Those who have been around the Catholic blogosphere during it’s early part a decade a go will remember (and fondly remember) Fr. Bryce Sibley.

He has an article in Crisis Magazine which voices my opinion on Christian films like Courageous quite well. He is able to put succinctly what I try to grasp to understand in why I think these movies don’t ultimately succeed. His comparison of these movies to the Christian fiction so often produced is a nice parallel in that as he says they both fail to have a “sacramental imagination”.

I also fully agree when he writes:

While films like Courageous have their place, Christian filmmakers should take up the challenge to not only convey the truths of the Christian faith, but that also convey a sense of beauty and mystery in their films. These are the type films that will have the power to truly change minds and touch hearts for generations to come.

Courageous certainly shows the filmmaker has grown, but compare it to a movie like “Of Gods and Men” and then you can rightly see it more as a good Christian Bookstore Movie than what it should be, a work of art.

I encourage you to read his thoughtful article.

Rorate Caeli has a story of Hans Küng declaring Benedict XVI schismatic over the issue of the possible SSPX unification.

Now while Hans Küng is somewhat of an expert on disobedience, heresy, and schism somehow I think he got this one wrong. Yeah what a surprise. He pins all this on the extremely debatable point that the Bishops and Priests of the SSPX were “definitely invalidly ordained.” Well not really debatable just plain Bravo Sierra. So I guess according to Mr. Küng attempts at ordaining women by a range of suspects are all valid, but the Bishops and Priest of the SSPX weren’t.

This is a kind of a “I’m rubber you’re glue, if I’m a schismatic than so are you.”

It’s official: Ave Maria University will no longer make available health coverage for students, according to a statement by Ave Maria President Jim Towey.

In making the announcement, available on the university’s website, Towey cited both moral objections and skyrocketing costs that are consequences of President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the associated HHS contraception mandate.

The university is also dropping the requirement that students be insured. The new policy goes into effect August 15, 2012.

Ave Maria announced that the college was recently informed by its insurance carrier that the provisions of Obamacare would require an increase in the maximum benefit per injury or illness (from $50,000 to $100,000) and that students would not only face a 66% increase in their premiums (from $839 to $1,392) but an increase in their deductibles (from $100 to $250 per policy year).

On top of that, the HHS mandate would require the university to provide coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization procedures, which Towey called “an affront to our core values.” (Matthew Archbold @ Cardinal Newman Society)

This of course follows the news last week when the Franciscan University of Steubenville did the same.

At 11 a.m. Eastern time today, 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations — including Our Sunday Visitor and the University of Notre Dame — filed religious liberty lawsuits against the federal government in a dozen different jurisdictions around the country.

At issue are regulations that require Catholic organizations, employers and insurers to provide or facilitate abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception — in violation of their consciences.

Equally troubling is the extreme narrowness of the government’s new test for determining which religious organizations are exempt from this mandate — which would appear to exclude Catholic schools, health care facilities, charities and others like Our Sunday Visitor. source

Fr. Jenkins of the University of Notre Dame comments here

The speaker who received an honorary doctor of laws degree at the University of Notre Dame’s 164th University Commencement Ceremony would not release a full statement.

But he did say how is that “sensible conscience clause” working out for you?

Well Christ did take a lickin’ and keep on ticking’

At a party this weekend celebrating New York Design Week, which begins today, the Chilean-born artist plans to hand out 100 “Christian Popsicles” made of “frozen holy wine transformed into the blood of Christ” and featuring a crucifix instead the tongue depressor that typically hosts the frozen treats, he said.

GetReligion Covers this story from CNN which is a textbook example of the typical horrible mainstream religion reporting.

An image of Jesus Christ positioned traditionally on the cross is visible once the ice pop is consumed. As for the frozen wine, Errazuriz said, he concealed it in a cooler and took it into a church, where it was “inadvertently blessed by the priest while turning wine into the blood of Christ during the Eucharist.”

Lets bypass the whole “inadvertently blessed” component for a minute and cover another point. Now why did this self-admitted atheist artist decide that he needed first to attempt this aspect of it anyway? He doesn’t believe in the doctrine of the Eucharist and consecrated wine and unconsecrated wine is all the same to him.

No doubt it is the same reason so many artists attempt blasphemous art for attention. Mocking of belief is one component and to increase making the believer think that consecrated wine was actually used increases the intensity of such mocking. The “daring” artist is so common now and almost always the target is specifically the Catholic faith. Though that is an old trend that started with the shaping of the Crown of Thorns.

Raised in a Catholic household, Errazuriz is now a “practicing atheist,” but he has many friends and family members who are religious, and he respects their beliefs. … His frozen cocktails stand as a symbol, he said, an invitation to “drink the Kool-Aid” that he feels so many religious zealots are stirring up.

Well if this is how he “respects” their beliefs, I wonder what he does when he disrespects something. So in answer to all this “religious zealotry” the answer is art mocking one aspect of belief – yeah that will really make the world better and not stir anything up.

Now as to the “inadvertently blessed” aspect of the story this is so ridiculous and GetReligion rightly lambasts CNN for not challenging this aspect of the story in any way.

Now I am rather skeptical that this artist actually brought a cooler into a Church with enough wine for 100 popsicles. But even if he did there is no scenario where the wine would actually get consecrated. Even if he did go to all the trouble of putting the cooler underneath the altar (with nobody noticing this), consecration is an intentional act – not a piece of magic. It is not as if any wine or bread in the Church gets consecrated if they happen to be in people’s pockets regardless of how close they are to the priest during consecration. What a shock that another ex-Catholic turned atheist doesn’t have even a basic theological understanding. If you are going to go to all the effort to mock something, you might just want to check if you actually succeeded. If you are going for the P.Z. Myers school of art you first actually need something to desecrate. For my part I am glad he was inept about this, though actually getting hold of a volume of consecrated wine would be fairly difficult to pull off.

GetReligion asks the pertinent questions about the reporting.

In other words, this story is a disaster. Did the CNN team grasp the bizarre and ludicrous nature of this claim by the artist? Did anyone stop and think about the practical details of what was said to have happened? If so, why was the story published without some kind of commentary from a liturgical expert, if not a priest or bishop of the church?

As Errazuriz himself states, this was not a joke. Why did CNN treat it as a kind of wink-wink joke?

Update: Jimmy Akin posts on the subject.

According to the late Fr. Nicholas Halligan, OP, in his outstanding book, The Sacraments and Their Celebration (written as a training manual for priests and seminarians):

The material to be consecrated must be definitely intended by the minister, since by intention the formula determines the significance of the material. . . . The bread and wine to be consecrated should be placed on the corporal (or the altar cloth). If there is material to be consecrated or which is consecratable on the altar, but its presence is unknown to the celebrant, by that very fact it is not consecrated, since the intention of the minister must in some sufficient way designate or include the material that is to be consecrated (pp. 68-69, emphasis in original).