Purgatory, Holy Souls and Us - Knox

Dante gazes at Mount Purgatory (1530) - Agnolo Bronzino

IF YOU ACCEPT THE FULL teaching of the Church - I am perhaps speaking to some who do not, but they must pardon me for parting company with them here - if you accept the full teaching of the Church, these scruples (of unworthiness) will be sublimated for you by the doctrine of purgatory. We have, most of us, a despairing sense of inadequacy when we contemplate the holiness of God's saints, and compare our own record with it; we have, many of us, a feeling almost of envy when we visit people, or hear of people, whose life seems nothing better than one long round of suffering. Why is it that this discipline of suffering has fallen so little on us, who need it so greatly? If I may use a modern phrase, we are appalled at the differential. It straightens things out for us, if we believe that after death we shall go through a period of waiting and of discipline before we can become what we long to be, yet almost fear to be - perfect souls.

So, all through the month of November, we (remember) in our prayers the needs of the faithful departed; the holy souls, we call them, but we mean that they are not quite holy enough. What picture are we to form of those needs? We shall not find, I think, even in Dante, much aid to the imagination. But we can, perhaps, get some glimpse of what it all means if we concentrate our attention on the ancient prayer which the Church uses in this connection: "Grant them, O Lord, eternal rest, and may perpetual light shine upon them."

- Ronald A. Knox

Realities of Holy War

In light of recent events, far away (and yet not so very) and close to home, it becomes necessary to examine why the Scimitar lends itself in our present-day to extreme violence.

Father James V. Schall, S. J. writes on what is slow to dawn on the non-Scimitar mentality in A Jihadist Conquest.

From a mimetic theory vantage point, it must be noted that the Scimitar carries all the attributes of what René Girard calls "the primitive sacred" - a deity who "on the record" has no problem with the slaughter of the unfaithful, such values that cannot be reformed by anything resembling progressive revelation or newer prophets who speak for a loving, universal Providence like that of the Judeo-Christian God, and promises of paradise to those who do the sacrificing of the unfaithful.

These are the realities of the Scimitar's notion of holy war. As opposed, say, to those of Christian notions of legitimate defense and chivalry.

Anyone for Tea?

I've got to say, the Tea Party folks are reminiscent of my parents' generation at their prime - roughly the 1955-68 time frame. They are nothing if not generically American, conservative in morals and values, suspicious of centralized governance, and fiscally responsible at home and expecting the same from legislators - an expectation sorely and ridiculously exploited the last two years.

The Tea Party will look vvery carefully at the Republicans they successfully vote into office on Tuesday, and then decide whether or not to become the first and true viable third political party in American politics EVER.

Catholics may or may not want to become part of the Tea Party; time will tell because, as is always the case, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, as Lord Acton observed. Nothing is forever, particularly party politics (Dante immortalized this in The Divine Comedy).

Meanwhile, blithering theological idiots like this fellow make the Tea Party a pleasure to watch and cheer for the time being.

Chaput - Good Knights

Archbishop Charles Chaput in his speech to the U. S. Air Force Academy calls for a new knighthood.

JPII Cultural Center - Sold!

Rocco Palmo reports that the John Paul II Cultural Center has been sold - to the Dominican Sisters of Mary, that fast growing order. Here is a video that the Sisters have produced telling of the good news:

Hope of Glory - Knox

The Resurrection (15th c.) - Piero delia Francesca

AT LAST CAME one who saw that (mortal) conflict with level eyes, and faced the future with untroubled brow. He had power, he said, to lay down his life, and power to take it again. No fear of human violence assailed him; when the Galileans would have cast him down from the top of a hill, he passed securely through their midst ... Then, at a time he himself had predicted, making all his arrangements with leisurely forethought, and comforting his friends against the trial that was in store for them, he went to his death voluntarily ... and on the third day he left his tomb empty.

With that action he broke the spell that had chained humanity so long. Immediately after his death, his followers began to spread through the world, living a life of self-discipline and, where need arose, of heroic self-sacrifice, in the unquestioning hope that they, too, would be counted worthy of this Resurrection which they had seen and handled in his flesh. He did not simply convince men that he had risen; he convinced them that they would rise. That change of the body from a passible to a glorious state, which they admired as a portent in him, they looked forward to as a common experience for themselves, did they but become, through faith and through the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, concorporate with him.

He died that he might institute such means of grace; he died that he might obliterate the curse of sin under which our race laboured; he died that he might encourage us to follow heroically in his footsteps; he died that we might learn how intimate a place suffering has in the economy of our existence here. He died also, that he might assume for our sakes, while he was yet on earth, that Resurrection body whose true home and medium of activity is elsewhere; we should see with our eyes, and our hands should handle, the Word of Life.

- Ronald A. Knox

Benedict - On Immigration

A prophetic word comes from the Holy Father - a small thing, a cloud no larger than a man's hand - namely, states have the right to defend their borders and regulate migration flow, while - of course - treating migrants with human dignity here.

Purgatory - Foothills of Heaven

Rapidly approaching the Month of Holy Souls, here is your review sheet on Purgatory, compliments of Rev. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Monsignor Ronald Knox, remember, had thoughts on the subject too. Like this: " ... death strips us; puts away the toys we cherished. Shrouds have no pockets; a cheque signed by a dead man is no longer honoured."

Collins PRB

Convent Thoughts (1851) - Charles Allston Collins

Knox - Purgatory

YOU AND I, MAYBE, after death, will find ourselves in the twilight state known as purgatory. Saved (please God) by faith in the risen Christ, we shall not yet be partakers in the glory of his Resurrection.

Preachers who discuss the conditions of that intermediate state are apt to lay stress on the severity of the divine punishments. They may be right; it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Only, I dare to hope that the severity of it will be relieved by something we had no right to expect, something we had never been told about, the influence of our blessed Lord's passing, on Easter Eve, through the place of departed spirits. The holy water still glistens on your table when the priest has come and gone; what if our Lord, on that first Holy Saturday, blessed it once for all with the lustration which time can never efface? I like to think of purgatory, however long and however dreary it be, as consoled in some measure by the consciousness that he has been there before us; as a process of passing onwards from room to room, always with the sense that the presence of one we love has only just been withdrawn. Not strong enough, yet, to follow him out into the sunlight, we shall follow him eagerly through the dark. Is that fanciful?

At least let me say this: I think we do well ... to remember our dead. No, do not exclaim that I am a kill-joy, clouding your festival with sad thoughts ... But consider, when you see our Lord represented as rising from the tomb with a banner in his hand, it is the symbol of a military penetration; he, the Victor, in rolling back the stone has made a breach in the enemy's lines, for what? So that the army of his redeemed may pour through at his heels. Or, if you will use St Paul's metaphor, his is the first birth out of death; he has opened the barren womb of extinction, not for himself only but so as to be the first-born of many brethren. Vidi aquam - our Lord's Resurrection is the opening of the springs; the full river has yet to flow. It broadens out, reaches its fulfillment, in ours.

- Ronald A. Knox

The Curse

As Notre Dame got stomped by Navy (again), one sees with how much intensity Navy plays.

Notre Dame used to play with a chip on its shoulder; as though something set it apart from everybody else.

You don't suppose that as Notre Dame has whittled off the edges of its Catholic faith and morals, the intensity it once possessed - what made Notre Dame distinct, different, set apart - has dwindled on the playing field, do you?

They LOOK big, strong, well-fed, and well-funded. Too bad looks don't translate into wins.

Consequential Judgment - Nations

Not that I am advocating extremism that can lead deplorably to the dehumanization of scapegoating; rather, I am saying simply that abortion is - absolutely, categorically, magisterially - demonic. But this category has been cast out with the bathwater by materialists - along with the baby, I hasten to add. Abortion and its industry of easy, disposable human life has been swept clean even the possibility of personal evil. They have made their charnel house clinically-clean and sanitized; empty and awaiting that which they deny even exists.

The poor, besotted secularist atheists who live their cool and detached lives of quiet lack of charity need to read and digest Matthew 12, 43-45 vvery carefully.

And, as theologican Peter Kreeft points out here, abortion IS demonic.

The Right Way to be a Catholic

IT IS EASY TO get a name for broad-mindedness and good-fellowship by setting out to be a Catholic with a difference, half-agreeing with all the prejudices of your Protestant friends, making out that you are really paying rather a compliment to our holy religion by belonging to it; you who take it all so very calmly, so far removed from bigotry or fanaticism. But that is not the right way to be a Catholic. The right way to be a Catholic is to feel yourself all the time, a member of the Church Militant, a limb, living with the life of the whole, sharing its well-being and its discomforts, belonging to it, not talking as if it belonged to you. The right way to be a Catholic is to be associated with the essential activity of the Church, through prayer for the triumph of the truth and the conversion of sinners; as our Lord was when he kept his last appointment in Gethsemani, tempted, once more, by the prince of the powers of darkness.

- Ronald A. Knox

Invitation - Ora et labora

Are you acquainted with the Apostleship of Prayer? Many join with the Holy Father in these intentions in a Morning Offering each day. Indeed, with the two other conditions, this is crucial to fulfilling the requirements for a plenary indulgence.

And, while I am at it, you are cordially invited to join at no cost (yet at all cost) an international organization dedicated to Marian chivalry, the renewal of Christendom and the family, and praying for the Holy Father called Corpus Christianum.

I assure you: chivalry, prayer, and the life abundant are quite alive. You are invited to this needful vocation.

Millais PRB

A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford (1857)

Sir John Everett Millais