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I've said it before and I'll say it again: there is absolutely nothing that ever has been or ever will be discovered by the light of science that can contradict the truths of the Christian faith. Anyone who says otherwise either:
1) Doesn't understand the science
2) Doesn't understand the faith
3) Is selling a book
I've never understood the belief prevalent in some atheist circles that the discovery of extraterrestrial life - or even something as simple as water on Mars - would prove devastating to the faith. Angels and demons, hello? All non-heretical Christians already acknowledge the existence of intelligent, non-human life in the universe. The implications of the existence of extraterrestrial life for Christianity has already been explored at length by C.S. Lewis, among other writers, thinkers, and theologians. Even granting that aliens exist - and there is no evidence that they do - truth cannot contradict truth.
I guess one can't be too careful in what one reads if one is committed to "antitheism."
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The everlasting God has in his wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that he now presents to you as a gift from his inmost heart. The cross he now sends you he has considered with his all-knowing eyes, understood with this divine mind, tested with his wise justice, warmed with his loving arms, and weighed with his own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with his holy Name, anointed it with his grace, perfumed it with his consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God.
- St. Francis De Sales
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Catholics to pope: Lift birth control ban.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — More than 50 dissident Catholic groups from around the world have written an open letter asking Pope Benedict XVI to lift the church's ban on birth control.
Pop quiz hot shots: What is the difference, if any, between these two statements?
1. "X is true because the Magisterium says so."
2. "I know that X is true because the Magisterium says so."
Sometimes in the heat of debate and in everyday sloppy language, the first is used as shorthand for the second. In general though, they mean very different things. In general, the first is completely false. This is true even in juridical and disciplinary matters, and not just on matters of faith and morals.
The proximate reason why we have to abstain from meat on Fridays is because the Magisterium has established this as a discipline. The reason why we obey the Magisterium in matters of discipline is not simply (and circularly) because the Magisterium says we must obey her in matters of discipline. The Magisterium does not (and she herself says this, through the person of Pope Benedict) make things true by asserting them. She can be completely trusted to tell us what is in fact true. An infallible witness to the truth is not the creator of truth.
Catholics who complain about the Church's teaching on birth control (or other issues) have a certain epistemic oddity behind their wishful thinking. Underlying their complaints seems to be a belief that moral facts are not really facts: that they are based solely on the authority of the Church, as if the Church has the authority to make something moral or immoral simply by declaring it so. Catholics can hope the Church will adopt an objectively false view of sexual morality all they wish without changing the fact that using birth control is objectively evil. People hope for all kinds of counterfactual things, but wishful thinking does not make the counterfactual any closer to being true.
Someone who hopes the Church will change her position on birth control is hoping the Church will adopt an objectively false moral position.
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Slavery is simply a particular and highly institutionalized instance of treating human beings as property. Human beings can be and often are treated as property even without the formal institution of slavery, which doesn't stop being evil simply in the abandoning of its institutional character. And of course treating human beings as property is itself a species of treating human beings as things rather than persons. The servant-slave distinction as we understand it today hinges on exactly this: that the servant is treated as a person subject to a contingent earthly authority, while the slave is treated as nothing but an object the sole purpose of which is to provide utility.
Not even actual property should be treated as property: that is, our concept of property has become damaged by modern philosophy, which treats property as things subject to arbitrary will as opposed to things falling under legitimate jurisdiction in carrying out a mandate of stewardship. Modern people detest this idea, because modern people detest the idea that they are not God, and they especially detest the idea that they are not God even within their circumscribed "personal" domains.
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It must in any case be clearly understood that whatever may be laid down by civil law in this matter, man can never obey a law which is in itself immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the liceity of abortion. Nor can he take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it. [Emphasis mine]
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Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity. Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good. Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law.
[...]
Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection. [Emphasis mine]
Every Catholic has a positive, binding moral obligation to conscientiously object to the pro-choice legal regime. There may be additional things we must do to oppose abortion; but this particular duty - to expressly oppose the pro-choice legal regime in itself - is not optional. A grave duty to conscientiously object may mean any number of things, but "go along quietly and don't make any trouble" isn't one of them.
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| » A very distant cousin of mine once said... |
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We pray, Thee O Almighty and Eternal God! Who through Jesus Christ hast revealed Thy glory to all nations, to preserve the works of Thy mercy, that Thy Church, being spread through the whole world, may continue with unchanging faith in the confession of Thy Name. ( Read more... )
-Archbishop John Carroll, first bishop appointed for the United States, 1789
Jul. 4th, 2008 @ 11:58 am
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| » Some arguments I don't like to see |
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Necessity is the mother of all moral heresy. How often do we hear the following:
Torture is immoral because it isn't necessary. It doesn't actually work in providing reliable intelligence.
Abortion is immoral because it isn't necessary. Adoption is always an option.
Atomic bombings of civilian cities was immoral because they weren't necessary. The Allies needn't have insisted on unconditional surrender.
Suppose though that in a particular case it really is necessary. Suppose that all human life on earth will be utterly annihilated if we do not undertake one of those particular acts.
It doesn't matter one bit. It's still wrong to do it.
These moral arguments from (non)necessity are a way of marketing an idea that is unpalatable to a particular audience by hiding the essence of the idea. To be more blunt, they are a lie. The fact they hide is that morality is the Cross. That's why I don't like to see them, particularly coming from Christians.
Jul. 3rd, 2008 @ 06:47 am
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| » Jokes: handmaid to the handmaid |
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A man is in desperate financial straits and prays to God to save him by letting him win the lottery.
Days go by, then weeks, and the man fails to win a single lottery. Finally, in misery, he cries out to God, "You tell us, 'Knock and it shall be opened to you. Seek and you shall find.' I'm going down the tubes here and I still haven't won the lottery!"
A voice from above answers, "You've got to meet me halfway, bubbeleh! Buy a ticket!"
1) Which Christian tradition does the man most likely come from?
2) What is the theological premise underlying God's response?
Jul. 1st, 2008 @ 11:44 am
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| » The Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul |
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And Jesus came into the quarters of Cæsarea Philippi: and he asked his disciples, saying: Whom do men say that the Son of man is? But they said: Some John the Baptist, and other some Elias, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven. - Matthew 16:13-19
We Catholics interpret our Lord's words to mean that Simon Peter was the rock upon which He would build His Church. Protestants and Orthodox read those same words and come to completely different conclusions (I was actually rather charmed by Cal Thomas's rather innocent take on it, as if Jesus was unaware of how very much like pre-Ressurection Peter all of us can be.) The evidence for papal supremacy is not indisputable. That mythical creature called the neutral scholar could not look at the evidence and be as irresistibly drawn to the Catholic conclusion as he is to four being the solution to two plus two. The doctrine of papal supremacy is a reasonable conclusion derived from the historical evidence and Tradition; there is certainly nothing in early Church history to contradict it.
Critics of Catholicism often point to the clear evolution of the Church's understanding of the papal office and the powers of the bishop of Rome as discrediting the claim the papacy was established by Jesus Christ Himself when He gave the keys to Peter. Does this prove that the doctrine of papal supremacy is not part of the Apostolic deposit of faith? I don't think it's possible for that to be right. Consider, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity: ( Read more... )
For that matter, how many of the Ante-Nicene Fathers explicitly believed in the full divinity and personhood of the Holy Spirit? The Ante-Nicene Father who most consistently taught the full Nicene-Constantinapolitan doctrine was the Montanist Tertullian! Appeals to the consensus of the Church Fathers are unsatisfactory because they assume there was a time when the Church infallibly, explicitly, and uncontroversially taught everything that it teaches today; but such a time has never existed. The Church as Church knows the totality of the deposit of the faith, but at any given point in history, not all of that knowledge is discursive. The belief that there can be no such thing as doctrinal development might look as if it follows from the Christian conviction of the totality and finality of God's revelation to us in Christ. But that itself is not a revealed truth, nor taught by the Catholic Church. People who reject doctrinal development have a lot more historical problems to deal with than we papal supremacists.
We Catholics do not rest our faith on the ever shifting attitudes and passions of historians and scholars though. Otherwise, we should all simply lay down our crosses until the Jesus Seminar is finally retired. The Catholic believes that the papacy is divinely instituted because the Catholic Church authoritatively and infallibly proclaims it to be such; and so the Catholic, legitimately and rationally, interprets the evidence of history in light of this revealed truth.
Jun. 29th, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
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| » The start of the Pauline year and... |
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Today is the feast of St. Irenaeus who heard the Gospel from St. Polycarp who heard the Gospel from St. John the Apostle. If he had not been martyred, he deserved sainthood simply for going to the trouble of reading all of the available Gnostic writings in order to refute them.
We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. For it is unlawful to assert that they preached before they possessed "perfect knowledge," as some do even venture to say, boasting themselves as improvers of the apostles. For, after our Lord rose from the dead, [the apostles] were invested with power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down [upon them], were filled from all [His gifts], and had perfect knowledge: they departed to the ends of the earth, preaching the glad tidings of the good things [sent] from God to us, and proclaiming the peace of heaven to men, who indeed do all equally and individually possess the Gospel of God. Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. - Adversus haereses, Book III Chapt. I
Jun. 28th, 2008 @ 11:04 pm
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| » On voting, again |
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A few thoughts that have occurred to me in the course of my many correspondences with various people regarding the moral theology of voting:
1. It's true that most of what I've written on the subject is "non-Magisterial" in the sense that the Magisterium has not pronounced decisively on my side. But that fact can only be of interest to ultramontane moral relativists.
2. I used to be greatly flummoxed by how emotional people got over the subject of voting. Considered rationally, it is mathematically impossible for one vote to ever decide the outcome of a national election. The conceivable is a superset of the possible; "I can imagine it happening without logical contradiction" does not mean the same thing as "It is actually possible in reality."
That's when I realized that 99.9% of the act of voting consists of a personal affirmation for the voter. I don't think anyone votes thinking their one vote will carry their candidate into office. They vote because it makes them feel as if they've fulfilled their civic duty, or because it makes them feel like part of a winning team, or because they feel like they are making a statement about principle, or a statement about how much they dislike another candidate, etc. I knew with absolute certainty that my one vote for Ron Paul earlier this year would have no effect on the outcome of the primary whatsoever. Likewise, my one vote will have absolutely no effect on the outcome of any election this fall.
3. An interesting (and by interesting I mean wrong) idea cropped up the other day. We'll call it "absolution by futility." Roughly, it holds that act A cannot be formal or material cooperation with evil if A is futile, or has absolutely no chance of achieving its intended end. I don't think it's possible for that one to be right: ( Read more... )
4. The principle of double-effect is not a license for circular reasoning. Before we even begin determining whether double-effect applies, we first have to establish if the act we are about to do is intrinsically evil or not. The physical act of voting is simply pulling a lever, punching a chad, or pushing a button, so the first criteria is met. Second, we must establish that there is a proportionate reason for deliberate, premeditated material cooperation with evil which is a question of particular fact. Third, the act must be proportionate to its end, that is it has to have a reasonable chance of success. If any one of the criteria is lacking, then it is not permissible to engage in that act which is deliberate, premeditated material cooperation with evil. Voting for one of two cannibals might be permissible if my one vote carried my candidate into office, but that would literally require a miracle. If my reasoning requires me to stipulate a miracle occurring in the causal chain from my act to my intended end, then deliberate premeditated material cooperation with evil is not justified.
5. If I were to tell you that a dog was the same thing as a bumblebee - that is, they are merely collections of atoms responding to the laws of physics and obstinately denied that there was any legitimate or basic difference between them - you'd probably think I was a bit goofy. That's how people sound to me when they try to convince me that a vote by a jury or a corporate board of directors is the same thing as a national election for president.
6. National elections simply aren't what people think they are. They have some effect on governance but they do not give rise to governance per se. Nor are they what determines how we are governed. Again they have some effect, but they are not even one of the primary factors that determines public policy.
7. "vote or engage in armed revolt" is a false dilemma.
Jun. 28th, 2008 @ 08:38 pm
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| » The problem with the problem of evil |
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The existence of life as a physical phenomenon appears ludicrously improbable according to what we know from the natural sciences. To the casual observer, it looks as though the earth itself along with the whole universe was fine tuned so as to make our existence possible. Scientists respond to this with the cosmological anthropic principle. They say, "Of course the earth and the universe appear to be fine tuned to support our existence. If they weren't, we wouldn't be able to observe the earth and the universe at all because we wouldn't exist." Perhaps an infinite number of universes exist; but we find ourselves in a very unlikely corner of a very unlikely one, an unlikely corner capable of supporting life, because it isn't possible for us to exist in any of the other universes or life-hostile corners of this universe.
Whatever one may think about it as an argument for a specific metaphysic, the cosmological anthropic principle is an interesting, albeit tautological, statement about the logic of our existence. Whatever one can say about this world, it is exactly the kind of world I should expect to see because it is the kind of world that gave rise to me. There may be other worlds than this one, but the one I will definitely find myself in is the one upon which my existence is logically contingent.
The problem of evil can be phrased in many ways, and one way is the following question: How is it possible for evil to exist in a world created by an omniscient, omnipotent, and infinitely good God? It's a very human and natural question. Anyone who can't relate to it as an emotive response to evil and suffering is probably not the kind of person who's popular at cocktail parties. I don't think the problem of evil holds up logically.
The cosmological anthropic principle holds that only this world is logically compatible with my existence. Many kinds of worlds are no doubt possible and compatible with the existence of an omnipotent, infinitely good God but only this one is compatible with my existence. If not for some precise and extraordinarily improbable events, many of which were contingent on the existence of evil in this world, I would not exist. No one alive today would exist. If this world is incompatible with God's existence, and any other world is incompatible with mine, then my existence and God's existence become, as a logical matter, mutually exclusive. To assert the problem of evil is to literally consign oneself to hell: it is to assert that God could not love you enough to tolerate the existence of evil.
The problem of evil is a-rational emotion masquerading as reason. The Incarnation and the Passion make it infinitely so.
Jun. 15th, 2008 @ 06:58 pm
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| » Losing to win, winning to lose |
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People tend to think I'm some sort of hardcore idealist - that my inclination in public life and political discourse is more towards purity and being correct as opposed to winning. You know: winning the civilizational war against Islam, winning the war against abortion, winning the struggle against the decline and fall of our own culture, winning souls for the true Faith - that sort of winning.
Nothing could be further from the truth. It's so far from the truth it doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong. The premises of the perspective are themselves wrong. One false premise is that purity and correctness stand in opposition to winning. Another is that where the philosophy meets the mind must be completely separate from where the metal meets the meat. That just ain't so.
Victory is not possible unless you are truly willing to risk losing: to accept the possibility of being a loser. People who refuse to acknowledge the possibility of losing either simply declare victory anyway when they lose, or they blame their loss on backstabbing traitors and go on to repeat the same mistakes later. So instead of merely losing to what they oppose, they become what they oppose.
Great military strategists often take advantage of this principle. If the enemy is losing strategically, you can make sure he continues losing strategically by feeding him tactical victories as a way to lure his head into the noose. Instead of realizing the enormity of his situation, he will think he's making progress towards victory and press on even as he's getting owned. I doubt we'll ever meet a keener strategist than the prince of this world.
Human beings - particularly Americans - do not like to lose. They don't like to admit they have lost, or even to admit the possibility of losing. But even God won by getting nailed to a cross. When I go on about what is true as opposed to what works, it isn't because I think there's a tradeoff to be made because there isn't. Socially conservative objectives are (literally) a Hail Mary at this point in the game. We won't achieve them by incremental non-strategies or accepting the devil's table scraps by cooperating with evil. If we truly want to win we first have to accept the fact that - barring divine intervention, for which we should always pray and hope - we will almost certainly lose.
Jun. 11th, 2008 @ 08:13 pm
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| » Episcopal spine alert |
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St. Thomas More, ora pro nobis. St. John Fisher, ora pro nobis. All ye English martyrs, ora pro nobis.
Simply closing down adoption services rather than cooperate with evil is a valid and legitimate choice. If it were up to me, I would simply tell Caesar to go to hell and double dare him to stop Catholic adoption services from carrying on as normal. I expect we'll see stuff like this happen in this country more often in the future. The First Amendment is trumped by the need for tolerance and inclusion after all. Tolerance, though, is not enough. YOU. MUST. APPROVE.
Jun. 10th, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
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| » The moral theology of voting |
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Formal cooperation with evil means that we will that something evil be done, full stop. If X is evil, you will that X be done by someone, and you do anything at all, no matter how remote or insignificant, to bring it about, then you are formally cooperating with evil which is never permissible. It does not matter one bit if you know what X is but you disagree that X is evil. An example: suppose Fred the blogger publishes a blog post about the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Fred says (and assume he is honestly expressing his true intention) that if a prisoner knows the location of a ticking time bomb then by all means we ought to subject him to a few seconds of waterboarding or other forms of torture to get that information from the prisoner in order to save thousands of lives. Fred is formally cooperating with evil which is always wrong, period. Another example: everyone who said, or wrote, or blogged to the effect that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube should have been pulled, or that Michael Shiavo should have been "left alone" to pull it himself, formally cooperated with her murder.
How does all of that pertain to voting? I think it means several things: ( Read more... )
Jun. 9th, 2008 @ 09:57 am
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| » We will not be judged by what we've read |
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An acquaintance with whom I occasionally debate recently asked "Philosophy, theology, politics, law, writing, academia, principles, ethics, literature - does any of it matter? Does it make a single life better, does it make anybody defer to anyone who knows better... does it do a single damn thing for anybody?"
I think it does. It is certainly true that bad philosophy, theology, politics, law, writing, academia, principles, ethics, and literature can get people killed. That's why it's so vitally important that all of us learn good philosophy, theology, politics, law, writing, academia, principles, ethics, and literature. We ought to learn them, internalize them, and pass them on to our descendants. We can't recognize the bad and the wrong stuff if we don't know what's good and right. Without a solid base, without the stone which the builders rejected, people become susceptible to the bad philosophy of lunatics like Nietzsche and charlatans like Freud.
In the grand scheme of things - in the light of eternity - they may not matter. On Judgment Day none of us will be judged according to what we have read but according to what we have done. To how much we have loved.
Jun. 5th, 2008 @ 07:18 pm
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| » Nominalislamofascism |
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On this day in 1453, Constantinople fell to the barbarians.
"The difference between Catholicism and Islam is that Catholicism has a magisterium that can declare something to be authentically Catholic or not. Because Islam doesn't have a magisterium, 'Islam' is whatever Muslims say it is. So if we can get enough 'moderate' Muslims to convince their brethren that there is nothing inherently violent about Islam, then Islam and all Muslims will be moderate."
How many times have we heard this or something similar to this since 9/11? Underneath such sentiments lies an intellectual error that goes all the way back to the Middle Ages.
Nominalism means that one denies the existence of universals. As a practical matter what nominalism insists upon is that categories are just names that we use for the sake of convenience, and the names mean whatever someone authoritative says that they mean. In general, if I am using the terms, I get to say what the terms mean and what those meanings imply. The meaning arises from what I will, as a speaker. I am a Logos whose words make the reality that they express: indeed, my words are very much like a sacrament, making real that which they symbolize because I control with my will what they symbolize.
If Muslims really do become "moderate" (by which I think it is usually meant that they become modern secular liberals who view their religion as a purely private matter without public consequences), then they will be like "moderate" Christians, i.e. they will be functional apostates. Christianity is not a moderate thing: it is a thing which totally remakes every aspect of the life of the Christian. And someone is not a Christian because he wills himself to be a Christian. Someone is a Christian because he loves and has faith in the actual real Person of Christ.
A Muslim is not someone who has made up a faith for himself and happens to use the words "Allah" and "Koran." A Muslim is a person who is loyal to Islam. Islam is an objective thing, independent of what any particular Muslim says it is. As is the case with any ideology or religion, there are very loyal Muslims and loosely loyal Muslims. There are Muslims whose loyalty to Islam is very informed, and there are those who are loyal but ignorant. But the thing we refer to with the name "Islam" is independent of any particular Muslim's opinions and loyalties.
Nominalism is no less of an error when the speaker is the magisterium, rather than an individual. The magisterium does not make something real by naming it. There is no eighth sacrament or metasacrament by which the magisterium creates reality through words. The magisterium names things which are already real. And Islam is no less real a thing than Catholicism just because it lacks a magisterium.
Islam, as an objective thing, is categorically evil (which is not to say it is 100% pure evil or that every Muslim thinks only purely evil thoughts because of that.) A Muslim is someone who has some degree of loyalty to Islam, a thing which is categorically evil. Of course we all have attachments to things which are categorically evil. To the degree my attachment to greed is weak, I don't make a very good Scrooge (I always sound more like Sean Connery.) In that sense, it is quite true that a Muslim who is not committed to Jihad isn't a very good Muslim.
May. 29th, 2008 @ 07:28 pm
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| » What we have here is a failure to communicate |
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There's a lot of confusion out there about the definition of "faith." Atheists and agnostics seem to believe that "faith" means "believing in something despite a complete lack of evidence."
That view of faith isn't just skewed, it is outright wrong. The Catholic Church teaches (and reason confirms, if one is willing to do the intellectual heavy lifting) that the existence of God is something which we can conclude from natural reason. It's not my intention to get into the various ways this can be done here, but rather to explore what that means for "faith" when we take that as a given. If the existence of God can be proven through unaided human reason with no "leap of faith," then what does it mean to have faith?
Faith, it seems to me, is fundamentally about trust and loyalty. "Fidelity" is a better term in many ways than the more contaminated English word "faith". We can know by natural reason that God exists, and we can know the natural law through reason alone. But to be a Christian in the face of a fallen world filled with injustice and suffering it is not necessarily obvious that God should be trusted to love us. Faith, it seems to me, is in part about trusting that God created us because He loves us (How long, O Lord, how long?) And if He created us because He loves us then it is fitting that He reveals Himself to us through creation, and specifically through salvation history. If we trust God Who Reveals to show His love to us through a manifestly fallen creation, then salvation history clearly proclaims, to all corners of the world, Christ Crucified and Christ Risen.
Faith is not a blind confidence in personal salvation. The Council of Trent condemned as heresy the notion that doubt about one's personal salvation is a sin. Faith is trust that Christ is who He says He is; and it is fealty to the Church He established.
May. 21st, 2008 @ 08:00 am
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| » I'm religious but not spiritual |
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Atheism: The brief pause between exhaling Christianity and inhaling something else.
And that's all the current fad for atheism will be: a fad. A select few have the bottomless well of pride necessary for shaking their fists at heaven and shouting "NON SERVIAM" for the rest of their lives. All of the others just sort of shrug and say, "God doesn't exist, oh well, no big deal, time to move on." So they move on to some other fad, and then another, and another. Always searching, always restless. They might throw themselves into politics and find themselves arguing for principles that don't make a lot of sense when they are unmoored from faith in God or the natural law. Or they'll dabble in various non-Western religions or meditative traditions; whenever someone says that they are spiritual but not religious, they mean that they will believe in any religion at all so long as it doesn't involve Jesus.
Once they've done their searching, most people come to one of two conclusions: they either discover that Augustine was right when he said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God; or they throw up their hands and say there is no absolute truth and just muddle their way through trying to be "nice people." Until something new comes along; then they start all over again. Christianity is the only thing that can save a man from the degrading slavery of being a slave to his passions and his times.
May. 20th, 2008 @ 09:48 am
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| » When Jesuits were giants |
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Blessed Fr Peter Wright, S.J., of Slipton, Northamptonshire, England suffered for his priesthood, his vows of religion and his Catholic Faith at Tyburn on 19 May, 1651. His execution on Whit Monday took place before over 20 000 spectators, as Bishop Challoner relates: Having celebrated Mass with great devotion, the time drew near when he was to go down in order for execution. Hearing the knocking at the iron grate, he took it as a summons from Heaven, and cried out:
I come, sweet Jesus, I come.
When Fr Wright was called out to the hurdle, he went with so much alacrity and speed that the officers could scarce keep pace with him; then being placed on the hurdle he made a short act of contrition; and in the midst of mutual embraces was absolved by Fr Cheney, and then drawn away to Tyburn through the streets crowded with an innumerable multitude of people. He was drawn on the hurdle more like one sitting than lying down; his head was covered, his countenance smiling, a certain air of majesty, and a courage and cheerfulness in his comportment, which was both surprising and edifying, not only to the Catholics who crowded to ask his benediction, but to the Protestants themselves, as many publicly declared. Thirteen malefactors were appointed to die with him, to whom the father endeavoured to give seasonable advice for the welfare of their souls, but was continually interrupted by the minister, and therefore desisted, betaking himself to silent prayer, in which he employed about an hour, standing with his eyes shut, his hands joined before his breast, his countenance sweet and amiable, and his whole body without motion as one in deep contemplation. When the minister took occasion to tell him it was not yet too late, and that he might save his life if he would renounce the errors of Popery:
If I had a thousand lives I would most willingly give them all up in defence of the Catholic religion. The hangman having fitted the rope to his neck, the confessor made a short speech to the spectators: Gentlemen, this is a short passage to eternity; my time is now short, and I have not much to speak. I was brought hither charged with no other crime but being a priest. I willingly confess I am a priest; I confess I am a Catholic; I confess I am a religious man of the Society of Jesus, or as you call it, a Jesuit.
This is the cause for which I die; for this alone was I condemned, and for propagating the Catholic faith, which is spread through the whole world, taught
through all ages from Christ’s time, and will be taught for all ages to come.
For this cause I most willingly sacrifice my life, and would die a thousand times for the same if it were necessary; and I look upon it my greatest happiness, that my most good God has chosen me most unworthy to this blessed lot, the lot of the saints. This is a grace which so unworthy a sinner could scarce have wished, much less hoped for. And now I beg of the goodness of my God with all the fervour I am able, and most humbly entreat Him that He would drive from you that are Protestants the darkness of error, and enlighten your minds with the rays of truth. And as for you Catholics, my fellow soldiers and comrades, as many of you as are here I earnesdy beseech you to join in prayer for me and with me till my last moment; and when I shall come to Heaven I will do as much for you. God bless you all; I forgive all men. From my heart I bid you all farewell till we meet in a happy eternity.
Having spoken to this effect, he again recollected himself a while in prayer, and then the cart was drawn away, and he was suffered to hang till he quietly expired. His dead body was cut down, beheaded, bowelled, and quartered. His friends were permitted to carry off his head and quarters which were translated to Liege, and there honourably deposited in the college of the English Jesuits. He suffered aged 48, and after 22 years of religious life. He was beatified in 1929.
Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints, †
May. 19th, 2008 @ 11:27 am
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