Punditry

Via Creative Minority Report, Rep. Patrick Kennedy said about the election last night.

“It’s like in Roman times, they’d be trotted out to the coliseum and the lions would be brought out,” Kennedy said Tuesday night. “I mean, they’re wanting blood and they’re not getting it so they want to protest.”

Don’t worry Mr. Kennedy, it was faithful Catholics who were fed to the Lions. Ones actually obedient to their bishops (what a concept!). The Pagans who had no problems with worshipping Caesar and those who would leave infants outside to die of exposure were not fed to the Lions. Your Pagan sensibilities will prevent such a fate.

His statement is quite a contrast to me after just reading all the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch who really was eaten by lions. Yet on his way to his martyrdom did not whine about it but saw his bones as wheat for the lions and his sanctification and way to Jesus.

Besides it is Kennedy’s side that want blood and will protest until taxpayers pay personally for the blood of the unborn.

…I wondered whether the graduates of evangelical colleges and universities showed similar voting behaviors, so I compared the voting records of the 10 graduates of evangelical colleges and universities with the voting records of the 60 graduates of Roman Catholic colleges and universities. The results: Eight of the 10 evangelical college grads not only vote pro-life but are among the strongest anti-abortion voices in Congress. In contrast, 40 of the 60 Catholic college grads in the 111th Congress voted last year to expand abortion rights.

…Faithful Catholics were dismayed when nine of the other 12 Catholic college graduates in the Senate joined Durbin in voting to have the United States fund abortions overseas. Those favoring such funding: Georgetown grads Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Jim Webb, D-Va.; Loyola College Maryland grad Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.; Boston College grad John Kerry, D-Mass.; St. Peter’s College grad Robert Menendez, D-N.J.; Providence College grad Chris Dodd, D-Conn.; Catholic University of America grad Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; and to the surprise of some, Robert Casey Jr., D-Pa., a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross.

Three Catholic college grads, though, did vote to ban funding for overseas abortions: Georgetown grad John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; Xavier graduate Jim Bunning, R-Ky.; and Creighton University graduate Mike Johanns, R-Neb.

Similar voting patterns for Catholic college and university graduates are evident in the House, where 30 Catholic college graduates were instrumental in making it more likely that children of poor women living in the District of Columbia will be aborted. Still, 18 of the 48 Catholic college graduates in the House voted against D.C. abortion funding.

Many of the Catholic college grads went to schools under the authority of the Jesuits–the Society of Jesus, long the leading Catholic order oriented toward higher education. Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn recently told the National Catholic Reporter that Jesuit-educated graduates in Congress are “leavens of good for the wider society.” In the same article, Georgetown University spokesman Andy Pino claimed that the Jesuit graduates in Congress are “living the Jesuit value of educating leaders to be women and men for others.”

This article was written by a Catholic for World Magazine. Though I wouldn’t put all the blame on educational institutions, people can go to the most faithful of Catholic institutions and still be dissenters. But surely the environment of dissent that has existed certainly does not help and gives credence to this type of dissent being acceptable. It would appear thought that Evangelical colleges are doing a better job than most of the Catholic Universities.

Hat Tip Musings of a Pertinacious Papist.

If anybody hears a strange sound coming from St. Edward Campion’s reliquaries in Rome in Prague, no doubt it is the saint spinning at high velocity after hearing about this story.

Jesuit magazine America has given the 2009 Campion Award to The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. [reference]

Yes an award named after the great saint and martyr who continually risked his life and ended up giving it for the Catholic faith is now given to an Anglican. St. Campion never compromised his Catholic faith in any way and returned to Britain as a priest knowing the risks involved providing the underground Catholics the sacraments. At the same time he continued writing against Anglicanism including his famous Ten Reasons written a week before his capture. In it he goes through scripture, discusses the nature of the Church, discusses the Church fathers, sophism, history, and the witness of the Church. The witnesses he described were all saints of course obedient to the Holy Father.

Nothing America Magazine does should surprise me, but this caught me by surprise in that while it would have been a great parody in the Onion – the real life version is not so funny.

Hat tip Diogeses who has some choice words as always.

I do wonder exactly what the Anglican Archbishop did to earn this honor from a Jesuit magazine. Must have been when Rowan Williams lectured the Pope on women’s ordination last year. Or maybe it was the “Archbishop” complaining about the Apostolic Constitution and saying “it put us in an awkward position.” Rowan Williams has done nothing ecumenically to bring the Anglican church closer to the Catholic Church. If anything he has added to the harm being done within his communion by making it ever harder to ever have a fuller reconciliation. If there was an anti-Campion award than surely Rowan Williams would deserve that. “Archbishop” Williams meeting with the Pope last year was a interesting development. It is certainly nice to see the somewhat friendly terms that goes beyond the polemics of the past. But friendly meetings that bear no real fruit and end up business as usual are not worth much.

It does beg the question about who did indeed deserve this award with this Jesuit saint’s name on it? If America Magazine was actually faithful to the Church the awardee no doubt should have been Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope achieved in part this year what St. Campion desired. That is a large group of Anglican returning to the Church. The Pope’s Apostolic Constitution “Anglicanorum Coetibus” made this much easier to bring this group back into the fold and setting a new path to make this happen. This new Apostolic Constitution not only clears the way to bring in the Traditional Anglican Communion, but other Anglicans/Episcopalian groups/individual. Surely St. Campion rejoiced over this in Heaven – America Magazine; not so much.

The New York Times has lots of laughably bad coverage, especially when it comes to the Church. A current article is titled “Why a Rush to Pius XII Sainthood?” Yeah it’s only been over 50 years since he died. Yeah that’s a real rush job.

The question of Pius’s wartime record remains open, and will stay that way as long as the relevant archives are closed.

I guess he means the archives that were opened up ahead of schedule in 2003, though an archive of 16 million documents will take time to totally sift through. Much of the wartime documents have been made available and the whole archive up to 1958 is not going to throw anymore light on this. The main thing is the archives are not closed to researchers.

So what was the rush? The answer is politics — which does not make for an edifying religious spectacle. The common perception, disputed by the Vatican, is that by pairing Pius XII with John Paul II in the Dec. 20 decree, Benedict had hoped to satisfy both the conservative and the liberal wings of the Catholic Church.

What? This is so nonsensical it is hard to pry apart. Of course when labels such as conservative and liberal are used it always leads to confusion. If anything both Popes could only be seen as on the conservative side if you were going to apply such a label. The Spirit of Vatican II types and Women’s Ordination supporters would never call Pope John Paul II liberal. Pope John Paul II was loved by many people, but certainly not all that much by the self-proclaimed progressive Catholics.

The article goes on with this line of reasoning of taking Pope Benedict’s action with a political point of view and of course also quotes from the infallibly wrong-headed Fr. Reese for support.

This article is quite disingenuous by not specifying all that we do know about Venerable Pope Pius XII and the actions he took largely behind the scenes to save the Jews that he could. No mention is made that the Jewish community for years after the war had nothing but praise for the actions of this Pope. In the last several years along with many fine books on Venerable Pope Pius XII and his wartime record there have even been books written by Jews defending this great Pope.

In a recent article Gary L. Krupp of the Pave the Way foundation has become a defender of this Pope. He had assumed like many others that the charges against Pope Pius XII were true and he says he was shocked to find during his years of compiling the documentary evidence just how wrong this was. His recent article was “Friend to the Jews.” The fact is there is really no documentary evidence showing any kind of animus towards the Jews and a wealth of evidence showing quite the opposite.

When articles come out condemning Venerable Pope Pius XII it shows a total lack of journalistic integrity and just plain bias – common enough for the NYT. He wants to frame this as a conservative liberal divide and I would say he is just projecting his own motives.

Many people were surprised by Pope Benedict XVI advancing the cause of Pope Pius XII. After all there had been plenty of stories about how his cause had stalled – plenty of stories that were totally wrong. Sure Pope Benedict does have to make prudential political decisions during his papacy. Canonizations sometimes become political such as the case of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thomas More who were canonized much later due to political reasons. I don’t believe that Pope Benedict sees either of these two Venerable Pope’s as being political at all. I think it is much more accurate to look at what Pope Benedict does as advancing the truth. If men live lives of heroic sanctity and their causes prove this then there is no real reason why their cause should not be advanced. It does not matter that some people have a bad opinion of him or that they think he could have done more to help the Jews. Besides the decree of Heroic Sanctity does not mean that every prudential decision he made was perfect.

In some ways I am glad for some of the negative press thrown on this wartime Pope. As a result I have learned much more about this Pope that died days before I was born. All that I have learned has made me appreciate and admire this man. I enjoy saying Venerable before his name and hope within my lifetime to be able to call him a saint.

What annoys me the most is the revisionist history. There was no negative view of Pope Pius XII in regards to the Jewish people until the 1963 Rolf Hochhuth’s play, “The Deputy.” There is strong evidence that play was a KGB-directed and financed bid to smear Pius. It is only after this point that this view grew. This is so sickening that a play could be used as the basis to slander this pope. The fact that Hitler attempted to kill Pope Pius XII never factors into their view. No evidence matters, except for some play.

Amy Sullivan of Time Magazine in her typically ignorant religion reporting concentrates on American going to a Christmas service on the vigil vice Christmas Day. Though she didn’t even manage to use the world vigil.

When did Christmas Eve displace Christmas Day as the time for Christians to observe one of the two holiest days in the church year? Some traditions, including Catholics and Anglicans, hold midnight masses on the Saturday before Easter to usher in that holiday. But everyone still shows up the next morning for the traditional Easter celebration, just as Christmas Day remains a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics, who are likely to be found in church the day after attending a Midnight Mass. By contrast, the Christmas service everyone thinks of as “traditional” is the Service of Lessons and Carols that many Protestant congregations use on Christmas Eve.

Midnight Mass on Holy Saturday for Catholics? What world is she living in. The Easter Vigil Mass is to be passed Sunset on Holy Saturday. It is never held at 12 A.M. on the start of Holy Saturday.

She describes people going to a vigil service as an example of the triumph of culture over religion. Within the Catholic Church the history of a Midnight celebration of the Christmas Mass goes back to at least the 4th century.

Within both the Catholic Church and Protestantism the Midnight Mass and Midnight Service are the most attended. I guess Amy Sullivan forgets that the Midnight Mass actually occurs on Chrismas and is not a vigil Besides even if you go to the Vigil Mass it fulfills the obligation to attend Mass on Holy Days of Obligation. Even stranger is her description of people not attending the next day after a Midnight Mass. Well the following day December 26 is not a Holy Day of Obligation unless it falls on Sunday. Plenty of confusion in what she says in regards to a true Vigil Mass and Midnight Mass.

She also seems to forget that the idea of the vigil goes back to the Jewish accounting of the day from sunset to sunset. So this tradition is quite and old one and not because of modern Culture. The modern allowance of the Vigil Mass came about to some degree as a reaction to culture to allow those having to work on Sunday to still get to Mass. But this is no triumph of modernism but a way to accommodate. The Sabbath was made for Man and not Man for the Sabbath as Jesus said. It seems to me that Amy Sullivan has a bit of the Pharisee in her as displayed by this article.

If she really wanted to look for a trend of accommodation it is of Protestantism following the Catholic Church. Christmas celebrations in many forms of Protestantism among the colonials and start of the United States did not celebrate this feast. It was all too Romish for them.

Now a valid question would be are people going to early Masses/Services as a way to get it over with and on to a day consisting only of a family celebration. No doubt some do this as a checkmark to be checked. I would tend to doubt this as the primary motive for most people. This is just not the mood of the Christmas Masses I have observed. If this motive was the correct one than the earlier Vigil Mass would be more attended than the Midnight Mass. There is a palpable anticipation and a joyfulness that does not fit in with this secular view of things. An anticipation that does not run into just a opening or presents, but the real present of the Holy Child in swaddling clothes – Our Savior Jesus Christ.

The idea that Christmas Eve is a prime marketing opportunity to attract new members is widespread among pastors. In online forums, they give each other advice on crafting services that are broken down into digestible segments that will “hold the attention” of infrequent church-goers. (They also devote considerable space to trading concerns about the fire hazards posed by those Christmas Eve candles their congregants love holding.) One pastor said he considered regular Sunday services at his church to be “seeker-friendly,” but holidays like Christmas and Easter were “seeker-focused.” The irony is that by holding Christmas Eve services that cater to first-time visitors and shuttering their doors on Christmas Day, churches often fail to meet the spiritual needs of their longtime members on one of the holiest days of the year.

Well the shuttering of churches on Christmas is a purely Protestant thing since of course there are two Masses held on Christmas Day other than Midnight Mass. Not sure how widespread the “shuttering” of Protestant churches is on Sunday. I know a couple of years ago some articles made a big deal about some Protestant church doing this. Since it was so “newsworthy” that would seem to me to me that it isn’t all that wide spread.

WELLINGTON – A church billboard showing an apparently naked Virgin Mary and Joseph in bed together has sparked the ire of conservative Christians in New Zealand.

On the poster, a sad-looking Joseph lies next to Mary, whose face was turned heavenwards under the words: “Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow.”

The display was erected outside the progressive St Matthew-in-the-City church in Auckland on Thursday.

St Matthews’s vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, said the billboard was meant to challenge stereotypes about the way Jesus was conceived.

In the bible, the Virgin Mary became pregnant after an angel appeared to her and told her she would give birth to the son of God.

Cardy said the billboard was meant to challenge literal interpretations of the bible.

“It is intended to challenge stereotypes about the way that Jesus was conceived and get people talking about the Christmas story,” he said. [reference]

You can see the ad here if you are so inclined. Bleh.

Yes live it to a progressive Christian church to turn the Annunciation and the power of the Most High that overshadowed Mary into a stereotype. Yes maybe mix up a little Arianism and Adoptionism or some other warmed-over heresies to break up the stereotype of the truth of a dogma.

“Progressive Christianity is distinctive in that not only does it articulate a clear view, it is also interested in engaging with those who differ. Its vision is one of robust engagement,” he said.

Yes clear as mud. This ad really give me a “clear” view on their Christology – or is that Joseph-son-ology to them? Robust engagement has not exactly been my experience with Progressive Christianity. Disagree with them about homosexual acts and you will have the anathema of homophobia pronounced on you. I prefer dogmas that are true compared to their “dogmas” that aren’t. Maybe it is just me, but I will stick with Jesus being the Son of God.

In another story the government used a poser of Joseph and Mary headed to Bethlehem with the words “This is how Jesus was born, Joseph and May Participated in the Census. Don’t be Afraid. Participate in the Census in 2010. [American Papist]

Funny, I bet we won’t hear cries of Theocracy from liberals with Obama administration use of this poster. The census is not how Jesus was born. Jesus would still have been born even if Caesar had not called for the census. God in his providence used the census to arrange the place of our Saviors birth.

Plus what is up with the “Don’t be afraid” part? Are people really afraid of census workers? Amazing they didn’t add a picture of Pope John Paul II saying his famous “Be not afraid.” I am not afraid of census workers other than that they hire ACORN and other such workers who have no problem filling out false documents to try to inflate congressional districts.

Is their a religious aspect to taking a census? Well King David did get into trouble for calling for a census being that his motives were how to increase power via taxation. The Roman census was much the same in regards to taxation. It is suppose to be that our census is Constitutionally just to determine the amount of representatives in the Congress. Of course more and more they have used the census to compile other information not required such as race. So the moral aspect is of course the abuse of power that surrounds the census. So maybe considering the information is used by politicians to increase/decrease representatives and for stats used by other agencies maybe I really need to be afraid of the census. Especially when the government tells me not to be afraid about something. Don’t worry, be happy, and pay your taxes!

Whenever you want to revise the historical events of early Church history you pretty much have to go with some theory of how in the third or forth century evil men supplanted the true Gospel and replaced it with something else. Mormons call it the great apostasy. Dan Brownians place it with the Emperor Constantine. Many groups do roughly the same thing.

Now we once again hear from “church historian” Jimmy Carter.

In opposition to the vast majority of authentic scholars and historians, Carter asserted: “It’s clear that during the early Christian era women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets.” He added: “It wasn’t until the 4th century or the 3rd at the earliest that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant position within the religious hierarchy.” [reference]

Well if those “dominant Christian leaders” did such a good job – then how does Mr. Carter know there were women priests and bishops? These men must of done a pretty good job of erasing the record of all these women since historically there is no mention of them in any documents other than the women priests in some heretical sects such as Collyridianism where Mary was worshipped as God. Somehow I don’t think Jimmy Carter and other defenders of woman priests would endorse the beliefs of these heretical groups with women priests. What references to woman priests we actually have in the writings of the Early Church Fathers is a disavowal of them.

Now what Jimmy Carter means by “twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures” is hard to tell. Since the canon of scripture was defined during this time period I guess he says that the evil men who erase the record also managed to define the very books of the New Testament that he accepts. Does he refer to the fact that Jesus only picked men in the Gospels as being a distortion? Otherwise exactly what passages were twisted? No like all of this stripe general assertions is all that is made without a shred of evidence backing up what they say. No doubt President Carter heard someone else make these assertions and then just passes them on like so much of anti-Catholic bigotry.

My real question would be if Mr. Carter says that there were woman priests and bishops in the Early Church then why does he not belong to a church that has priests and bishops. If he accepts this as the structure of the Early Church than why is he a Southern Baptist? Really if you are going to go down the road as to accept the Early Church in the first two centuries than there is a lot of examples that Jimmy Carter is not following. Cardinal Newman said “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant”. There might be a lot of things Jimmy Carter is deep into, but one of them is not history.

So how does the National Catholic Reporter celebrate the feast of St. Juan Diego? Why of course by linking to articles denying that he ever existed.

Yes a nice way to start a day. Commit heresy. The First Vatican Council defined the limited circumstances when a Pope is exercises his charism of infallibility. Canonization of saints by the Pope uses the very language used to define something that all the faithful must believe. The pope states “we declare and define that Blessed N., is a saint” (example) which triggers the Church’s gift of infallibility. So to deny that Juan Diego is a saint is also to deny the First Vatican Council on papal infallibility. An ex cathedra statement requires an assent of faith. Anyone who denies thus teachings, or who obstinately doubts these teachings are in heresy and thereby automatically excommunicated as per Canon law.

Spirit of Vatican II types seem to forget Lumen Gentium discussion of the four levels of Church teaching. Yeah I know reading the actual documents is a bit much.

Up to the time that St. Juan Diego was canonized certainly there could be historical arguments about the actual existence of this man. So for the NCReporter’s to continue to imply that he did not exist is heresy – or at least one more added to the heap for them.

Anne Rice in her last book in the Vampire Chronicles involved St. Juan Diego in the plot. At one point the Vampire Lestat reads an article about him since he has a subscription to the National Catholic Reporter (figures). So questions of his existence are part of the novel and it is obvious that Anne Rice was swayed by this dissident rag. Lestat ponders the intersection of papal infallibility and a non-existent saint and imagines Juan Diego popping into Heaven upon the Pope’s proclamation. Well at least the Vampire Lestat seems to have a higher regard for papal infallibility than the National Catholic Reporter.

Earlier this week there was much furor in the press about comments attributed to Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan stating “transsexuals and homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Fr. James Martin S.J. posted on this twice in America Magazine first “instructing” the Cardinal on what the Catechism says and then later posting another response to the Cardinal’s comments.

When I first saw this story I immediately figured it was typical medial slice and dice of the Cardinal’s comments taking them deliberately out of the full context of what he had said. Twice I responded in the comments with this suggestions. Though the comments were mostly full of people angry with the Cardinal’s comments. I had commented that this was likely media distortion, which is so common, and really should be the charitable reply to the story. To think that the Cardinal believed that those with same sex attraction can not be saved is a rather silly conclusion. Yet of course this is what the news stories asserted and this is the conclusion that Fr. Martin replied to. I figured I would only have to wait a day or so for the real story.

On Wednesday, the Pontifex.roma Web site published comments attributed to Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán that state “transsexuals and homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The cardinal, however, said in a statement sent to ZENIT on Thursday that his words were taken out of context. The cardinal said he was referencing the Bible, specifically St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 1:26-27, which says (in part), “Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.”

“This is what the Word of God says, it isn’t what I said,” Cardinal Lozano Barragán affirmed. “Now, I have never said that a particular homosexual cannot be saved, because he can be saved.”

“Many times one is not a homosexual through one’s own fault; it all depends on one’s education and environment,” the prelate clarified.

Cardinal Lozano Barragán reiterated the Church’s teaching on grave sin: “The only thing I can say is that for grave fault to exist, in addition to needing grave matter, one needs full knowledge and full consent: Where one of those three conditions is lacking, there is no grave fault.”

Above all, the cardinal stressed that he is not the one who judges people, since God is

.

Some of the original stories even mentioned the Cardinal’s point on only God judging. Yet somehow they still inferred that the Cardinal meant all homosexual go to heaven. It is simply the teaching of the Church that all those who continue in grave sin and meet the conditions of mortal sin and never repent of this can not be saved. There are plenty of caveats to the original statement and it seems obvious to me that the Cardinal had mentioned them and the media just picked up on St Paul’s words and excluded any nuances not germane to their characterization.

So will Fr. Jim Martin, S.J. reference the ZENIT piece (if it comes to his attention)? I have no way to contact Fr. Martin directly, though I did leave a link to the ZENIT article on his last post on the subject. His posts previously on Church teaching on homosexuality seemed at odds to me with him lecturing the Cardinal on what the Catechism teaches. He seems to infer when he wrote his last piece on homosexuality that the Church has something wrong in it’s theology in that those with same-sex attraction can not participate fully in the life of the Church. I would just like some clarity from him as to whether he fully agrees with all aspects on the truth of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. But being just another pundit on in the internet i won’t expect one.

This story is also a cautionary for all Catholic pundits in responding to stories. We often jump to uncharitable conclusions where more charitable answers are possible. Unless you see a full transcript of someone’s comments we should be prudentially skeptical. Certainly we can respond to something that is reported, but we should also be careful to throw in caveats about what was reportedly said with some implied skepticism. What annoyed me about Fr. Martin’s post is that there was no such caveats and it was totally assumed that this is what the Cardinal meant.