Pope Benedict XVI Resigns

 It is a sad day for Holy Mother Church. I have a great fondness for Pope Benedict XVI, as it was through reading his works as Cardinal Ratzinger that I started to not only move towards the Catholic Church, but also to fall in love with theology. Even as an Anglican, his election to the papacy was a moment of great joy for me. Yet, Pope Benedict has said from the beginning of his pontificate that after seeing what Bl. John Paul II went through in his last years, if he ever felt that he was not mentally or physically able to fulfill his office, it would be his duty to step down for the good of the Church. It appears that he now feels he has reached that point. It's very sad, and out of selfishness I wish he wouldn't, but he is much wiser than I and truly has what is best for the Church at the forefront of his thought. Below is the full text of his announcement.

"Dear Brothers,
I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.
Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer".

From the Vatican, 10 February 2013

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

Charity As A Political Virtue

 

Now one can love the good of a city in two ways: in one way to possess it, in another that it might be preserved. If someone loves the good of a city in order to have and own it, he is not a good political person, because in this way even a tyrant loves the good of a city, in order to dominate it, which is to love oneself more than the city. He wants this good for himself, not for the city. 

But to love the good of the city that it might be kept and defended, this is truly to love the city and this makes a person a good political person, so much so that some expose themselves to the danger of death and neglect their private good in order to preserve or increase the good of the city. In the same way, to love the good that is participated by the blessed, to love it so as to have or possess it, does not establish the right relation between a person and blessedness, because even evil people want this good. 

But to love that good according to itself, that it may remain and be shared out and that nothing be done against this good, this gives to a person the right relation to that society of the blessed. And this is love [caritas] which loves God for his sake and the neighbors, who are capable of blessedness, as oneself.

-St. Thomas Aquinas, De Virtutibus, 2.2 c.  

Thus Sounds The Death Knell For The Anglican Communion

In 2003, Vicky Gene Robinson was elected as the first openly homosexual bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), a branch of the world-wide Anglican Communion, which has the Church of England as its primatial see. Orthodox Episcopalians who upheld the two thousand year old traditions of Christ were faced with a dilemma. How does one remain part of the Anglican Communion, while at the same time rejecting the heterodox downslide of ECUSA? A fascinating charade was worked out, whereby the Episcopalians who did not agree with the leadership of ECUSA would be under the jurisdiction of an Anglican Ordinary from Africa or South America, where traditional Christianity was upheld, allowing them to remain in America without being under the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA, and at the same time still in union with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.

On paper, this is a nice little trick, but in reality ECUSA and the traditional Episcopalians who became the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) are still in the same communion because they both are in union with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus are, by default, in union with each other. So long as the Church of England was on the level, so the sentiment went, all is well. Well, with the most recent ruling by the House of Bishops in the Church of England allowing homosexual bishops, all is not well.

Now, the safeguard that allowed the ACNA to be able to split from ECUSA and yet remain Anglican has been eliminated. The Church of England has turned its back on the orthodox Anglicans in its communion and left them with the choice to violate their consciences or cease being Anglicans. There is no way around it this time. No amount of slight of hand or misdirection will hide the reality that the orthodox Anglican is no longer welcomed in the Anglican Communion. The House of Bishops wishes to assuage any fears by stating that only those homosexuals who are in a partnership and vow to be celibate will be admitted to the episcopacy. Yet, if they are to be celibate, why the partnership in the first place? Do they think that the people are so naïve as to think that they will truly remain celibate while at the same time living in a homosexual partnership? One priest of the Church of England has already stated that the celibacy requirement is a let down. Might we not reasonably expect this to be the sentiment of most, if not all, those lobbying for homosexual partnered bishops?

At the end of the day, the choice for ACNA members who wish not to violate their consciences is clear; either they move to a different Protestant denomination, where they will most likely encounter similar battles, or join the Roman Catholic Church through the Anglican Ordinariate and thereby retain their Anglican heritage while simultaneously being part of the one communion that has upheld, and will continue to uphold, traditional Christianity from the beginning.

Modernity: How Did We Get Here?

As a Catholic looking at Modernity, provided that one is aware of the goings-on around him, the world can seem like a pretty messed up place. And it is. Original Sin has radically effected the state of the world and there continues a constant battle against personal sin throughout the history of man. One of the effects of sin is the darkening of the intellect. That's right....sin makes you stupid! Throughout Christian history, however, there have been thinkers who, aided by the supernatural grace of God, have risen above this ignorance of the intellect to soar to great heights. The most famous of these was St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) who, building off of the great pre-Christian thinker Aristotle, systematized the union of faith and reason unlike anyone before or after. Yet, shortly after the death of Aquinas, the Aristotelian-Thomistic approach to the world (i.e. the via antiqua) was subverted, leading us into the via moderna. One of the first casualties of modernity was the rejection of the philosophy of being found in Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics.

The root of the problem known as the via moderna goes back to John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) who was the founder of voluntarism and William of Ockham (d. 1347) who was the founder of nominalism. These two concepts (voluntarism and nominalism) replaced logos (contemplative reason) as the highest act of man and led to the idea of reason as will to power. Ockham and Scotus thereby influenced Luther, Bacon, Newton, Kant, etc., so that not only was the notion that there are greater realities above mankind done away with, being replaced by a mechanistic view of nature where man is the highest reality in existence, but also nature was seen as something to be controlled, manipulated, and conquered for purposes of humanity. Rene Descartes (d. 1650) started what is known as the "turn to the self", whereby the only certain things in existence are clear and distinct ideas (Cogito, ergo sum/I think, therefore I am). Everything else is to be approached with radical doubt.  After Descartes came Immanuel Kant (d. 1804), another key figure in this history. Due to him, modern man is egotistically centered on himself. Kant's categorical imperative is based on radical autonomy so that each man becomes the measure of the universe and the arbiter of law, rather than something objective outside of man, such as an infinite God. In Kant's world view there is no such thing as natural law, which Thomas Aquinas defined as the "rational creature's participation of the eternal law" (Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 91  a. 2). Most of the modern world is Kantian without having read Kant. Thus, if you know how to answer Kant, you are on your way to steering people back in the right direction.

If you are interested in learning more about the via moderna, what it is, how we got here, and how to counter it, here are some books I would recommend:

Metaphysics -Aristotle

Nicomachean Ethics -Aristotle

Summa Theologiae -St. Thomas Aquinas

The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society -Brad S. Gregory

The Last Superstition -Edward Feser

Socrates Meets Hume -Peter Kreeft

Socrates Meets Kant -Peter Kreeft

A Refutation of Moral Relativism -Peter Kreeft

Back to Virtue -Peter Kreeft

Faith and Certitude -Thomas Dubay

The Evidential Power of Beauty -Thomas Dubay

Answering the New Atheism -Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

Reasons to Believe -Scott Hahn

Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists -Benjamin Wiker

Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700 -Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker

Christianity and the Crises of Culture -Joseph Ratzinger

Introduction to Moral Theology -Romanus Cessario

Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body -John Paul II

Another Sort of Learning -James V. Shall

Leisure the Basis of Culture -Josep Pieper

Bride Of Yahweh: An Exegesis of Isaiah 54

A. Outline and Structural Analysis

54:1-10—The Fecundity of the Barren Wife.

         1-3: Call for Jerusalem to rejoice and promise of renewed fertility.

         4-8: Reunion of Yahweh with His bride.

         9-10: Comparison to the covenant with Noah.

54: 11-17—The Security of the Afflicted City.

         11-14: The rebuilding of Jerusalem.

         15-17: Yahweh’s protection of the city.

            The structure of Isaiah 54 would seem to suggest two major sections, vv. 1-10 and vv.11-17. Blenkinsopp divides the chapter into three main sections: vv. 1-8, vv. 9-10, and vv. 11-17a, with v. 17b as a concluding statement summarizing the whole (360-361). His basis for doing so, is that “the only clear markers in the text itself…are the references to who is speaking” in verses 6, 8, 10, and 17. There are, however, a few problems with the ratio for this division. First, if the basis of the division is based on who is speaking, why not add another division after verse 6, which Blenkinsopp skips over? Second, in his translation, he skips over the יהוה אמר at the end of verse 1, which would further complicate his division based on references to the speaker. Finally, the references to the speaker do not seem to be the only basis for dividing the text. One could make a plausible argument for dividing the text based on the addressee marked out in verses 1 and 11. Blenkinsopp points out that BHS and 1QIsa^a also divide the text in the way I have suggested and it seems to be the preferred one based on the context of the chapter (360). Whybray, Westermann, North, and Sawyer also make the same division (though not necessarily for the same reason as myself). Thus, the assessment of Watts that “form-critical analysis has agreed on dividing the chapter into four sections: vv 1-3, 4-6, 7-10, and 11-17” is a striking one (236).

Von Balthasar's Aesthetical Approach To Scripture

In the first book of the first part of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Trilogy, The Glory of the Lord: Seeing the Form, von Balthasar lays out his plan for a theological aesthetics. He envisions his project as a reversal of the ordering of the transcendentals in the works of Immanuel Kant. Kant began with his critique of pure reason (truth), then moved to a critique of practical reason (good), and finally a critique of judgment (beauty). Thus, von Balthasar begins where Kant ends and affirms that without beauty as the starting point, the other transcendentals are lost. ...

Continue reading my most recent article, Obstacles to Reading Scripture in Modernity: Von Balthasar's Response, over at Homiletic & Pastoral Review.

False Emancipation

This quote, from the then-Joseph Ratzinger, underscores the erroneous philosophical background rooted in Enlightenment philosophical presuppositions of current topics of debate such as abortion and the attempt to redefine the institution of marriage:

“The attack on tradition became, with them (the French Encyclopedists), ever more fundamental, more conscious, more intense. This movement increased its scope during the age of technical reason. The idea of emancipation is understood today as the radical antithesis of the idea of tradition. All previous value systems are to be unmasked; in his rationality, man becomes the creator not only of himself but also of a world constructed according to his own designs; he forms himself and reality anew in the unconditioned transparency of his own rationality. Philosophically, this concept is expressed in the theory that man was not created according to a preconceived design and is, consequently, free (and, at the same time, obligated by this freedom) to design himself—to determine what man is to be like in the future. This liberation of man from the soil of the earth, from the foreordination to which he owes his existence, is most evident in the notion of perfect dominion over life and death and in elimination of the distinction between man and woman.”

-Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: BuildingStones for a Fundamental Theology

Thomas Aquinas And Mystical Theology

"Several authors, struck by the difference which they find between the writings of the great mystical theologians (such as Dionysius, Richard of St. Victor, St. Bonaventure, Tauler, St. John of the Cross) and the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, are surprised that we should expect to find in St. Thomas’ writings the principles of mystical theology. Some even consider St. Thomas, not a great theologian who from a supernatural point of view used Aristotle for the defense and explanation of the divine truths of faith, but rather a philosopher of genius who gave us an interpretation of the Gospel, a Christian Aristotle, as later on Malebranche was a Christian Plato.

    Anyone who accepts this view must lack an intimate knowledge of the writings of St. Thomas, especially his treatises on the Trinity, the incarnation, the Holy Eucharist, grace, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Certainly such a person never read St. Thomas’ commentaries on St. Paul, St. John, the Psalms, and the Canticle of Canticles. He must be ignorant of St. Thomas’ short treatises on piety, his prayers, his office of the Blessed Sacrament; and he must be unacquainted with the saint’s life, his nights spent before the tabernacle, his ecstasies, the eminent gift of contemplation which made him refer to his Summa as being only straw in comparison with what he beheld."

-Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Christian Perfection and Contemplation: According to St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross

Our Lord And Our Lady

They warned Our Lady for the Child
  That was Our blessed Lord,
And She took Him into the desert wild,
  Over the camel's ford.
And a long song She sang to Him
  And a short story told:
And She wrapped Him in a woollen cloak
  To keep Him from the cold.
But when Our Lord was grown a man
  The Rich they dragged Him down,
And they crucified Him in Golgotha,
  Out and beyond the Town.
They crucified Him on Calvary,
  Upon an April day;
And because He had been her little Son
  She followed Him all the way.
Our Lady stood beside the Cross,
  A little space apart,
And when She heard Our Lord cry out
  A sword went through Her Heart.

-Hilaire Belloc

The Transformative Power Of Grace

“Through their mother's mediation, the sons of Zebedee press Christ as follows in the presence of their fellow apostles: ‘Command that we may sit, one at your right side and one at your left’ (cf. Mk 10,35f.)... Christ hastens to free them from their illusions, telling them they must be prepared to suffer insults, persecutions, even death. ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I shall drink?’ Let no one be surprised to see the apostles displaying such imperfect dispositions. Wait until the mystery of the cross has been fulfilled and the strength of the Holy Spirit given to them. If you want to see the strength of their souls, take a look at them later on and you will see them to be above all human weakness. Christ does not conceal their pettiness so you will be able to see what they become later on by the power of the grace that will transform them... Later on you will see this same John, who here approached Christ with the petition, gave precedence always to Saint Peter... James, however, did not live long after. From the beginning he was moved with great zeal. He gave up all earthly interests and attained such an inexpressible degree of excellence that from among the apostles he was killed the first (Acts 12,2).”

-St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew