04.30.08
Posted in Great Catholic Writers, Classical Liberalism at 3:59 pm by Brian Schuettler
Economics As Science: A Catholic Defense of the Free Market
by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
at Inside Catholic >>>>> http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3525&Itemid=48
Put forth a robust defense of the free market as the most morally and materially satisfying economic system and you invite all manner of invective and accusation. What are you, some kind of dissenter?
Not so fast. Although the documents of modern Catholic social teaching normally begin with Rerum Novarum (1891), students should instead start with Pope Leo XIII’s Quod Apostolici Muneris(1878), an encyclical entirely devoted to socialism, in order to understand that socialism and the free market are not being described as equally objectionable. For while socialism is per se condemned, the market is criticized only for alleged abuses.
Nor could the Church condemn the market in and of itself, since it rests on the inoffensive principle of peaceful, non-coerced exchanges between rightful property owners. Breathless claims to the contrary notwithstanding, that is all the free market amounts to. With Leo XIII having described the rights of property as “inviolate” in one encyclical and “sacred and inviolable” in another — phrases the Left has spent the past century trying to explain away, I might add — the Church would have to acknowledge the essential justice of a market economy at some level, even if she might for whatever reason still have complaints to register here and there.
The authority of the bishops in the Church, including the supreme pontiff himself, involves matters pertaining to faith and morals. Important as that authority is, it is mere superstition to think it confers upon them an expertise in secular disciplines. It is one thing to enumerate general principles or worthy goals, but it is quite another to propose the specific policies that are most likely to achieve those goals, or even to avoid policies that may wind up frustrating them. These latter skills necessarily involve a working knowledge of the mechanics of the discipline in question.
Several years ago, Archbishop John J. Myers of Newark, New Jersey, made something like this point himself with reference to economics:
For example, our preferential option for the poor is a fundamental aspect of this teaching. But, there are legitimate disagreements about the best way or ways truly to help the poor in our society. No Catholic can legitimately say, “I do not care about the poor.” If he or she did so this person would not be objectively in communion with Christ and His Church. But, both those who propose welfare increases and those who propose tax cuts to stimulate the economy may in all sincerity believe that their way is the best method really to help the poor. This is a matter of prudential judgment made by those entrusted with the care of the common good. It is a matter of conscience in the proper sense.
In other words, there is far more room for legitimate debate on these questions than some people seem prepared to concede.
Another claim is that Catholic free-marketeers have defined the sphere of faith and morals too narrowly, and that the popes’ statements about the economy are a legitimate subset of those areas of life over which they have been given divine authority to instruct the faithful. The popes, this argument goes, have every right to speak out on economic matters since such things are not utterly distinct or removed from moral concerns.
This argument, too, misfires. No one denies that economic activity carries a moral dimension. The pope is obviously well within his rights to condemn theft or fraud, or to instruct the faithful on the need to be generous with their wealth. He may likewise condemn government policies that involve oppression and injustice, such as burdensome taxation or inflation of the money supply. Thus, no one is saying that action in the economic sphere (or, for that matter, the medical or any other sphere) is exempt from moral evaluation.
The point is that the cause-and-effect relationships that constitute the theoretical edifice of economics are not a matter of faith and morals. They do not fall within the range of subjects on which a Catholic prelate is endowed with special insight or authority. Catholic laity cannot head up petition drives against them. They are simply facts of life. Facts cannot be protested, defied, or lectured to; they can only be learned and acted upon. There is no use in shaking our fists at the fact that price controls lead to shortages. All we can do is understand the phenomenon, and be sure to bear it and other economic truths in mind if we want to make statements about the economy that are rational and useful.
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Posted in Culture, Study History-Avoid Failure at 3:51 pm by Brian Schuettler
If the term irritates you, get over it—or substitute your own coinage. What matters is the reality being pointed at, argued over, catalogued. Google the term and you’ll find what at first appears to be a lively conversation. On closer inspection, you may be struck by the narrow boundaries of most of the talk. Who qualifies for the title, and what kind of work counts in the public conversation: those crucial matters get defined in very cramped ways.
And contrary to some widely circulated jeremiads, the species is thriving. Consider Susan Wise Bauer, whose books The Well-Educated Mind (2003, written with Jessie Wise) and The Well-Trained Mind (2004) found a ready audience among homeschooling families and intellectually curious souls more generally, and who now is engaged on nothing less than a history of the world in four volumes, intended for the common reader.
Writing history in public is a bold enterprise, even when your subject is relatively modest in scope, but Bauer is up to the challenge. In the first volume of the series, The Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome, she lightheartedly acknowledges the audacity of her project, clearly undaunted. Within the first few paragraphs she’s briskly taking charge: “I understand why many historians choose to use bce and ce in an attempt to avoid seeing history entirely from a Judeo-Christian point of view, but using bce while still reckoning from Christ’s birth seems, to me, fairly pointless.”
Perhaps her four-volume children’s series on world history was a necessary preparation for this text. In The Story of the World Series: History for the Classical Child (already in revised and second editions since 2003), she mastered the art of deciding “what to leave out.” And writing for children, a historian learns how to hold her readers’ attention. Pick up Bauer’s new volume on the ancient world and compare her treatment of Peisistratus, the tyrant who ruled Athens for several decades in the 6th century bc, with the account given of him in the reputable world-civ standard, The Heritage of World Civilizations, by Albert Craig et al. 1 First from Craig’s text:
Despite Solon’s reforms, Athens succumbed to factional strife that ended when the leader of one faction, Pisistratus (605?—527 B.C.E.), a nobleman and military hero, seized power firmly in 546 b.c.e. with the help of mercenary soldiers and made himself the city’s first tyrant.
And then from Bauer’s book:
In 560, Peisistratus and his club-wielding bodyguards stormed into the Acropolis [and lost] … . Peisistratus regathered himself in exile. He had tried sheer force; now he would try strategy. He made a secret alliance with the aristocratic Megacles, leader of the Men of the Coast, promising to marry his daughter … . [After enjoying some success, Peisistratus] annoyed his wife by “not having sex with her in the usual way,” as Herodutus puts it … . Megacles, informed of this development (and presumably already regretting his alliance with the rough and ready Men of the Hills), decided to switch sides again, and joined the Men of the Plain in driving Peisistratus back out.
Peisistratus had tried revolt; he had tried political alliance; his only path back into power was to buy it, and this path he took.
Writing a four-volume series rather than a single (if massive) volume, Bauer has the advantage of a larger canvas. But she also has a knack for narrative and an eye for human interest. Indeed, sprinkled liberally throughout the book are talking points that connect with readers in ways distinctive from many established texts.
Most of Bauer’s hooks are created through historic leaders. Her preface invites us into the human story of Antiquity—and it is a story, not a bloodless text that drones endlessly on, not a barrage of disconnected facts. Listen in on the book’s first sentences:
Sometime around 1770 bc, Zimri-Lim, king of the walled city of Mari on the banks of the Euphrates, got exasperated with his youngest daughter.
A decade earlier, Zimri-Lim had married his oldest daughter Shimatum to the king of another walled and sovereign city called Ilansura. It was a good match, celebrated with enormous feasts and heaps of presents (mostly from the bride’s family to the groom).
Within the first page the tone is set for a public discourse. The obscure Zimri-Lim has a socio-political context, along with a human dimension. Bauer unfolds the story with an account of his wives, the birth of twins, a disowned second wife, and the otherwise trite story of royal succession. This scenario doesn’t dispense geographic, economic, and cultural information in indigestible form, but neither does Bauer ignore these important aspects of her subject; rather, she works them into this prefatory case study, in which she lays out her approach for the entire volume.
Not one reader in a million will ponder the clay tablets that record the history of Mari. But being a public intellectual necessitates bringing such sources to the front while leaving the research-laden discussion to specialists. Whether in her discussion of Greek “Trading Posts and Colonies” (Chapter 49) or the Assyrian decline (Chapter 50), Bauer reaches into primaries like Homer, Herodotus, Livy, Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Tacitus, Josephus, I and II Kings, Xenophon, Hesiod, and a host of others. She also consults important secondary works like H. W. F. Saggs’ Babylonians. And her text is strengthened by drawing on key works from archaeologists, such as C. L. Woolley’s classic reports on Ur—and views on Akhenaton from that candid Canadian at Penn State, Donald Redford. Although she misses some important scholarly voices, especially Edwin Yamauchi’s work on the Scythians and Persians (I’m rather biased since he’s my mentor), she consults a host of others, such as Cyrus Gordon (Yamauchi’s mentor), Kenneth Kitchen, A. Leo Oppenheim, and Thorkild Jacobsen. (However, she overlooks Jacobsen’s wonderful Treasures of Darkness—a dialogue on the original Mesopotamian texts worthy of Bauer’s insightful attention.)
Read the full review of the first volume of the series, The Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome
at http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/003/1.20.html
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Posted in Protect The Garden State at 3:37 pm by Brian Schuettler
How New Jersey Can Maximize the Benefits of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
http://www.environmentnewjersey.org/reports/global-warming/global-warming-reports/cutting-pollution-cutting-costs-how-new-jersey-can-maximize-the-benefits-of-the-regional-greenhouse-gas-initiative
New Jersey is one of 10 northeastern states taking part in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a first-of-its-kind program to limit emissionsof carbon dioxide—the leading pollutant responsible for global warming—from power plants in the Northeast.
RGGI will cap carbon dioxide emissions from power plants at projected 2009 levels through 2014 and cut emissions by 10 percent by 2018. The 10 RGGI states are in the midst of adopting the rules necessary to implement the program.
While the most important rules governing the program—including the level of the emission cap—have already been agreed upon by the RGGI states, the regional process gives states flexibility in how to implement several important parts of the program.
By adopting strong rules for the implementation of RGGI, New Jersey can maximize the environmental benefits of the program while protecting consumers.
RGGI is an important step forward for New Jersey in the fight against global warming.
• New Jersey has a great deal to lose from unrestrained global warming. Projected future impacts of global warming on the state include the possible inundation of parts of the Jersey Shore by rising seas, increases in heat-related and smog-related deaths, an increase in heavy precipitation events leading to flooding, and impacts on New Jersey agriculture and
wildlife.
• Power plants are the second-largest source of carbon dioxide pollution in the Northeast, accounting for one-quarter of the region’s emissions.
• While not perfect, RGGI is a trail-blazing program that will set precedents for future action on global warming at the state, regional and federal levels.
New Jersey should auction 100 percent of pollution allowances under RGGI and invest the proceeds in programs
to improve the energy efficiency of the state’s economy.
Cutting Pollution, Cutting Costs
• The pollution permits (called “allowances”) issued under RGGI will likely have a value of between $46 million and $229 million per year, at an estimated allowance price of $2 to $10 per ton.
• Giving allowances away to polluters enables polluters to achieve unjustified windfall profits. In the European Union’s emission trading system, which is similar to RGGI, power producers have received billions of dollars in windfall profits at the expense of consumers and businesses.
• Auctioning allowances to polluters is consistent with the “polluter pays” principle and would generate significant amounts of money to use for public purposes. By investing the proceeds from auctions in energy efficiency, New Jersey can reduce the cost of RGGI to consumers. Indeed, a study conducted for the RGGI state working group shows that pairing RGGI with a doubling of energy efficiency spending would reduce the average household electric bill. New Jersey should resist efforts to weaken RGGI in the guise of containing the costs of the program. Caps on the cost of emission allowances and expansion of the use of “offsets” should not be considered.
• RGGI already includes several measures to prevent significant increases in electricity costs. Power plants may meet some of their compliance obligation through the use of offsets, which are emission reductions achieved at facilities other than power plants. Power plant owners may also bank allowances
and offset credits for use later on in the program, thereby preventing price spikes. Finally, RGGI includes provisions
to allow greater use of offsets if allowance prices rise beyond certain levels.
• Cost caps and expanded use of offsets would threaten the integrity of the RGGI emission cap, reducing (and possibly eliminating) the emission reductions achieved by power plants in the Northeast.
• Imposing cost caps or expanding the use of offsets would require New Jersey to rewrite portions of the RGGI model rule that have been agreed upon by all 10 states. Doing so would undermine New Jersey’s commitment to the RGGI process and open the door for further changes by other states—changes that might not be in New Jersey’s best interests. New Jersey should take additional steps to ensure that RGGI delivers the maximum benefits for the state.
• New Jersey should require that emission allowances be retired when consumers purchase renewable electricity (or “green power”) through their utilities. More than 10,000 New Jersey consumers have purchased “green power” products, believing that their actions will reduce environmental impacts. By tying renewable energy purchases to the retirement of pollution allowances under RGGI, the state can ensure that those purchases deliver their promised environmental benefits and achieve greater reductions of global warming emissions from power plants.
• New Jersey should reject efforts to exempt electric generators that consume most of the power they produce on-site from the RGGI emission cap.
• New Jersey should play a leading role in developing a regional response to the problem of emissions “leakage,” which is the potential for distribution utilities in RGGI states to increase their imports of dirty power produced outside of the region, thereby reducing the aggregate emission reductions delivered by the program. New Jersey should also work with other states to tighten the emission cap under RGGI and consider short-term measures to ensure that the program achieves real emission reductions upon taking effect in 2009.
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Posted in General at 9:56 am by Brian Schuettler
Shocked Visitor Exhorts Las Vegas Bishop to End Pro-Homosexual Ministry in Diocese
Ministry gives incomplete presentation of Church teaching and considers homosexual inclinations unchangeable
By Michael Baggot
LAS VEGAS, NV April 29, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A visitor to the Cathedral of Las Vegas was shocked recently to see an advertisement for the Imago Dei ministry in the cathedral bulletin. Jack Fonseca, a 3rd degree member of the Knights of Columbus, has since worked to rally other Catholics to have Bishop Joseph Anthony Pepe disband the group for its infidelity to Church teaching regarding homosexuality.
According to its official site, “Imago Dei was established to meet a need in the Church for support of gay Catholic women and men. Gay people have been made to feel that they are unwelcome in the Church and in the Heart of God.”
“We are also here for families and friends who want to understand, accept and support their loved one(s) who may be gay…especially through the light of their Catholic/Christian faith,” the site adds.
In a letter to Bishop Pepe, Fonseca wrote, “I feel I have a Catholic moral obligation to express my shock and horror at the fact that GAC’s bulletin promoted a homosexual ministry which appears to support and encourage homosexual relationships and the acceptance of homosexuality as good, natural and normal.”
Fonseca goes on to criticize the Imago Dei site for its incomplete and therefore misleading presentation of Catholic teaching on homosexuality.
The site, notes Fonseca, emphasizes only the Church’s teaching on the dignity of persons with homosexual tendencies and the evil of hateful discrimination against them. The organization, however, assiduosly avoids expressing the Church’s clear teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and gravely sinful. In the section of their website entitled “Statements from Church Teaching” Imago Dei includes quotations from numerous Church documents. All of the quotations, without exception, relate only to how homosexuals as persons are to be accepted and loved, and none express Church teaching on the morality of homosexual acts.
The mission of the site “is not to detail every word of church teaching,” Charles O’Neill, director of Imago Dei, told LifeSiteNews.com. The site is primarily an “advertising and evangelization tool” focused on “trying to get people in” the ministry, so that Imago Dei can share the message of God’s love, O’Neill added.
“Sex is not the topic or focus of discussion or prayer.”
The Catholic Church, however, has officially warned against giving an incomplete presentation of teaching regarding homosexuality under the pretext of pastoral care. Such an incomplete presentation, observes the Church, can be just as misleading and damaging as a forthrightly incorrect one.
“No authentic pastoral programme will include organizations in which homosexual persons associate with each other without clearly stating that homosexual activity is immoral,” stated The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s (CDF) 1980 statement concerning the pastoral care of homosexual individuals. “A truly pastoral approach will appreciate the need for homosexual persons to avoid the near occasions of sin.”
“We wish to make it clear that departure from the Church’s teaching, or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care is neither caring nor pastoral. Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral. The neglect of the Church’s position prevents homosexual men and women from receiving the care they need and deserve,” the document added.
In contrast to the selective quotations of the Imago Dei website, the Holy See-endorsed Courage ministry presents, the three main passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church dealing with homosexuality on its website.
O’Neill also admitted to LifeSiteNews.com that Imago Dei does not encourage members to overcome homosexual tendencies. He cited the 1993 English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states in paragraph 2358 that men “do not choose their homosexual condition.”
“How does one overcome something that is not chosen as the Church states?” O’Neill asked.
The current English edition, however, based upon the official 1997 Latin edition of the Catechism, removes mention of the homosexual condition not being chosen and describes homosexuality as an “inclination, which is objectively disordered.” The earlier 1993 English translation was based upon the unofficial French edition, not the official Latin edition, which led to some confusion on the matter.
However, both translations affirm that the “psychological genesis [of homosexuality] remains largely unexplained.” (for a detailed look at the translations, see http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Homiletic/Feb98/ques…)
In contrast to O’Neill’s claims, recent studies have indicated that homosexuality is not a genetically irreversible condition.
“Like most psychiatrists, I thought that homosexual behavior could be resisted, but sexual orientation could not be changed. I now believe that’s untrue - some people can and do change,” Dr. Robert Spitzer told the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in 2001 after an extensive study.
Spitzer’s testimony is especially pertinent since in 1973 he was a key figure in convincing the APA to remove homosexuality from the diagnostic manual’s list of metal disorders.
While Imago Dei claims to “support gay Catholic men and women,” Church teaching discourages labels that reduce individuals to their sexual orientation.
“Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life,” stated the 1980 CDF document.
“To say someone is ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ or a ‘homosexual’ is to define a whole person by just one aspect. It can lock up a person’s identity and block further emotional growth. That’s just the sort of labeling which gives rise to prejudice and discrimination,” explained a Courage commentary on the CDF document.
O’Neill noted that Imago Dei currently receives official support from the diocese, since it is a “ministry of the cathedral” whose spiritual director is whichever priest the Bishop assigns as rector of the cathedral.
“How can this gay lobby group call itself a ‘Catholic’ ministry when it refuses to give the full teaching of the church, to condemn homosexual acts and fails to orient those with same-sex attraction to where Holy Mother Church wants to lead them? That is, to uniting their sufferings to the cross of Christ and either seeking recovery from their condition by the healing power of Christ and/or the grace to live a chaste Christian life, never giving in to the homosexual temptations?” asked Fonseca.
Fonseca’s letter exhorts the bishop to disband Imago Dei and to instead lend support to Courage, a ministry faithful to the whole of Church teaching that supports individuals with same-sex attractions in their efforts to overcome same-sex attractions and live lives of prayerful chastity.
Contact Bishop Pepe about Imago Dei activities in Las Vegas:
336 Cathedral Way
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Phone: (702) 735-3500
Fax: (702) 735-8941
E-mail: bagan@dioceseoflasvegas.org
Learn about the Courage Ministry:
http://www.couragerc.net
Read the Vatican’s statement about the pastoral care of homosexual individuals:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docum…
Read the United States Bishops’ statement on pastoral care of individuals with homosexual inclinations:
http://www.usccb.org/dpp/Ministry.pdf
Read about Dr. Spitzer’s changed view of homosexual orientation:
http://www.narth.com/docs/spitzer2.html
Read about the various factors involved in forming a persons sexual orientation:
http://www.narth.com/docs/bornway.html
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Posted in Classical Liberalism at 9:54 am by Brian Schuettler
What Muslims Really Think
By Dinesh D’Souza
at Townhall.com
While on the debating circuit pounding atheists–a pastime I am really getting to enjoy–I have just started reading Dalia Mogahed and John Esposito’s Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. It’s one of the first books to put some real data behind a much-disputed question.
For several years now liberal and conservative pundits have been pontificating about the Muslim world, usually without a shred of data. I was amused last year to cross swords with some of my fellow conservatives like Scott Johnson and Victor Davis Hanson. These ideologues seem of the opinion that the average Muslim is a crazed polygamist who is ready to blow himself up. No surprise: this is supposedly what Muslims all learn in the school where they read nothing but the Koran! Only pundits who have no exposure to Muslim countries, Muslim history and Muslim people can go on like this.
Kashmiri Muslim woman shout slogans during a protest demanding the bodies of two separatist militants who were killed in a gun battle with the Indian security forces in Baramulla, 55 km (34 miles) north of Srinagar April 23, 2008. The militants including a commander belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen, Kashmir’s main militant group, were killed in the gun battle which started late on Tuesday in Baramulla district, Indian army authorities said. One residential house was completely destroyed in the gun battle, the army added. REUTERS/Fayaz Kabli (INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR)
For such gurus, Islam itself is the problem and nothing short of an Islamic Reformation headed by ex-Muslims like Hirsi Ali and will show the Muslim world where it has gone wrong over the past five centuries. I admire Ali and sympathize with her hardships, but how likely is it that Muslims will follow a woman who the author of a book titled Infidel? In Christianity, the Reformation was led by a devout Martin Luther and not by skeptics and freethinkers like Hume or Voltaire.
Practical difficulties aside, we often forget the simple fact that Islam has been around for 1300 years and Islamic terrorism has been around for a few decades. Yes, one can find isolated instances in Islamic history of fanatical groups like the Assassins, but these are hardly typical of the Islamic regimes that have ruled for centuries. The intelligent questions to ask are, what is it about Islam today that has made it an incubator of radicalism and terrorism? And second, what do most Muslims really think about the West?
Fortunately there is an increasing body of reliable data on Muslim beliefs. One source is the World Values Survey, which has the benefit of tracking opinions over a period of decades. Another is the Gallup surveys which are now under the aegis of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, a group headed by Mogahed. Esposito is one of the most respected American authorities on Islam. I am only getting into their book, but here I offer my own hypothesis, and then I’m going to find out if their data vindicate it.
The problem for Muslims is not Christianity or Judaism. In fact, Islam sees itself as incorporating both in much the same way that Christianity sees itself as incorporating Judaism. Moses and Christ are considered prophets in Islam. If you read the propaganda of the radical Muslims, they almost never condemn the West for being a Christian society. They typically describe the West as an atheist and immoral society. Bin Laden has called America “the leading power of the pagans and unbelievers.”
The problem for most Muslims is Western liberalism. But here we must distinguish between two kinds of liberalism. There is the classical liberalism of the American founding. Call this Liberalism 1. This liberalism is reflected in such principles as the right to vote, to assemble freely, to debate issues, to trade with others, to practice one’s religion, political and religious toleration, and so on.
Read the entire article at >>>>> http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2008/04/28/what_muslims_really_think
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Posted in Catholic Leadership, Protect Children, Democrats of Death at 9:48 am by Brian Schuettler
Focus Shifts to Archbishop Wuerl; Washington Prelate on Hotseat on Pro-Abortion Politicians
By Hilary White
WASHINGTON, April 29, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At the same time as praise and gratitude pours into the office of New York’s Cardinal Egan from the pro-life community for his firm statements on the necessity of denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians, all eyes are now turning to Washington’s Archbishop Donald Wuerl who remains evasive after Senator John Kerry and other prominently pro-abortion Catholic politicians were photographed receiving the Eucharist at the Pope’s Mass.
Wuerl has issued a statement saying, “How to respond to those in public office who support abortion legislation is open to various legitimate pastoral approaches.” This is in sharp contrast to a letter sent four years ago by then-Cardinal Ratzinger saying unequivocally that such public figures “must” be refused Holy Communion.
The New York archdiocese issued a statement saying that the former mayor, Rudolph Giuliani had agreed to refrain from reception of Communion at Mass “because of his well-known support of abortion” and Cardinal Egan said he will be seeking a meeting with Giuliani over the issue. The archdiocese informed LifeSiteNews.com that the issue was being brought forward publicly at this time “because it has become a public issue and a public question.”
But, Giuliani was far from the only notoriously pro-abortion politician who not only received Communion at the Papal Masses, but issued statements ahead of time saying they would do so. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sens. John Kerry, Christopher Dodd and Edward M. Kennedy all attended the Mass in Nationals Park in Washington at the personal invitation of Archbishop Wuerl, and were photographed receiving Holy Communion. Although the news was widespread, along with photos, no statement of correction has been forthcoming from the Washington archdiocese, even while Pope Benedict remained in the US.
Robert Novak, the political commentator and convert to Catholicism, wrote yesterday in the New York Post that the failure to address the situation with a public correction “reflected disobedience to Benedict by the archbishops of New York and Washington.” Now that the Cardinal Archbishop of New York has stepped up to the plate, others are wondering where Archbishop Wuerl’s response is.
But the question of why Archbishop Wuerl has not issued any statement is easy to answer, Novak says. “Wuerl is averse,” he said, “to colliding with powerful laymen”.
“He could have avoided any confrontation at Nationals Park by simply not inviting the pro-choice politicians to a mass where there was no room for the vast majority of Catholics who wanted to attend.”
In the past, Archbishop Wuerl has refused to address the issue of publicly pro-abortion politicians who continue to receive Communion on his episcopal doorstep. Today, in a statement quoted in the New York Times, Wuerl repeated his contradiction of the Pope, saying that there is no absolute ground for refusing Communion.
The statement claimed that Archbishop Wuerl had “consistently and persistently presented the Church’s clear teaching on the evil of abortion and the need for those in public office to recognize that the support of abortion is wrong.”
It then attempted to pass the responsibility on: “The decision concerning the refusal of holy communion to an individual can best be made by the bishop in the person’s home diocese with whom he or she presumably is in conversation.”
But such evasions are not holding water with Catholics who have watched the scandal for years. Philip Lawler, editor of Catholic World News wrote in an editorial that Cardinal Egan’s statement “corrects the record and prevents the further dissemination of a very misleading and damaging perception about Catholic Church teaching and pastoral practice”.
Lawler writes, “It came a bit late, but the public statement by Cardinal Egan chastising Rudy Giuliani is a major step forward for Church leadership in the US. The follow-up question is unavoidable: Why hasn’t Archbishop Wuerl made a similar statement?”
The most prominent Catholic pro-life organisation in the US, American Life League, has issued statements of gratitude to Cardinal Egan that even more firmly underscore the dereliction of duty in Washington.
Judie Brown, American Life League’s president, said, “Those who are in public life -claim to be Catholic- and support abortion are indeed persisting in a grave sin.”
“American Life League’s Crusade for the Defense of Our Catholic Church has been asking American Bishops to enforce Canon 915 since our campaign began in 2003. We are indeed gratified that Cardinal Egan has seen this as a priority as well. Protecting Christ from sacrilege is an honor and we applaud Cardinal Egan for making this clear.”
To contact Archbishop Wuerl
P.O. Box 29260
Washington, DC 20017-0260
Phone: 301-853-4500
Archdiocesan Director of Communications
Susan Gibbs
sgibbs@adw.org
Phone: 301-853-4517
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
New York Cardinal Egan Slams Giuliani for Receiving Communion at Papal Mass - Demands Meeting
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/apr/08042803.html
HLI Leader Says: “I don’t believe Archbishop Wuerl is doing his job”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07011604.html
First Things’ Fr. Neuhaus Criticizes Archbishop Wuerl on Pro-Abortion Politicians Fiasco
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07012501.html
Washington Archbishop Wuerl Speaks Again on Communion for Pro-Abortion Politicians
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07070602.html
Will New Archbishop of Washington Deny Pro-Abort Nancy Pelosi Communion at Jan. 3 Showcase Mass?
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/dec/06122005.html
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Posted in Daily Mass Readings at 7:04 am by Brian Schuettler
Acts 17: 15, 22 - 34
|
| 15 |
Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. |
| 22 |
So Paul, standing in the middle of the Are-op’agus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. |
| 23 |
For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, `To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. |
| 24 |
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, |
| 25 |
nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. |
| 26 |
And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, |
| 27 |
that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, |
| 28 |
for `In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your poets have said, `For we are indeed his offspring.’ |
| 29 |
Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. |
| 30 |
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent, |
| 31 |
because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.” |
| 32 |
Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” |
| 33 |
So Paul went out from among them. |
| 34 |
But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionys’ius the Are-op’agite and a woman named Dam’aris and others with them. ———————————————————————— |
Acts 18: 1
|
| 1 |
After this he left Athens and went to Corinth. |
Psalms 148: 1 - 2, 11 - 14
|
| 1 |
Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise him in the heights! |
| 2 |
Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his host! |
| 11 |
Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! |
| 12 |
Young men and maidens together, old men and children! |
| 13 |
Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven. |
| 14 |
He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him. Praise the LORD! ———————————————————————— |
John 16: 12 - 15
|
| 12 |
“I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. |
| 13 |
When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. |
| 14 |
He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. |
| 15 |
All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you. |
Can you expect to go to heaven for nothing? Did not our Savior track the whole way to it with His tears and blood? And yet you start at every little pain.
— St Elizabeth Ann Seton
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04.29.08
Posted in Protect The Garden State at 2:36 pm by Brian Schuettler
Hi Brian,
Last Wednesday, the steps of the Trenton State House were the scene of a concrete camp-out — over 300 people rallied to save our state parks from Gov. Corzine’s budget cuts.
The same day, the Governor’s staff was testifying to the Legislature, saying the Governor supports “passive recreation” at the nine state parks targeted for closure. But they would still ban swimming and camping. The next day, the Governor proposed corporate sponsorship for state parks.
So, we’re starting to have an impact. But the Governor still doesn’t get it — New Jersey state parks should not be only partially open or sold to the highest bidder.
The Legislature is starting to get the message. Make sure your state senator holds the line on keeping all of our state parks open.
http://www.environmentnewjersey.org/action/preservation/parks2?id4=ES
Sincerely,
Dena Mottola
Environment New Jersey Executive Director
DenaM@EnvironmentNewJersey.org
http://www.environmentnewjersey.org
P.S. Thanks again for your support. Please feel free to share this e-mail with your family and friends.
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Posted in Culture at 9:47 am by Brian Schuettler
A review of There Will Be Blood:
Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson surpasses himself.
by Jean Bethke Elshtain at Books & Culture
Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is to generic movies as Mt. Everest is to an anthill: it towers over what we ordinarily regard as an entertainment. One of our most quirky, ingenious, and religiously steeped filmmakers, Anderson has crafted a dark work of enduring power that features one of the great defining performances in the history of film, Daniel Day-Lewis’ Daniel Plainview. Nothing in Anderson’s previous work quite prepares us for this. Certainly there are hints in Magnolia, with its themes of redemption, revenge, and forgiveness—notable, in part, for Tom Cruise’s brilliant performance in a supporting role. But all the players are superb, especially the inimitable John C. Reilly, whose performance is steeped in a pathos that never turns banal. The interlocking stories of Magnolia conclude with a torrential downpour of … frogs! When I saw the film in a theater in Chicago, there were murmurs of perplexity from exiting filmgoers. “Like, what the hell was the frog thing about?”, I overheard one fellow say, a statement objectionable for two reasons: first, the ubiquitous, distracting, and slightly demented repetition of “like”; second, the illustration of complete biblical ignorance. Ever hear of the plagues Moses called down on the Pharoah and Egypt?
As brilliant as Magnolia was, it seems a confection next to There Will Be Blood. Martin Luther told us that a “lonely man always deduces one thing from the other and thinks everything to the worst,” a quote that Hannah Arendt favored; for her, it illustrated the mindset of totalitarian ideologues as well as psychopaths. Daniel Plainview is one of Luther’s lonely men, a brilliant, driven, stricken person who rivets us in his prime, then enthralls and repels us as we witness his descent into bitter, despairing, alcohol-driven isolation.
I suspect that filmgoers will either be put off or irresistibly drawn into the film from its opening moments. We see Daniel Plainview alone in the bowels of the earth pickaxing an unforgiving wall of rock. We hear jarring, discordant music. We notice at one point that the music has stopped. We hear only the sound of Plainview’s ax and his labored breathing. (Note should be made here of the extraordinary soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood, blessedly free from the lugubrious, over-produced “wall of sound” annoyance so typical of most films. Greenwood’s score deserves every possible accolade as one of the most inventive and scalp-tingling ever composed.) The year is 1898. Daniel labors, suffers a broken-leg, patches himself up, works despite the pain. We do not hear the sound of a human voice for the film’s first 17 minutes by my estimate. The next scenes take place in 1902, then 1911. Plainview presents himself with his young son, H.W. The remainder of the film is a tale of Plainview’s success and his horrific descent—but, oh my, how Anderson, who also wrote the script, and Day-Lewis tell it!
In Plainview’s story we see illustrated what Alexis de Tocqueville identified as the dark side of the coin of American freedom and equality, namely, isolation: we are apart from one another, all the insinuating strands that once linked us having unraveled. In large part, Plainview’s tragedy is that he needs other people the way an addict needs a fix: to triumph over, to kick in the balls (sorry, crude but necessary), to bury, all too literally at one turning point. “I look at people and I see nothing worth liking,” Plainview opines. He also avers that “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed,” words proffered to Henry Plainview, whom Daniel believes to be a long-lost half-brother. Even the mere existence of others in the oil business tears him up. He would be an Emperor who reigns over a desert denuded of life, for he must drive out all others in order to be assured of his own triumph.
The sole exception to Plainview’s remorseless utilitarianism in his “son,” H.W. We first see the child as a baby boy around eight months old, sniffling, miserable, stuck in a ramshackle basket, the child of one of Plainview’s workers whose wife has died in childbirth. (Or so we surmise.) The child’s father is then felled in an accident, sinking into oily muck at the bottom of a well. Plainview adopts the child as his own. He tutors, nurtures, loves the boy, schooling him in the mysterious intricacies of risk-taking: is there oil or is there not on this land? He also uses the boy to good advantage given the resonance of the words, “I’m a family man. This is my son, H.W.,” to which one must add the child’s winsome wholesomeness as another possible attraction for those Plainview hopes to gull with his schemes. (Anderson draws an astonishing performance from newcomer Dillon Freasier.) When H.W. is around ten or eleven, he is deafened in an oil-derrick accident, leaving him unable to hear or to speak. (The score helps us to “hear” the horrors of the ruin of H.W.’s ears with a dissonant roaring after the accident, cuing us in on the condition of the child’s hearing, or lack thereof.) Plainview is devastated. Over time, however, he grows impatient with H.W.: surely the child’s muteness has become willful, surely he could speak if he really tried.
Because Plainview comes to interpret his son’s inability to communicate through speech as opposition to his entreaties, he becomes shorter, more abrupt. But love the boy, he does. It is only after the child mysteriously (maliciously?) sets fire to the house, little more than a shack at that point, that Plainview sends H.W. away to a special school for the deaf, tricking him into believing his father is taking a trip with him. Plainview exits the train at the last moment, leaving H.W. to his factotum to deliver to the institution. As the train pulls away, we see Plainview doubled over in anguish. When the boy returns several years later in the company of a sign-language interpreter, Plainview runs to his son and embraces him, murmuring as he does so, “That does me good, that does me good.”
In the interim, Plainview has been approached by Standard Oil executives, members of a cabal seeking monopoly who would buy Plainview out. One hapless member of this unattractive group attempts to persuade Plainview to sell by insisting that, if Plainview accepted the offer, he could spend more time with his son. Plainview’s response is to promise the man he will sneak into his home one night and slit his throat. “Don’t tell me how to raise my family,” he shouts menacingly, as Day-Lewis uncannily channels the speech of the late, great John Huston, whose stentorian tones could lull and caress you and scare the bejesus out of you, too. (Day-Lewis’ threats are more menacing than anything I have heard on film—save, perhaps, for Anthony Hopkins’ dulcet murmurings to Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs. “People will say we’re in love, Clarisse,” all velvet, drawn out, and deadly.)
A family motif haunts the film and Plainview himself. We join Plainview in our initial skepticism, followed by acceptance, of a man who presents himself as Plainview’s half-brother. (Warning: spoiler material follows!) Plainview figures out that the Henry who has presented himself as his blood relative isn’t such at all but, instead, a drifter who fell in with the half-brother, taking the real Henry’s story as his own following Henry’s death from tuberculosis. The imposter is a harmless soul looking for a place to lay his head and some decent, regular work. Plainview’s vengeance at this deception is swift and horrifying to behold.
Surely, however, H.W. remains family. Now grown up, H.W. marries Margaret, youngest daughter of a family Plainview has in large part bought out. It’s a family that includes the (likely) charlatan preacher Eli Sunday (Upton Sinclair’s caustic representation of the famous evangelist Billy Sunday in his novel Oil, on which the film is very loosely based). Plainview has always been kind and partial to Margaret, chastising (and threatening subtly) her strict father for beating the girl when Margaret refuses to say her prayers on time.
When we arrive at the last forty minutes of this nearly three-hour film, Plainview is a portrait of a giant crumbling. All his virtues—indefatigability, intelligence, eagerness, capacity to dream and to act—have been put at the service of his own ambition, to be sure, and yet at his best, Plainview reminds us of the pagan virtues Augustine grudgingly extols in The City of God. Now, in his descent, those virtues have morphed into the vices of a rabid roaring lion stuck in a cage of his own devising.
Roar! Roar! Plainview drives the married H.W. away with ugly words when H.W. tells his father he wants to go with his wife to Mexico, to get outdoors, go to work, do what his father taught him to do, drill for oil. “You’ll be my competitor,” Plainview roars, and, despite H.W.’s profession of love for his father and his demurrals, Plainview cannot resist. He has to wound the young man: “You’re no blood of mine, you’re not really my son,” for his sole criterion has become blood; “You’re nothing but a bastard in a basket,” stormy, bitter words, pronounced in the rhythm of a driving sledgehammer, Plainview in a drunken range, spittle flying. Thus he guarantees the isolation he both craves and fears: the stunned H.W., with his hapless interpreter by his side, walks away forever.
And then the preacher Eli Sunday reappears, presenting himself to Plainview as a supplicant. After a ritualized danse macabre between the two protagonists, Eli admits that he is broke, he has lost everything in the crash, he needs and wants money and will offer Plainview access, at long last, to land Plainview has long coveted. Plainview strings Eli along, compelling him to confess repeatedly and loudly—”I am a false prophet” and “God is a superstition”—as the price he must pay to secure Plainview’s acceptance of a deal.
Is Sunday a fraud all the way down? This is not absolutely clear to me, perhaps because God can surely use a flawed vehicle to holy ends. I say this because we also witness a scene, through Plainview’s jaundiced eyes, as Sunday “heals” an arthritic woman. Her gnarled hands open up slowly as the congregation gathers round singing “Take it to the Lord in Prayer” (”Are you weak and heavy laden / Burdened with a load of care? / We should never be discouraged / Take it to the Lord in prayer”). Whatever Sunday’s sincerity, this is an authentic moment as a community surrounds and blesses a stricken woman. Plainview betrays a subtle hint of being touched by this moment—it’s all in Day-Lewis’ eyes—but recovers quickly and comments to Sunday as they leave the church, “That was one god damned hell of a show.” In other words, we are brothers under the skin, you and I, we are both in it for ourselves, showmen, a pair. Religious and entrepreneurial excess are twins, a clear message of the film as the two strands intertwine throughout.
And now the end of this line for the pair. “Hah!” Plainview exults, you—Sunday—did all this groveling for nothing. I already have everything I want from that property. I went under it and I drained it, I drained it. At this juncture, when you think Day-Lewis cannot dig any deeper into Plainview’s character—cannot, surely, torment himself further (for Day-Lewis is legendary for staying in character throughout filming, even off camera, making life squirmy for his co-stars)—he does. It is breathtaking to behold.
Read the entire review at >>>>> http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2008/003/2.22.html
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Posted in Catholic Leadership, Authentic Discipleship at 9:33 am by Brian Schuettler
Jim Caviezel
The actor known for playing Jesus in The Passion of the Christ discusses his latest project, a New Testament Audio Bible, along with the reasons that he and his wife adopted two critically ill children.
http://www.christophers.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=740
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Posted in Doctors Of The Church, Authentic Discipleship at 9:25 am by Brian Schuettler
by Bemedit M. Ashley O.P.
An article which appeared in exCHANGE, Vol. 11, No. 4, Winter, 1979.
Sinsinawa Publications, Sinsinawa WI.
These days we are experiencing a revival of interest in the spiritual classics, but the writings of St. Catherine of Siena have not attracted much attention, even among Dominicans. The directed retreat movement has stimulated interest in Ignatian spirituality. People interested in Zen are discovering Meister Eckhart. The Jungians are promoting
The Cloud of Unknowing; while feminists are attracted to Juliana of Norwich who addressed God as “Mother.” But Catherine’s long doctrinal instructions, her use of involved allegories, her stress on obedience to ecclesiastical superiors, and above all her physiological language — her “sweat, blood, and tears” (especially “blood”) — turn off many readers.
However, we are now in a better position to understand and appreciate Catherine and her message. As a result of some rather heated scholarly controversies over the authenticity of her writings and the details of her biography, we now have solid historical information on Catherine, especially in the excellent biography by Levasti.(1) A considerable part, but not all, of her letters have been critically edited.(2) A reliable edition of her Dialogue has been published in beautiful format by Sister Guiliana Cavallini, O.P.,(3) which has been translated into attractive English with introduction and notes by Sister Suzanne Noffke, O.P.(4) A complete translation of the letters and prayers is being prepared by a team of Dominican sisters and is promised publication in two or three years. Undoubtedly Catherine’s sixth centenary in 1980 will see the publication of many studies of her life, writings, and significance for today.
What are some of the results of this research for an understanding of Catherine’s spiritually? First, I would note that critical studies have assured us that we have a substantially correct view of the facts of Catherine’s life and of the authenticity of her letters and the Dialogue, although it is likely that the Dialogue is a composite work and that it underwent some editorial revision by Catherine’s priestly advisers.
Second, it is now clear that while Catherine’s spirituality is authentically Dominican, it belongs to that older and broader tradition of Dominican life which was not specifically or exclusively Thomistic. While Catherine’s thought is essentially in harmony with that of Thomas, it is rooted in popular Dominican preaching, and such vernacular writers as Dominic Cavalca, O.P.,(5) and was also influenced by non-Dominicans, particularly William of Flete, the English Augustinian hermit who was a member of her circle.(6) However, the Franciscan influences, which some have claimed, have not yet been proved.(7)
This broader Dominican tradition was itself “Augustinian” in the sense that it was patristic, rather than scholastic and it was framed largely in the categories of St. Augustine’s mysticism. What makes St. Catherine very clearly Dominican, and thus brings her into harmony with Thomas, is her constant emphasis on the necessity of rooting authentic love of God in the truth of Gospel revelation. Hers is very much a spirituality of the Word appropriate to the Order of Preachers of the Word. At the very beginning of the Dialogue God says to her, “You have prayed for the will to know and to love me, the Supreme Truth” (c. iv) and it is as “Truth” that Catherine constantly calls on God. In this Catherine was in opposition to much of late medieval spirituality which was strongly anti-intellectual.
Third, it seems clear to me that Catherine’s spirituality differs markedly from that of the great Dominican mystics of the same period, Mechtilde of Magdebourg, Bl. Margaret Ebner, Meister Eckhart, Bl. Henry Suso, and John Tauler. Her German sisters and brothers cultivated a profound but very introverted, and somewhat withdrawn, antiinstitutional, and anti-secular type of spirituality, while Catherine’s spirituality is intensely apostolic, directed toward ministry, and very much concerned with the reform of the Church and of secular society, a spirit later manifested in Savonarola.
Fourth, it is very interesting to observe how Catherine transcended the narrow roles in which medieval society and even our own, until recently, confined the members of the Church, dividing the clergy from the laity, religious from non-religious, and women religious from men religious, limiting religious life for women to the cloister. Catherine was a Dominican, but a laywoman, and her circle of disciples included in one family persons of all these neatly demarcated categories. Though a woman she was a powerful leader, who in effect preached to her followers, and guided them spiritually both by personal counseling and through her letters. This did not imply that she had any intention of undermining the ecclesiastical establishment to which she constantly urged obedience, but that in working for a revitalization of the organized Church she was ready to make use of every road open to her, without thought of the risks or criticisms this might entail. For her Church reform did not mean a new set of structures, rather it meant inspiring all the members of the Church in their respective roles to work together as the one living body of Christ. Her spirituality is intensely ecclesial, constantly occupied with the renewal of the Church and of the Dominican Order in the service of the Church and the world.
Fifth, we should note the wonderful union between the contemplative and active life which Catherine achieved. She never had any illusions that she could accomplish anything by her own busy-ness. All her immense activity flowed from her deep, prayerful union with God, for which she had been freed by a rigorous, ascetic discipline. To enter into her prayer life we must understand her symbols. While Catherine often speaks in very clear, theological (but non-technical) language, the depth of her experience is to be found in the symbols which she uses. At first sight these may seem like rather far-fetched allegories in which medievals delighted but which we moderns find puzzling, boring, and often in bad taste.
On closer examination, however, these symbols turn out to be for the most part biblical, and when we relate them to their biblical use we discover that her language is essentially sacramental. Perhaps the most unpleasant to moderns is her constant dwelling on “the Blood.” However, for Catherine “the Blood” is a concrete, physical, symbolic way of making real the abstract notion of “Grace.” The Blood of Christ flows from His heart, that is, from the very depths of His inner life, and flows out into His Body the Church to give life and healing to every one of his members — to each of us. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” and it is this Blood of Christ (His grace His Spirit) which alone can renew the Church. Here again Catherine draws from St. Augustine, as Thomas did, for a profound theology of grace, based on the words, “Without me you can do nothing.”
Undoubtedly it was because Catherine felt this Blood of life beating in her own heart (as expressed in her vision of the exchange of hearts with Jesus, and her experience of being crucified with Him), that gave Catherine that wonderful courage which is perhaps her chief personal characteristic. In her letters to Raymond of Capua (her spiritual director and then the Master General who undertook the reform of the Order which had declined from its practice of poverty and its zeal for preaching) Catherine again and again urges him to put away his excessive timidity and fear of risks. She says to him “Be a man!” by which she really meant, I believe, “Be a woman like me, by the power of the Spirit unafraid.”
NOTES
1 Arrigo Levasti, My Servant Catherine, London, Blackfriars, 1954, unfortunately out of print, but to be found in many Dominican libraries.
2 Eugenio Dupre-Theseider, Epistolario da Santa Caterina da Siena, Rome, 1940, vol.1; the editor did not live to complete this important work. A selection of the letters is available in Vida D. Scudder, Saint Catherine as Seen in Her Letters, N. Y., 1940.
3 Rome, 1968.
4 Published by the Paulist Press in their notable series Classics of Western Spirituality.
5 Dominic Cavalca O.P. (c. 1270-1342) was a famous preacher at Pisa, a city not far from Catherine’s Siena. He was one of the first spiritual writers in Italian, and his The Mirror of the Cross was probably well known to Catherine.
6 Cf. the article “Guillaume de Flete” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité by M. Benedict Hackett, t. 6, colt 1204-1208 which tends to exaggerate this influence, neglecting the fact that Catherine had been raised in a Dominican parish where she had heard Dominican preaching from her earliest years.
7 Fr. Alvaro Grion, O.P. in his Santa Caterina da Siena: Dottrina e Fonti, Cremona, 1953 attempted to trace the influence on Catherine of the Franciscan Spiritual Ubertinus de Casali, but this was well answered by Fr. H. D’Urso, O.P., 4411 pensiero di S. Caterina et le sue font),” Sapienza 7 (1954) pp. 335-88, who showed that the influence of Dominic Cavalca is much more evident.
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Posted in Daily Mass Readings at 7:00 am by Brian Schuettler
John 1: 5 - 10
|
| 5 |
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. |
| 6 |
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. |
| 7 |
He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. |
| 8 |
He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light. |
| 9 |
The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. |
| 10 |
He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. |
Psalms 103: 1 - 4, 8 - 9, 13 - 14, 17 - 18
|
| 1 |
Bless the LORD, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless his holy name! |
| 2 |
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, |
| 3 |
who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, |
| 4 |
who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, |
| 8 |
The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. |
| 9 |
He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger for ever. |
| 13 |
As a father pities his children, so the LORD pities those who fear him. |
| 14 |
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. |
| 17 |
But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children, |
| 18 |
to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. |
Matthew 11: 25 - 30
|
| 25 |
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes; |
| 26 |
yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. |
| 27 |
All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. |
| 28 |
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. |
| 29 |
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. |
| 30 |
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” |
God said: I have placed you in the midst of your fellows so that you may do to them what you cannot do to Me - that is, so that you may love your neighbor freely without expecting any return from him. And what you do to him I count it done to Me.
— St Catherine of Siena
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04.28.08
Posted in Marian Devotion, Renewal Of The Church, Saints at 4:05 pm by Brian Schuettler
EXCERPT FROM THE LOVE OF ETERNAL WISDOM
by Saint Louis De Montfort
Means to acquire Divine Wisdom
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MEANS TO ACQUIRE DIVINE WISDOM
THE FIRST MEANS:
AN ARDENT DESIRE
181. Children of men, how long will your hearts remain heavy and earthbound? How long will you go on loving vain things and seeking what is false? (Ps 4.3) Why do you not turn your eyes and your hearts towards divine Wisdom who is supremely desirable and who, to attract our love, makes known his origin, shows his beauty, displays his riches, and testifies in a thousand ways how eager he is that we should desire him and seek him? “Be desirous, therefore, of hearing my words,”
(Wis 6.12) he tells us. “Wisdom anticipates those who want her. (Wis 6.14) The desire of Wisdom leads to the everlasting kingdom.” (Wis 6.21)
182. The desire for divine Wisdom must indeed be a great grace from God because it is the reward for the faithful observance of his commandments. “Son, if you rightly desire wisdom, observe justice and God will give it to you. Reflect on what God requires of you and meditate continually on his commandments and he himself will give you insight, and your desire for wisdom will be granted.” (Sir 1.26; 6.37) “For Wisdom will not enter into a deceitful soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sin.” (Wis 1.4)
This desire for Wisdom must be holy and sincere, and fostered by faithful adherence to the commandments of God.
There are indeed an infinite number of fools and sluggards moved to be good by countless desires, or rather would-be desires, which, by not bringing them to renounce sin and do violence to themselves, are but spurious and deceitful desires which are fatal and lead to damnation. (Prov 21.25) The Holy Spirit, who is the teacher of true knowledge, shuns what is deceitful and withdraws himself from thoughts that are without understanding; iniquity banishes him from the soul. (Wis 1.5)
183. Solomon, the model given us by the Holy Spirit in the acquiring of Wisdom, only received this gift after he had desired it, sought after it and prayed for it for a long time.
“I desired wisdom and it was given to me. I called upon God and the spirit of wisdom came to me.” (Wis 7.7) “I have loved and sought wisdom from my youth, and in order to have her as my companion and spouse I went about seeking her.” (Wis 8.2,18) Like Solomon and Daniel we must be men of desire if we are to acquire this great treasure which is wisdom. (cf Dan 9.23)
http://www.theworkofgod.org/Library/Montfort/EW4MEANS.HTM#FOURTH%20MEANS:
*****************************************************************************************************************************************************
He was canonized by Pope Pius XII on July 20th 1947, and his feast is kept on the anniversary of his death, April 28th.
The epitaph engraved in Latin on his tomb is an excellent summary of his life:
You who pass this way, what do you see?
A light quenched,
A man consumed with the fire of charity,
Who became all things to all men,
Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort.
If you would know his life, there was none more holy;
If his penance, none more mortified;
If his zeal, none more ardent;
If his devotion to Mary, none more like Bernard.
A priest of Christ, he showed forth Christ in his actions,
and preached him everywhere in his words;
unwearied, he rested only in the grave.
A father to the poor,
protector of orphans,
reconciler of sinners,
his glorious death was the image of his life.
As he lived, so did he die.
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Posted in The Suffering Poor at 11:24 am by Brian Schuettler
Vast amounts of money are flooding the world’s commodities markets, driving up prices of staple foods like wheat and rice. Biofuels and droughts can’t fully explain the recent food crisis — hedge funds and small investors bear some responsibility for global hunger.
Not long ago, Dwight Anderson welcomed reporters with open arms. He liked to entertain them with stories from the world of big money. Anderson is a New York hedge fund manager, and as recently as last October he would talk with enthusiasm about his visits to Malaysian palm-oil plantations and Brazilian grain farms. “You could clearly see how supply was getting tight,” he said.
In mid-2006 Anderson was touting the “extraordinary profitability” of field crops from corn to soybeans. He was convinced that rising worldwide hunger would be synonymous with highly profitable — and dead-certain — investment bargains.
In search of new investments, Anderson sends dozens of his employees to visit agricultural regions around the world. Back in New York, at his company’s headquarters on the 27th floor of an office building high above Park Avenue, they bet on agricultural markets from Peru to Vietnam.
But in the towers above Manhattan’s urban canyons, it’s easy to lose touch with the ground. Hedge fund manager John Paulson was recently celebrated for achieving a record annual profit of $3.7 billion (€2.3 billion). Those who work in this environment have only one rule: Don’t disappoint profit-hungry investors.
“I’m constantly wired,” Anderson used to say, back when he talked to journalists. His nickname in the industry is the “Commodities King,” and his Ospraie hedge fund is the world’s largest. These days, though, Anderson avoids the media. He’s even kept his face out of the media by buying up rights to all photos of himself on the market. His spokesman is now paid, mainly, to say nothing.
A Broken Market?
There are plenty of questions to ask Anderson, though — in particular about the role of international investors in the current spike in the price of staple food. Not only is there talk that investors have profited from desperate hunger in Honduras, the Philippines and Bangladesh; critics also wonder if commodity speculators are making the crisis worse.
On Tuesday in Washington, DC, a regulatory body called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission held public hearings on this very question. Farmers and food producers argued that the market was “broken,” suggesting that the steep rise in the price of staple crops was hurting everyone — farmers as well as the people they feed. “The market is broken, it’s out of whack,” said Billy Dunavant, head of a cotton-producing firm in the United States, at the Tuesday hearing.
Regulators on the commission warned against government intervention, and no doubt fund managers like Anderson would, too. But the crisis keeps deteriorating. India and Vietnam have imposed export bans on ordinary rice. Indonesia is following suit. According to the United Nations, North Korea is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis. After unrest shook countries from Egypt and Uzbekistan to Bangladesh, thousands of South Africans took to the streets of Johannesburg last Thursday to protest high food prices. In Haiti, the prime minister was fired after riots over the price of rice.
Read the entire article at Spiegel on line >>>>> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,549187,00.html
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Posted in Daily Mass Readings at 7:00 am by Brian Schuettler
1 Corinthians 1: 18 - 25
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| 18 |
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. |
| 19 |
For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.” |
| 20 |
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? |
| 21 |
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. |
| 22 |
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, |
| 23 |
but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, |
| 24 |
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. |
| 25 |
For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. |
Psalms 40: 2, 4, 7 - 10
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| 2 |
He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. |
| 4 |
Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods! |
| 7 |
Then I said, “Lo, I come; in the roll of the book it is written of me; |
| 8 |
I delight to do thy will, O my God; thy law is within my heart.” |
| 9 |
I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; lo, I have not restrained my lips, as thou knowest, O LORD. |
| 10 |
I have not hid thy saving help within my heart, I have spoken of thy faithfulness and thy salvation; I have not concealed thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness from the great congregation. |
