Ubi Petrus

Thanks to a reference from American Papist, I’ve added an “I Support The Pope” banner as you can (hopefully) see. His post on the topic is here: “I Support the Pope” banners. I like the idea of expressing our support for our Pontiff not only at times like this, with all the tempest in a teapot furor going on over his Regensburg speech, but in general. For a further show of support, send him an email – Michelle Malkin has his address here.

Over at his blog at Fox News, Father Jonathan wrote a thought-provoking piece on what this world could look like in 2051 if our culture of laissez-faire spirituality continues. The essence of the story is very true – if we forget why we care, if we abandon what is important in the name of relativism we lose our cultural soul.

While he frames this against the backdrop of the War on Terror, I think it also points to a more general truth which is equally valid in areas like our very own Catholic Church. If, for convenience or out of laziness, we allow ourselves to forget why we proclaim our faith, to forget the sheer greatness of our faith and fall into the well of “each religion is equally true and equally good” we begin to lose our faith not just in our faith but in God Himself.

A snippet to whet the pallet:

By 2025, Europe had officially denied its Christian roots. In the name of tolerance and diversity, it had separated human values from morality and morality from God. The result was a stifling dictatorship of moral and religious relativism. In the minds of the youth, there was now, in effect, no such thing as absolute good or bad. Democracy, for example, was optional like everything else, and then it just disappeared. At first, nobody seemed to care.

Diogenes has this story at CWN. I agree with several of the commenters – my appetite is absolutely lost. A snippet:

A single mum in Scotland is taking legal action to get 250,000 pounds from the National Health Service. Pregnant with twins at 16, she went for an abortion, and the Health Care Providers only succeeded in bagging one of the targets. The survivor is now five years old and starting school. A heart-warming story of safe, legal, imperfectly rare feticide, and its friends:

To quote Buggs Bunny, *twitch* *twitch*

From Brit Hume’s blog on Fox News:

Offended Christians have sent nearly 2,000 letters to The University of Virginia’s student newspaper, The Cavalier Daily, calling on the paper to apologize for a series of cartoons mocking their religion, including one portraying the Virgin Mary with an “immaculately transmitted” rash.

Editor-in-chief Michael Slaven says the paper will not apologize simply because someone is offended, saying newspaper policy allows cartoons to ridicule a group for it’s own “opinions or actions.”

But Slaven did issue an apology for a religious cartoon in February, after a widespread student protest. That cartoon poked fun at the Muslim prophet Mohammad.

Surprised? Neither am I. A sure sign of a sick and depraved society is when it hates itself. The title “Slouching Towards Gomorrah” comes to mind.

We had our first RCIA meeting yesterday and I thought it went pretty well. Particularly from the perspective that I managed to keep myself out of trouble (thus the subject of this post) . We had one inquirer show up; two more couldn’t make it due to scheduling issues and another for a reason I don’t clearly recall. That’s smaller than I’m used to from my old parish, but this is also a much smaller parish. The discussion was good and lighthearted which was good considering there was six team members to the one inquirer. No need to scare the poor guy… This coming week should be fun as we start to really get into the meat of the matter, starting with a session on “Sharing our Journey & Prayer”. Orate, fratres!

Incidentally, we’re using the Come and See series from St. Anthony Messenger Press, which is based on their Catholic Update series. If anyone who reads this blog happens to have an experience with either Come and See or Catholic Update, please do let me know what you think. I’ve asked around a bit and gotten back both good and bad reviews. I’m concerned in that some of the articles I’ve read thus far seem to be contrary to Church teaching but perhaps that is viewed as a good teaching tool. For me, however, it will be an exercise in prudence and patience. I’ve been advised to gently correct wherever I feel an article may misstate the issue; I can only hope my gentility is in full force – that Irish temper is a tough thing sometimes.

Browsing at American Papist this morning I came across the Pope’s speech to the Bishops of Ontario. I was stopped dead in my reading at the following paragraph:

False dichotomies are not unknown within the Christian community itself. They are particularly damaging when Christian civic leaders sacrifice the unity of faith and sanction the disintegration of reason and the principles of natural ethics, by yielding to ephemeral social trends and the spurious demands of opinion polls. Democracy succeeds only to the extent that it is based on truth and a correct understanding of the human person. Catholic involvement in political life cannot compromise on this principle; otherwise Christian witness to the splendour of truth in the public sphere would be silenced and an autonomy from morality proclaimed (cf. Doctrinal Note The Participation of Catholics in Political Life, 2-3; 6). In your discussions with politicians and civic leaders I encourage you to demonstrate that our Christian faith, far from being an impediment to dialogue, is a bridge, precisely because it brings together reason and culture.

The highlighted sentence really stuck in my head. So many these days lament the seeming failure of politics to solve the great issues of the day, be they poverty, energy, war, terrorism, illegal immigration or what have you. But one must simply be impressed by the clarity of the statement from the Pope. We fail in these things because we fail to base our work on “truth and a correct understanding of the human person.”

He goes on to hammer the “dictatorship of relativism” (what a term!) and I find it inescapable how clearly this outlines the problems we face. No one is allowed to face a problem and confront it as it is because “truth” is now considered a four-letter word. Jesus tells us, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life”. If our politicians consider truth a concept beneath them, what does that say about their feelings on the one Who is Truth?

Spurred to a bit of interest in this issue by a discussion (and also here) over at Open Book, I thought anyone else interested in the issues of Marcan vs. Matthean priority would be interested to see how the Didache series from Midwest Theological Forum handles the question. In the New Testament section from the Introduction to Catholicism book, we find:

According to written testimony from the second century, Matthew was the first to write a version of the Gospel. Eusebius wrote in his history that Matthew wrote the “oracles of the Lord.” Matthew wrote his Gospel in Palestine and addressed it to Jewish people living in Palestine. He is thought to have written the original version in Aramaic, the language of the Jewish people at that time, between A.D. 50 and 69, several years before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, which occurred in A.D. 70. The version of Matthew’s Gospel that the Church now possesses was written in Greek around A.D. 70, possibly after St. Mark’s Gospel was written.

Interesting how in the last sentence they slide right past the Marcan/Matthean issue and that they also include the recent research which suggests the original language for the New Testament was not necessarily uniformly Greek. And you’ll note that ‘Q’ doesn’t make an appearance anywhere.
Update: Links would have been nice…

On the way to my house there are two churches within a few hundred feet of each other. One is a beautiful brick Catholic church with a still-in-use bell tower and wonderful stained glass windows. The other is a very classical New England Protestant church (UCC I believe, but it’s not emminently clear) with its own wonderful steeple and beautiful pillared entrance. It is aside from their individual physical beauty is where the two houses of worship begin to diverge.

The Catholic church has been twinned with another parish a few miles away, itself a beautiful stone building with magnificent stained glass windows and a bell tower that dominates the entire skyline of that part of the city. There is one Mass on Sunday and an anticipatory Mass on Saturday evening; other than that I’m not even sure when the physical building is open.

The Protestant church by comparison has seemingly constant activity with concerts, youth fairs, guest speakers and more. Just the other day as I drove by there was a worker atop a very tall ladder re-painting the columns at the front of the church. They also have a sign by the road that is updated normally at least once a week with different Bible verses and thoughtful sayings. One currently finds a quotation from Matthew 11:28:

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

And this, I realized, is where the two churches truly diverge. The Protestant church is busy with all sorts of activities and speaks to us of the sayings of Christ. But where is the He that speaks the “Come to me”? He is not here but only replays of His words and retelling of His deeds. But the Catholic church, in all its quiet and seeming inactivity, has the answer none other can give. He is here. Fully. Completely. His Body is over there, in the tabernacle. He calls to us, in silence. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

To honor the renaming of the Plaza in front of Notre Dame Cathedral after Pope John Paul II several protest groups showed up complaining the honor was being bestowed upon, by others names, an assassin. Diogenes nailed these … hmmm … I’m searching for an appropriate word in Christian charity for these folks. Anyway, he nailed them:

In what way was Pope John Paul an assassin? Follow me closely here: Believing that human beings are endowed with free will, the Pope insisted that they are able to choose not to sin. Confronted with the fact that one particular sin exposes the sinner to, and transmits, a lethal illness, he repeated the teaching of the Church that the answer was, not to choose to sin safely, to but choose not to sin at all. Yet many people made the choice contrary to the one the Pope counseled, and died. Ergo, he murdered them.

Got it? Clear as mud to me. And then just to put some icing on that cake, he repeats a very accurate insight:

other institutions are held responsible for hardships resulting from obedience to their teachings; the Church is held responsible for hardships resulting from defiance of hers.

It’s amazing the lengths to which people will rewrite their understanding not only of history but the present to justify the life they choose to lead. Unfortunately for them, God does not depend on a human telling of history when the time comes for their Judgement. I’m sure someone will tell me that’s a threatening statement.