Ecclesiology, New Evangelization

Self-Righteous Catholics: Pope Francis says self-righteous doomed…

pope-francis-reuters-640x480

I’m sure you have had the misfortune, as have had I, of encountering the stifling scrupulosity of the Catholic self-righteous.  Lord, have mercy.

-by Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service, Dec. 16, 2014

VATICAN CITY  “Only the repentant heart that is humble, open to correction and trusts completely in God will be saved, Pope Francis said.

Those whose hearts are proud, self-righteous and deaf to God’s voice and correction are doomed, the pope said Tuesday at his morning Mass in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he lives.

“The people who are humble, lowly and trust in the Lord, they are the ones who are saved, and this is the way of the church, right? It has to go down this path, not the other one, which doesn’t listen to the voice [of God], doesn’t accept correction and doesn’t trust in the Lord,” he said, according to Vatican Radio.

The pope’s homily focused on the day’s readings, first from the Book of Zephaniah (3:1-2, 9-13), in which the Lord condemns the “rebellious and polluted” city, which does not hear or trust in God and accepts no correction. God will remove “the proud braggarts” and leave behind “a people humble and lowly,” the reading says. The Gospel reading from St. Matthew (21:28-32) shows Jesus asking the chief priests and elders to decide who is more obedient to God’s will: the son who refuses, but then repents and goes as commanded to work in the vineyard, or the son who agrees right away but does not go.

The two readings, the pope said, talk about judgment, salvation and condemnation.

“When we see a holy people of God that is humble, whose wealth is in its faith in the Lord, in its trust in the Lord,” he said, “they are the ones who are saved.”

The Gospel account of the two sons, he said, can be seen today with Christians who declare that they are “pure” just because they go to Mass and receive Communion.

But God wants something more, the pope said. He wants them to honestly open their hearts and courageously lay bare all of their sins.

Even people who generously give their lives in service to others, who work with the poor, help the church, there is still something missing that God wants: a list of their sins, the pope said.

“When we are able to tell the Lord, ‘Lord these are my sins, not the sins of that one or the other, these are mine. They are mine. You take them and that way I will be saved’ — when we are able to do this we will be that beautiful people, a humble and lowly people, who trust in the Lord,” the pope said.

Among those invited to attend the morning Mass were the three women religious from the United States who were in Rome for the presentation of a final report ending a Vatican-ordered investigation of U.S. communities of women religious.

Mother Mary Clare Millea, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the apostolic visitor appointed by the Vatican, told reporters during a news conference about the report that the pope’s morning homily was “an awesome experience.”

She said the pope’s final comments about Jesus asking everyone to “give me your sins; I was very struck by that because we all have our shortcomings, all of our congregations, we’ve all come up short on many aspects in living our fidelity, and I thought that was a beautiful message to all of us.”

The Vatican’s final report calling on the women to discern how best to live the Gospel in fidelity to their orders’ founding ideals was “very pastoral,” she said.

“It challenges each of us, every one of our congregations, to turn all of that over to Jesus so that he can work great things through us, and I think that was the message I received from the Holy Father this morning,” she said.”

Love & peace,
Matthew

Ecclesiology, Moral, New Evangelization

Vincible Ignorance – Ignorance is NOT a synonym for stupid

ignorance

There’s a joke that goes:  a missionary has just catechized a native, and the native asks, “‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ Priest: ‘No, not if you did not know.’ Native: ‘Then why did you tell me?’

There is a good answer to this. I hope the priest responded, “For the sake of the JOY of the Gospel!!!!”

CCC 1790 A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself. Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.

CCC 1791 This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility. This is the case when a man “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin.” In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits.

CCC 1792 Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct.

CCC 846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; He is present to us in His body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.

It is important to distinguish between two types of ignorance. Invincible ignorance is ignorance in which a person, through no fault on his or her part and due to a number of reasons, is unaware about the goodness or evil of an action. On the other hand, a person who has vincible ignorance has an opportunity to know what is right or wrong, but purposely keeps an “ignorance is bliss” approach. Such people would rather remain ignorant about the goodness or evil of an action than attempt to discover the truth, which could result in a major change in life. This type of ignorance does not excuse a person from responsibility for his or her actions, since the opportunity to know the truth is available, yet the person chooses not to engage or seek it.

This ignorance stifles any work of the Spirit in our lives, leaving us downcast and enslaved to our own set ways. Gradually, the ignorance itself becomes our very choice—the rejection of God’s purpose for ourselves. Disciples of the truth are not ignorant and have a choice, yet they also have freedom in this decision. With ignorance, there is no freedom; with ignorance, there is no bliss!

Vincible ignorance is imputable because it could be overcome by a reasonable effort, but, for some cause attributable to the agent, that effort is not made.  The ignorance is therefore due to a culpable negligence or a deliberate bad choice on the part of the agent. This may come about in several ways.

For example, from deliberate negligence when a man refuses to find out the truth, so that he may be at liberty to go on as he is going, or when, because of pleasures and other distractions, he cannot be bothered to find out. Or it may come about from a deliberate will to indulge a particular passion, which later, in its heat and fury, clouds and obscures the mind, and so brings about a state of ignorance. Or again, ignorance may be the result of an evil habit, which has so blunted the conscience that the sinner is, or thinks that he is, ignorant of the wickedness of his actions. Lastly, ignorance may be caused by a refusal to stop and consider further, although a doubt has arisen; this is characteristic of hotheaded and impetuous people who are impatient of reflection.

This vincible ignorance admits of three degrees of seriousness, dependent on the way in which it has been brought about:

  1. First, it may be “simple“. That is, it is caused by a simple, not gravely culpable negligence. For example, a clerk misreads a price.  In Church terms, he is given bad theology or catechesis, or is not guided by qualified instructors.  This is not a case of total negligence – he looked for and – saw a nearby price/a heretical or inferior theology.  He made an honest mistake.  How was he to know?
  2. Secondly, this vincible ignorance may be “crass” or “supine“.  Here the negligence is total or relatively so, in a matter in which care was a clear duty and easy of fulfillment.  The clerk, too lazy to care, is content with a mere guess. He makes up his own theology.  He disregards Apostolic Tradition, of any kind.  The gravity of the blame due to “crass” ignorance depends on the gravity of the matter at stake.
  3. Thirdly, such ignorance may be “affected” or deliberate.  That is, it is the result of a direct conscious act of will.  The agent deliberately keeps himself in ignorance, lest by finding out the truth he should be prevented by his conscience from doing what he wants to do.  He doesn’t care what the Truth is.  He doesn’t want to find out, because he fears its implications.  He is willfully ignorant, deliberately.  He doesn’t want to listen.  He doesn’t want to hear.  He doesn’t care.  This is the worst, most blameworthy, form of vincible ignorance.

-by Greg Witherow, Holy Trinity Parish, Gainesville, VA

“To begin with, the teaching that “there is no salvation outside of the Church”1 is a “de fide” (what must be believed) dogma2. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated, “The universal Church of the faithful is one outside of which none is saved”. This was the teaching also of the Union Council of Florence (1438-1445), Pope Innocent III, Clement VI, Benedict XIV, Pope Boniface VIII in the papal bull Unam Sanctum, Pius IX, Leo XIII and Pius XII in the Encyclical Mystici Corporis3. But does the Magisterium address exceptions to formal membership to the Church?

This question is answered by reviewing the excommunication of Father Leonard Feeney, Feeneyism, in 1953, a recent yet pre-Vatican II4 case that illustrates the Church’s teaching. Father Feeney was excommunicated because he rejected the teaching of baptism of desire, either explicit or implicit. As baptism is the gate into the Catholic Church, he held all the unbaptized are undoubtedly lost. This was in direct conflict with the teaching of the
Church. It has always been held that salvation is possible for the unbaptized, assuming the person has either an explicit or implicit desire for Christ and his Church. Such people are mystically (not formally) attached to the Church, if indeed they are in a state of
grace5. The Feeney case illustrates two things. First, there are exceptions to formal membership and secondly, such exceptions are not a post Vatican II invention.”

“Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ.”
–St. Athanasius

“Turn your thoughts away from a non-Catholic, turn away your ears, so that you may have strength to grasp life everlasting through the one, true and holy Catholic Church. Our Lord warns all the faithful: they must not put any faith in heretics or schismatics. “
-St. Augustine

Love,
Matthew

  1. Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed this in the papal bull Unam Sanctum in 1302.
  2. The Fundamentals of the Catholic Faith, page 312.
  3. Taken from The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (by Dr. Ludwig Ott) on page 312.
  4. I will use as many pre-Vatican II examples as possible as some are suspicious of the post-Vatican II era.
  5. The story of Cornelius in Acts 10 depicts a non-Christian who was a true follower of God. In the story we see Cornelius is neither a Christian (he hadn’t heard the Gospel yet) nor a Jew (he was considered by Peter to be a Gentile). Yet he was in a state of grace before he received the Gospel or was baptized. We know this because his prayers were heard and his alms were accepted as pleasing to God, as Hebrews 11:6 states, “without faith it is impossible to please God”. This means Cornelius must have had faith, which can only be obtained by the work of the Holy Spirit on someone’s soul. Cornelius had the Holy Spirit in the same manner pre-Pentecost believers had Him. With baptism he received a post-Pentecost portion of the Holy Spirit. Characteristics Cornelius had marking him as a man of God included prayer, fasting, almsgiving, the fear of the Lord, righteousness AND upon hearing the Gospel, he did not reject it – i.e. it was not because he was “a good person”. Baptism brought him into a full, formal communion with the Church.
Family Life, Sacraments

Sacrament of Holy Matrimony & AMAZING GRACE!!!

AMAZING-GRACE1

The President went from rainbow coloring the White House to singing Amazing Grace, all in the same day (6/26/15).  Wow.  Imho, that was quite the spiritual and intellectual contortion.  Let’s hope he has an analgesic for his soul and mind.  He’s gonna need it.

Unions, “marriages”, not in line with God’s commandments, limit, inhibit, mortally wound? their supply of sanctifying grace.  How, in the world, can hope remain?

-by Paul McLachlan (© 1997)
Thomas More Centre Winter School
St Leo’s College, Brisbane, UK
19 July 1997

“I have been asked today to tell you something about the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. This is obviously because of my vast experience in this area, having been married for 3½ years so far, which by modern standards, appears to be quite a feat!

Marriage is a hot topic these days. Statistics tell us that a sizeable proportion of them are doomed to end in divorce, the majority of couples live together before they marry and about 10% of couples with children decide never to marry at all. And, we are told, Catholics are living together, divorcing and remarrying at about the same rates as the rest of the community.

Magazines, talk shows, pop psychology self-help books, even Catholic Marriage Preparation materials will all tell you everything you could want to know and more about the relationship of marriage, how to sustain it, how to improve it. You can get advice almost anywhere on how to get hitched, how to be enriched and when to ditch.

If you were to judge what marriage is and should be by reading the magazines or watching television or by talking to people on the street, you’d be led to believe that it’s a relationship founded on sexual compatibility and romance. If the sex goes bad or the romance dies, then the couple can walk away from the marriage. How do you work out whether you are sexually compatible. Well, of course, you try before you buy! You make sure you have a sufficient number of sexual partners (the prevailing wisdom is that the appropriate number is about 12) to work out what you like and what you don’t like so that when Mr or Ms Right comes along, you’ll know he or she is the one for you as soon as you sleep with him or her. You live together before you’re married, often before marriage is ever mentioned or contemplated, and often for several years before deciding to marry. You judge the strength of a marriage by how romantic it is: how often does he bring home flowers unexpectedly, how often do you go away for romantic weekends at luxury hotels, how often do you get breakfast in bed, how often does he tell you he loves you?

Marriage is no longer meant to stifle your individuality. Couples rewrite their vows to read something along the lines of: “I take you as an individual. I want to help you reach your full potential. I want to help you reach your own goals and dreams.” Children are a real dilemma. Do you have any at all? How much will they cost? Should we have just one or two? Children come after the mortgage has been paid off, after the trip to Europe, after studies are over and careers are firmly established. Then when they come, they’re treated as little more than accessories. Pay someone else to look after them during the week and complain about your lost freedom on the weekend.

Marriage is seen as a social construct built to protect sexual intercourse, or as a prison with woman chained to the sink and the children. The secularization of marriage so that it is merely a legal contract with attendant rights has led to demands that those rights be extended to those who live as though they were married, even homosexuals. These days, we define ourselves by our “sexuality” and our view of sex is warped by the omnipresent, omnipotent eroticism of the media.

Is it any wonder people are asking why they should get married in the first place? Who’d want to be?!

But, then, that’s what happens when you reduce marriage to just another human relationship, or worse still, an animal relationship. So, I’m not going to say another word about the relationship of marriage. Instead, I’m going to talk about Catholic Marriage, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony. How is that different from the mere “relationship of marriage”? There are three things about a Catholic marriage that make it far more than just a relationship: it is a Sacrament, it is a Vocation and it is a path to Sanctity. Three things that we so often forget.

Path to sanctity

Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, repeats again for our modern ears the truth that each and every one of us is called to holiness, called to be a Saint. Saints are not meant to be isolated, rare individuals. You don’t have to be a monk and shave your head, or a contemplative nun to be a Saint. Every single one of us, no matter who we are or what we do is called to be “perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect”. That is what God expects from us! That is what we are called to strive for throughout our entire lives! So many of us are happy to live each day just getting by when it comes to God and our Faith. We go to Sunday Mass, we pray every once in a while. But “holiness”, “piety”, “sanctity” … no thanks, too hard, too different! Who wants to walk around with a halo on their head?!

There’s a tendency to think that holiness is for the Pope and priests and nuns who give up their lives for God, for people who lived in another age when there were kings and queens and crusades and inquisitions. People who have day jobs and are married with children just don’t have time for all that praying and helping the poor and smiling at everyone. You can’t wear sackcloth to work! Maybe this view has arisen because so many of the Church’s great Saints are priests and monks and nuns. But don’t forget all the married Saints as well. Our Patron Saint, St Thomas More was a married man. He died for his faith and for refusing to renounce allegiance to the Holy Father leaving behind a wife and several children…

Marriage should not be an obstacle to our growth in holiness.  (Ed. HARDLY!) The Church teaches very clearly that God gives us marriage as a way of becoming holy.

So, if you’re married, or think that’s what God has planned for you, there’s no excuse! You still have to be a Saint, and use your marriage as the means to that end, not as the excuse if you don’t make it!

Vocation

That leads me to my next point. One of the other things that makes Catholic marriage different is that it is a true Vocation.

Most of us tend to think that only Vocations to the priesthood or religious life are Vocations. That may be because the vast majority of people marry rather than live a life totally devoted to God. It may be because of the notoriety of the supposed shortage of Vocations to the priesthood in the Western World. It may be because the Church has always affirmed that a Vocation to Consecrated Virginity or Celibacy is more exalted than a Vocation to the married state.

Nevertheless, it is very clear that the Church teaches that God has a plan for each of us which He invites us to participate in. He created us, He knows us through and through, and He has a special role for each of us in this life. A select few, He calls to live lives devoted entirely to Him so that we can all have a foretaste of how He wants us all to live in entire union with Him in Heaven. Many others He calls to be married, so that we have someone to help and to help us reach Heaven, and so that we can beget even more Saints.

But, whatever we are called to be, it is clear that God is calling us to some particular state in life. Each of us must pray hard to discern what our Vocation in life is. And once we have discerned it, we must embrace it wholeheartedly.

OK, now how much more dignified does marriage seem already: it’s not just something you fall into: God calls you to be married, He wants you to be married, and He wants you to use your marriage as the way you become a Saint!

But hold on, I’ve left the big guns for last…

Sacrament

The most important thing about Catholic marriage, the thing that sets it apart from all other relationships, from civil marriage, from Jewish and Islamic marriages, is that Catholic marriages are sacramental.  (Ed. visible signs of grace!)…

We forget so often that marriage is a Sacrament. I suspect that it is so easily forgotten because none of us really understands what a Sacrament is!

So, maybe it’s worthwhile going back to basics to look at just what a Sacrament is. First of all, though, we need to understand what Grace is.  (Ed.  ALL is grace!!!)

“Grace is nothing else but a certain beginning of glory in us.” – St. Thomas Aquinas

“God gives each one of us sufficient grace ever to know His holy will, and to do it fully.” – St. Ignatius of Loyola

“God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” – James 4:6 

There are three types of Grace: Sanctifying Grace, Sacramental Grace and Actual Grace. We receive Sanctifying Grace at our Baptism. We lose it completely when we commit a mortal sin. It is the presence of Sanctifying Grace in the soul that we refer to when we say we are in a State of Grace. We need Sanctifying Grace to be saved, to make it to Heaven, even if we have to take the “scenic route” through Purgatory on the way. If we are in a state of mortal sin after Baptism, then the Sacrament of Penance restores sanctifying grace to our souls. The worthy reception of all the other Sacraments, including the Sacrament of Penance when we are not in a state of mortal sin, increases sanctifying grace in our souls. Each Sacrament also imparts a special Sacramental Grace to us. This is a special Grace that is different for each Sacrament. Actual Grace is the grace that God gives us when we call on Him to help us, to give us strength not to sin.

A “Sacrament” then, is an effective sign which imparts Grace instituted by Christ. It is a channel between our souls and the graces poured forth by Our Lord on the Cross. It infuses the soul with God’s Grace.

And so, that is what is so incredible about Catholic Marriage, what makes it more than a mere relationship. In the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, not only do you receive an abundance of Sanctifying Grace, but you receive a special Sacramental Grace which elevates the natural order of Marriage and perfects it giving you the right, as a gift from God, to receive from Him whatever Actual Graces you need throughout your married life to live the Sacrament in the way God intended.

When we say that we take our spouse, “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, till death do us part”, God is giving us the promise of His guaranteed assistance to cope with the sickness as easily as with the health, with the bad times as easily as with the good. People say to couples who have remained successfully married, “How did you do it?!”. People say to Mothers who have had 10 children, “How on earth did you cope?!”. People say to spouses who have forgiven the serious failings of the other: “How could you forgive?!”. The answer is very simple: “Through the Grace of God!”.  (Ed. AMEN!!! -Mary D. McCormick & all other mothers!  The hardest job in the world!)

Pope Pius XI in his landmark encyclical on Christian Marriage, Casti Connubii, in 1930 wrote:

“By the very fact, therefore, that the faithful with sincere mind give such consent, they open for themselves a treasure of Sacramental Grace from which they draw supernatural power for the fulfilling of their rights and duties faithfully, holily, perseveringly even unto death. Hence this sacrament not only increases Sanctifying Grace, the permanent principle of the supernatural life, in those who … place no obstacle in its way, but also adds particular gifts, dispositions, seeds of grace, by elevating and perfecting the natural powers. By these gifts the parties are assisted not only in understanding, but in knowing intimately, in adhering to firmly, in willing effectively, and in successfully putting into practice those things which pertain to the married state, its aims and duties, giving them the fine right to the actual assistance of grace itself, whensoever they may need it for the fulfilling of the duties of their state.”

These days, the Wedding is so often a time of fear, uncertainty, and even secret pessimism for the couple. Couples sign pre-nuptial agreements in case it doesn’t work, in case they fall out of love, in case they can’t cope. But, Christians have infused in their souls since Baptism the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. Their pre-nuptial agreement is the common Faith that God will give them all the assistance they need, the Hope that they will never reject His assistance, and the Love of God and of each other that will make their home a piece of heaven on Earth.

But, marriages do fail. Catholics do get divorced. Catholic husbands and wives commit adultery. Catholic couples do reject children in their marriages. That is because, however abundantly it is poured out for us, Grace cannot override our Free Will (more’s the pity!). We must respond to God’s Grace, we must choose to accept it, to call on it. We must not place obstacles in the way of His Grace. That means we have to try and live our Sacrament every day in a way that doesn’t hamper God’s assistance or Graces. More about how to do that in a minute…

The Church teaches that the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders impart a “character”. In other words, they place an indelible mark on our souls. While we can’t see it yet, it shines forth in the supernatural realm. That is why these Sacraments can only be received once. Holy Matrimony does not impart a character, instead it creates an indissoluble bond between the couple which is only broken by the death of one of the spouses. St Paul has taught from the very beginning that this bond is a great mystery because it is the same bond which unites Christ to His Bride, the Catholic Church. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, St Paul says: “Wives be subject to your husbands as the Church is subject to Christ. Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church!” What an incredible responsibility! To love one another as much as Christ loves His Church! Each and every Christian marriage lived to its potential is a concrete sign to the world of the love Christ has for the Church, for the obedience the Church owes to Her Lord, to His promise to be with Her always even until the end of time.

Is it any wonder then that alone among all the religions and faiths of the world, alone among all the Christian Churches, the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church proclaims today with as much force as ever that Sacramental Marriage is indissoluble, that only those marriages that are judged never to have existed in the first place because of some defect or impediment can be dissolved?!

We are not called to love until the love dies, we are not called to stay together until the children are grown, we are not called to stick around only until the sex gets boring or our individuality is repressed: we are called to be a living witness of the love of Christ for His Church and the unbreakable bond between them.

And it is because of that unbreakable bond which is created by the Sacrament that many have compared the Sacrament to those Sacraments that impart a character, that consecrate us: Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. Again, Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii wrote:

“If, however, doing all that lies within their power, they cooperate diligently, they will be able with ease to bear the burdens of their state and to fulfill their duties. By such a sacrament they will be strengthened, sanctified, and in a manner, consecrated. For, as St Augustine teaches, just as by Baptism and Holy Orders a person is set aside and assisted, either for the duties of Christian life or for priestly office and is never deprived of their sacramental aid, almost in the same way (but not by a sacramental character) the faithful once joined by marriage ties can never be deprived of the help and binding force of the sacrament.”

God understands that it is not easy to live holy lives, it is not easy to sustain a lifelong relationship. All these things take sacrifice and effort. But, thankfully, He never leaves us to our own resources. He gives us the Graces throughout our entire married lives to carry whatever crosses He sends our way. He never asks us to do the impossible.

That is a privilege that comes about through the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, as a special privilege for having accepted God’s call to live the married life. That mere fact alone is enough to show you how different Sacramental marriage is from any other form of relationship.

You have no right to call on God’s grace simply because you have contracted a civil marriage. You have no right to call on God’s grace because you’re in a de facto relationship. But, you have the incredible right to call on the Grace of God to help you through all that life throws at you because you are sacramentally married.

In Casti Connubii, Pope Pius XI also recalled how St Robert Bellarmine had likened the Sacrament of Marriage to the Blessed Sacrament. He says:

“Let them constantly keep in mind that they have been consecrated and strengthened for the duties and the dignity of their state by a special sacrament, the efficacious power of which, although it does not impress a character, is undying. To this purpose we may ponder over the words full of real comfort of holy Cardinal St Robert Bellarmine, SJ, who with other well-known theologians with deep conviction thus expresses himself. ‘The sacrament of Matrimony can be regarded in two ways: first in the making and then in its permanent state. For it is a sacrament like to that of the Eucharist, which not only while it is being conferred, but also while it remains, is a sacrament; for as long as the married parties are alive, so long is their union a sacrament of Christ and His Church.”

How, then do we live our marriages so as to reap the benefits of the Sacrament and please God? St Augustine teaches that there are three “blessings” of marriage, or in Natural Law terms, three “goods”: fecundity, fidelity and indissolubility. These three goods apply to all true marriages, even marriages that are not sacramental. The Church also teaches that marriage has two main purposes: the more important is procreation, the begetting and education of Children, raising them to worship God; the second, is the consortium vitae, the companionship and union of married love.

To live our marriages in a way pleasing to God, to take full advantage of the graces He offers and not put obstacles in their way, we must always respect these blessings and ends of marriage. Without going into much detail, because they are topics in and of themselves:

  1. We must respect the blessing of fecundity in marriage: entering marriage with the intention of never having children is a grave wrong and more than likely grounds for an annulment because you aren’t consenting to be married at all; blocking God out of your fertility, using technology to control it, limiting family size without serious reason are all attacks on the blessing of fecundity, contrary to God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply”, contrary to the generous love we are called to live every day, contrary to the faith and trust God wants us to have in Him. The atrocity of procured abortion is a direct attack on the fecundity of marriage. Resorting to technology for the conception of children, as Pope Paul VI terms it in Humanae Vitae, deliberately removing the unitive purpose of sexual intercourse, attacks the good of fecundity.
  2. We must respect the blessing of fidelity in marriage, we must fulfil the purpose of a communion of mutual benefit, the consortium vitae. Adultery obviously attacks this, but so does “adultery of the eyes and the heart”. Contraception and premarital sex in their own ways also attack the blessing of fidelity because they muddy our vision of sexual intercourse. Instead of a truly holy act, when each spouse says to the other, I love you with my whole self, I give you my whole self, they are led to treat sex as a means solely of deriving personal pleasure, to treat each other as objects of gratification rather than to give themselves as subjects of love. Doing the dishes strengthens the blessing of fidelity, holding each other while you watch the children sleep strengthens the blessing of fidelity, the million and one ways of saying I love you, I am yours, we are one in flesh and mind all strengthen the blessing of fidelity.
  3. And finally, we must respect the blessing of indissolubility. We must not treat marriage as a transitory thing, temporary or impermanent.

Apostolate

And it doesn’t stop there! The Church is calling married couples more than ever to change the world, to evangelize. The Second Vatican Council in its decree Apostolicam Actuositam said that the witness of Catholic couples faithfully living their marriages according to God’s will, their witness to the indissolubility of marriage, is part of the most important aspect of the apostolate of the laity. We have to be out there as shining examples of the truth about marriage.

The Holy Father also exhorts married couples in Familiaris Consortio to be the primary force in the Apostolate to married couples, teaching other married couples the value of the Church’s teaching on the family, sexuality, on birth control, on marriage itself.

We can’t sit and wait for our priests to give homilies on these things. The last 30 years have shown that they won’t! We have to live by example, we have to take advantage of the opportunities to witness to other couples, particularly those preparing for marriage. And most importantly, we have to raise our children well. Sadly, Catholic schools seem to do more to undo a child’s Faith than they do to foster it these days. We have to ground our children in the Faith so that they too are examples throughout their lives. It’s no small task, but with the Grace of God and a love of His Church, we’re up to it!

And the first step to take in restoring the esteem and value of marriage for Catholics is to restore the high esteem that celibacy and virginity previously held in the Church. Pope John Paul says in Familiaris Consortio, explaining the Church’s teaching that celibacy or virginity is preferable to marriage, that the truth of this can only be understood when marriage is also highly valued. Because if you value marriage, how much more do you respect those who have given up that great blessing for the love of God and the sake of His Kingdom?

How to get hitched

Well, hopefully by now, I’ve completely sold you on Marriage and all of you who think that that is your Vocation are going to set about finding a partner with great zeal! But, where do you look? How do you find someone?!

Well, again, you’re not going to get far if you follow the advice they give on radio talk shows or in Cosmo, if you ring the psychic hotline and ask “Is he the one?”. It’s no secret that compatibility and communication are the buzzwords for a successful relationship (even if Grace is the buzzword for a successful marriage!). I’ll assume that God and your Catholic Faith are the most important things in your lives: not your studies, or your careers or your material worth. If God and your Catholic Faith are not the most important things in your lives, then why on earth not?!

If your life is Christ-centred and faith filled, you should be out their looking for someone else who is Christ-centred and faith filled, someone who will understand your faith, who will understand why you love God so much because they do too, someone who you’re not going to have to fight with to remain faithful to the teachings of the Church and bring your children up in the Faith.

They’re scarce as hens teeth, I know! But, look, there’s a room full of people here who probably fit that description, most of them single! Nightclubs are not where you’re going to find a wife or a husband! Work is not where you’re likely to find one either. It’s at Mass, in Catholic Groups and Associations (and I mean, capital C Catholic, not your average youth group or Catholic singles group which tend to be anything but).

And you have to pray! Monique and I found each other on our knees, literally! She prayed, as young women do, to St Joseph on his feast day that he would find her a good Catholic husband. Her parents nabbed me because they saw me praying the Rosary all the time after Mass. Before long, we were praying the Rosary together, and then, angels started whispering things in our ears about how God wanted us to be together.

So, there you go! Talk to each other at Mass! Be brave, go out with people you meet at Church. There are over a billion Catholics in the world! Chances are God has at least one of them in mind for you!!

So, go find them, get married, “be fruitful and multiply” and hopefully, one day, we’ll be singing together in the Heavenly Choir rubbing shoulders with all God’s other married Saints!”

Love,
Matthew

Family Life, Marriage, Moral, New Evangelization, Sacraments

Marriage: A Hard Discipline Over a Lifetime

catholicmonarchy

“Marriage is an adventure, like going to war!” -GK Chesterton

“I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.” -GK Chesterton

Old joke, but too true!!!  Out of the mouth of babes, Catholic school children, when asked “What are the seven Sacraments?”  Answer:  “Baptism, Penance, Eucharist, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and … Martyrdom!” 🙂

revstephenfreeman

-by Rev. Stephen Freeman

“‘When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it’s interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years.’ – Stanley Hauerwas

No issues in the modern world seem to be pressing the Church with as much force as those surrounding sex and marriage. The so-called Sexual Revolution has, for the most part, succeeded in radically changing how our culture understands both matters. Drawing from a highly selective (and sometimes contradictory) set of political, sociological and scientific arguments, opponents of the Christian tradition are pressing the case for radical reform with an abandon that bears all of the hallmarks of a revolution. And they have moved into the ascendancy.

Those manning the barricades describe themselves as “defending marriage.” That is a deep inaccuracy: marriage, as an institution, was surrendered quite some time ago. Today’s battles are not about marriage but simply about dividing the spoils of its destruction. It is too late to defend marriage. Rather than being defended, marriage needs to be taught and lived. The Church needs to be willing to become the place where that teaching occurs as well as the place that can sustain couples in the struggle required to live it. Fortunately, the spiritual inheritance of the Church has gifted it with all of the tools necessary for that task. It lacks only people who are willing to take up the struggle.

Marriage laws were once the legal framework of a Christian culture. Despite the ravages of the Enlightenment and Reformation, the general framework of marriage remained untouched. The Church, in many lands, particularly those of English legal tradition, acted as an arm of the State while the State acted to uphold the Christian ideal of marriage. As Hauerwas noted in the opening quote, marriage as an institution was never traditionally about romantic love: it was about fidelity, stability, paternity and duty towards family. The traditional Western marriage rite never asked a couple, “Do you love him?” It simply asked, “Do you promise to love?” That simple promise was only one of a number of things:

WILT thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her, in sickness, and in health? And forsaking all others, keep thee only to her, so long as you both shall live?

And this:

I N. take thee N. to my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death; according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I plight thee my troth.

Obviously, the primary intent of these promises was faithfulness in all circumstances over the course of an entire lifetime. The laws that surrounded marriage existed to enforce this promise and sought to make it difficult to do otherwise.

Divorce was difficult to obtain – long waiting periods were required and very specific conditions had to be met for one to be granted. Churches made remarriage quite difficult, to say the least. Obligations to children were very well-defined and grounded in parental (biological) rights and obligations. Indeed, there was a large complex of family laws that tilted the culture towards marriage at every turn.

Of course, none of this would have represented any benefit had it not also reflected a cultural consensus. Contrary to popular sayings, morality can indeed be legislated (laws do almost nothing else). But moral laws are simply experienced as oppression if they do not generally agree with the moral consensus of a culture. The laws upholding marriage were themselves a cultural consensus: people felt these laws to be inherently correct.

Parenthetically, it must be stated as well that the laws governing marriage and property were often tilted against women – that is a matter that I will not address in this present article.

The moral consensus governing marriage began to dissolve primarily in the Post-World War II era in Western cultures. There are many causes that contributed to this breakdown. My favorite culprit is the rapid rise in mobility (particularly in America) that destroyed the stability of the extended family and atomized family life.

The first major legal blow to this traditional arrangement was the enactment of “no-fault” divorce laws, in which no reasons needed to be given for a divorce. It is worth noting that these were first enacted in Russia in early 1918, shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. The purpose (as stated in Wikipedia) was to “revolutionize society at every level.” That experiment later met with significant revisions. The first state to enact such laws in the U.S. was California, which did not do so until 1969. Such laws have since become normative across the country.

These changes in marriage law have been accompanied by an evolution in the cultural meaning of marriage. From the earlier bond of a virtually indissoluble union, marriage has morphed into a contractual agreement between two persons for their own self-defined ends. According to a 2002 study, by age 44, roughly 95 percent of all American adults have had pre-marital sex. For all intents, we may say that virtually all Americans, by mid-life, have had sex outside of marriage.

These are clear reasons for understanding that “defense of marriage” is simply too late. The Tradition has become passé. But none of this says that the Tradition is wrong or in any way incorrect.

Of course, there are many “remnants” of traditional Christian marriage. Most people still imagine that marriage will be for a life-time, though they worry that somehow they may not be so lucky themselves. Pre-nuptial agreements are primarily tools of the rich. Even same-sex relationships are professing a desire for life-long commitments.

But all of the sentiments surrounding life-long commitments are just that – sentiments. They are not grounded in the most obvious reasons for life-long relationships. Rather, they belong to the genre of fairy tales: “living happily ever after.”

The classical Christian marriage belongs to the genre of martyrdom. It is a commitment to death. As Hauerwas notes: faithfulness over the course of a life-time defines what it means to “love” someone. At the end of a faithful life, we may say of someone, “He loved his wife.”

Some have begun to write about the so-called “Benedict Option,” a notion first introduced by Alasdair MacIntyre in his book, After Virtue. It compares the contemporary situation to that of the collapse of the Roman Christian Imperium in the West (i.e., the Dark Ages). Christian civilization, MacIntyre notes, was not rebuilt through a major conquering or legislating force, but through the patient endurance of small monastic communities and surrounding Christian villages. That pattern marked the spread of Christian civilization for many centuries in many places, both East and West.

It would seem clear that a legislative option has long been a moot point. When 95 percent of the population is engaging in sex outside of marriage (to say the least) no legislation of a traditional sort is likely to make a difference. The greater question is whether such a cultural tidal wave will inundate the Church’s teaching or render it inert – a canonical witness to a by-gone time, acknowledged perhaps in confession but irrelevant to daily choices (this is already true in many places).

The “Benedict Option” can only be judged over the course of centuries, doubtless to the dismay of our impatient age. But, as noted, those things required are already largely in place. The marriage rite (in those Churches who refuse the present errors) remains committed to the life-long union of a man and a woman with clearly stated goals of fidelity. The canon laws supporting such marriages remain intact. Lacking is sufficient teaching and formation in the virtues required to live the martyrdom of marriage.

Modern culture has emphasized suffering as undesirable and an object to be remedied. Our resources are devoted to the ending of suffering and not to its endurance. Of course, the abiding myth of Modernity is that suffering can be eliminated. This is neither true nor desirable.

Virtues of patience, endurance, sacrifice, selflessness, generosity, kindness, steadfastness, loyalty, and other such qualities are impossible without the presence of suffering. The Christian faith does not disparage the relief of suffering, but neither does it make it definitive for the acquisition of virtue. Christ is quite clear that all will suffer. It is pretty much the case that no good thing comes about in human society except through the voluntary suffering of some person or persons. The goodness in our lives is rooted in the grace of heroic actions.

In the absence of stable, life-long, self-sacrificing marriages, all discussion of sex and sexuality is reduced to abstractions. An eloquent case for traditional families is currently being made by the chaos and dysfunction set in motion by their absence. No amount of legislation or social programs will succeed in replacing the most natural of human traditions. The social corrosion represented by our over-populated prisons, births outside of marriage (over 40 percent in the general population and over 70 percent among non-Hispanic African Americans), and similar phenomenon continue to predict a breakdown of civility on the most fundamental level. We passed into the “Dark Ages” some time ago. The “Benedict Option” is already in place. It is in your parish and in your marriage. Every day you endure and succeed in a faithful union to your spouse and children is a heroic act of grace-filled living.”

We are not promised that the Option will be successful as a civilizational cure. Such things are in the hands of God. But we should have no doubt about the Modern Project (Ed. the current trend) going on around us. It is not building a Brave New World. It is merely destroying the old one and letting its children roam amid the ruins. (Ed. another Dark Ages of civilization)”

Love,
Matthew

Divine Attributes, Philosophy, Theology, Transcendentals

The Transcendentals – Unum, Bonum, Verum

transcendence

The transcendentals are properties of being.  “The Transcendentals” would also be another great name for a band, imho.  While we’re on it, “(The) Truth, (The) Beauty, (The) Goodness” would not be bad, either, but I digress.  Truth is being as known, Goodness is being as rightly desired, and Beauty is being as rightly admired.  Truth is being’s imprint on the mind, Goodness is beings imprint on the will, and Beauty is beings imprint on the emotions. So Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are all different modes of Being as apprehended by the Mind, the Will, and the Emotions.

timtroutman

-by Tim A. Troutman, who believes in the Bible. He just couldn’t figure out how we got the one we call “the canon”. Like so many 20-somethings, Tim traveled the road of the spiritual nomad: questions, doubt, fear, and finally hope. Through this journey, he connected with 10 or so other former Reformed Christians who now tell their story and talk about the Catholic faith at the extremely popular blog site www.calledtocommunion.com.

“According to St. Thomas, integrity (or perfection) is one of the three marks of beauty. The other two are harmony (or proportion) and radiance (or brightness). 1 The term ‘integrity’ is closely related to and directly implies unity; for without unity, integrity is impossible. We derive the word ‘integrate’ from the word integrity, and integration is nothing but the acquisition of one thing into unity with another.

Moreover, Aquinas follows Boethius in arguing that “unity belongs to the idea of goodness” because “a thing exists so far as it is one” and as St. Thomas explains, both goodness and unity are convertible with being. 2 Thus, along with goodness and truth, unity is one of the ‘transcendentals’ because it is convertible with being. These transcendentals are simply being apprehended under different modes. This complements St. Augustine’s teaching that evil is not its own being but the corruption of being. All things, in so far as they exist, that is, in so far as they have being, are good and they exist in truth and unity.

Harmony or proportion is also closely related to unity. For harmony is a bringing together of two or more things into a unity while maintaining some aspect of their distinctive identity. Proportion is the perfect representation of another thing or conformity to some good. St. Thomas gives the example of the Son as the perfect image of the Father and thus said to be in perfect proportion. 3 Elsewhere he states that God is beautiful as being “the cause of the harmony and clarity of the universe.” 4 He also states that love, which is the most beautiful virtue, is “a certain harmony of the appetite with that which is apprehended as suitable.” 5

Unity and harmony, as qualities of beauty, can be understood when we consider the attractiveness of a complex piece of music (or any artwork) over something simple. All other things equal, the complexity makes the piece more beautiful. This is because the act of harmoniously incorporating additional forms and components into a greater unity approximates truth, beauty, and goodness. The unity of the Trinity is the perfect archetype of harmony and pure oneness (out of something like a plurality). A family is beautiful because of its unity; and a well ordered society is for the same reason. That is all to say that unity and harmony point to not just any truth, but to truth itself, God, as do all things beautiful.

The dissolution of a thing arises from a defect therein. Disunity is an evil because its end is the dissolution of a being in the same way that the end of sin is the dissolution of some good. The ugliness of disunity is evidenced by the pain that accompanies it. St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine saying, “what else is pain but a feeling of impatience of division or corruption?” 6 and goes on to say, “the good of each thing consists in a certain unity” in defense of his proposition that the desire for unity is a cause of sorrow.7

With all of these ideas considered, we followers of Christ ought to sorrow at the disunity of Christians and earnestly pray for the re-unification, the integration, of all Christians into one body: the Church. Unity is beautiful because it is good and Christ intended unity for His Church8 because it is His own body. Our theological differences notwithstanding, I hope that Christians of all backgrounds will join together during this week of prayer for Christian unity to petition the Holy Spirit to move on the hearts of men that we may be unified not only in spirit, but in body, that is, in Church.”

“Life is not just a succession of events or experiences. It is a search for the true, the good & the beautiful.”-Pope Benedict XVI

Love,
Matthew

  1. Summa Theologica, 1.39.8
  2. Ibid., 1.6.4; 2.36.3
  3. Ibid., 1.39.8
  4. Ibid., 2b.145.2. Aquinas is quoting Pseudo-Dionysius
  5. Ibid., 2.29.1
  6. De Lib. Arb. iii, 23
  7. Summa Theologica 2.36.3
  8. cf. John 17
June, Mariology, Saints

Jun 27 – Our Lady of Perpetual Succour (Help)

ourladyofsuccour
mother_of_perpetual_help_by_theophilia-d559ghb

Mother of Perpetual Help, Woman of Eternal Hope, your wordless gaze tells us so much about you. Knowing eyes look upon us with tender love. The slight bend of your head reveals such maternal concern. While your left hand supports the Child, your right hand is ready to receive us, too. Just as He feels the beating of your heart, so you encourage us to lead a life of hope and holiness. Just as His sandal will fall on your lap, through your intercession may God pick us up as we stumble and fall. Never let us be parted from you and your Son, Jesus. Lady of love, you invite us to place our hand where His fingers touch yours — near a heart of endless hope — so that we may be united often in prayer here on earth and joined forever with you in heaven. Amen.

Mother of Perpetual Help, your very name inspires confidence. We come before your holy picture in praise and thanksgiving to God seeking your intercession with Jesus, your Son, for all the needs of our lives today. We celebrate your holy motherhood as we proclaim Jesus Christ our Lord and Redeemer.

You answered when called to be mother of our Lord. Obtain for us the grace to be alive to our baptismal call and especially to embrace the gospel of life and to respect all life on earth.

You wondered as your Son grew in wisdom, knowledge and grace. Intercede for us so that we may welcome the Word of God in our lives and be bearers of the good news to everyone.

You delighted as your Son healed the sick. Intercede for our sick that they may receive good health and that they in their turn may be healers to others.

You enjoyed peace as your Son comforted the afflicted. Intercede for all who suffer so that they may know that we carry their burdens with them and in this way we keep the law of Christ.

You rejoiced as your Son forgave sins. Obtain for us the forgiveness of our sins and lead us to unbind others and set them free.

You suffered at the wounds your Son endured for our salvation. Help us to bind up the broken hearted and to give hope to the down trodden.

You exulted in your Son’s resurrection. Obtain for us the grace to persevere in His way all the days of our life and be granted a place in heaven.

You are the first of all the disciples and saints. We trust in your motherly love and care. Obtain for us all the graces we need to fulfill God’s plan each day in our lives. Amen.

Courage of Single Parents,
Determination of Widows,
Woman of Confidence,
Help of the Worried,
Model for Parents of Teenagers,
Mother of Prisoners,
Lady of Grace,
Hope for the World,
pray for us!!!

Mother of Perpetual Help,
with the greatest confidence
we come before your holy picture
to be inspired by the example of your life.

We think of you at that moment when,
full of faith and trust,
you accepted God’s call
to be the mother of His Son.
Help us, your children,
to accept with joy our own calling in life.

When you learned that your cousin Elizabeth was in need
you immediately went to serve her
and offer your help.
Help us, like you,
to be concerned for others.

We think of you, Mother,
at the foot of the cross.
Your heart must have bled
to see your Son in agony.

But your joy was great
when he rose from the dead,
victorious over the powers of evil.

Mother of Sorrows,
help us through the trials and
disappointments of life.
Help us not to lose heart.

May we share with you and your Son
the joy of having courageously
faced up to all the challenges of life.

Amen.

Thanksgiving Prayer

O Mother of Perpetual Help,
with grateful hearts we join you
in thanking God
for all the wonderful things
He has done for us,
especially for giving us
Jesus, your Son, as our Redeemer.

O God, our Creator,
we thank you for the gift of life
and all the gifts of nature:
our senses and faculties,
our talents and abilities.

We thank you for creating us
in your image and likeness
and for giving us this earth
to use and develop,
to respect and cherish.

Despite our failures,
you continue to show your love for us today
by increasing the life of your Spirit in us
at the Eucharistic table.

Finally, we thank you, loving Father,
for giving us Mary,
the Mother of your Son,
to be our Mother of Perpetual Help.

We are grateful for all the favours
we have received through her intercession.
We pray that those past favours may inspire us
to greater confidence in your loving mercy
and to seek the aid of our Mother of Perpetual Help.

Amen.

Mother of Perpetual Help, today we face so many difficulties. Your picture tells us so much about you. It reminds us to reach out and help those in need. Help us understand that our lives belong to others as much as they belong to us.

Mary, Model of Christian love, we know we cannot heal every ill or solve every problem. But with God’s grace, we intend to do what we can. May we be true witnesses to the world that love for one another really matters. May our daily actions proclaim how fully our lives are modeled after yours, Mother of Perpetual Help.

Mother of Perpetual Help, you have been blessed and favored by God. you became not only the Mother of the Redeemer, but Mother of the redeemed as well. We come to you today as your loving children. Watch over us and take care of us. As you held the child Jesus in your loving arms, so take us in your arms. Be a mother ready at every moment to help us. For God who is mighty has done great things for you, and God’s mercy is from age to age on those who love God. Intercede for us, dear Mother, in obtaining pardon for our sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to call upon you, Mother of Perpetual Help.

Oh Mother of Perpetual Help, grant that I may ever invoke your powerful name, the protection of the living and the salvation of the dying. Purest Mary, let your name henceforth be ever on my lips. Delay not, Blessed Lady, to rescue me whenever I call on you. In my temptations, in my needs, I will never cease to call on you, ever repeating your sacred name, Mary, Mary. What a consolation, what sweetness, what confidence fills my soul when I utter your sacred name or even only think of yours! I thank the Lord for having given you so sweet, so powerful, so lovely a name. But I will not be content with merely uttering your name. Let my love for your name prompt me ever to hail you Mother of Perpetual Help.

Prayer for Financial Aid

Realizing, dear Mother Mary,
that thou art our Perpetual Help not only in spiritual but likewise in temporal necessities,
we approach thee with submissive and humble hearts,
because we have a child-like confidence in thy power and goodness,
beseeching thee to assist us in our present financial worry.
Owing to untoward circumstances which have arisen in our lives,
we are in dire want, being unable to meet our honest debts.
We are not asking, dearest Mother for wealth,
if possession of it is not in accordance with the holy will of God;
we merely beg for that assistance which will enable us
to satisfy our pressing obligations.

We believe, dear Mother,
that thou art the Queen of heaven and earth,
and, as such,
the instrument and special dispensation of thy Son Jesus Christ;
that thou hast acquired by virtue of thy wonderful dignity,
a sweet jurisdiction over all creation.

We believe that thou art not only rich and bountiful,
but extremely kind and generous to all thy loving children.
We plead with thee then, dear Mother,
to obtain for us the help we so urgently need in our present financial difficulty.
We thank thee, dear Lady and promise to publish far and wide,
the marvels of thy glorious Picture.
Amen.

Love,
Matthew

Forty Martyrs of England & Wales, June, New Evangelization, Saints

Jun 22 – Omnia Horarum Fides/Faith for All Seasons

faithforallseasons
-please click on the image for greater detail.

JPKern

-by Br John Paul Kern, OP (Br John Paul converted to the Catholic faith while studying mechanical & nuclear engineering at Penn State)

“It was the year 1535. For almost a millennium England had been a Christian nation, its culture, traditions, and morality informed by the faith. Marriage, like most things, was understood according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, as preserved and taught by His Church down through the generations.

About fifteen years earlier, rumors began to circulate of a renegade monk in Germany who railed against abuses in the Church and used these faults to challenge the authority of the Church herself. This made waves among political leaders looking to increase their power, among Church leaders concerned for their flocks and the welfare of the Church herself, and among the common folk who, much like people today, were simply trying to make sense of the issues amidst a sea of catchy slogans, songs, and the print propaganda circulated by those advocating for change.

Reports of such rumblings on the Continent slowly made their way across the Channel. The well-educated may have encountered the writings of these Reformers, as they called themselves, and of well-known literary figures such as Erasmus and England’s own Sir Thomas More, who sought to defend the Catholic faith. But for the average person, English life remained much the same as it had. After all, King Henry VIII himself had written a book defending the sacraments of the Church and had been honored by the Pope as a Defender of the Faith. England was soundly her Catholic self.

However, things changed rapidly–and most English Catholics probably didn’t see it coming. Soon there was a new Queen, Anne, and a new Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, both of whom were sympathetic to new ideas. The government issued an Act of Succession, supporting the legitimacy of the King’s divorce and his marriage to the new Queen, and an Act of Supremacy, declaring the King head of the Church in England. The King forced his subjects to support these acts even while he, himself a rebellious son of the Church, was excommunicated by the Pope. A number of monks were executed for dissenting.

Now, in the summer of 1535, two well-respected figures, Bishop John Fisher and the former Lord Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More, were publicly executed in London. Their only crime had been to hold fast to the traditional faith and understanding of marriage that had so abruptly fallen from grace in English society. There was no room for debate in the public square. The law of the land had claimed supremacy over the law of God, and faithful adherents to the latter were branded treasonous.

Certainly, to be a faithful Catholic in such times demanded heroic faith, the faith of the martyrs. But it can be hard for us to relate to such heroic virtue. That’s because such virtue is overtly public, and exercised against clearly recognizable external threats. Our faith, however, tends to be more private. The kind of virtue we most commonly practice is in our personal struggles against the usual temptations to seek lesser goods than God: to sleep in instead of going to Mass on Sunday or to neglect nourishing our relationship with God through prayer, spiritual reading, and charitable acts instead of slothfully succumbing to another Netflix series or binging on Facebook.

But there is another, more public level of spiritual warfare we must be attuned to. We Christians on earth are the Church Militant and, just like any other army, we must be prepared to recognize and respond to threats from the enemy, Satan. The challenge is to recognize that we live in trying times–times as volatile as those that Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More saw. But we often view martyrdom, and the social and political challenges that inspired the witness of the martyrs, as something set in the distant past. We are largely ignorant of the fact that around two-thirds of all Christian martyrs died only recently, in the 20th century.

Are there threats on the horizon in the United States that will require heroic virtue from Christians here? No. They aren’t on the horizon; the threats are already here. Fifteen years ago hostility toward the faith was present on certain politically-correct college campuses, for example. Coming to college in 2001, I saw for the first time posters declaring “zero tolerance for intolerance,” which I discovered was Orwellian for “zero tolerance for dissent.” I realized that one day there might be zero tolerance for traditional American values and Christian beliefs, for myself and other dissenters. This day came quickly.

While no one here is currently facing martyrdom as in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, jobs are being threatened and people face legal, media, and social harassment for following the teachings of Jesus Christ–teachings that are, with increasing frequency, labelled as bigoted, hateful, and intolerant. To live one’s Christian faith is considered treasonous to society. Not only do public figures and religious leaders face such treatment, but average Christians do as well.  Heroic virtue is required here and now.

Let us pray that God may give us the grace to heroically live and preach the faith “in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2), following the witness of the martyrs throughout the ages (including those from our own age) and the two great saints we honor today.”

“In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, Who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of His appearing and His kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

For I am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my dissolution is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing.”
-2 Tim 4:1-8

My mother was a catechist.  See where I get it from?  🙂  She charged her students, when they saw her, not to greet her with “Hello, Mrs McCormick!”, but rather, “Keep the Faith!”

“If my children lose their faith, I have failed as a mother!” -Mary D. McCormick, oft repeated to her children.

“Is it not a wonderful thing, that he that is the Lord and author of all liberty, would thus be bound with ropes and nailed hand and foot unto the Cross?”
— St. John Fisher

Love,
Matthew

Spirituality, Theology of the Body, Yoga

yoga is not a religion? or, is compatible with any? (5 of 5)

coexist1

I find many people take the politically neutral, albeit incorrect and unthinking position, regardless of what the position is, as long as they don’t have to think or exert any effort forward :  warm fuzzies.   Not really thinking is always easier.   Preferring “peace in our time” is nothing new; never solves anything.  Our enemy is the prince of lies.  Jer 6:14, 8:11.  “What is Truth?”, Pilate retorted.  Jn 18:38.

FrEzra1

-by Rev Ezra Sullivan, OP

“So far in this series, we have discussed the nature of Yoga in general (1 of 5), and we have learned that it is rooted in hindu beliefs about gods and goddesses who want to influence us (2 of 5). Through further research we saw that a philosophic yoga suggests that the goal of the practice is union in a “higher reality” where distinctions among all things disappear, and even the individual is lost in nothingness (3 of 5). There are, of course, many, many different traditions and styles of yoga, but nearly all blur the distinction between physical exercise and spiritual excellence, making the postures or asanas the first step toward self-transcendence (4 of 5).

In this post, I will address the claim that yoga is not a religion and that it is compatible with any religion. After considering claims to the contrary, we will find that we can meaningfully assert that yoga is religious – especially because of important parallels it has with Catholicism. St. Paul advises us: “test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil” (1 Th 5:19, 21-22). Let us turn our minds to the truth, ask the Lord to bend our hearts according to His will, and explore yoga from a Catholic perspective.

+++++++

“It’s not a religion, dude. It’s a way of life.”

We hear this claim about yoga all the time.[1] It is meant to distance yoga from the negative connotations bound up with religion. If you get too caught up in religion, people commonly think, you will become narrow, doctrinaire, and maybe even violent.[2] This is why many people like to say, “I am spiritual but not religious.” Within this context yoga is seen as an attractive alternative to formal religion while offering some kind of spiritual benefit. There are, however, compelling reasons to hold that yoga is religious though it may not be a religion.

Before explaining why yoga may be considered religious, it would be helpful to discuss why it is often thought not to be a religion. A basic definition of religion is this: religion consists in a belief about (a) a higher power or powers upon which we are dependent, and (b) that it is possible to enter into a sort of relationship with the power or powers. The relationship involves (c) an association of people, with (d) ritual acts that are specific to the group and (e) a way of regulating one’s life in order to maintain good relations with the higher power or powers.[3] A child of ten could see that some of these elements do not apply to yoga. Most importantly, yoga does not embrace any belief that the individual is dependent upon some higher power. From the perspective of yoga, as we have seen in previous posts, gods and goddesses and a separate divinity are only illusions. There is no krishna or shiva; there isn’t even Jesus. Those persons may or may not be historical figures, but at most, they are only manifestations of a supreme reality that is above and beyond them. yoga does not inculcate love of Jesus or obedience to God. yoga does not lead practitioners to act morally upright so that they might get along with krishna, shiva, or Jesus. Instead, yoga aims at what one scholar calls “self-deification”: the postures and breath control are a means toward enlightenment, “the expansion of the self to the point that one’s body or self becomes coextensive with the entire universe.”[4]

So yoga is non-religious, right? It is compatible with every religion or no religion at all, isn’t it? Sure, the historical root of yoga is hinduism, and yoga remains a powerful symbol for the culture of India, but in itself yoga is free from dogmatism, moralism, superstition, and all that religious jazz, wouldn’t you say?

Not so fast.

To compare the concepts of yoga and religion at a fundamental level, it will be useful to compare the meaning of the two words. The word “yoga” comes from the sanskrit yuj, which means, “to yoke together,” “union,” “to join, to bind.”[5] What is the essence of religion? St. Thomas Aquinas explains the concept of religion by discussing the origin of the word: “religion may be derived from religare [to bind together], wherefore Augustine says: ‘May religion bind us to the one Almighty God.’”[6] This analysis by one of the Catholic Church’s greatest theologians leads to an astonishing result. The essence of yoga and the essence of religion are exactly the same. yoga and religion both aim at joining the individual to divinity.

One can hardly deny that yoga has significant religious elements. A number of yoga communities, whether in studios and ashrams, are dedicated to connecting with a higher power. They do so through prescribed rituals led by a person who has a closer connection with the divine, that is, a guru or yoga instructor. yoga rituals include not only the physical postures and breathing techniques. They also include words and gestures that echo words and gestures found in religion. In the beginning and the end of Holy Mass, a priest says, “The Lord be with you.” The congregation responds, “And also with you.” Then the priest blesses the congregation with the sign of the Cross. Paralleling this structure, at the end of a typical yoga session class (and sometimes at the beginning), the yoga instructor says, “namaste.” And the students, “hands together at the heart charka, close the eyes, and bow the head,” responding, “namaste.”[7] The sanskrit word literally, “I bow to you.” In the context of Yoga, it signifies “I bow to the divine in you” or, more accurately, “the divine in me greets the divine in you.”[8] The purpose, we are told, is “to increase the flow of divine love.”[9] A significant difference between the Catholic ritual and the yoga ritual is the understanding of the meaning of a blessing. For Catholics, a blessing comes from Christ who works through the priest. For yoginis, a yoga blessing is not imparted by the teacher; rather, it is initiated by the teacher and shared among all participants. The other is only a mirror of one’s own divinity that deserves honor.

Another religious element integral to yoga is the importance of sound and song. In the Christian religion, singing is an act of worship, as indicated in the adage attributed to St. Augustine, “To sing is to pray twice.”[10] Pope Benedict XVI revealed the cosmological profundity of singing with his observation: “the culture of singing is also the culture of being … it is about vigilantly recognizing with the ‘ears of the heart’ the inner laws of the music of creation, the archetypes of music that the Creator built into his world and into men.”[11] yoga parallels these religious impulses by suggesting that the divine can be reached through sound and song, but it also diverges from them for it lacks a divine person to sing about, one who could listen to the song of worshippers. Here we recall that mantra yoga is often combined with hatha and other types of yoga.[12] yoga practitioners chant “OM,” which is to help awaken them to higher reality. OM is not a word so much as a prayer, a mantra that, when intoned correctly, sounds throughout the body to the depth of the soul. In this way, the mantras of yoga honor the divine and make it more fully realized in the life of the yogini. When a person chants “OM,” she attunes herself to the cosmic vibration and she can enter the state of trance, in which her individuality is transcended and merged with the Infinite divine self.[13]

yogic ritual and chant point to the deepest intention of yoga: to honor and to find union with the divine. Thus far, yoga may be considered a sort of religion. What makes yoga distinct from other religions is how divinity is understood. Within most religions, the divine is a power or person or persons distinct from the self. Within yoga, however, the divine is not a being or a person outside of the self. The divine is identical with the self. Rebirth through brahman is not through a personal God; rather, it a rebirth of one’s mind so that you realize that you are divine, and the divine is everything. Through the yoga disciplines, the person is supposed to discover an ontological identity with everything. With this achieved, she loses her individuality and is dissolved into the divinity that she always was. Thus, yoga is far from being a stranger to the religious realm, for it inculcates a tendency toward self-worship.

Admittedly, there is an important way in which yoga is not a religion. Worship, as noted above, indicates a relationship between persons and/or powers. As long as a yogini is imperfect and has not mastered Yoga, she may still experience herself as a being distinct from others. In this case, she is capable of worshipping herself. But this does not hold in perfect yoga mastery. To help the practitioner obtain perfection, yoga instructor calmly suggests, “Some might get in touch with ganesh or krishna or shiva; others might call upon Jesus. Wherever your spirit leads is where you should go.” In other words, it doesn’t matter what you are praying or to whom you are praying, so long as you are doing yoga. The practice of yoga is primary and all relationships disappear. Even the self disappears. All that is left is the supreme reality, in which all is one. Thus, the perfect practice of yoga does not bring about the fullness of worship, for it is the absence of all relationships. This is why one of the classic studies of yoga insisted: “The method [of yoga] comprises a number of different techniques (physiological, mental, mystical), but they all have one characteristic in common–they are antisocial, or, indeed, antihuman.”[14]

In light of our study, we can make some observations. The fool says that there is no God, but the devil wants to be equal to God.[15] pantheistic yoga unites both of these trends, saying both (a) that there is no distinct personhood in God and (b) that the self is equal to the non-personal “divine” that encompasses the universe. If Yoga is a religion, its rituals incline practitioners to worship the self, which is both divine and created, both nothing and everything. This is the epitome of Satanic pride. But when Yoga moves beyond worship, it ends in the annihilation of the self. This is the epitome of nihilistic despair.

Many yoga practitioners evidently do not believe this. A number simply reject pantheism. Others reject theism. Still others do not think about God at all or do not realize the deepest meaning of yoga. From these various perspectives, people argue that yoga is not about honoring the divine anywhere. Its real purpose, they say, is self-improvement through the self-discipline of physical exercise. I will consider this claim in my next post.”

Love,
Matthew

+++++++

[1] For a more scholarly version of the assertion, see Theos Bernard, quoted in Paul G. Hackett, “Theos Beranard and the Early Days of Tantric Yoga in America,” Yoga in Practice, ed. David Gordon White (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 355.
[2] Bl. John Henry Newman elaborates on this modern mindset: “Is not religion associated in your minds with gloom, melancholy, and weariness? … It is so; you cannot deny it. The very terms ‘religion,’ ‘devotion,’ ‘piety,’ ‘conscientiousness,’ ‘mortification,’ and the like, you find to be inexpressibly dull and cheerless.” John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons vol. VII, no. 2: 17.
[3] See Morris Jastrow, The Study of Religion (New York, 1901), 170.
[4] David Gordon White, “Yoga, Brief History of an Idea,” Introduction to Yoga in Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 12, 8.
[5] I noted this in my second post. The quotation is from Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 4.
[6] Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 81, a. 1.
[7] http://www.yogajournal.com/article/beginners/the-meaning-of-quot-namaste-quot/
[8] See http://www.abc-of-yoga.com/yoga-dictionary.asp
[9] http://www.yogajournal.com/article/beginners/the-meaning-of-quot-namaste-quot/
[10] The actual quote from St. Augustine is the following: “For he that sings praises, not only praises, but praises with gladness: he that sings praise, not only sings, but also loves him of whom he sings. In praise, there is the speaking forth of one confessing; in singing, the affection also of one loving” (Commentary on Psalm 73, 1).
[11] Benedict XVI, Address in Paris at the Collège des Bernardins, 12 September 2008. http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/206663?eng=y
[12] See post number four.
[13] See Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 126.
[14] Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, 95.
[15] Ps 14:1, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”; Is 14:12-15, “I will ascend into heaven … I will be like the Most High.” For an analysis of Satan’s pride, see St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 63, a. 3.

Spirituality, Theology of the Body, Yoga

types of yoga (4 of 5)

yogaxl
-pls click on the image for greater detail

FrEzra1
-by Rev Ezra Sullivan, OP

“In the first post we discussed “what is yoga?” In part two we learned about the polytheistic, hindu roots of yoga. And, in the third installment we saw that philosophic yoga teaches that the goal of yoga is union with a supreme reality, that is, it leads the practitioner to become dissolved into a “higher reality.” Once a person perfects her yoga practice, her individual self disappears, along with all distinctions among things.

In today’s post, I would like to show three things:

  1. There are many traditions of yoga.
  2. Practically all types of yoga practiced by Westerners are in the tradition of hatha yoga.
  3. hatha yoga is the first step to the other traditions of yoga.

In other words, the yoga that the West knows best is only the first step on a spiritually dangerous and morally unacceptable path.

St. Paul advises us: “Do not quench the Spirit … but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil” (1 Th 5:19, 21-22). Let us turn our minds to the truth, ask the Lord to bend our hearts according to His will, and explore yoga from a Catholic perspective.

+++++++

To the newly-initiated, the varieties of yoga may be overwhelming. At first a person might think that yoga is yoga wherever you go. But she soon discovers that the yoga offered at the local gym may not be the same as the yoga offered in a boutique studio. She might even meet connoisseurs who claim to practice “real” or “traditional” yoga. Perhaps she comes across aficionados and their flow-charts to help a person make their way through this jungle. Perhaps she reads an internet article with the leading question, “Which type of yoga is tight for you?” The implication is that everyone can find at least one of the dozens of options that fits her lifestyle. But there is another possibility, namely, that no type of yoga is right for anyone.

Since the goal of this post is not to sell yoga but to explain it, it may be useful to distinguish between traditions of yoga and styles of yoga.[1] A yoga tradition is like a branch on a tree; a style is like a leaf on the branch. The major classic traditions of yoga are these:

  • raja yoga, the yoga of mind control: the “original” yoga, focused on disciplining the mind in pursuit of union with the absolute.
  • karma yoga, the yoga of action: liberation from the law of karma and reincarnation through good works performed with complete detachment.
  • bahkti yoga, the yoga of devotion: offers nine means of maintaining a connection with the divine; often practitioners worship a guru as an embodiment of the divine.
  • jnana yoga, the yoga of hidden knowledge: a discipleship period with a guru prepares a person to engage hindu-yoga literature directly.
  • tantra yoga, the yoga of dynamism: instead of classic Yoga’s insistence on self-denial, the dominant form suggests salvation through the practice of sexual yoga.
  • kundalini yoga, the yoga of awareness: aims to unlock the “goddess energy” of the root chakra, seen as a serpent coiled around the base of the spine. It is called the “master”, the “mother”, and the “bestower” of yoga.
  • mantra yoga, the yoga of sound: uses sounds and songs, especially “OM”, in order to help the mind find union with universal divine. It is typically combined with other kinds of yoga.
  • hatha yoga, the yoga of opposing forces: focuses on physical postures and breathing techniques.

It is important to note that these varieties generally are not opposed to each other. In fact, many people employ more than one form of yoga at the same time. Nevertheless, one tradition of yoga has gained dominance in the West and, subsequently, wherever the West has had cultural influence. It is the tradition of hatha yoga.

There is a smorgasbord of styles that shape the basic techniques of hatha yoga. In this realm one finds ancient-sounding names, such as vinyasa and kriya yoga. Then there are styles named after famous founders including bikram or iyengar. “gentle” yoga caters to the elderly and injured, “hot”, “rocket”, and “power” yogas appeal to business types, and laughter yoga is touted as a cure for sad sacks.

What is the essence of hatha yoga? What do all the various styles have in common? The etymology of the word gives us a clue. In sanskrit, ha — tha means “sun – moon”, such that hatha yoga denotes the union of two opposite forces, something accomplished only by personal effort. The union of opposing forces occurs on different levels: on one level, physical postures unite with conscious breath; on another level, one’s body unites with one’s mind; on an even deeper level, the mind unites with the absolute. These levels of union are intelligible in light of the fact that hatha yoga aims at “self-realization” by building on the taja structure, often uniting it with mantra and other types of yoga.[2]

Experts tells us that hatha yoga is the “foundation” for the other traditions of yoga, the first step along the path of the truest yoga.[3] What is the first step of hatha yoga? The asanas, the physical postures.[4] How do physical postures do this? By means of bodily postures and breathing techniques, the body is tensed and relaxed, the mind is emptied, and then follows meditations with pantheistic or polytheistic content: “melt into the ground,” “become one with the universe,” “awaken the goddess within,” etc. A disciple of the yoga master patanjali explains the meaning of the asanas:

Posture becomes perfect when the effort to attain it disappears, so that there are no more movements in the body. In the same way, its perfection is achieved when the mind is transformed into infinity.[5]

In other words, through yoga postures a person begins by being hyper-conscious about her body as she tries to perfect her positioning. But if she perfects her posture, she gains control over her limbs, her breathing, her organs, her entire body as a complete whole. Then she is able to suppress all natural efforts of the body and to lose all conscious awareness of the body. This exercise is meant to facilitate, even make real, a union, a bond, a yoking with the infinite consciousness. The deeper union is supposed to take place during the feeling of expansion that occurs in deep relaxation. Because yoga postures calm the emotions, they help to empty the mind. The practitioner is easily led to assume that her physical experience also involves a spiritual experience.

A summary evaluation of the effects of hatha yoga is as follows. yoga postures often have physically beneficial effects, but we should not be fooled: feelings of quiet and relaxation, pleasant sensations, perhaps even phenomena of light and warmth, and even deeper insights into reality are not the same as deep union with God, nor are they signs of spiritual progress.

If a person calls upon gods during the practice of yoga, as in performing postures in the presence of hindu statues or in chanting mantras to a god or goddess, then she has practiced idolatry and her spiritual condition is worse than when she began. If a person accepts a philosophy that denies the distinctions between body and mind, gain and loss, good and evil, God and the self, then she has embraced falsehood and her spiritual condition is worse than when she began. If she believes that yoga is not dangerous or thinks that it is simply exercise, then her misunderstanding indicates that there is room for improvement. Probably her heart longs for deep spirituality.

The saints teach us the path to true holiness. From them we learn that the evidence of a deep spiritual life necessarily includes the love of God and neighbor, a regular prayer life, fidelity to the commandments, a real and abiding faith in the saving power of Christ, and obedience to the voice of God speaking through the Church. Without these, union with God is little more than a passing breath of hot air.

Love,
Matthew

+++++++

[1] For a helpful and accurate summary of the interconnecting branches of Yoga, see: http://theyogaposter.com/.

[2] See David Gordon White, “Yoga, Brief History of an Idea,” Introduction to Yoga in Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 16. “Without a doubt, hatha yoga both synthesizes and internalizes many of the elements of the earlier yoga systems.”

[3] The classic text Hatha Yoga Pradipika by Swami Svatmarama begins with this dedication: “Reverence to Shiva, the Lord of Yoga, who taught Prvati hatha wisdom as the first step to the pinnacle of raja yoga.” Following this tradition, see B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Yoga (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1966), 23.

[4] Swami Svatmarama, Hatha Yoga Pradipika, verse 17: “Asanas are spoken of first, being the first stage of hatha yoga.”

[5] Quoted in Mircea Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 53.

Christology, Theology

“What is Truth?”, Pilate retorted. -Jn 18:38

caitlyn-jenner

Rachel-Dolezal-21

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest”…”You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to Me.” -Jn 18:36-37.

Our recent media coverage of “identifying as” is symptomatic, only in a clearer way, of humanity’s difficulty with objective truth, imho.  Pilate’s question about truth is one of my favorite in Scripture.  I pray on it constantly.  Perhaps reality is even too much to ask of some?  Reality is too much of a tyrant?

Serpa_Fr_Vincent161[1]

-by Rev Vincent Serpa, OP

“I suppose the most basic definition of truth would be: the conformity of the intellect with what the thing perceived actually is. This would be objective truth. In our culture many want to make such truth relative. “You have your truth and I have mine.” Such is not truth. If one’s perception of something does not conform to what it actually is, then one is in error—no matter how convinced one is and certainly no matter how one feels about it. People who  are (Ed. willfully) colorblind  are not seeing all the true colors before them.

Their perceptions are distorted, even though they are not aware of it. When I make a statement about something that does indeed actually exist, then such a statement could be called a truth. Any statement that would contradict that statement would then be an untruth. If such an untrue statement is deliberately made in order to deceive, then that statement is called a lie. This is pretty basic stuff. Unfortunately, there is so much dishonesty in our society about the very nature of truth that many are confused. Since God is the source of all that is and knows His creation perfectly, He is the fullness of all truth.”

Love,
Matthew

Summa Catechetica, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam." – St Anselm, "“Si comprehendus, non est Deus.” -St Augustine, "Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair." -G.K. Chesterton, “When we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us.” -St Jerome, "As the reading of bad books fills the mind with worldly and poisonous sentiments; so, on the other hand, the reading of pious works fills the soul with holy thoughts and good desires." -St. Alphonsus Liguori, "And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels." –St. Angela Merici, “Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways.” —St. Teresa of Avila, "I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men and women who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity… I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistencies and absurdities of the Protestant theory.” -St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, "We cannot always have access to a spiritual Father for counsel in our actions and in our doubts, but reading will abundantly supply his place by giving us directions to escape the illusions of the devil and of our own self-love, and at the same time to submit to the divine will.” —St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." –St. Padre Pio, "Screens may grab our attention, but books change our lives!" – Word on Fire, "Don't neglect your spiritual reading. Reading has made many saints!" -St Josemaría Escrivá, "Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you." —St. Jerome, from his Letter 22 to Eustochium, "Encounter, not confrontation; attraction, not promotion; dialogue, not debate." -cf Pope Francis, "God here speaks to souls through…good books“ – St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, "You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.” -St Athanasius, "To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP. 1 saint ruins ALL the cynicism in Hell & on Earth. “When we pray we talk to God; when we read God talks to us…All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection.” -St Isidore of Seville, “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.” -GM Hopkins, SJ, "Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book." — St. John Bosco, "Why don't you try explaining it to them?" – cf St Peter Canisius, SJ, Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the Catechism, "Already I was coming to appreciate that often apologetics consists of offering theological eye glasses of varying prescriptions to an inquirer. Only one prescription will give him clear sight; all the others will give him at best indistinct sight. What you want him to see—some particular truth of the Faith—will remain fuzzy to him until you come across theological eye glasses that precisely compensate for his particular defect of vision." -Karl Keating, "The more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we love Him." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP, ST, I-II,67,6 ad 3, “But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered." —St. Teresa of Avila, "Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me." –St. Augustine, "Without good books and spiritual reading, it will be morally impossible to save our souls." —St. Alphonsus Liguori "Never read books you aren't sure about. . . even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?" -St. John Bosco " To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." —St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. "Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading." –St. Isidore of Seville “The aid of spiritual books is for you a necessity.… You, who are in the midst of battle, must protect yourself with the buckler of holy thoughts drawn from good books.” -St. John Chrysostom