jesus, knowing that the hour has come for the fulfilment of this prophecy, singles out two from the rest of His disciples, and bids them lead to Him an ass and her colt, which they would find not far off. He has reached Bethphage, on Mount Olivet. The two disciples lose no time in executing the order given them by their divine Master; and the ass and the colt are soon brought to the place where He stands.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The holy fathers have explained to us the mystery of these two animals. The ass represents the Jewish people, which had been long under the yoke of the Law; the colt, upon which, as the evangelist says, no man yet hath sat, [St. Mark xi. 2.] is a figure of the Gentile world, which no one had ever yet brought into subjection. The future of these two peoples is to be decided a few days hence: the Jews will be rejected, for having refused to </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">acknowledge Jesus as the Messias; the Gentiles will take their place, to be adopted as God's people, and become docile and faithful.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The disciples spread their garments upon the colt; and our Saviour, that the prophetic figure might be fulfilled, sits upon him, [Ibid. 7, and St. Luke xix. 35.] and advances towards Jerusalem. As soon as it is known that Jesus is near the city, the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of those Jews, who have come from all parts to celebrate the feast of the Passover. They go out to meet our Lord, holding palm branches in their hands, and loudly proclaiming Him to be King. [St. Luke xix. 38.] They that have accompanied Jesus from Bethania, join the enthusiastic crowd. Whilst some spread their garments on the way, others cut down boughs from the palm-trees, and strew them along the road. Hosanna is the triumphant cry, proclaiming to the whole city that Jesus, the Son of David, has made His entrance as her King.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Thus did God, in His power over men's hearts, procure a triumph for His Son, and in the very city which, a few days later, was to clamour for His Blood. This day was one of glory to our Jesus, and the holy Church would have us renew, each year, the memory of this triumph of the Man-God. Shortly after the birth of our Emmanuel, we saw the Magi coming from the extreme east, and looking in Jerusalem for the King of the Jews, to whom they intended offering their gifts and their adorations: but it is Jerusalem herself that now goes forth to meet this King. Each of these events is an acknowledgment of the kingship of Jesus; the first, from the Gentiles; the second, from the Jews. Both were to pay Him this regal homage, before He suffered His Passion. The inscription to be put upon the cross, by Pilate's order, will express the kingly character of the Crucified: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. Pilate, the Roman governor, the pagan, the base coward, has been unwittingly the fulfiller of a prophecy; and when the enemies of Jesus insist on the inscription being altered, Pilate will not deign to give them any answer but this: ' What I have written, I have written.' Today, it is the Jews themselves that proclaim Jesus to be their King: they will soon be dispersed, in punishment for their revolt against the Son of David; but Jesus is King, and will be so for ever. Thus were literally verified the words spoken by the Archangel to Mary, when he announced to her the glories of the Child that was to be born of her: ' The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David, His father; and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever.' [St. Luke i. 32.] Jesus begins His reign upon the earth this very day; and though the first Israel is soon to disclaim His rule, a new Israel, formed from the faithful few of the old, shall rise up in every nation of the earth, and become the kingdom of Christ, a kingdom such as no mere earthly monarch ever coveted in his wildest fancies of ambition.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This is the glorious mystery which ushers in the great week, the week of dolours. Holy Church would have us give this momentary consolation to our heart, and hail our Jesus as our King. She has so arranged the service of today, that it should express both joy and sorrow; joy, by uniting herself with the loyal hosannas of the city of David; and sorrow, by compassionating the Passion of her divine Spouse. The whole function is divided into three parts, which we will now proceed to explain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The first is the blessing of the palms; and we may have an idea of its importance from the solemnity used by the Church in this sacred rite. One would suppose that the holy Sacrifice has begun, and is going to be offered up in honour of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Introit, Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Gospel, even a Preface, are said, as though we were, as usual, preparing for the immolation of the spotless Lamb; but, after the triple Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! the Church suspends these sacrificial formulas, and turns to the blessing of the palms. The prayers she uses for this blessing are eloquent and full of instruction; and, together with the sprinkling with holy water and the incensation, impart a virtue to these branches, which elevates them to the supernatural order, and makes them means for the sanctification of our souls and the protection of our persons and dwellings. The faithful should hold these palms in their hands during the procession, and during the reading of the Passion at Mass, and keep them in their homes as an outward expression of their faith, and as a pledge of God's watchful love.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">It is scarcely necessary to tell our reader that the palms or olive branches, thus blessed, are carried in memory of those wherewith the people of Jerusalem strewed the road, as our Saviour made His triumphant entry; but a word on the antiquity of our ceremony will not be superfluous. It began very early in the east. It is probable that, as far as Jerusalem itself is concerned, the custom was established immediately after the ages of persecution. St. Cyril, who was bishop of that city in the fourth century, tells us that the palm-tree, from which the people cut the branches when they went out to meet our Saviour, was still to be seen in the vale of Cedron. [Cateches. x. versus fin.] Such a circumstance would naturally suggest an annual commemoration of the great event. In the following century, we find this ceremony established, not only in the churches of the east, but also in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria. At the beginning of Lent, many of the holy monks obtained permission from their abbots to retire into the desert, that they might spend the sacred season in strict seclusion; but they were obliged to return to their monasteries for Palm Sunday, as we learn from the life of Saint Euthymius, written by his disciple Cyril. [Act. SS. Jan. 20.] In the west, the introduction of this ceremony was more gradual; the first trace we find of it is in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, that is, at the end of the sixth, or the beginning of the seventh, century. When the faith had penetrated into the north, it was not possible to have palms or olive branches; they were supplied by branches from other trees. The beautiful prayers used in the blessing, and based on the mysteries expressed by the palm and olive trees, are still employed in the blessing of our willow, box, or other branches; and rightly, for these represent the symbolical ones which nature has denied us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The second of today's ceremonies is the procession, which comes immediately after the blessing of the palms. It represents our Saviour's journey to Jerusalem, and His entry into the city. To make it the more expressive, the branches that have just been blessed are held in the hand during it. With the Jews, to hold a branch in one's hand was a sign of joy. The divine law had sanctioned this practice, as we read in the following passage from Leviticus, where God commands His people to keep the feast of tabernacles: And you shall take to you, on the first day, the fruits of the fairest tree, and branches of palm-trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God. [Lev. xxiii. 40.] It was, therefore, to testify their delight at seeing Jesus enter within their walls, that the inhabitants, even the little children, of Jerusalem, went forth to meet Him with palms in their hands. Let us, also, go before our King, singing our hosannas to Him as the conqueror of death, and the liberator of His people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">During the middle ages, it was the custom, in many churches, to carry the book of the holy Gospels in this procession. The Gospel contains the words of Jesus Christ, and was considered to represent Him. The procession halted at an appointed place, or station: the deacon then opened the sacred volume, and sang from it the passage which describes our Lord's entry into Jerusalem. This done, the cross which, up to this moment, was veiled, was uncovered; each of the clergy advanced towards it, venerated it, and placed at its foot a small portion of the palm he held in his hand. The procession then returned, preceded by the cross, which was left unveiled until all had re-entered the church. In England and Normandy, as far back as the eleventh century, there was practised a holy ceremony which represented, even more vividly than the one we have just been describing, the scene that was witnessed on this day at Jerusalem: the blessed Sacrament was carried in procession. The heresy of Berengarius, against the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, had been broached about that time; and the tribute of triumphant joy here shown to the sacred Host was a distant preparation for the feast and procession which were to be instituted at a later period.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">A touching ceremony was also practised in Jerusalem during today's procession, and, like those just mentioned, was intended to commemorate the event related by the Gospel. The whole community of the Franciscans (to whose keeping the holy places are entrusted) went in the morning to Bethphage. There, the father guardian of the holy Land, being vested in pontifical robes, mounted upon an ass, on which garments were laid. Accompanied by the friars and the Catholics of Jerusalem, all holding palms in their hands, he entered the city, and alighted at the church of the holy sepulchre where Mass was celebrated with all possible solemnity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This beautiful ceremony, which dated from the period of the Latin kingdom in Jerusalem, has been forbidden for now almost two hundred years, by the Turkish authorities of the city.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">We have mentioned these different usages, as we have done others on similar occasions, in order to aid the faithful to the better understanding of the several mysteries of the liturgy. In the present instance, they will learn that, in to-day's procession, the Church wishes us to honour Jesus Christ as though He were really among us, and were receiving the humble tribute of our loyalty. Let us lovingly go forth to meet this our King, our Saviour, who comes to visit the daughter of Sion, as the prophet has just told us. He is in our midst; it is to Him that we pay honour with our palms: let us give Him our hearts too. He comes that He may be our King; let us welcome Him as such, and fervently cry out to Him: 'Hosanna to the Son of David!'</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">At the close of the procession a ceremony takes place, which is full of the sublimest symbolism. On returning to the church, the doors are found to be shut. The triumphant procession is stopped; but the songs of joy are continued. A hymn in honour of Christ our King is sung with its joyous chorus; and at length the subdeacon strikes the door with the staff of the cross; the door opens, and the people, preceded by the clergy, enter the church, proclaiming the praise of Him, who is our resurrection and our life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This ceremony is intended to represent the entry of Jesus into that Jerusalem of which the earthly one was but the figure--the Jerusalem of heaven, which has been opened for us by our Saviour. The sin of our first parents had shut it against us; but Jesus, the King of glory, opened its gates by His cross, to which every resistance yields. Let us, then, continue to follow in the footsteps of the Son of David, for He is also the Son of God, and He invites us to share His kingdom with Him. Thus, by the procession, which is commemorative of what happened on this day, the Church raises up our thoughts to the glorious mystery of the Ascension, whereby heaven was made the close of Jesus' mission on earth. Alas! the interval between these two triumphs of our Redeemer are not all days of joy; and no sooner is our procession over, than the Church, who had laid aside for a moment the weight of her grief, falls back into sorrow and mourning.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The third part of today's service is the offering of the holy Sacrifice. The portions that are sung by the choir are expressive of the deepest desolation; and the history of our Lord's Passion, which is now to be read by anticipation, gives to the rest of the day that character of sacred gloom, which we all know so well. For the last five or six centuries, the Church has adopted a special chant for this narrative of the holy Gospel. The historian, or the evangelist, relates the events in a tone that is at once grave and pathetic; the words of our Saviour are sung to a solemn yet sweet melody, which strikingly contrasts with the high dominant of the several other interlocutors and the Jewish populace. During the singing of the Passion, the faithful should hold their palms in their hands, and, by this emblem of triumph, protest against the insults offered to Jesus by His enemies. As we listen to each humiliation and suffering, all of which were endured out of love for us, let us offer Him our palm as to our dearest Lord and King. When should we be more adoring, than when He is most suffering?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">These are the leading features of this great day. According to our usual plan, we will add to the prayers and lessons any instructions that seem to be needed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">This Sunday, besides its liturgical and popular appellation of <i>Palm Sunday</i>, has had several other names. Thus it was called <i>Hosanna Sunday</i>, in allusion to the acclamation wherewith the Jews greeted Jesus on His entry into Jerusalem. Our forefathers used also to call it <i>Pascha Floridum</i>, because the feast of the Pasch (or Easter), which is but eight days off, is today in bud, so to speak, and the faithful could begin from this Sunday to fulfil the precept of Easter Communion. It was in allusion to this name, that the Spaniards, having on the Palm Sunday of 1513, discovered the peninsula on the Gulf of Mexico, called it Florida. We also find the name of <i>Capitilavium</i> given to this Sunday, because, during those times when it was the custom to defer till Holy Saturday the baptism of infants born during the preceding months (where such a delay entailed no danger), the parents used, on this day, to wash the heads of these children, out of respect to the holy chrism wherewith they were to be anointed. Later on, this Sunday was, at least in some churches, called the <i>Pasch of the competents</i>, that is, of the catechumens, who were admitted to Baptism; they assembled today in the church, and received a special instruction on the symbol, which had been given to them in the previous scrutiny. In the Gothic Church of Spain, the symbol was not given till today. The Greeks call this Sunday <i>Baïphoros</i>, that is, <i>Palm-bearing.</i></span></blockquote>
Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-16932872875810118662015-03-23T22:33:00.000+00:002015-03-23T22:33:07.180+00:00Genuflections During the Mass: What the Traditional Latin Mass Teaches Us Through Action<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://acatholiclife.blogspot.ie/2015/03/genuflections-during-mass-what.html">http://acatholiclife.blogspot.ie/2015/03/genuflections-during-mass-what.html</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-37483681977735532502015-03-23T22:32:00.001+00:002015-03-23T22:32:12.285+00:00Cardinal Nichols celebrates Requiem Mass for King Richard III<b>From <a href="http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/23/cardinal_nichols_celebrates_requiem_mass_for_king_richard_ii/1131463">http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2015/03/23/cardinal_nichols_celebrates_requiem_mass_for_king_richard_ii/1131463</a></b><br />
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<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
(Vatican Radio) Hundreds of people have been queuing up Monday to view the coffin of the last Plantagenet King of England, Richard III. <span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The coffin is on public view in Leicester Cathedral until Thursday when it will be lowered into a tomb following a ceremony presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Richard was killed in battle against Henry Tudor in 1485.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The University of Leicester confirmed in February 2013 that the skeleton found in an excavation under a car park in the city of Leicester, formerly the site of a Franciscan church, was that of the King.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6;">On Monday evening the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols is celebrating Mass for the repose of the soul of Richard III in the Holy Cross Priory in Leicester.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Lydia O’Kane, the Cardinal said that King Richard was a man of prayer. “the Archbishop of Canterbury when he comes to the interment on Thursday will bring with him Richard III’s book of hours, so his prayer book… and in that prayer book there an annotations and there is a prayer that Richard wrote himself, so he was clearly a man who had his own prayer book and who prayed.”</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Richard III was a Catholic King in a Catholic country at the time and there have been ceremonies this week marking his internment at Leicester Cathedral celebrated by both the Anglican and Catholic Churches.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“Well, I’m glad to say”, said Cardinal Nichols, “that the co-operation between our Churches and the preparation of these events has been first class”.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">On Sunday, hundreds of people in Leicester looked on as a procession carrying the coffin of King Richard made its way to Bosworth, the battlefield where the monarch was killed, before heading to the Cathedral.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #444444; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 24px; padding: 20px 0px; text-align: justify; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.6; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Richard III was found to have had scoliosis, which is a form of spinal curvature, consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard's appearance, such as in Shakespeare’s play which paints a dark picture of the British King as a murderous villain.</span></div>
Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-33239852244156548482015-03-19T21:02:00.000+00:002015-03-19T21:02:12.648+00:00ST JOSEPH APPARITION: COTIGNAC, FRANCE 1660<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://apostolateofstjoseph.blogspot.ie/2013/08/st-joseph-apparition-cotignac-france.html">http://apostolateofstjoseph.blogspot.ie/2013/08/st-joseph-apparition-cotignac-france.html</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-86608229347842902702015-03-18T22:28:00.000+00:002015-03-18T22:28:15.445+00:00 Fr. Willie Doyle, SJ: Ireland’s Forgotten Saint?<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/3752/fr_willie_doyle_sj_irelands_forgotten_saint.aspx">http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/3752/fr_willie_doyle_sj_irelands_forgotten_saint.aspx</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-37083244916702669652015-03-18T22:27:00.000+00:002015-03-18T22:27:12.780+00:00LEGENDARY GAY DESIGNERS OPPOSE GAY MARRIAGE, GAY PARENTING, SURROGACY<b><span style="font-size: large;">See <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/14/legendary-gay-designers-oppose-gay-marriage-gay-parenting-surrogacy/">http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/14/legendary-gay-designers-oppose-gay-marriage-gay-parenting-surrogacy/</a></span></b>Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-42625659063039469462015-03-13T23:25:00.003+00:002015-03-13T23:25:59.971+00:00How the Traditional Latin Mass Fosters More Active Participation than the English Mass<div style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<b>NewLiturgicalMovement.org</b> <b>December 15, 2014:</b></div>
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How many times do lovers of the classical Roman Rite hear the objection: “The new Mass is better than the old one because it allows for more active participation of the faithful,” or “The old Mass just had to be reformed eventually, because the priest was the only one doing anything, and the people were all mute spectators.” My aim in this article is to refute such claims and to demonstrate that, if anything, the opposite is true.</div>
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<strong>Active/Actual Participation</strong></div>
People who take the time to sit down and study Sacrosanctum Concilium are often struck by how much of this document is unknown, ignored, or contradicted by contemporary Catholic practice. Often, there are phrases that are so rich, and yet the manner in which they have been turned into slogans has undermined their original nuance and depth.<br /><br />The most notorious victim of this process of journalistic simplification has been the notion of “active participation” or participatio actuosa. The word actuosa itself is very interesting: it means fully or totally engaged in activity, like a dancer or an actor who is putting everything into the dancing or the acting; it might be considered "super-active." But what is the notion of activity here? It is actualizing one's full potential, entering into possession of a good rather than having an unrealized capacity for it. In contemporary English, "active" often means simply the contrary of passive or receptive, yet in a deeper perspective, we see that these are by no means contrary. I can be actively receptive to the Word of God; I can be fully actualizing my ability to be acted upon at Mass by the chants, prayers, and ceremonies, without my doing much of anything that would be styled “active” in contemporary English.[Note 1] As St. John Paul II explained in an address to U.S. bishops in 1998:<br /><blockquote>
Active participation certainly means that, in gesture, word, song and service, all the members of the community take part in an act of worship, which is anything but inert or passive. Yet active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant, and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active. In a culture which neither favors nor fosters meditative quiet, the art of interior listening is learned only with difficulty. Here we see how the liturgy, though it must always be properly inculturated, must also be counter-cultural. [<a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1998/october/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19981009_ad-limina-usa-2_en.html" target="_blank">link</a>]</blockquote>
If your choir or schola sings Proper chants or motets at Mass, or if you’d like to see this happen someday, make sure you have this text from John Paul II ready for the person who objects: “But the people need to be singing everything!” Dom Alcuin Reid explained the Council’s intention very succinctly in an interview last December:<br /><blockquote>
The Council called for participatio actuosa, which is primarily our internal connection with the liturgical action—with what Jesus Christ is doing in his Church in the liturgical rites. This participation is about where my mind and heart are. Our external actions in the liturgy serve and facilitate this. But participatio actuosa is not first and foremost external activity, or performing a particular liturgical ministry. That, unfortunately, has been a common misconception of the Council’s desire. [<a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2760/the_liturgy_fifty_years_after_isacrosanctum_conciliumi.aspx#.UtbDtNJDt8E" target="_blank">link</a>]</blockquote>
Now, even with the common misunderstanding of “actual” cleared out of the way, it is an extremely curious fact that the full expression from Sacrosanctum Concilium 14 is rarely quoted: “Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy” (in the original: "Valde cupit Mater Ecclesia ut fideles universi ad plenam illam, consciam atque actuosam liturgicarum celebrationum participationem ducantur, quae ab ipsius Liturgiae natura postulatur"). Whatever happened to “full” and “conscious”?<br /><br /><div>
Conscious Participation</div>
Let’s probe this matter further. After several decades of attending Mass in both the OF and the EF (both celebrated “by the books”), I’ve become convinced that there is paradoxically a far greater possibility of not consciously paying attention to the Mass in the vernacular, precisely because of its familiarity: it becomes like a reflex action, the words can go in and out while the mind is far away. The vernacular is our everyday comfort zone, and so it doesn’t grab our attention. This is why when we are in a busy place where lots of people are speaking, we tend not to notice that they are even talking—whereas when we hear a foreign language, something other than our mother tongue, suddenly our attention is caught by it.<br /><br />Of course, this lack of attentiveness can happen in the sphere of any language: as someone once put it, I can be doing finances inside my head while chanting the Credo in Latin—if I have been chanting it every week for years. But it nevertheless seems evident that this danger is significantly less present with the usus antiquior, for two reasons:<br /><br />First, its very foreignness demands of the worshiper some effort to enter into it; indeed, it demands of the worshiper a decision about whether he really wants to enter into it or not. It is almost pointless to sit there unless you are ready to do something to engage the Mass or at very least to begin to pray. The use of a daily missal, widespread in traditional communities, is a powerful means of assimilating the mind and heart of the Church at prayer—and for me personally, following the prayers in my missal has amounted to a decades-long formation of my own mind and heart, giving me a savor for things spiritual, exemplars of holiness, ascetical rules, aspirations and resolutions. When I attend the EF, I am always much more actively engaged in the Mass, because there is more to do (I’ll come back to this point) and it seems more natural to use a missal to help me do it.<br /><br />Second, the traditional Latin Mass is so obviously focused on God, directed to the adoration of Him, that one who is mentally present to what is happening is ineluctably drawn into the sacred mysteries, even if only at the simplest and most fundamental level of acknowledging the reality of God and adoring our Blessed Lord in the most Holy Sacrament. I am afraid to say that it is not clear at all that most Catholics attending most vernacular OF liturgies are ever confronted unequivocally and irresistibly with the reality of God and the demand for adoration. Or, to put it differently, the old liturgy forms these attitudes in the soul, whereas the new liturgy presupposes them. If you don’t have the right understanding and frame of mind, the Novus Ordo will do very little to give it to you, whereas the EF is either going to give it to you or drive you away. When you attend the EF, you are either subtly attracted by something in it, or you are put off by the demands it makes. Either way, lukewarmness is not an option.<br /><br /><div>
<strong>Full Participation</strong></div>
So much for “conscious.” What about “full” participation? Again, as surprising as it may seem in the wake of tendentious criticisms, the traditional Latin Mass allows the faithful a fuller participation in worship because there are more kinds of experience to participate in, verbal and non-verbal, spiritual and sensuous—indeed, there is far more bodily involvement, if one follows the customary practices. This last point deserves attention.<br /><br />At a Low or High Mass, depending on the feast, one might make the sign of the Cross 8 times:<br /><ul>
<li>In nomine Patris…</li>
<li>Adjutorium nostrum…</li>
<li>Indulgentiam…</li>
<li>Cum Sancto Spiritu (end of the Gloria)</li>
<li>Et vitam venturi (end of the Credo)</li>
<li>Benedictus (in the Sanctus)</li>
<li>if the Confiteor is repeated at communion;</li>
<li>At the final blessing.</li>
</ul>
To this, some add the sign of the cross at the elevation of the Host and of the Chalice. And of course, the triple sign of the cross is made twice—once at the Gospel, and once at the Last Gospel.<br /><br />Moreover, one will end up striking the breast up to 15 times (!)<br /><ul>
<li>3x at the “mea culpa” of the servers’ Confiteor;</li>
<li>3x at the Agnus Dei;</li>
<li>3x at the second Confiteor;</li>
<li>3x at the Domine, non sum dignus;</li>
<li>3x at the Salve Regina (O clemens, O dulcis, O pia).</li>
</ul>
Traditionally-minded Catholics have learned to bow their head slightly at the name of Jesus, and to bow at other times during the liturgy, such as when the priest is passing by or when the thurifer is incensing the people. We go one step further and genuflect at the “Et incarnatus est” of the Creed—every time it is said, not just on Christmas and Annunciation, as in the Novus Ordo. We genuflect as well at the final blessing and at the words “Et verbum caro factum est.” (There are also other special times during the liturgical year when everyone is called upon to genuflect.)<br /><br />While the postures of the faithful at certain times in the Mass are not as regimented as in the Novus Ordo, a Low Mass will typically have the faithful kneeling for a long time (from the start all the way to the Gospel, and from the Sanctus all the way through the last Gospel), which is a demanding discipline and really keeps one’s mind aware that one is in a special sacred place, taking part in a sacrifice. At a Sunday High Mass, there will be quite a lot of standing, bowing, genuflecting, kneeling, and sitting, which, together with the signs of the cross, the beating of the breast, the bowing of the head, and the chanting of the responses, amounts to what educators call a TPR environment—Total Physical Response. You are thrown into the worship body and soul, and, at almost every moment, something is happening that puts your mind back on what you are doing. The OF has tended to drop a lot of these “muscular” elements in favor of merely aural comprehension and verbal response, which, by themselves, constitute a fairly impoverished form of participation, and surely not a full one.<br /><br />Most distinctive of all, perhaps, is the immensely peaceful reservoir of silence at the very center of the traditional Latin Mass. When the priest isn’t reading the Eucharistic Prayer “at” you, as it were, but instead is offering the Canon silently to God, always ad orientem, it becomes much easier to pray the words of the Canon oneself in union with the ministerial priest, or, if one prefers, to give oneself up a wordless union with the sacrifice. This makes the Canon of the Mass a time of more intensely full, conscious, and actual participation than is facilitated by the constant stream of aural stimulation in the Novus Ordo.<br /><br /><div>
<strong>A Culture of Prayer</strong></div>
An observation at the blog Sensible Bond fits in very well with the foregoing analysis:<br /><blockquote>
One can still hold the new rite to be integrally Catholic, and yet consider that the culture of the extraordinary form, where the people are supposedly passive, tends to teach people to pray independently, while the culture of the ordinary form often tends to create a dynamic in which people just chat to each other in church unless they are being actively animated by a minister.</blockquote>
What we have seen, therefore, is a conclusion that flies completely in the face of the conventional wisdom. “Active participation,” in the manner in which it is usually understood and implemented in the Novus Ordo sphere, actually fosters passivity, while the Catholic who receives in a seeming passivity all that the traditional Mass has to give is actualizing his potential for worship to a greater extent. Consequently, if you are looking to fulfill the Council’s call for full, conscious, and actual participation, look no further than your local traditional Latin Mass and you will find, with due time and effort, a richness of participation more comprehensive than the reformed liturgy allows.</blockquote>
Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-57128420628611286822015-03-03T21:58:00.003+00:002015-03-03T22:00:12.466+00:00What made a non believer Chadian citizen; die for Christ, along with his “20 Coptic Christian friends”?<b>From <a href="http://bombayorthodoxdiocese.org/what-made-a-non-believer-chadian-citizen-die-for-christ-along-with-his-20-coptic-christian-friends/">http://bombayorthodoxdiocese.org/what-made-a-non-believer-chadian-citizen-die-for-christ-along-with-his-20-coptic-christian-friends/</a></b><br /><br />ISIS announced the execution of 21 Copts but only 20 names were confirmed, most of them were from the province of Minya(Upper Egypt). There was an inaccuracy in the number of Egyptian Hostages; there were only 20 Egyptians(Copts). Then who was this remaining one non-Coptic victim?<br /><br /><br />Ahram-Canadian News was able to gather information about this man. He was a Chadian Citizen who accepted Christianity after seeing the immense faith of his fellow Coptic Christians to die for Christ. When Terrorist forced him to reject Jesus Christ as God, looking at his Christian friends he replied, “their God is my God“ so the terrorist beheaded him also.<br /><br /><br />Think about the faith, shining through those 20 Christians who made a non believer, a true believer in Christ, even at the point of death. In Bible, Gospel of Luke describes about two thieves, being on either side of Jesus as they were crucified. At that very point of death by Crucifixion, one of the thief accepted Christ saying, ‘LORD, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’ Here this Chadian citizen showed the same faith in Christ.<br /><br />Can we put ourselves into his place? The faith he showed was not a mean faith, at such a moment, he could believe in Jesus as Lord and King.<br /><br /><br />May God help us to strength our faith so that the world may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven. (Mathew 5:16)<br /><br />(News referred from Ahram-Canadian news)<div class="page-width-left" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat; color: #555555; float: left; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 0px; width: 620px;">
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Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-71754552727755304872015-02-21T09:46:00.001+00:002015-02-21T09:46:29.554+00:00Death of Beauraing Visionary Renews Message of Apparition<b>From <a href="http://www.ignitumtoday.com/2015/02/17/death-beauraing-visionary-renews-message-apparition/">http://www.ignitumtoday.com/2015/02/17/death-beauraing-visionary-renews-message-apparition/</a></b><br />
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The last living visionary from Beauraing, Belgium died on February 10, 2015. I was not surprised Gilberte Degeimbre’s death elicited no coverage in the United States by Catholic writers or Marian enthusiasts. The thirty-three apparitions of Our Lady to five children in Beauraing are virtually unknown to Catholics in the United States. More common to the United States are Our Lady of Guadalupe, Lourdes, or Fatima, given their liturgical celebrations (December 12, February 11, May/October 13/First Saturdays, respectively) or the 1859 apparition in Champion, Wisconsin which received ecclesiastical approval in 2010.<br /><br />The death of Gilberte, who I had the privilege of meeting in January 2015, provides an occasion to present the message of Our Lady anew. In the messages, we will not find anything different from other apparitions of Our Lady throughout time; it is the same call to prayer, the sacraments, and conversion of life. As we approach the Lenten season, Our Lady’s message encourages us to live Lent more fully in the spirit of prayer and sacrifice.<br /><br />The Beginning of the Apparitions<br /><br />On November 29, 1932, two children from the Voisin family, (Fernande and Albert), went to the nearby school to retrieve their sister, Gilberte. Along the way, the two children stopped at the Degeimbre household to see if their friends, Andree and Gilberte, could join them. The four children left the Degeimbre home and continued on their way to the school. After ringing the doorbell, Albert looked toward the railroad bridge and saw a woman walking in the air near the Lourdes grotto. Albert was not alone in seeing the mysterious woman, as Gilberte Voisin, upon leaving the school, did as well. The children reported seeing the woman again on November 30 and December 1. Our Lady did not convey her first message until December 2 and she continued to appear through January 3, 1933. In the course of the apparitions, Our Lady would reveal her Golden Heart and identify herself as the Immaculate Virgin, Mother of God, and the Queen of Heaven. She also requested the construction of a chapel, because as she stated, she appeared so people would come on pilgrimage.<br /><br />The Simple Messages<br /><br />Our Lady appeared to children and spoke very simple messages to them. As we approach the Lenten season, I believe we can see the spirit of Lent through the messages.<br /><br />Always be good (Dec. 2)<br /><br />I will convert sinners (Jan. 3)<br /><br />The first message relayed by Our Lady to the children on December 2 was simple, considered trite by some: “Always be good.” This message coincides well with what Our Lady said in her individual messages to the children during the last apparition on January 3, 1933. To Gilberte Voisin, Our Lady said, “I will convert sinners.”<br /><br />The conversion of our lives entails being good. It means living a good Christian life, obeying the commandments and loving our neighbor. When we are not good, we recognize this by going to the Sacrament of Penance and seeking out God’s pardon and mercy. Our Lady’s greatest desire in her apparitions throughout time is the conversion of sinners. She wants people to live lives that do not displease her Son. Our Lady’s declaration that she will convert sinners should startle us and call us to greater awareness of the failings in our lives.<br /><br />Many people who read these words readily accept Our Lady’s apparitions. We go to these holy sites and pray there because of our devotion to Our Lady. But do we allow her message to pierce us the entire way through? Do we allow the message of conversion to sink in totally, that we are willing to experience conversion in thought, word, and deed?<br /><br />Mary desires to convert sinners, meaning she wants the attitudes of our hearts to change. When we want to speak ill of another, we must realize the need for conversion. When we wish to use curse words—conversion. Our Lady exhorts us to live more consciously of our need every day for conversion. It is not enough to think about conversion; we truly need to change. During our Lenten discipline let us realize the moments that we need conversion and embrace them, so that the words Our Lady speaks, “I will convert sinners,” can be actualized.<br /><br />Pray. Pray very much. Pray Always.<br /><br />Our Lady exhorted the children to pray, not once, not twice, but three times and intensified each request. Prayer is communication with God. For many, the word ‘prayer’ is quite limited. We think of prayer as asking God for something or thanking God. These are good places to start, but prayer is meditative and contemplative. It is about conversing with God and listening in the silence of one’s heart for His response. Our Lady wants us to pray because it means we will be in constant relationship with her Son, a constant conversation and dialogue with Jesus. This conversation will begin to guide every moment of our lives, and through that dialogue, we will identify how God wishes for us to be converted.<br /><br />We are to pray, pray very much, and pray always. Ultimately, we can make our entire day a prayer. This can be done in a simple way each morning by praying a Morning Offering. Our Lady exhorts us to pray—she wants us to pray from the moment we wake to the moment we fall asleep. Each one of us will have to figure out how we can fulfill this request.<br /><br />Do you love my Son? Do you love me? Then sacrifice yourself for me.<br /><br />Fernande Voisin received the last words spoken by Our Lady in Beauraing. Mary asked, “Do you love my Son? Do you love me? Then sacrifice yourself for me.” We can make small sacrifices for Our Lord and Blessed Lady by fasting this Lent. But we can sacrifice ourselves in greater ways by serving God in our neighbor. Sacrifice yourself by serving Jesus in the poor, homeless, and the sick. Live the corporal works of mercy. Sacrifice yourself for the good of the other—your spouse, children, and friends. Sacrifice yourself in the vocation you live by emptying yourself of all desires, and filling yourself only with the desires of God. In prayer, when God asks us for conversion, it will mean sacrifice. God will ask us to sacrifice time for prayer. He will ask us to sacrifice things that put up barriers between Him and us. When we sacrifice, we become more fully open and receptive to God’s action in our lives.<br /><br />Lenten Observation<br /><br />Our Lenten discipline reminds us of our need for conversion, prayer, and sacrifice. In the apparitions received by the five children of Beauraing, we clearly see these principles. Mary desires the conversion of sinners. As the Mediatrix of Grace, Mary intercedes for the grace of conversion. This Lent, pray for a greater desire to conform your life to Christ. Identify one area to improve. Mary asks us to pray always. How will you pray more this Lent? Consider taking up the recommendation of Pope Francis <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/margefenelon/2015/02/why-im-not-giving-anything-up-for-lent/">to read the scriptures</a> and converse with God about them. Mary wants us to make sacrifices. How will you sacrifice yourself this Lent?<br /><br />Concluding Reflections<br /><br />During my stay in Beauraing I was struck by the simplicity of Our Lady’s words and the depth of meaning they conveyed. I also had the opportunity to view a documentary about the apparition. When Gilberte Degeimbre (recently deceased visionary) spoke about the apparitions, you could sense the authenticity of what she said. She greatly desired to go home to God. When Gilberte would visit the Hawthorne tree, where Our Lady appeared, she would tell people to close their eyes, because they would see Our Lady better. In death, Gilberte has closed her eyes and she sees again the Queen of Heaven reigning with her Son. Inspired by the example of Gilberte, let us begin to interiorize the message of Our Lady and allow it to take root in our hearts and lives this Lenten season.<br /><br />External Links:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DoBruEBGp8Kk&h=nAQG3GhFI">Interview with Gilberte Degeimbre in French with English Subtitles</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.pilgrimages.com/frcalloway/ourlady/">Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC is leading a pilgrimage to Beauraing and other holy sites</a><br /><br />- See more at: http://www.ignitumtoday.com/2015/02/17/death-beauraing-visionary-renews-message-apparition/#sthash.R9A4jPim.dpufTrad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-72736060299588794842015-02-17T23:11:00.001+00:002015-02-17T23:11:34.397+00:00Dietrich von Hildebrand on the Holy Latin Mass vs. the New Mass<div style="margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in;">
<b>TraditionalCatholicPriest.com</b> <b>February 16, 2013:</b></div>
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<em>Dietrich von Hildebrand, called by Pope Pius XII “the 20th Century Doctor of the Church,” was one of the world’s most eminent Catholic philosophers. Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) wrote about Dietrich von Hildebrand in the year 2000: “I am firmly convinced that, when at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the 20th century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time.” The following is an article he wrote on the Latin Mass that appeared in the October 1966 issue of Triumph magazine:</em></div>
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The arguments for the New Liturgy have been neatly packaged, and may now be learned by rote. The new form of the Mass is designed to engage the celebrant and the faithful in a communal activity. In the past the faithful attended Mass in personal isolation, each worshipper making his private devotions, or at best following the proceedings in his missal. Today the faithful can grasp the social character of the celebration; they are learning to appreciate it as a community meal. Formerly, the priest mumbled in a dead language, which created a barrier between priest and people. Now everyone speaks in English, which tends to unite priest and people with one another. In the past the priest said Mass with his back to the people, which created the mood of an esoteric rite. Today, because the priest faces the people, the Mass is a more fraternal occasion. In the past the priest intoned strange medieval chants. Today the entire assembly sings songs with easy tunes and familiar lyrics, and is even experimenting with folk music. The case for the new Mass, then, comes down to this: it is making the faithful more at home in the house of God.</div>
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Moreover, these innovations are said to have the sanction of Authority: they are represented as an obedient response to the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. This is said notwithstanding that the Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy goes no further than to permit the vernacular Mass in cases where the local bishop believes it desirable; the Constitution plainly insists on the retention of the Latin Mass, and emphatically approves the Gregorian chant. But the liturgical “progressives” are not impressed by the difference between permitting and commanding. Nor do they hesitate to authorize changes, such as standing to receive Holy Communion, which the Constitution does not mention at all. The progressives argue that these liberties may be taken because the Constitution is, after all, only the first step in an evolutionary process. And they seem to be having their way. It is difficult to find a Latin Mass anywhere today, and in the United States they are practically non-existent. Even the conventual Mass in monasteries is said in the vernacular, and the glorious Gregorian is replaced by insignificant melodies.</div>
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My concern is not with the legal status of the changes. And I emphatically do not wish to be understood as regretting that the Constitution has permitted the vernacular to complement the Latin. What I deplore is that the new Mass is replacing the Latin Mass, that the old liturgy is being recklessly scrapped, and denied to most of the People of God.</div>
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I should like to put to those who are fostering this development several questions: Does the new Mass, more than the old, bestir the human spirit–does it evoke a sense of eternity? Does it help raise our hearts from the concerns of everyday life–from the purely natural aspects of the world–to Christ? Does it increase reverence, an appreciation of the sacred?</div>
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Of course these questions are rhetorical, and self-answering. I raise them because I think that all thoughtful Christians will want to weigh their importance before coming to a conclusion about the merits of the new liturgy. What is the role of reverence in a truly Christian life, and above all in a truly Christian worship of God?</div>
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Reverence gives being the opportunity to speak to us: The ultimate grandeur of man is to be capax Dei. Reverence is of capital importance to all the fundamental domains of man’s life. It can be rightly called “the mother of all virtues,” for it is the basic attitude that all virtues presuppose. The most elementary gesture of reverence is a response to being itself. It distinguishes the autonomous majesty of being from mere illusion or fiction; it is a recognition of the inner consistency and positiveness of being–of its independence of our arbitrary moods. Reverence gives being the opportunity to unfold itself, to, as it were, speak to us; to fecundate our minds. Therefore reverence is indispensable to any adequate knowledge of being. The depth and plenitude of being, and above all its mysteries, will never be revealed to any but the reverent mind. Remember that reverence is a constitutive element of the capacity to “wonder,” which Plato and Aristotle claimed to be the indispensable condition for philosophy. Indeed, irreverence is a chief source of philosophical error. But if reverence is the necessary basis for all reliable knowledge of being, it is, beyond that, indispensable for grasping and assessing the values grounded in being. Only the reverent man who is ready to admit the existence of something greater than himself, who is willing to be silent and let the object speak to him–who opens himself–is capable of entering the sublime world of values. Moreover, once a gradation of values has been recognized, a new kind of reverence is in order–a reverence that responds not only to the majesty of being as such, but to the specific value of a specific being and to its rank in the hierarchy of values. And this new reverence permits the discovery of still other values.</div>
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Man reflects his essentially receptive character as a created person solely in the reverent attitude; the ultimate grandeur of man is to be capax Dei. Man has the capacity, in other words, to grasp something greater than himself, to be affected and fecundated by it, to abandon himself to it for its own sake–in a pure response to its value. This ability to transcend himself distinguishes man from a plant or an animal; these latter strive only to unfold their own entelechy. Now: it is only the reverent man who can consciously transcend himself and thus conform to his fundamental human condition and to his metaphysical situation.</div>
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Do we better meet Christ by soaring up to Him, or by dragging Him down into our workaday world?</div>
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The irreverent man by contrast, approaches being either in an attitude of arrogant superiority or of tactless, smug familiarity. In either case he is crippled; he is the man who comes so near a tree or building he can no longer see it. Instead of remaining at the proper spiritual distance, and maintaining a reverent silence so that being may speak its word, he obtrudes himself and thereby, in effect, silences being. In no domain is reverence more important than religion. As we have seen, it profoundly affects the relation of man to God. But beyond that it pervades the entire religion, especially the worship of God. There is an intimate link between reverence and sacredness: reverence permits us to experience the sacred, to rise above the profane; irreverence blinds us to the entire world of the sacred. Reverence, including awe-indeed, fear and trembling-is the specific response to the sacred.</div>
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Rudolf Otto has clearly elaborated the point in his famous study, The Idea of the Holy. Kierkegaard also calls attention to the essential role of reverence in the religious act, in the encounter with God. And did not the Jews tremble in deep awe when the priest brought the sacrifice into the sanctum sanctorum? Was Isaiah not struck with godly fear when he saw Yahweh in the temple and exclaimed, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips . . . yet my eyes have seen the King?” Do not the words of St. Peter after the miraculous catch of fish, “Depart from me, 0 Lord, because I am a sinner,” testify that when the reality of God breaks in upon us we are struck with fear and reverence? Cardinal Newman has shown in a stunning sermon that the man who does not fear and revere has not known the reality of God.</div>
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When St. Bonaventure writes in Itinerarium Mentis ad Deum that only a man of desire (such as Daniel) can understand God, he means that a certain attitude of soul must be achieved in order to understand the world of God, into which He wants to lead us.</div>
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This counsel is especially applicable to the Church’s liturgy. The sursum corda–the lifting up of our hearts–is the first requirement for real participation in the Mass. Nothing could better obstruct the confrontation of man with God than the notion that we “go unto the altar of God” as we would go to a pleasant, relaxing social gathering. This is why the Latin Mass with Gregorian chant, which raises us up to a sacred atmosphere, is vastly superior to a vernacular Mass with popular songs, which leaves us in a profane, merely natural atmosphere.</div>
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The basic error of most of the innovations is to imagine that the new liturgy brings the holy Sacrifice of the Mass nearer to the faithful, that shorn of its old rituals the Mass now enters into the substance of our lives. For the question is whether we better meet Christ in the Mass by soaring up to Him, or by dragging Him down into our own pedestrian, workaday world. The innovators would replace holy intimacy with Christ by an unbecoming familiarity. The new liturgy actually threatens to frustrate the confrontation with Christ, for it discourages reverence in the face of mystery, precludes awe, and all but extinguishes a sense of sacredness. What really matters, surely, is not whether the faithful feel at home at Mass, but whether they are drawn out of their ordinary lives into the world of Christ–whether their attitude is the response of ultimate reverence: whether they are imbued with the reality of Christ.</div>
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Those who rhapsodize on the new liturgy make much of the point that over the years the Mass had lost its communal character and had become an occasion for individualistic worship. The new vernacular Mass, they insist, restores the sense of community by replacing private devotions with community participation. Yet they forget that there are different levels and kinds of communion with other persons. The level and nature of a community experience is determined by the theme of the communion, the name or cause in which men are gathered. The higher the good which the theme represents, and which binds men together, the more sublime and deeper is the communion. The ethos and nature of a community experience in the case of a great national emergency is obviously radically different from the community experience of a cocktail party. And of course the most striking differences in communities will be found between the community whose theme is supernatural and the one whose theme is merely natural. The actualization of men’s souls who are truly touched by Christ is the basis of a unique community, a sacred communion, one whose quality is incomparably more sublime than that of any natural community. The authentic we communion of the faithful, which the liturgy of Holy Thursday expresses so well in the words congregavit nos in unum Christi amor, is only possible as a fruit of the I-Thou communion with Christ Himself. Only a direct relation to the God-Man can actualize this sacred union among the faithful.</div>
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The depersonalizing “we experience” is a perverse theory of community</div>
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The communion in Christ has nothing of the self-assertion found in natural communities. It breathes of the Redemption. It liberates men from all self- centeredness. Yet such a communion emphatically does not depersonalize the individual; far from dissolving the person into the cosmic, pantheistic swoon so often commended to us these days, it actualizes the person’s true self in a unique way. In the community of Christ the conflict between person and community that is present in all natural communities cannot exist. So this sacred community experience is really at war with the depersonalizing ‘we-experience” found in Mass assemblies and popular gatherings which tend to absorb and evaporate the individual. This communion in Christ that was so fully alive in the early Christian centuries, that all the saints entered into, that found a matchless expression in the liturgy now under attack–this communion has never regarded the individual person as a mere segment of the community, or as an instrument to serve it. In this connection it is worth noting that totalitarian ideology is not alone in sacrificing the individual to the collective; some of Teilhard de Chardin’s cosmic ideas, for instance, imply the same collectivistic sacrifice. Teilhard subordinates the individual and his sanctification to the supposed development of humanity. At a time when this perverse theory of community is embraced even by many Catholics, there are plainly urgent reasons for vigorously insisting on the sacred character of the true communion in Christ. I submit that the new liturgy must be judged by this test: Does it contribute to the authentic sacred community? Granted that it strives for a community character; but is this the character desired? Is it a communion grounded in recollection, contemplation and reverence? Which of the two–the new Mass, or the Latin Mass with the Gregorian chant evokes these attitudes of soul more effectively, and thus permits the deeper and truer communion? Is it not plain that frequently the community character of the new Mass is purely profane, that, as with other social gatherings, its blend of casual relaxation and bustling activity precludes a reverent, contemplative confrontation with Christ and with the ineffable mystery of the Eucharist?</div>
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Of course our epoch is pervaded by a spirit of irreverence. It is seen in a distorted notion of freedom that demands rights while refusing obligations, that exalts self-indulgence, that counsels “let yourself go.” The habitare secum of St. Gregory’s Dialogues–the dwelling in the presence of God–which presupposes reverence, is considered today to be unnatural, pompous, or servile. But is not the new liturgy a compromise with this modern spirit? Whence comes the disparagement of kneeling? Why should the Eucharist be received standing? Is not kneeling, in our culture, the classic expression of adoring reverence? The argument that at a meal we should stand rather than kneel is hardly convincing. For one thing, this is not the natural posture for eating: we sit, and in Christ’s time one lay down. But more important, it is a specifically irreverent conception of the Eucharist to stress its character as a meal at the cost of its unique character as a holy mystery. Stressing the meal at the expense of the sacrament surely betrays a tendency to obscure the sacredness of the sacrifice. This tendency is apparently traceable to the unfortunate belief that religious life will become more vivid, more existential, if it is immersed in our everyday life. But this is to run the danger of absorbing the religious in the mundane, of effacing the difference between the supernatural and the natural. I fear that it represents an unconscious intrusion of the naturalistic spirit, of the spirit more fully expressed in Teilhard de Chardin’s immanentism.</div>
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Again, why has the genuflection at the words et incarnatus est in the Credo been abolished? Was this not a noble and beautiful expression of adoring reverence while professing the searing mystery of the Incarnation? Whatever the intention of the innovators, they have certainly created the danger, if only psychological, of diminishing the faithful’s awareness and awe of the mystery. There is yet another reason for hesitating to make changes in the liturgy that are not strictly necessary. Frivolous or arbitrary changes are apt to erode a special type of reverence: pietas. The Latin word, like the German Pietaet, has no English equivalent, but may be understood as comprising respect for tradition; honoring what has been handed down to us by former generations; fidelity to our ancestors and their works. Note that pietas is a derivative type of reverence, and so should not be confused with primary reverence, which we have described as a response to the very mystery of being, and ultimately a response to God. It follows that if the content of a given tradition does not correspond to the object of the primary reverence, it does not deserve the derivative reverence. Thus if a tradition embodies evil elements, such as the sacrifice of human beings in the cult of the Aztecs, then those elements should not be regarded with pietas. But that is not the Christian case. Those who idolize our epoch, who thrill at what is modern simply because it is modern, who believe that in our day man has finally “come of age,” lack pietas. The pride of these “temporal nationalists” is not only irreverent, it is incompatible with real faith. A Catholic should regard his liturgy with pietas. He should revere, and therefore fear to abandon the prayers and postures and music that have been approved by so many saints throughout the Christian era and delivered to us as a precious heritage. To go no further: the illusion that we can replace the Gregorian chant, with its inspired hymns and rhythms, by equally fine, if not better, music betrays a ridiculous self-assurance and lack of self-knowledge. Let us not forget that throughout Christianity’s history. silence and solitude, contemplation and recollection, have been considered necessary to achieve a real confrontation with God. This is not only the counsel of the Christian tradition, which should be respected out of pietas; it is rooted in human nature. Recollection is the necessary basis for true communion in much the same way as contemplation provides the necessary basis for true action in the vineyard of the Lord. A superficial type of communion–the jovial comradeship of a social affair–draws us out onto the periphery. A truly Christian communion draws us into the spiritual deeps.</div>
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The path to a true Christian communion: Reverence . .. Recollection . . . Contemplation</div>
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Of course we should deplore excessively individualistic and sentimental devotionalism, and acknowledge that many Catholics have practiced it. But the antidote is not a community experience as such-any more than the cure for pseudo-contemplation is activity as such. The antidote is to encourage true reverence, an attitude of authentic recollection and contemplative devotion to Christ. Out of this attitude alone can a true communion in Christ take place. The fundamental laws of the religious life that govern the imitation of Christ, the transformation in Christ, do not change according to the moods and habits of the historical moment. The difference between a superficial community experience and a profound community experience is always the same. Recollection and contemplative adoration of Christ–which only reverence makes possible–will be the necessary basis for a true communion with others in Christ in every era of human history.</div>
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Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8393839459084027168.post-45120367345043198262015-01-29T20:00:00.000+00:002015-01-29T20:00:00.125+00:00Why Islam Is More Violent Than Christianity: An Atheist’s Guide<b>From <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/27/why-islam-is-more-violent-than-christianity-an-atheists-guide/">http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/27/why-islam-is-more-violent-than-christianity-an-atheists-guide/</a></b><br />
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The Charlie Hebdo massacre once again has politicians and the media dancing around the question of whether there might be something a little bit special about this one particular religion, Islam, that causes its adherents to go around killing people.</div>
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It is not considered acceptable in polite company to entertain this possibility. Instead, it is necessary to insist, as a <i>New York Times</i> article <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/world/europe/raising-questions-within-islam-after-france-shooting.html" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">does</a>, that “Islam is no more inherently violent than other religions.” This, mind you, was in an article on how Muslims in the Middle East are agonizing over the violent legacy of their religion.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Cambria, georgia, serif; text-align: justify;">It is obviously true that all major religions have had violent periods, or periods in which the religion has coexisted with violence. Even those mellow pacifist Buddhists. These days, especially the Buddhists, who are currently </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/opinion/malik-myanmars-buddhist-bigots.html" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">fomenting a pogrom</a><span style="font-family: Cambria, georgia, serif; text-align: justify;"> against a Muslim minority in Burma.</span></div>
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But in today’s context, it’s absurd to equate Islam and Christianity. Pointing to the Spanish Inquisition tends to undermine the point rather than confirm it: if you have to look back three hundred years to find atrocities, it’s because there are so few of them today. The mass crimes committed under the name of Islam, by contrast, are fresh and <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/16/in-graphic-videos-and-on-twitter-isis-members-record-and-tout-executions-of-gay-men.html" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">openly boasted about</a>.</div>
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As an <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/05/what-atheists-have-to-offer-the-right/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">atheist</a>, I have no god in this fight, so to speak. I don’t think the differences between religions make one more valid than another. But as the Charlie Hedbo attack reminds us, there is a big practical difference between them. In fact, the best argument against the equivalence of Christianity and Islam is that no one acts even remotely as if this were true. We feel free to criticize and offend Christians without a second thought—thanks, guys, for being so cool about that—but antagonizing Muslims takes courage. More courage than a lot of secular types in the West <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/09/stop-lying-media-are-censoring-charlie-hebdo-out-of-fear-of-islam/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">can usually muster</a>.</div>
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So it’s a matter of some practical urgency to figure out: what is the difference? What are its root causes?</div>
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As I see it, the main danger posed by any religion to its dissenters and unbelievers lies in the rejection of reason, which cuts off the possibility of discussion and debate, leaving coercion as an acceptable substitute. I’m with Voltaire on that one: “If we believe absurdities, we will commit atrocities.” But all religions are different and have different doctrines which are shaped over their history—and as we shall see, that includes different views on precisely such core issues as the role of reason and persuasion.</div>
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I should preface this by saying that I am no expert on theology, particularly Muslim theology. Yet there are a number of big, widely documented differences between Christianity and Islam that can be seen in the traditions established by their history and in the actual content of their religious doctrines.</div>
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The life of Christ versus the life of Mohammed.</h2>
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Mohammed was a conqueror who gained worldly political power in his lifetime and used it to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Asma%27_bint_Marwan" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">persecute opponents</a> and impose his religion. He also fully enjoyed the worldly perks of being a tyrant, including multiple wives. Jesus, by contrast, was basically a pacifist whose whole purpose on earth was to allow himself to be tortured to death.</div>
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He even explicitly forbade his followers to use force to defend him. Here’s John,<a href="http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/John-Chapter-18/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Chapter 18</a>: “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear…. Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?”</div>
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This does not imply that all Christians ought to be pacifists. But it certainly sets a tone for the religion. The life of the founder of a religion is held up to his followers as a model for how they should live their own lives. The life of Mohammed tells the Muslim that he should expect to rule, whereas the life of Christ tells the Christian he should expect to sacrifice and serve. Which leads us to a deeper doctrinal difference.</div>
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“What you do to the least of these, you do to me.”</h2>
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In Matthew, <a href="http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-Chapter-25/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Chapter 25</a>, Christ tells his followers what will happen during the final judgment, when he separates the righteous from the wicked.</div>
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Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.<br /><g><br />Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?<br /><g><br />And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.</g></g></div>
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Similarly, there is an episode during the Last Supper when the apostles are squabbling about which of them is greatest. Christ <a href="http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Luke-Chapter-22/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">intervenes</a> and tells them that the greatest is he who serves others the most.</div>
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And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.</div>
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This is a very profound idea that goes against the grain of most of human history. I’m a big fan of the Classical world, but the pagans still regarded it as normal, right, and natural that the physically strong set the terms for everyone else. Thucydides famously summed it up in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melian_dialogue" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Melian Dialogue</a>: “The strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Thucydides was clearly critical of that view, but the Classical world didn’t have a clear alternative. As far as I know, Christ was the first to insist that even the lowest, least significant person has value and that we will be judged by how we treat him.</div>
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The distinctive idea here is not a belief in self-sacrifice—Islam, with its emphasis on the glory of dying in battle, has that idea in abundance. Nor is it the idea of a duty to serve others—Communist regimes were built on the idea that the individual exists only to serve the collective. Instead, it is the idea that each individual has a supreme and sacred value. Even Ayn Rand <a href="http://www.solopassion.com/node/8600" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">declared</a> this to be the idea from Christianity that most impressed her.</div>
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Islam has no corresponding idea. The news is constantly bringing us a story of some imam somewhere declaring it consistent with Islam for a man to beat his wife, and the rise of the Islamic State in Syria has provided us current examples of Islam sanctioning slavery, including the capture and systematic rape of sex slaves. This is a religion that is still very much in the “rights of the conqueror” mode, in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.</div>
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Again, this goes back to the beginning. Consider the story, from one of the earliest Arab biographies of Mohammed, of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Asma%27_bint_Marwan" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Asma bint Marwan</a>, an Arab poet in Medinah who spoke out against the rise of Mohammed. According to legend, he asked his followers, “Who will rid me of the daughter of Marwan?” (His version of Henry II’s “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”) One of them took it on himself to sneak into her house and murder her in her sleep. There are questions about the authenticity of the story, but the fact that it was widely believed and reported indicates the example Mohammed set.</div>
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To be sure, this brutal attitude is partly because of the backwardness of some of the quasi-feudal societies that are majority-Muslim, where divisions of tribe and caste still dominate. But then again, Islam hasn’t done much to elevate those societies, despite having more than a thousand years to do so.</div>
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The early history of Christianity vs. Islam</h2>
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Christians started as a persecuted minority in a pagan society, so that gives them a certain comfort with being powerless. Those who find themselves out of step with the sinful modern world regard this as more or less the normal state of things.</div>
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The early history of Islam, by contrast, was further conquest and dominance, as Muslim invaders marched out into Persia and across North Africa. That’s why Muslims tend to look at the modern situation, in which other creeds and political systems are wealthier and wield greater military power, as an aberration that is not to be tolerated.</div>
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This history is connected to a specific doctrinal issue.</div>
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<b></b>The kingdom of god vs. the kingdom of man.</h2>
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When you’re a persecuted minority, it’s more natural to say that the ultimate reward and total justice have to be found in another world, because you know you’re not going to get them in the decadent Roman Empire. In Christianity, this produced a distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. When Pilate asks him if he is a king, Jesus <a href="http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/John-Chapter-18/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">responds</a>, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”</div>
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This idea is extensively developed in Christian theology and is widely accepted among religious conservatives today as the main explanation for the failure of Communism and other utopian schemes: they were arrogant, misguided attempts to achieve heaven on earth. Or if you are inclined to the use of unnecessarily long and obscure words, this is referred to as trying to “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanentize_the_eschaton" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">immanentize the eschaton</a>.”</div>
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The idea is that human beings are not capable of achieving the ultimate holy order of things in this world, so it is folly to try.</div>
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But when your prophet is the dictator, it’s more tempting to think that you can just mandate a perfect society. Hence the Islamist obsession with creating a pure Islamic State, usually with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_religious_police" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">special division of zealots</a> who call themselves something like the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, whose job is to enforce a long list of intrusive religious prohibitions. An Islamic state is the kingdom of God brought to earth—exactly the approach that has been widely rejected at various points in Christian theology.</div>
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The different roles of “falsafa.”</h2>
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There is another important legacy of Christianity’s early history among the pagans—in this case, not a reaction against pagan rule, but a part of the Classical influence that rubbed off on Christianity.</div>
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Christianity took hold among Greeks and Romans steeped in the Classical philosophical tradition, and that left its mark. The now-retired pope, Benedict XVI—who I’m really missing right now, by the way—made this the central point of an <a href="https://www.tracinskiletter.com/2007/01/jerusalem-athens/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">important speech</a> he gave in 2006 at the University of Regensburg, in which he addressed the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Benedict argued that “the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith,” and defended the “Hellenization” of Christianity. (More on this later.) There was some controversy about this within early Christianity—Tertullian famously asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”—and at first the anti-Classical side won out. But those early controversies made it easier for Christianity to re-absorb Classical ideas during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.</div>
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Islam went through an opposite progression. It encountered Classical science and philosophy, “falsafa” in Arabic, during its conquest of various Mediterranean countries, and the Muslim world would produce great scientists and philosophers steeped in the ideas of the Greeks, including ibn Sina (Avicenna) in Persia and ibn Rushd (Averroes) in Muslim Spain. But by the late Middle Ages, just as the West was rediscovering Classical philosophy, the Muslim world purged it. This is generally blamed on the theologian al-Ghazali, who denounced “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_the_Philosophers" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">The Incoherence of the Philosophers</a>” and caused Muslim theologians to reject the Classical influence as incompatible with faith. The result is that Islam allows much less room for philosophical discussion and debate over the meaning of the religion.</div>
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Again, this history is connected to a deeper doctrinal issue.</div>
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<b></b>Is God rational?</h2>
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This was the issue Benedict focused on in his Regensburg speech. He approvingly cited a dialogue in which one of the Byzantine emperors was debating with a Muslim and argued that in Christian theology, God is rational: he acts according to reason and is understandable by reason. He cited a <a href="http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/John-Chapter-1/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Biblical passage</a> about God being “Logos”—which means both “word” and “reason” in Greek—as evidence that “the world comes from reason” as part of the animating spirit of God’s creation.</div>
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Islam rejects this view. Al-Ghazali even rejected the law of cause and effect. The Muslim God does not establish laws of nature and leave them to operate. He is personally involved in causing every natural event by a direct act of will. Thus, al-Ghazali insisted that when a ball of cotton is placed into a flame, the fire does not burn the cotton. Instead, “when fire and cotton are placed in contact, the cotton is burned directly by God rather than by the fire.”</div>
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If you think this is very old, Medieval history, consider that there was a controversy in the 1980s in Pakistan, when Islamists <a href="http://www.answeringmuslims.com/2012/09/frank-tipler-on-muslim-contributions-to.html" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">insisted</a> that chemistry textbooks had to say that when hydrogen and oxygen are combined, then <i>by the will of Allah</i>, water is created—directly borrowing al-Ghazali’s formulation. The rejection of scientific laws and secular reason was <a href="http://www.nationalobserver.net/2010/83_6_book_reilly.htm" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">codified in Islam</a> long ago, and those who depart from this orthodoxy continue to be ostracized, as seen in Pakistan’s <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/robcrilly/100173926/why-abdus-salam-pakistans-great-physicist-has-been-written-out-of-history-by-his-own-country/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">rejection</a> of one of its most eminent physicists.</div>
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All of this has a lot of implications for how you deal with disagreement and whether you think religion is a subject that can be debated. The Byzantine emperor quoted by Benedict argues, “Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats,” to which Benedict added: “The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.” Whereas if reason is itself heretical, then why should anyone tolerate your arguments and philosophical debates?</div>
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<b></b>Secular law versus Sharia law.</h2>
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The differences between Islam and Christianity are not just about the laws of nature. They’re also about laws for man.</div>
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Christianity has its own religious law, laid down by Moses in the Old Testament, though much of it does not survive Christ’s revisions. But Christianity also has a long tradition of coexisting with secular systems of law. This comes from the Roman context, where there was an established, codified Roman system of law which Christianity did not seek to overthrow. This, as I understand it, is part of the significance of Christ’s admonition to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” So the idea of religion as <i>the</i> source of law was not well-established under Christianity. Or to be more exact, religion is viewed as source of general moral principles, but there is plenty of room for debate on what those principles mean and how to translate them into specific laws.</div>
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By contrast, Islam recognizes no room for any law other than what was supposedly revealed to Mohammed, and that is the source of a whole lot of trouble. The explicit argument offered by Islamists against representative government is the complaint that laws voted on by the people are laws created <i>by man</i>, whereas God is the only one who can make law. Similarly, one of the main issues of contention in newly created governments across the Middle East—Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya—was the question of whether Islam should be cited as the sole source of law. Then there is Saudi Arabia, where the Koran <i>is</i> the constitution.</div>
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But what is really telling is the concreteness of Islamic law. As it is usually interpreted, Sharia is not a set of general principles that leave room for individual judgment in their application. It is a set of extremely detailed, specific requirements and prohibitions. This is why we see Islamic clerics asked to issue “fatwas” on every triviality under the sun, from soccer to tomboys to Mickey Mouse, which can lead to some <a href="http://listverse.com/2010/02/25/top-10-bizarre-or-ridiculous-fatwas/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">very weird results</a>.</div>
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As British Islamist Anjem Choudary <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/01/07/islam-allah-muslims-shariah-anjem-choudary-editorials-debates/21417461/?AID=10709313&PID=4003003&SID=i5716jvrjk00ou4y00dth" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">explains</a> to us, “Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone. Therefore, Muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression, as their speech and actions are determined by divine revelation and not based on people’s desires.” Note how total this is—everything is determined by revelation—and how little room it leaves for individual choice. So no wonder it is used as a license for unlimited coercion.</div>
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The concrete nature of Islamic law and its devaluation of individual judgment reflects a deeper aspect of the difference between Christianity and Islam.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong>Is it normal to struggle with faith?</h2>
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Christianity has a tradition of being an introspective religion, one that is about plumbing the depths of one’s soul—and about struggling with one’s faith. In the Bible and in Christian lore, there is a long tradition of openly talking about struggles with doubt, the sense that faith is something that can be difficult to maintain, so that lapses or skepticism or a crisis of faith are understandable and to be tolerated. The put-upon Job debates with God. Even Jesus struggled with temptation and doubt in the Garden of Gethsemane as he faced the prospect of crucifixion. That’s why the typical piece of Christian “hate mail” I get is annoyingly non-hate-filled. They mostly tell me that they’re praying for me so I will one day see the light.</div>
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By contrast, Muslims widely accept a particularly literal version of what the Christian would call “salvation through works.” In its crudest version, this is the “die in jihad and get 72 virgins in paradise” outlook. Getting into heaven is less about reordering your soul or trying to introspect some greater meaning in your life—and more about punching a checklist of external actions, of being obedient to a long list of strictly enforced requirements and taboos.</div>
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<b></b>The history of religion in America.</h2>
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The final big difference between Islam and Christianity isn’t something that’s wrong with Islam, but rather something that happened uniquely in the West that influenced Christianity: the history of religion in America. From the beginning we had a profusion of different religious sects, many of which had come here seeking freedom from persecution. So from early on, at least from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Roger Williams</a>, American religious leaders were deeply involved in developing the ideology of religious freedom. While Enlightenment ideas had a wide influence in America, demands for religious freedom did not come primarily from anti-clerical types who wanted to abolish religion. Instead, religious freedom was literally <a href="http://webuus.com/timeline/Seven_Sermons.html" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">preached from the pulpit</a>, which is why it so naturally made it into our founding documents.</div>
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That’s only one aspect of Christianity in the West, of course, but it has had a global influence on the religion and its approach to liberty.</div>
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I have painted with broad strokes, and there are some who will no doubt come back to me citing Muslim leaders who espouse better views, as no doubt you could go out and find Christians with much worse views.</div>
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And of course, many of those who kill in the name of Islam don’t even know this history. One of my <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2684714/I-tell-I-m-going-jihad-Lol-I-ll-arrested-What-British-terrorist-Birmingham-told-childhood-friend-travelled-Syria-join-rebel-fighters.html" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">favorite stories</a> is about British jihadists who headed off to join ISIS in Syria after buying a copy of the book <i>Islam for Dummies</i>. These guys aren’t following the narrow doctrinal disputes. What they absorb is an overall sense of what the religion means and how it is to be practiced.</div>
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If you add up all of these things, you see what an explosive mix you get from Islam: the expectation that religion dictates everything and that their religion ought to be totally dominant here in this world, combined with the notion that religion is not open to reason and leaves no room for doubt, questioning, or debate.</div>
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Religious ideas can be, and often are, recombined and reinterpreted in more or less benevolent ways. There will always be a tension between faith and reason; the concept of service to others can be used to demand service to the state; the concept of man’s sinfulness and imperfection can be interpreted to mean that the perfect religious society cannot be imposed on earth—or that humans can’t be trusted with freedom, so the state needs to curb our vicious impulses. Certainly, the <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/15/why-pope-francis-is-wrong-about-free-expression/" style="border: 0px; color: #ea370b; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">recent comments</a> by Pope Francis on the Charlie Hebdo attack should make us wonder how committed he is to the principle of freedom of speech.</div>
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But this should make us appreciate all the more the way in which, after centuries of contentious and often bloody history, our culture’s dominant faith has settled into a more benevolent and liberal form.</div>
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We can hope that Islam will do the same. But in terms of their history and doctrines, they still have a long way to go—and I’m afraid they still have some of those contentious and bloody centuries ahead of them.</div>
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Trad Catholichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01019375653409835364noreply@blogger.com0