A Liberal Episcopalian and the Pope Walk Into...

I can't stand it. THIS is against doctor's orders to take it easy.

Texas Meets Rome, Shakes Hands

Father Z(uhlsdorf) lauds an article by Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review on the Dictatorship of Relativism - The pope bears important truths about the roots of our experiment in liberty.

Pay close attention to Fr Z's commentary in red; his sanctified W. C. Field's asides are well worth the attention!

Modern Rationality? You're Joking, Meis

Morgan Meis of The Smart Set opines,

The pope (was) here. Ratzinger. Pope Benedict XVI. It is thus a good occasion to figure out what this pope is up to. So far he's done two notable things, at least for those of us outside the arms of the Church. He did the first just before he became pope, and that was to meet with the world-renowned German philosopher Jürgen Habermas for a long chat about faith and reason (the title of the discussion: “Pre-political moral foundations in the construction of a free civil society”). The second was to deliver an address at the University of Regensburg. In that address, he mentioned in passing a quote from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus. "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new,” the emperor said in 1391, “and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

This was not received well by the Islamic world. There were riots. Various Islamists threatened to march on Rome, literally, to take the city for Islam. A Christian nun was killed in Somalia. In general, mayhem. The pope later apologized for the fact that his words were taken as an insult. He did not, however, take back the gist of what he was trying to say. Now there's no question that the pope was taking a swipe at Islam. But in the context of the discussion of faith and reason, the swipe comes off a lot differently than how it was picked up in popular media. Basically, the pope accused Islam of holding God so far above reason that there is an absolute split between the two things. Islam, therefore, has no need to justify itself rationally. And thereby it has no need to limit itself in terms of violence or anything else. Whatever serves Allah serves Allah and there's nothing else to say about it. Now one can object to this point in various ways, but it is far from stupid, or uninteresting.

The pope, in essence, was challenging Islam to step up to the plate. He may have made his pitch in a jerky way, but he was essentially inviting Islam to join in with the Logos, the great big argument about how we can make society good. Because the pope does not see Islam as his big problem. Islam — a religion essentially of The Book — is a potential ally in the task of fixing things up. The pope sees the modern Western world as his main problem.

The problem with the modern Western world is that it got all jazzed up on rationality and forgot what that rationality was supposed to be in the service of ...

Read all of He’s got a bone to pick with the Western world.

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The only disagreement I have with Meis is that the modern world is NOT rational; not by a long shot. In fact, as Hilaire Belloc pointed out, the Modern Phase of the attack on the Church is characterized the flagrant disabusing the human race of reason (as well denying the existence of a covenant-making, loving God and Revelation, but that's another topic).

Why else the irrational worship of instincts? The pan-sexual destruction of faith and morals? The any and every stick possible to try to destroy the one place where human dignity and worth is still held as indelible, imago dei?

Yet Meis and other humanists are beginning to "get" the gist of Benedict's mission. Perhaps, just perhaps others, too, will see the light of Christ's hope and return to the Faith vouchsafed in the Catholic Church. Just perhaps.

Malta - Tiny Fortress of Faith

Thomas Basil at New Oxford Review compares Contrasts in Christendom: Red Lights in Amsterdam, Neon In Malta.

And a Nice Smile

Rich Leonardi, the Seditious Catechist, posts on a tribute for the Holy Father from an appreciative but non-Catholic columnist in A quiet pope ... with a sword:

I'm not a Catholic. But somewhere during the funerals for two fallen firefighters April 9, I thought: Nobody does this better than the Catholic Church. When an uncertain world cruelly reminds us how fragile life can be, the magic, tradition, ritual and beauty of a mass soothes the aching heart. It speaks of eternal truth.

You noticed that all by yourself, did you? I did too. Became a Catholic. Glad I did.

No, Not Them Bells, Dylan. These

In honor of my friend Scott Dinsmore over at In the Meantime, here is a piece by Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, Ring the Bells. It begins, "For a long time I did not hear the beauty of church bells; or more accurately, I did not wish to hear it. They sounded only like Christianity..."

Benedict and Belloc

HILAIRE BELLOC, historian (First honors, Oxford), author, and friend of G. K. Chesterton, is known but not widely read today. This is too bad. He knows better the ailments of the dilapidated West today than the talking heads, pundits, and politicians who happen presently to be alive.

Belloc describes in utter lucidity the gradient of the degradation of the West in the chapter of The Great Heresies entitled, "The Reformation." The entire book should be required reading for all concerned with the apparent demise of the West. Suffice it to say that the Protestant hegemony, a truly anti-Catholicism, broke up finally and certainly with the Great War, World War I.

But let it be noted that this breakdown of the older anti-Catholic thing, the Protestant culture, shows no sign of being followed by an hegemony of the Catholic culture. There is no sign as yet of a reaction towards the domination of Catholic ideas - the full restoration of the Faith by which Europe and all our civilization can alone be saved. [141]

Belloc goes then into the final chapter that describes with wincingly accurate ways what he calls "The Modern Phase" or "The Modern Attack."

To many who have no sympathy with Catholicism, who inherit the old Protestant animosity to the Church (although doctrinal Protestantism is now dead) and who think that any attack on the Church must somehow or other be a good thing, the struggle already appears as a coming or present atttack on what they call "Christianity." [143]

This phase of the attack on the Faith is replete with rabid scientific dogmatists like Dawkins or Fleet St. jingoists like Hitchens or separate religionists like the Scimitar-terrorist boys or recrudescent Neo-pagans-R-Us in the mainstream media. It is a dark and apocalyptic time for the Catholic Church in the world, let alone in the West.

ENTER BENEDICT XVI ON HIS MISSION TO AMERICA. The Pontiff leaves the Vatican to celebrate his eighty-first birthday on American soil, meets with his American bishops, celebrates the Blessed Sacrament in two -- count 'em, two -- major league baseball fields, strolls Fifth Avenue, meet with young people and seminarians, and kneels in prayer at Ground Zero, praying for loving forgiveness in the face of heinous and murderous evil.

This aged leader of the Catholic Church has not given up on the West; nor is he about to look fearful before the specters that haunt our televisions, newspapers, or internet-browsing computer monitors. The Holy Father toddled through his stomping-grounds to show that he is Christ's Vicar -- the 265th since St. Peter himself -- and come hell or high water, he will come to bless, to serve, to love, and to spread the Gospel. How about us?

A Human Person, Actually

City Journal's Peter Lawler reviews Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen (Doubleday, 256 pp., $23.95): a powerful philosophical case for protecting embryos.

As opposed, say, to nihilistic neo-pagan Moloch worship and ‘Abortion Art.’

Soaps, Mimesis, & Birth Rates

Is watching the soaps responsible for falling birth rates?? Given the realities of mimesis, the small families depicted on soap operas may be a major influence.

Enoch Powell

Paul Belien begins to voice what many are feeling about the once-taboo British politician: Enoch Powell and his “Rivers of Blood” speech were right.

One would do well to reread James Pinkerton's notion of a "Shire Strategy" in the West.

Mary the Dawn

Mary the Dawn, Christ the Perfect Day;
Mary the Gate, Christ the Heavenly Way!

Mary the Root, Christ the Mystic Vine;
Mary the Grape, Christ the Sacred Wine!

Mary the Wheat, Christ the Living Bread;
Mary the Stem, Christ the Rose blood-red!

Mary the Font, Christ the Cleansing Flood;
Mary the Cup, Christ the Saving Blood!

Mary the Temple, Christ the temple's Lord;
Mary the Shrine, Christ the God adored!

Mary the Beacon, Christ the Haven's Rest;
Mary the Mirror, Christ the Vision Blest!

Mary the Mother, Christ the mother's Son
By all things blest while endless ages run. Amen.

From Sunday Evening Prayer, Corpus Christianum (Little Office of the Virgin Mary)

Stanhope Forbes

A Street in Brittany (1881) - Stanhope Forbes

Address to Young People

Here is the text of the Holy Father's Address to Young People and Seminarians. An excerpt:

My own years as a teenager were marred by a sinister regime that thought it had all the answers; its influence grew – infiltrating schools and civic bodies, as well as politics and even religion – before it was fully recognized for the monster it was. It banished God and thus became impervious to anything true and good. Many of your grandparents and great-grandparents will have recounted the horror of the destruction that ensued. Indeed, some of them came to America precisely to escape such terror.

Let us thank God that today many people of your generation are able to enjoy the liberties which have arisen through the extension of democracy and respect for human rights. Let us thank God for all those who strive to ensure that you can grow up in an environment that nurtures what is beautiful, good, and true: your parents and grandparents, your teachers and priests, those civic leaders who seek what is right and just.

The power to destroy does, however, remain. To pretend otherwise would be to fool ourselves. Yet, it never triumphs; it is defeated...

[Snip]

What might that darkness be? What happens when people, especially the most vulnerable, encounter a clenched fist of repression or manipulation rather than a hand of hope? A first group of examples pertains to the heart. Here, the dreams and longings that young people pursue can so easily be shattered or destroyed. I am thinking of those affected by drug and substance abuse, homelessness and poverty, racism, violence, and degradation – especially of girls and women. While the causes of these problems are complex, all have in common a poisoned attitude of mind which results in people being treated as mere objects ─ a callousness of heart takes hold which first ignores, then ridicules, the God-given dignity of every human being. Such tragedies also point to what might have been and what could be, were there other hands – your hands – reaching out. I encourage you to invite others, especially the vulnerable and the innocent, to join you along the way of goodness and hope.

The second area of darkness – that which affects the mind – often goes unnoticed, and for this reason is particularly sinister. The manipulation of truth distorts our perception of reality, and tarnishes our imagination and aspirations. I have already mentioned the many liberties which you are fortunate enough to enjoy. The fundamental importance of freedom must be rigorously safeguarded. It is no surprise then that numerous individuals and groups vociferously claim their freedom in the public forum. Yet freedom is a delicate value. It can be misunderstood or misused so as to lead not to the happiness which we all expect it to yield, but to a dark arena of manipulation in which our understanding of self and the world becomes confused, or even distorted by those who have an ulterior agenda.

His Real Presence

Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth mini-series stands in a class of its own. Robert Powell's face (pictured above) captures the archetypal image that, for many people of faith, is the face of our Lord as vouchsafed for us in the Shroud of Turin.

A fine presentation that presents convincing evidence of the Shroud's veracity (as well as critics' shoddy efforts to disparage it) is the PBS Home Video episode, Secrets of the Dead – Shroud of Christ? The textile evidence is quite astonishing.

But, of course, the truest affirmation that Our Lord gives us is His Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. It is here that He comes to us - Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity - and we know at our deepest level of being what Edward Schillebeeckx said: "It is existentially impossible to despair in the Presence of Jesus."

Benedict XVI - White House

There were so many fine talks given by the Holy Father on his mission to America. Father James Martin called his homily at St. Patrick's Cathedral one of the best sermons ever. Period. But this clip from the White House lawn gives for my money the best directive from the Vicar of Christ to the major world power. It is worth your ten minutes attention.