Worldly People - Knox

(T)HE CHRISTIAN RELIGION ALWAYS HAS one enemy, and always it is the same enemy, the world ... What do we mean when we talk about "worldly" people? It isn't a very easy thing to explain or to define. But, roughly speaking, I think you can say worldly people are the people who either don't believe in a future life, or don't bother about a future life, and want to make this world as comfortable a place as possible for as many people as possible, always including themselves ... And of course all that was what Pontius Pilate stood for. He didn't care a bit about whether our Lord was the Son of God or not, about whether he broke the Sabbath or not, about whether he kept the law of Moses or not. He only wanted to keep the Jews reasonably contented, reasonably quiet; he didn't want crowds of people going round shouting out slogans like "Hosanna to the Son of David," or "Crucify him" - that kind of thing was bad for public safety, so it had got to be stopped. It wasn't Judas, you see, it wasn't Caiaphas, that crucified our Lord. If they had done it, there was an intelligible motive for doing it. Caiaphas and those others had at least the excuse of wounded professional pride, for wanting to put our Lord to death. Judas had a much more practical excuse - thirty pieces of silver. But Pilate didn't dislike our Lord at all; he was rather impressed by him, he was certainly convinced of his innocence. And yet it was Pilate who crucified him. It was the world of worldly people, with its dislike of a scene, its dislike of a fuss, its doctrine of "Live and let live" that put Jesus Christ to death.

- Ronald A. Knox

Clueless

He just doesn't get it, does he? If he spent one-half his time trying to reach the American public with the same fervor, he might just make some friends.

Meanwhile, he and most of the MSM ignores this. Sigh.

Titian

The Tribute Money (1515) - Titian

Hubris vs. Catholic Truth

How do you compare these personages? Easy - with great similarity and motive. The man on the left, Henry VIII, dissolved the monasteries of England to get lead for his cannon balls from their roofs and money and lands for his nouveau rich gentry flunkies. The man on the right - here receiving an honorary law degree from the University of Notre Dame - wants to dissolve the influence in terms of faith and morals of the Catholic Church with the help of such "royal" personages as the president of Notre Dame, Fr. John Jenkins.

Simple equations in luciferian logic and inference. We have much to learn from the so-called English "reformation".

Pax Christi in regno Christi - Knox

CHRISTENDOM HAS BEFORE NOW taken up arms in its own defence ... Christian princes, before now, have tried to spread the faith at the point of the sword, always, or nearly always, with disastrous results for religion. But the substantial victories of the Church have lain, always, in the sphere of the human conscience. Christ has reigned, not in the councils of nations, but in men's hearts. If every country in the world professed the Catholic religion, set up religious emblems in its market places and voted special honours, special privileges, special revenues to the clergy -- that would not be the reign of Christ on earth. It would not be the reign of Christ on earth if the homage which men paid to religion was merely external, merely political; if they treated the emblems of Christianity merely as an ancestral tradition they were proud of; and a convenient rallying-point for civic sentiment, no more. Christ will reign in the world only where, only in so far as, he rules in human hearts.

- Ronald A. Knox

Botticelli

Madonna del Magnificat (1480-81) - Sandro Botticelli

Our Blessed Lady - Knox

(O)ur blessed Lady does not only recall to us, as the second Eve, our past; does not only encourage us, as the destroyer of all the heresies, amid the jarring voices of the present; she points forward to the future. There is a dark sea we have all to cross, remote from this comfortable world of our experience, opening up new dangers, and wider horizons. Over that sea the calm eyes of our blessed Lady look out, foreseeing the difficulties of our passage. And it was to the order of Mount Carmel that she gave the holy scapular, to be a life-belt in that sea, a talisman amid those unseen perils. She is not content to be our Mother in this world; she will care for us and see us into the next.

- Ronald A. Knox

A Study in Contrasts

We now have a Speaker of the House who is Catholic and, unlike his predecessor, practices what the Church teaches.

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.