Ubi Petrus

In this particular quote which I’ve pulled from God is Near Us, then-Cardinal Ratzinger expounds on Jesus as unifier and in an indirect way, on what true unity is. As he says, true unity is with God, not with a group and thus against a different group. If true unity is unity with God, then by virtue of their unity with God those who share in that unity are in fact united with each other, though not because they intend to be united with one another.

It further reminds us of now-Pope Benedict’s continual reminder that Christianity is and must be referred to as a positive, as something that adds, not as a negative or something that removes or detracts. Through true Christian unity, that of unity with the Father through the Son by the working of the Spirit we will find that we are united in fact even if not by intent with others, united in that one gaze upon the Beatific One.

Life shared with God, eternal life within temporal life, is possible because of God’s living with us: Christ is God being here with us. In him God has time for us; he is God’s time for us and thus at the same time the opening of time into eternity. God is no longer the distant and indeterminate God to whom no bridge will reach; he is the God at hand: the Body of the Son is the bridge for our souls. Through him, each single person’s relationship with God has been blended together in his one relationship with God, so that turning one’s gaze toward God is no longer a matter of turning one’s gaze away from others and from the world, but a uniting of our gaze and of our being with the single gaze and the one being of the Son.

Amy has a post up that starts with Thomas More and in the comments moves rapidly to some great information on the early history of the English translation of the Bible, including information that would be useful to anyone in, or forced in to, apologetics on that subject. Be absolutely sure to read all the comments – it’s another one of those blogosphere goldmines.

From CWN. Apparently support for the understood-to-be-coming-real-soon-now universal indult is, well, universal. It certainly does appear that support for the “do-it-yourself” liturgies is on steep decline as the world re-discovers the wonder and beauty that is the fullness of the Catholic faith. Sometimes a step into the slum is necessary to recover respect for opportunity. As always, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Jan. 8, 2007 (CWNews.com) – A group of English-speaking writers and intellectuals has joined similar groups in France, Italy, and Poland in a statement of support for Pope Benedict’s plans to broaden use of the pre-conciliar liturgy.

In a short 6-paragraph document released on January 6, and entitled “the Epiphany Declaration,” about 40 English-speaking intellectuals indicated their support to the widely expected papal document allowing wider use of the 1962 Missal. The signatories “express our enthusiastic support for any papal initiative” backing the traditional liturgy.

The Epiphany Declaration was organized and circulated by administrators of the New Liturgical Movement web site. The signers include professors, journalists, and authors from the US, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. The full text can be found on that site.

The document notes that a generation ago, in 1971, another group of prominent intellectuals urged Pope Paul VI to preserve the traditional Latin liturgy, recognizing it as “a spiritual and cultural treasure of inestimable value.”

The Epiphany Declaration observes that a papal initiative allowing greater use of the 1962 Missal would satisfy the “rightful aspirations” of many Catholics, and could also enrich the post-conciliar liturgy. The signatories indicate their belief that the expected document “will positively contribute to the ongoing efforts to implement the liturgical reforms promulgated by the Second Vatican Council.”

[Phil Lawler, the editor of Catholic World News, is one of the signers of the Epiphany Declaration.
Readers who wish to add their name to the document can do so on the New Liturgical Movement web site.]

I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite ‘brain-buster’ subjects to contemplate is God’s concept of time. Personally, so far, I have not come across a better explanation than C.S. Lewis’ term, “the ever-present Now”. I find it a particularly useful thing to wrap my head around since it’s something that people trying to come to grips with their faith (say, in RCIA) often run into – the seeming contradiction of God’s perfect vision of all of time at once and His gift to us of free will. Lewis does a good job of un-tieing the (usually self-made) knot in Mere Christianity:

Another difficulty we get if we believe God to be in time is this. Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call ‘tomorrow’ is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call ‘today’. All the days are ‘Now’ for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday, He has not. He does not foresee you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him.

Fr. Z. tells us the Pope has apparently phoned the reluctant French bishops and convinced them of the propriety of the pending Motu Proprio freeing up the use of the Tridentine Mass. Personally, whenever I get an unexpected phone call from my boss my heart goes in my throat, so I can’t even comprehend the reaction one would have getting a phone call from the Pope.

Now I must also admit that I have never actually participated in any way in a Tridentine Mass, since there are none in New Hampshire (the closest I believe in Boston, MA) so I don’t have the direct affection for it, but I do sympathize with those who suffer with the abuses of the Missal of Pope Paul VI (Novus Ordo as we all call it) some like to foist on us. Note the proper emphasis in that statement – “abuses of“, not “abuses in” – I do believe it is possible to have, and have personally seen, very reverent N.O. Masses. Even versus populum. I do, however, also agree that the freedom of the N.O. Mass combined with versus populum and combined with the far more damaging culture into which it was introduced originally can lead to abuses. That is why I believe allowing both rites to exist alongside each other is a positive action. It is my firm hope that those who continue to abuse the Pauline Missal will see this Motu Proprio as a signal that the time for personal creativity at the altar is over. If that is the only effect of this Motu Proprio it will be one of the most important documents of this century. Oremus, fratres! (I’m sure someone will correct my Latin if I’m wrong there.)

From the “I’m shocked – shocked” department, via CWN:

Jan. 5, 2007 (LifesiteNews.com/CWN) – By John-Henry Westen

The New York Times is seriously contemplating removing its public editor (ombudsman) position, which was instituted in 2003 to be an independent voice for the public within the paper in order to maintain credibility, LifeSiteNews reports. The new move comes in the wake of current public editor Byron Calame’s confirmation that LifeSiteNews was correct in asserting that the Times made a major error in reporting on criminal penalties for abortion in El Salvador.

The first recorded mention of the intention to axe the position was raised at a December 15 New York Times meeting when executive editor Bill Keller raised the idea. That meeting was held about a week after Calame began asking very uncomfortable questions of senior editors at the Times, and receiving in response terse replies rejecting his warnings that the NYT magazine had been caught in a serious error which deserved correction.

With information from contacts in El Salvador, LifeSiteNews had pointed out that the cover article in the NYT magazine of April 6 claimed falsely that some women in El Salvador were imprisoned for thirty years for illegal abortions. LifeSiteNews published the full court ruling in the case, which showed that rather than being jailed for a clandestine abortion, as the Times magazine asserted – the case study cited actually concerned infanticide of a full-term baby.

Calame describes his struggle with the editors of the Times in the pages of the paper saying, “After the English translation of the court ruling became available on Dec. 8, I asked Mr. Marzorati (NYT magazine editor) if he continued to have ‘no reason to doubt the accuracy of the facts’ in the article. His e-mail response seemed to ignore the ready availability of the court document containing the findings from the trial before the three-judge panel and its sentencing decision.”

Calame also struggled with the Times’ standards editor. “I asked Mr. Whitney if he intended to suggest that the office of the publisher bring the court’s findings to the attention of those readers who received the ‘no reason to doubt’ response, or that a correction be published,” writes Calame. He notes that no decision to issue a correction had been made despite the overwhelming evidence.

Soon after these exchanges the December 15 meeting occurred at which the proposal to eliminate the public-editor position was raised.

In his December 31 publication of the article exposing the NYT magazine story errors, Calame concludes, “One thing is clear to me, at this point, about the key example of Carmen Climaco. Accuracy and fairness were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have a right to expect.”

Calame told LifeSiteNews that his personal position at the Times was not in question since his “non-renewable, two-year contract to serve as public editor ends May 8, 2007.”

LifeSiteNews contacted Times spokesman Abbe Serphos for comment, but she did not respond by press time.

Hmmm… Journalistic malpractice at the NYT? As I said at the top, I’m shocked – shocked to hear of it. No…wait… I’m not. Here’s hoping the continued negative attention their thinly-veiled political maneuverings are getting for them eventually forces them to retreat to some level of respectable journalism. I’m not expecting to hold my breath for it though. Sadly.

From then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s God is Near Us:

There is only one Christ. Wherever the Eucharist is celebrated, he is wholly and fully present. Because of that, even in the most humble village church, when the Eucharist is celebrated, the whole mystery of the Church, her living heart, the Lord, is present. But this Christ, fully present, is yet at the same time one. That is why we can only receive him together with everyone else. He is the same, here or in Rome, in America or in Australia or in Africa. Because he is one, we can only receive him in unity. If we were opposed to unity, we would be unable to meet with him. For that reason, every celebration of the Eucharist has the structure we find in the Communicantes, that of communion not only with the Lord but also with creation and with men of all places and all times. This, too, is something we ought to take to heart anew, that we cannot have communion with the Lord if we are not in communion with each other; that when we go to meet him in the Mas, we necessarily go to meet each other, to be at one with each other. Therefore the mentioning of the bishop and the pope by name, in the celebration of the Eucharist, is not merely an external matter, but an inner necessity of that celebration. For the celebration of the Eucharist is not just a meeting of heaven and earth; rather, it is also a meeting of the Church then and now and a meeting of the Church here and there‘ it assumes that we visibly enter into a visible unity, one that cna be described. The names of the bishop and the pope stand for the fact that we are truly celebrating the one Eucharist of Jesus Christ, which we can receive only in the one Church.

I find two things particularly striking. First, and perhaps this is only because I continue to be temporal-mechanics-challenged, the realization that communion in the “with each other” sense is not limited to those here, or even those in the universal Church of today but encompasses, in God’s outside of time capacity, communion with those before and after us. That’s something that will make my head hurt a touch if I continue to contemplate it for a while.

The second thing is the amazing ease with which he systematically moves us from “communion with others” to the need for the one Church. This is a argumentation that should be learned by everyone that has to deal with those who would rather horizontalize our faith and the Mass. If you can get one of those folks to realize our unity is not because of each other but because of our union with Christ, they will have taken a big step towards understanding the truth of Christian unity.

From CWN:

Moscow, Jan. 2, 2007 (CWNews.com) – The Russian Orthodox Church is considering canonical sanctions against Bishop Basil Osborne, who headed the Russian Orthodox community in Great Britain, but has transferred his allegiance to the Orthodox patriarchate of Constantinople.

The Russian Orthodox Synod warned Bishop Basil that he is subject to canonical action after he ignored a summons to Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported. The British prelate could be defrocked, the Synod observed, but action would be postponed until representatives of the Moscow patriarchate discussed the case with their counterparts from the patriarchate of Constantinople.

Earlier in 2006, Bishop Basil had announced his plans to affiliate with the Constantinople patriarchate, and been received under that jurisdiction. The Moscow patriarchate responded by suspending the prelate’s right to celebrate the divine liturgy and preside over the Russian Orthodox community in London.

The Moscow patriarchate– which is by far the largest of the world’s Orthodox communities– has been in tension with Constantinople in recent years. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople has traditionally been recognized as the “first among equals” of the patriarchs in the Orthodox world.

In September, during the discussions of a joint Catholic-Orthodox theological commission, representatives of the Moscow patriarchate challenged a joint statement that, in their view, gave undue emphasis to the authority of the Constantinople patriarch. A Russian Church spokesman explained that the Moscow patriarchate could not accept “an ecclesiological model in which the Patriarch of Constantinople occupies the place of an ‘Eastern Pope.”’

Boy, and people think we in the Latin Church have issues with ecumenism. I quite frankly don’t know what to make of the whole thing. Is it good that they’re “defending their turf” or bad that they’re being quite so, well, Russian about it? It does make me wonder whether the positive response Pope Benedict got during his trip to ConstantinopleIstanbul will make approaching the Russian Orthodox even harder now. Regardless, it certainly seems it will be a hard nut to crack and could take a long, long time and a lot of effort.

Yes, I know what I’m going to say is already dated in this 24×7 immediacy world in which we live. But that’s what happens after days of head-cold-induced sleep deprivation. Anyway, to my point. Yesterday, 1/1, I pulled off the last page of my John Paul II quote-a-day calendar and behind it was … a blank page. This is interesting in two ways. One, I’d expected an advertisement for something. Two, it was like a perfect rendition of what January 1 represents – a new start, a blank slate.

It also served as a reminder of the wonderful blessing of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and how we are given a blank page to work on afterwards. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Is 1:18)

And again, it provided pause to consider the greatest slate-wiping succession of events ever in creation – the Birth, Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. How perfectly coincidental that this should come so closely after we celebrate the beginning of this miraculous sequence.

Amazing, is it not, how much God can make out of … nothing?