Ubi Petrus

There was a time not so long ago when the ringing of church bells to mark the major hours of the day was as common as the sunrise.  Now we come to find out that in some places it can get the pastor of that church thrown in jail.  It may well be that this will be overturned on further appeal and will simply blow away as the dust of another silly judicial decision.  Or it may indeed be, as Fr. Zehnle suggests, the beginning of a new level of persecution.

For my part, let me just ask this:  if we as Catholics hadn’t given away this tradition, both in building new churches without bell towers and in a concession to the surrounding culture, would this even be a question of the free exercise of religion?  Put another way, when we decide to drop a tradition en masse, how can we later claim its practice to be an important part of the practice of our faith?  Lesson learned:  be careful when deciding something isn’t important to the faith – you might just have a problem getting it back later.

There’s something about looking at Scripture, turning it a bit sideways and seeing what is there that’s just eminently appealing to my quirky little mind.  Tom at Disputations finds a rather interesting connection in today’s Gospel reading for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord (Lk 2:22-40) in the roles of Anna and Simeon.  Is he right?  I don’t entirely know, but there is surely something to the thought.

Sometimes questions just hit you, things you’ve blindly accepted without mental bother for years suddenly become a pressing question in your mind.  This weekend clear out of the blue I realized I had absolutely no idea why we Catholics call the Eucharistic bread a “host”.  It seems a word with a host … *ahem* … a plethora of potential meanings, none of which really seem to apply and some of which would lead directly to such heresies as transfiguration (which holds the consecration creates a “figure” of Jesus’s Body) and consubstantiation (holding that Jesus’s Body and Blood co-resides with the bread).  Since teaching heresy didn’t seem to be a decent reason for the word, I had to look it up.

The New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia has this, in part:

According to Ovid the word comes from hostis, enemy: “Hostibus a domitis hostia nomen habet”, because the ancients offered their vanquished enemies as victims to the gods. However, it is possible that hostia is derived from hostire, to strike, as found in Pacuvius. In the West the term became general chiefly because of the use made of it in the Vulgate and the Liturgy (Romans 12:1; Philippians 4:18; Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 10:12; Mabillon, “Liturg. Gall. vetus”, pp. 235, 237, 257; “Missale Mozarab.”, ed. Leslie, p. 39; “Missale Gothicum”, p. 253). It was applied to Christ, the Immolated Victim, and, by way of anticipation, to the still unconsecrated bread destined to become Christ’s Body. In the Middle Ages it was also known as “hoiste”, “oiste”, “oite”.

In time the word acquired its actual special significance; by reason of its general liturgical use it no longer conveyed the original idea of victim.

Perhaps that’s all there is to it.  But somehow in Catholicism it seems the answer to a question this old never has just one string.  So… does anyone have anything else to add to this?

LifeSiteNews gives us this mortifying news:

A national group that promotes abortion and homosexual rights has deep ties with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, according to a report released Monday.

Top USCCB executive John Carr held simultaneous leadership roles, creating a conflict of interest, with the USCCB and the radical Center for Community Change.

…

John Carr’s relationship with the Center for Community Change goes back at least to 1983, serving in leadership roles from 1999 to 2006 – including as chairman of the board.  The Reform CCHD Now report details the organization’s promotion of abortion, “reproductive rights” and homosexuality as among the CCC’s core advocacy focuses.

As one commenter at Patrick Madrid’s blog put it:  “Our bishops are not stupid men; they must have been aware of this for some time.”  One would have thought that after the recent CCHD fiasco the Bishops would have performed a thorough and independent scrubbing of the ties of anyone working for the USCCB that in any fashion could affect funding or policy-making.

I only ask this:  how many women could have been helped, and abortions prevented, with the funds that instead went to CCC?  It may sound harsh, perhaps melodramatic, but when it comes down to it these kinds of decisions cost lives.

It’s an old saying in baseball – “hit it where it’s pitched”.  It means that a batter shouldn’t try to force things based on what he wants to do but should take the pitch that comes and do what’s best for the team.  Oakland A’s prospect Grant Desme is taking that adage and applying it not just at the plate but in life:

Regardless, today is the day: As first reported by FOXSports.com, the 23-year-old star prospect has informed the A’s that he will retire and become a priest.

“I’m doing well in baseball,” Desme told reporters on Friday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. “But I had to get down to the bottom of things, to what was good in my life, what I wanted to do with my life. Baseball is a good thing, but that felt selfish of me when I felt that God was calling me more. It took awhile to trust that and open up to it and aim full steam toward him. I love the game, but I’m going to aspire to higher things.”

Now we all know that the road to the priesthood is a long one, and not everyone who goes to seminary comes out as a priest, but to come this far and turn away from a potential career in Major League Baseball to answer God’s call says much.  From the rest of the article this young man already is truly living his faith, and that in a career that all to often lends itself to terrible moral challenges.  As with anyone willing to pursue the priesthood, my prayers go with him.

…to join the Virtual March for Life.  Even if you can’t be at one of the major Marches in person, show your support and march in this new “virtual” way.  Some day, some how, I pray I will be able to travel to Washington DC, but for now I do what I can.  And truly, some day, by God’s Grace, abortion will be looked upon as a terrible note in the history of the world; let us pray that day is soon coming!

As someone who is constantly fascinated with the interplay of words (what, you didn’t notice?) this video speaks to me, and sadly I think, reflects my own struggles at times.  That, and it’s pretty doggone funny too.

H/T to the ever-funny, and never grammatically challenged (?) CMR.

Fr. Daren has a good chunk of an answer here.  Hint:  it’s not just them, it’s us too.  Here’s part of it:

Too often have we distanced ourselves from their questions, giving them only a cursory answer and backing down when they have disagreed with our reasoning. We have not often given them enough, a thorough, well-reasoned argument. Too often have we shied away from demonstrating the illogical argumentation of the world, which has frequently clouded their own logic.

I’ve been backed up on my blog reading, as evidenced by the fact I’m linking to a post by Fr. Powell OP from last week.  I think it’s perhaps the best concise reading of the situation of dissent in the Church today that I have read yet.  I’ll include it here, but if you don’t already read his blog, you should!

5).  You and your fans seem to loathe any kind of dissent from Church teaching.  Is there no place in the Church for good faith disagreement?

Of course there is!  You couldn’t put Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure in same room and not expect some disagreement.  Catholic orthodoxy is incredibly generous and incredibly broad.  Dissent doesn’t mean disagreement.  Dissent is a public declaration that the Church has incorrectly taught a significant tenet of the faith.  IOW, the Church has taught an error.  Dissenters often confuse the unwillingness of the Church to accept their views with an unwillingness on the part of the Church to listen to their views.  The sharpest weapon of the dissenters is “process.”  Let’s keep this question open in a dialogue until all views are heard.  The thrust of this tactic sounds reasonable until you realize that its real purpose is to keep us all talking until everyone agrees with the dissenter.  Imagine for a moment that the Church decided to ordain women.  Do you think that supporters of women’s ordination would agree to keep the question in dialogue?  Of course not.  They would declare the question settled and anyone who suggested that we revisit the issue would be labeled a dissenter!  You already see this sort of thing happening with Church teaching on social justice issues.  It’s important to distinguish between doubt and dissent.  There are a few Church teachings that I doubt.  My assumption however is that I simply don’t understand the teachings.  I assent to them as conclusions by holding my doubts in suspension.  Dissenters tend to do the exact opposite.  They assume that b/c they have a doubt about a teaching that they are free to reject that teaching.  Cardinal Newman famously noted that a thousand doubts do not make a single dissent.  Basically, don’t assume that b/c you are smart that you are smarter than 2,000 years of Church teaching!

That last part is what finally cracked the nut shell of my brain.  Humility comes hard to those who have a gift in any form and know it.  The beginning of the end of my ability to believe I was smarter than the Church was Evangelium Vitae.  It’s been a roller-coaster ride of intellectual humility ever since.