". . . but Jesus said, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." And he laid his hands on them and went away." (Matthew 19:14-15)
 |
| Antique St. Servulus Prayer Card |
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
 |
| Samuel anointing David, by François-Léon Benouville, 1842 |
Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy-dayes are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.
Old Christmas is kickt out of Town.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament,
you see the world turn'd upside down.
-From "The World Turned Upside-Down" Thomason Tracts (669. f. 10 (47)), dated 8 April 1646.
"The World Turned Upside-Down" is a ballad written during the English Civil War in the 1640s as a protest against laws passed by England’s Puritan-dominated Parliament banning traditional celebrations of Christmas . The Puritans (as was their way) believed the Nativity of the Lord should be a solemn, serious occasion. Making merry, decking the halls, hoisting steaming bowls of wassail, and so forth, simply smacked too much of paganism for the austere Roundheads.
 |
| “The Puritan Governor interrupting the Christmas Sports,” by Howard Pyle c. 1883 |
"The War on Christmas," it seems, is nothing new. The writer of "The World Turned Upside-Down," however, might be surprised at just how upside-down the order of battle has become in the modern version of the conflict. The Puritans wanted to take all the joyful and celebratory elements out of the observance of Christmas on the grounds that they obscured the holiday's religious significance. 21st century censors, on the other hand, want to take all the religion out of our celebrations of the Nativity (as is their way), leaving only things frivolous and indulgent. They are seeking, in short, to transform one of the holiest days of the Christian liturgical year into a sort of purposeless seasonal bacchanal. Talk about the world turned upside-down . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
You wouldn't be wrong if you observed that it's becoming increasingly uncomfortable to be a professing Christian in our culture. The good news is, being comfortable or safe has never been part of the job description for a follower of Christ (I'll bet you're feeling better already). In fact, Jesus Himself is very emphatic on this point; this passage from the Gospel of John is just one example::
They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you of them. (John 16: 2-4)
 |
| Japanese Martyrs |
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
Picture Sunday Mass in a typical parish. A mother comes up for communion holding a small child in her arms. As she approaches the priest, she awkwardly holds on to her infant with one arm in order to free up the other to take the Eucharistic host and quickly pop it into her mouth before she drops it, or her squirming child, to the floor. I’ve witnessed this scene on numerous occasions over the years, and I always wonder why the harried parent doesn’t avail herself of a simple and effective method of protecting both the safety of her son or daughter and the dignity of all the parties involved (very much including Christ present in the Eucharist): hold her child securely in both arms, extend her tongue, and receive the Body of Christ in the same manner as her ancestors did for centuries before her: the manner that is still, officially, the norm for the entire Church.
 |
| "Les Premières Communiantes" by Blanchard, Musée de la Civilisation, Québec |
The question of the value of tradition has been given a certain currency by Pope Francis’ recent motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, which seeks to restrict the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). G.K. Chesterton called tradition “the democracy of the dead” because it gives our forebears a “vote” in how we conduct ourselves here and now. This is something unique to humanity . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
Seven years ago, in the run-up to the Synod on the Family, there was a mild controversy over the Pope's decision to remove Latin from its place of honor as the official language of the meeting. By the time the synod convened the language issue had largely been overshadowed by . . . other things. Nevertheless, I don’t think the Latin question should be forgotten. I felt compelled to write the post below at the time, both because the Latin language is a particular interest of mine (as I explain in the article), but more importantly because the discussion of its place in the Church helps illustrate some important aspects of Catholicism. Now, with a rumored return to the bad old days of restricted opportunities to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass (as I discuss here and here), it seems like a good time to rerun my old (slightly revised) post:
Lingua Latina Aeterna
 |
| Passing the literary torch: Virgil and Dante Meeting Homer, Horace, Ovid and Lucan by Nicola Consoni (c.1850) |
Over the last couple of days I have been watching two gentlemen going back and forth in the comments section about the Pope’s decision not to use Latin as the official language of the Synod of Bishops. They both make some interesting points about the place and importance of the Latin language in the life of the Church. Their spirited discussion has got me thinking not just about the Latin language, but about some of the distinctive features of Catholicism . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
As Catholics, we are blessed to have some wonderful devotional practices that help us grow closer to Christ. One of the most profound of these is Eucharistic Adoration. My wife and I were recently asked to help encourage participation in Adoration in our parish, in the course of which we ourselves came to see dimensions of this great gift that we hadn’t considered before.
For one thing, we both thought immediately of scriptural connections. My lovely bride thought of the passage from First Kings (1 Kings 19:10-13) where the Lord tells the prophet Elijah to stand on the mountain, for “The Lord is about to pass by”. There’s a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a roaring fire, but God is not in any of those things; instead, Elijah encounters the Lord in a “gentle whispering”.
Just as God does not appear to Elijah in any of the grand and dramatic forms we might expect, so Jesus enters the world as a tiny baby, and continues to manifest himself to us as a simple piece of bread. Eucharistic Adoration gives us a chance to shut out all the storm and stress of our daily lives while we contemplate the infinite God embodied in that piece of bread, and hear his gentle whisper.
My own first thought was the passage from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 10:38-42) where Jesus is visiting the sisters Martha and Mary. Martha, who is “worried about many things”, is frantically bustling about the house, while Mary simply sits at the feet of Jesus . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
Once upon a time I was a teacher in a (more or less) Catholic school, where I was occasionally called upon to teach an introductory theology course to the bright-eyed young men & women of the ninth grade. Of the roughly 16 students per class there would usually be 2-3 Catholic students whose families attended Mass at least weekly, and a like number of non-Catholic Christians who were regular church goers. The rest were raised in a secular environment, ranging from occasionally religious to explicitly atheist.
Many of my blog posts grew out of discussions with these students, including some republished here ("Has Pascal's Wager Really Been 'Debunked'?", "God's Existence Isn't A Dark Matter"). The post below is another of these, in which I try to get my students to look at the world from a different - ahem - angle . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
 |
| Joe and Jill Biden at Mass |
The quote above is often attributed to communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky. There is no record of his actually having said it, but it's widely repeated because it pithily sums up a terrifying truth about the relentlessness of war. In an age when a large and influential segment of the population wages political warfare on all who seem to stand in the way of their urgent drive to replace reality as it is with a vaguely envisioned utopia, we can amend that to "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you."
For a long time now the Catholic bishops in the United States have dabbled in politics, mostly in a manner that we would call "virtue signaling" today: a statement about nuclear war in the 1980s, expressions of concern about capital punishment in the 1990s, some hand-wringing about immigration in more recent years. All issues with legitimate moral dimensions, it's true, but all likewise issues on which serious Catholics can have legitimate differences of opinion. In none of them were the bishops confronting Catholics or others who were clearly advocating anything directly contrary to the moral law, or promoting an intrinsic evil. And for what it's worth, none of them are areas in which Catholic bishops have particular competence.
Over the same stretch of time there has been another issue looming, one which is indeed a matter of intrinsic evil, about which there is no room for prudential judgment, and which is very much within the competence of the episcopacy: abortion.
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
The scene is a parish church. A congregation has assembled for Sunday Mass. The opening hymn begins with a grand flourish. The celebrant processes into the church amid alleluias and mighty blasts from the organ. We reach a mini-climax. The music ends. Then, there is a moment of silence while the celebrant adjusts his microphone. He smiles. And what are the first words out of his mouth? "Good morning, everybody" THUD! You can almost hear something collapsing . . . The church building, the music, and the celebrant in flowing robes all seem to to say, "This is a ritual," an event out of the ordinary. Then, the "Good morning" intrudes itself and indicates that this is really a business meeting and not a liturgy, after all. -Thomas Day, Why Catholics Can't Sing
In Why Catholics Can't Sing Thomas Day takes a close and often acerbic look at what is wrong with the liturgy as it is all too often celebrated in Catholic churches. A major theme, as we can see in the excerpt above, is that reformers and others (both clerical and lay) who are responsible for planning and conducting liturgical celebrations ignore the importance of ritual - of sights, sounds, scents, and actions - in fostering our relationship with God. While there have been some marked improvements since Day's book was first published in 1991 (most notably Pope Benedict XVI's Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum in 2007, about which more below), we're nowhere near out of the woods yet.
 |
| "David Bearing the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem" by Domenico Gargiulo, c. 1640 |
This is not just a matter of aesthetics, by the way. Yes, a poorly celebrated or even a lackadaisical Mass can still be valid, and the Eucharist confected by an irreverent priest is still the Body and Blood of Christ. The Mass, however, is more than just a delivery system for the Eucharist. It is also the highest form of prayer. It helps us to find communion with our Lord on a number of different levels, and prepares us, ideally, to be properly receptive to the Grace of the Eucharist. And, if we truly believe that the Mass is bringing us the Real Presence of the Second Person of the Trinity, well, can we possibly be reverent enough?
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
 |
| "Lucifer" by Cornelius Galle, 1595 |
It's difficult for us to balance the idea of a Hell of eternal torment with the image of a God who "is Love" (1 John 4:8), especially in our world today where sentiment is king: Hell "feels" wrong. In fact, I recently had a reader of my discussion of Pascal's Wager who accused me of believing in a "monster" God who "would torture you forever" if you didn't believe in him. I answered that neither I nor the Catholic Church believe in a God who "tortures" people "forever" . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
 |
| "Satan Cast Down From Heaven" by Gustav Dore, 1866 |
Such intense self-absorption is bad for us, of course, because we were made for love by the God Who is Love (1 John 4:8), and love is willing the good of another. And therein lies a problem, because one effect of sin turning us inside out is that it turns love inside out as well, so that we find ourselves actually willing evil for others.
A few years back I ran across a story that perfectly captures the essence of a world full of people curved in upon themselves. Please click below to find my exploration of the wonderful world of Vasectomy Showers:
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
When you consider the nature of the current struggle, it seems clear that language is one of the main fronts in the war right now. Above I referred to Satan as the "father of lies". That title is bestowed on him by Jesus himself: "When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe me." (John 8:44-45) To the extent that we're wading through a sea of lies, we're fighting on the Enemy's chosen ground. We need to find a way to move the battle back to dry land, to the truth . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? And yet it's not. Here's the short version of the story: given the
exuberance with which certain nominally Catholic politicians in the United States promote the killing of the unborn, the dismantling of the family as an institution, and other unlovely manifestations of the Culture of Death, the U.S. Catholic Bishops are preparing to discuss Eucharistic Coherence (i.e., what to do about the scandal caused by said politicians) at their annual meeting later this month. You will no doubt be surprised to hear that a group of 68 American bishops (I could name names, but you probably know them already) have written to Archbishop Gomez, head of the Bishops Conference, asking him to halt the discussion . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
"'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.' So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." (Mark 10:7-9)
 |
| "Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the Temple" by Luca Giordano, before 1690 |
When I observed in my recent post "Sins of the Fathers . . .and of Kings" that "one of the greatest contributors to poverty and other debilitating social ills today is the break-down of sexual morality", one reader commented: "It is enough to watch the news or TV for two minutes to realize that our miseries are not due to lack of dollars but to lack of morals." The connection between our sexual conduct and our societal health is impossible to miss, at least for those who aren't heavily invested in the so-called "sexual revolution". It is clear that the societal endorsement of sexual license directly undermines the institution of marriage, and the breakdown of marriage in turn has a profoundly negative impact on children most immediately, and from there on everything and everyone else.
This last point is backed up by an enormous body of research accumulated over decades. I'm not going to delve into that mountain of data here, except to illustrate with a small sample from a 2014 article by posted on the United States National Institute of Health website . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)
Tongues of Fire
 |
Not everyone, it would seem, is pleased with the current Roman Pontiff. If that hadn't been clear to me already, it would certainly be apparent in many of the comments some of my recent posts (this one and this one, for instance) have received in various online venues. Who would have thought it?
St. Mathias was the thirteenth Apostle, chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after Judas betrayed the Lord then took his own life. It's interesting that our scriptural sources actually tell us very little about St. Mathias himself. The only place he is mentioned by name is the passage is the Acts of the Apostles that describes his election:
In those days Peter stood up among the brethren (the company of persons was in all about a hundred and twenty), and said . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
Who Will Debunk the Debunkers?
The totalitarian subjugation, debasement, and enslavement of language foreseen by prophets of dystopia such as George Orwell is in full flower. I need not point out recent examples like "peaceful protest", "court-packing", and the like to show how many previously clear and serviceable expressions have been made to mean something other than what they purport to mean, sometimes even their exact opposite.
 |
| Blaise Pascal |
One such term with a long history of abuse is "debunk". This word originally meant to disprove, to show that a particular statement or argument was "bunk", i.e., nonsense. For some time now, however, I've seen certain people employ the term when they have made no serious effort to refute something, but have simply stated their disagreement. They often seem to think that if they simply invoke the word without actually making an argument, debunk will, through some numinous power of its own, refute an unwelcome assertion.
Debunk has become something of a red flag for me because of this history of abuse. It's what caught my attention a few years back when I saw a reference to an article claiming to debunk Pascal's Wager. When I looked at the article in question I found that, to their credit, the authors did in fact make the effort to present arguments in support of their positions; the problem was, their arguments were themselves largely bunk. But don't take my word for it: I make my case below in an article I first published six years ago this month, "Has Pascal's Wager Really Been 'Debunked'?" . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
In my prior post, "What Do We Do When Our Priest Is A Communist? (Part I)" we saw that the true Church is not reducible to the people who occupy its offices at any particular point in time, not even to those in the highest positions of authority. The true Church is the Mystical Body of Christ extending through time. We depend upon that Church for our salvation, and we can't abandon it because of the malfeasance of its temporary caretakers, whether they are priests, bishops, or even (if you can believe it) popes.
 |
| Bad popes: "Pope Formosus and Stephen VII" by Jean-Paul Laurens, 1870 |
At the same time, while the immorality and infidelity of bad clerics can't unmake the Church itself, it can do a lot of damage to members of the Church, and Church institutions, in particular times and places. It can cause souls to be lost. That was in fact the concern of the original comment that led to these posts. A father was afraid that the bad example and erroneous teaching of certain prominent churchmen (including some at a decidedly higher pay grade than his parish priest) would damage the faith of his children, and that he might need to leave the Church for their protection . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"
You’re probably familiar with the quote above, a favorite of Pope St. John Paul II. It’s author is Tertullian (c. A.D. 160 – c. A.D. 220), one of the foremost Christian writers and apologists of his age, who also gave us such essential terms as “Trinity” (Trinitas) and “Three Persons, One Substance” (Tres Personae, Una Substantia). Despite his enormous achievements, however, and his lasting influence, Tertullian is not considered a Father of the Church; we don’t even call him “Saint” Tertullian: he chose, sadly, to follow his own judgment rather than that of the Apostolic Church, and fell into heresy in the latter part of his life.
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68)
 |
| Is this your parish priest? |
We live in scary times. It looks like our secular institutions in the West are collapsing, to be replaced by mob rule (which really means, as always, a tyranny of the elite who manipulate the mob). More frightening still for Catholics, the institutional Church appears to be experiencing a parallel slide. A commenter on my post about the Trappists and Icarians expressed his unhappiness at attending Mass where, as he put it, the priest "preaches communism." He was not just concerned, however, that many Catholic clerics, from parish priest on up, are abandoning the Faith for a poisonous brand of politics, but also, on a more practical level, that the Catholic Church itself was not a safe place for his children.
The commenter raises some valid and important points, which deserve a better answer than I can give off the cuff in a social media combox . . . I was thinking about how to approach this topic Friday morning, when I received some timely help from the daily Mass readings. . . .
[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]
