vitaminb16

Moved

2005-07-11T06:20:00.000-07:00

This blog has moved to http://www.vitaminb16.com, which is part of http://www.cehwiedel.com.

No new posts will be added to this site, but the blog will remain to point towards the new site.

Moving Day

2005-07-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

I am in the process today of moving this blog to my personal website at http://www.cehwiedel.com/blogs/vitaminb16 (not yet quite ready).

This site will remain here with the pointer to the new site.

Anselm of Canterbury, Part 4

2005-07-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 232:

His powers of destruction extend farther than his capacity to reconstruct.Thus between all the reparations that man may attempt and the greatness of his guilt there remains an infinite gulf he can never bridge. Any gesture of expiation can only demonstrate his powerlessness to close the infinite gulf that he himself opened up.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Anselm of Canterbury, Part 3

2005-07-06T05:49:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 232:

But the measure of the offense demands an infinite reparation, which man is not capable of making. He can offend infinitely — his capacity extends that far — but he cannot produce an infinite reparation; what he, as a finite being, gives will always be only finite.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Anselm of Canterbury, Part 2

2005-07-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 232:

Since God is infinite, the offense to him implicit in humanity’s sin is also infinitely important. The right that has been violated to such an extent must be restored, because God is a God of order and justice; indeed, he is justice itself.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Anselm of Canterbury, Part 1

2005-07-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 231-232:

Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033-1109) had been concerned to deduce the work of Christ by a train of necessary reasons (rationibus necessariis) and thus to show irrefutably that this work had to happen in the precise way in which it in fact did. The main lines of his argument may be summarized as follows: By man’s sin, which was aimed against God, the order of justice was violated beyond measure and God infinitely offended. Behind this is the idea that the measure of the offense is determined by the status of the offended party; if I offend a beggar, the consequences are not the same as they would be if I offended a head of state. The importance of the offense varies according to the addressee. Since God is infinite, the offense to him implicit in humanity’s sin is also infinitely important.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

July Papal Intention

2005-07-02T15:58:00.000-07:00

The Pope promulgates a specific prayer intention every month, one general and one for the missions. The general intention for the month of July 2005 is:

That Christians be sensitive to the needs of everyone, without ever hiding the radical requirements of the Gospel message.

(Hat tip: Amy Welborn’s Open Book.)

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism, Ecumenism, Evangelism.

Gone for a Week

2005-06-26T05:27:00.000-07:00

I'm headed to Denver, Colorado, to attend a technical conference. Back next week!

Christology and Soteriology

2005-06-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 230-231:

From the position thus gained it is at last possible to perceive also the operation of another antithesis erected by history; it is in fact closely related to the one we have just considered [theology of the incarnation & theology of the cross]. In the course of the historical development of faith in Christ, two aspects of it, which people became accustomed to call “Christology” and “soteriology”, visibly parted company. The former term came to denote the doctrine of the being of Jesus, which was treated more and more as a self-contained ontological exception and thus transformed into an object of speculation concerning something special, incomprehensible, and confined to Jesus alone. Soteriology then came to denote the doctrine of the redemption; after dealing with the ontological crossword puzzle — the question of how man and God could in Jesus be one — people went on to inquire quite separately about what Jesus had really done and how the effect of his deed impinges on us. That the two questions parted company, that the person and his work were made the subjects of separate inquiries and treatises, led to both problems becoming incomprehensible and insoluble.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Limits of Science, Part 4

2005-06-19T18:11:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 195:

Just as in physics being retires behind appearance, so here to a large extent the only past events that are still accepted as valid are those that are presented as “historical”, that is, tested and passed by historical methods. It is quite often forgotten that the full truth of history eludes documentary verification just as much as the truth of being escapes the experimental approach. So it must be said that historical science in the narrowest sense of the term not only reveals but also conceals history. The automatic result is that it can see the man Jesus all right but can only with difficulty discover the Christ in him, which as a truth of history cannot simply be checked as right or wrong by reference to the documentary evidence.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Limits of Science, Part 3

2005-06-18T05:51:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 195:

The consequence of this methodical approach is that — as in natural science — only the “phenomenal” or outer surface of what has happened comes into view. But this “phenomenal” aspect, that is, the surface that can be checked by documentary evidence, is more questionable than the positivism of physics from two points of view. It is more questionable, first, because it has to rely on the availability of documents, that is, on chance statements, while physics at any rate always has the necessary material realitites before it. It is also more questionable because the expression of the human element in the written evidence is less accurate than the self-expression of nature; its reflection of human depths is inadequate and often positively conceals them; and its interpretation involves man and his personal mode of thinking far more extensively than the interpretation of physical phenomena does.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Limits of Science, Part 2

2005-06-17T05:46:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 195:

A very similar position threatens to arise in the encounter with history. The methods of physics are followed as far as they possibly can be, though a limit is set to the process by the fact that history cannot carry verification, which forms the core of the modern scientific approach, to the point of repetition, on which the unique certainty of scientific statements rests. The historian is denied this satisfaction; past history cannot be reenacted, and verification must be content with the demonstrable soundness of the evidence on which the historian bases his view.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Limits of Science, Part 1

2005-06-16T05:31:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 195:

…physics has renounced the discovery of being itself and confines itself to the “positive”, to what can be proved. The impressive gain in precision thus made has to be paid for by a renunciation of truth that in the end can go so far that behind the prison bars of positivism, being, truth itself, disappears. Ontology becomes visibly more impossible, and even philosophy has to yeld in large measure to phenomenology, to the investigation of mere appearances.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Meaning of All Being

2005-06-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, pages 193-194:

Accordingly the meaning of all being is first of all no longer to be found in the sweep of mind that rises above the individual, the limited, into the universal; it is no longer simply given in the world of ideas, which transcends the individual and is reflected in it only in a fragmentary fashion; it is to be found in the midst of time, in the countenance of one man.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Both Logos and Sarx

2005-06-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 193:

Although faith in the logos, the meaningfulness of being, corresponds perfectly with a tendency in the human reason, this second article of the Creed proclaims the absolutely staggering alliance of logos and sarx, of meaning and a single historical figure. The meaning that sustains all being has become flesh; that is, it has entered history and become one individual in it; it is no longer simply what encompases and sustains history but a point in it.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Authoritative Center of All History

2005-06-13T05:21:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 193:

It is only in the second section of the Creed that we come up against the real difficulty — already considered briefly in the introduction — about Christianity: the profession of faith that the man Jesus, an individual executed in Palestine round about the year 30, the Christus (anointed, chosen) of God, indeed God’s own Son, is the central and decisive point of all human history. It seems both presumptuous and foolish to assert that one single figure who is bound to disappear farther and farther into the mists of the past is the authoritative center of all history.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

“My doctrine in not mine&hellip”

2005-06-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 189:

Let us round off the whole discussion with a passage from St. Augustine that elucidates splendidly what we mean. It occurs in his commentary on St. John and hinges on the sentence in the Gospel that runs, “Mea doctrina non est mea” — “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me” (7:16). Augustine has used the paradox in this sentence to illuminate the paradoxical nature of the Christian image of God and Christian existence. He asks himself first whether it is not a sheer contradiction, an offense against the elementary rules of logic, to say something like, “Mine is not mine.” But, he goes on to ask, digging deeper, what, then is the teaching of Jesus that is simultaneously his and not his? Jesus is “word”, and thus it becomes clear that his teaching is he himself. If one reads the sentence again with this insight, it then says: I am by no means just I; I am not mine at all; my I is that of another. With this we have moved on out of Christology and arrived at ourselves: “Quid tam tuum quam tu, quid tam non tuum quam tu” — What is so much yours as yourself, and what is so little yours as yourself? The most individual element in us — the only thing that belongs to us in the last analysis — our own “I”, is at the same time the least individual element of all, for it is precisely our “I” that we have neither from ourselves nor for ourselves.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The True Greatness of God

2005-06-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 146:

…the aphorism with which Hölderlin prefaced his Hyperion will serve to recall the Christian image of the true greatness of God: “Non coerceri maximo, contineri tamen a minimo, divinum est” (Not to be encompassed by the greatest, but to let oneself be encompassed by the smallest — that is divine). The boundless spirit who bears in himself the totality of Being reaches beyond the “greatest”, so that to him it is small, and he reaches into the smallest, because to him nothing is too small. Precisely this overstepping of the greatest and reaching down into the smallest is the true nature of absolute spirit.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Repeating the Ancient Pagan Failure

2005-06-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, discussing the modern misguided application to Christianity of ancient paganism’s failure, page 142:

In a situation in which the truth of the Christian approach seems to be disappearing, the struggle for Christianity has brought to the fore again the two very methods that ancient polytheism employed to fight — and lose — its last battle. On one side, we have the retreat from the truth of reason into a realm of mere piety, mere faith, mere revelation; a retreat that in reality bears a fatal resemblance, whether by design or accident and whether the fact is admitted or not, to the ancient religion’s retreat before the logos, to the flight from truth to beautiful custom, from nature to politics. On the other side, we have an approach I will call for short “interpreted Christianity”: the stumbling blocks in Christianity are removed by the interpretative method, and, as part of the process of thus rendering it unobjectionable, its actual content is written off as dispensable phraseology, as a perphrasis not required to say the simple things now alleged, by complicated modes of exposition, to constitute its real meaning.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Truth, Not Custom

2005-06-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, contrasting the public and customary religion of the ancient Mediterranean with Christianity, page 140-141:

Religion [that is, the public and customary religion of the pagan culture in which Christianity was founded] did not go the way of the logos but lingered in myths already seen to be devoid of reality. Consequently its decline was inevitable; this followed from its divorce from the truth, a state of affairs that led to its being regarded as a mere institutio vitae, that is, as a mere contrivance and an outward form of life. The Christian position, as opposed to this situation, is put emphatically by Tertullian when he says with splended boldness: “Christ called himself truth, not custom.” In my view, this is one of the really great assertions of patristic theology. In it the struggle of the early Church, and the abiding task with which the Christian faith is confronted if it is to remain itself, is summed up with unique conciseness. The idolization of the consuetudo Romana, of the “tradition” of the city of Rome, which had made its own customs into a self-sufficient code of behavior, was challenged by the truth and its claim to uniqueness. Christianity thus put itself resolutely on the side of truth and turned its back on a conception of religion satisfied to be mere outward ceremonial that in the end can be interpreted to mean anything one fancies.

This quote from Tertullian, and the Christian proposition that it boldly states, is a direct challenge to modern efforts to exclude religion — particularly Christianity — from the public square, or limit it to empty symbols such as Christmas trees and presents (with no crèche), and Easter bunnies and eggs (with no cross).

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

“Faith Comes from what is heard.”

2005-06-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 91:

“Faith comes from what is heard,” says St. Paul (Rom 10:17). This might seem like a very transient factor, which can change; one might be tempted to see in it purely and simply the result of one particular sociological situation, so that one day it would be right to say instead, “Faith comes from reading” or “from reflection.” In reality it must be stated that we have here much more than the reflection of a historical period now past. The assertion “faith comes from what is heard” contains an abiding structural truth about what happens here. It illuminates the fundamental differences between faith and mere philosophy, a difference that does not prevent faith, in its core, from setting the philosophical search for truth in motion again. One could say epigrammatically that faith does in fact come from “hearing,” not — like philosophy — from “reflection.” Its nature lies in the fact that it is not the thinking out of something that can be thought as the result of my thought. On the contrary, it is characteristic of faith that it comes from hearing, that it is the reception of something that I have not thought out, so that in the last analysis thinking in the context of faith is always a thinking over of something previously heard and received.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Man — and God — as Faciendum

2005-06-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 65, continuing the discussion on how we travelled from verum est ens through verum quia factum to verum quia faciendum:

Like history before it, techne [manual skill] now ceases to be a subordinate, preliminary stage in the intellectual development of man, even if to a decidedly arts-oriented mentality it still retains a certain hint of barbarity. The structure of the general intellectual situation has been fundamentally altered: techne is no longer banished to the “House of Commons” of learning [as in the medieval university], or, to be more accurate, here, too, the House of Commons has become the decisive element in the constitution; in comparison with it the “House of Lords” now seems only a collection of aristocratic pensioners. Techne has become the real potential and obligation of man. What was previously at the bottom is now on top. Simultaneously the perspective is changing once again: at first, in ancient and medieval times, man had concentrated on the eternal, then, during the short-lived predominance of the historical approach, on the past; but now the faciendum, the “makable” aspect of things, directs his attention to the future of what he himself can create. If before, perhaps through the conclusions implicit in the doctrine of the origin of species, he might have resignedly noted that so far as his past was concerned he was just earth, a mere chance development, if he was disillusioned by such knowledge and felt degraded, he does not need to be disturbed by this any longer, for now, wherever he comes from, he can look his future in the eye with the determination to make himself into whatever he wishes; he does not need to regard it as impossible to make himself into the God who now stands at the end as faciendum, as something makable, not at the beginning, as logos, meaning.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Making Your Own Truth

2005-06-06T05:35:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 63, continuing the discussion on how we travelled from verum est ens through verum quia factum to verum quia faciendum:

Verum quia factum: this program that directs man to history as the receptable of truth could not suffice, it is true, in itself. It only became fully effective when it was allied to a second principle, which, again a good hundred years later, Karl Marx formulated in his classical statement: “So far philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; it is necessary to change it.” With this the task of philosophy was once again fundamentally redefined. Translated into the language of the Philosophical tradition, this maxim means that verum quia factum — what is knowable, tending toward truth, is what man has made and what he can now contemplate — was replaced by the new program verum quia faciendum — the truth with which we are now concerned is feasibility. To put it again in another way: The truth with which man is concerned is neither the truth of being, nor even in the last resort that of his accomplished deeds, but the truth of changing the world, molding the world — a truth centered on future and action.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

All-Devouring History

2005-06-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 62, continuing the discussion on how we arrived at modernism:

With [the dominance of factum] is connected that revaluation of all values that made subsequent history really a “new” age as compared with the old one. History, previously despised and regarded as unscientific, now remained, alongside mathematics, the only true science left. That which alone had hitherto seemed worthy of the free mind, thinking about the meaning of being, now seemed an idle and aimless enterprise offering no hope of attaining genuine knowledge. Thus mathematics and history now became the dominant disciplines; indeed, history devoured, so to speak, the whole world of learning and transformed it fundamentally. Through Hegel, and in a different way through Comte, philosophy became a historical question, in which being itself is to be understood as a historical process. With F.C. Baur, theology turned into history, and its path became that of rigorous historical research, which asks what happened in the past and thereby hopes to reach the bottom of the matter. With Marx, economics was given a historical slant. Indeed, even the natural sciences were affected by this general tendency toward history: with Darwin, the classification of living beings was understood as a history of life; the constancy of what stays as it was created was replaced by a line of descent in which all things came from one another. Thus the world finally appeared no longer as the firm housing of being but as a process whose continual expansion is the movement of being itself. This meant that henceforth the world was only knowable insofar as it was something made by man. In the last analysis man was no longer in a position to look beyond himself except on the level of the fact, where he had to recognize himself as the chance product of age-old developments. At the very moment when radical anthropocentrism set in and man could know only his own work, he had to learn to accept himself as merely a chance occurrence, just another “fact.”

I enjoy the irony of the last sentence, as the Church is so frequently accused of prideful anthropocentrism, when its proper attitude is more reflected by the psalm’s plaintive question: what is man that thou art mindful of him?

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

All That Can Be Known

2005-06-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 61, continuing the discussion on how we travelled from verum est ens to verum quia factum:

If part of real knowledge is the knowledge of causes, then we can truly know only what we have made ourselves, for it is only ourselves that we are familiar with. This means that the old equation of truth and being is replaced by the new one of truth and factuality; all that can be known is the factum, that which we have made ourselves. It is not the task of the human mind — nor is it within its capacity — to think about being; rather, it is to think about the factum, what has been made, man’s own particular world, for this is all we can truly understand… The dominance of the fact began, that is, man’s complete devotion to his own work as the only certainty.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

What is Man That Thou Art Mindful of Him?

2005-06-03T15:59:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 60:

In contrast to [God and his works], from the point of view of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, the work of man seems contingent and transitory. Being is thought and therefore thinkable, the object of thought and the science that strives after wisdom. The work of man, on the other hand, is a mixture of logos and the a-logical, something, moreover, that with the passage of time sinks away into the past. It does not admit of full comprehension, for it is lacking in presence, the prerequesite for being looked at, and it is lacking in logos, in thoroughgoing meaningfulness.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Creator Spiritus

2005-06-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 59:

For the ancient world and the Middle Ages, being itself is true, in other words, apprehensible, because God, pure intellect, made it, and he made it by thinking it. To the creative original spirit, the Creator Spiritus, thinking and making are one and the same thing. His thinking is a creative process. Things are, because they are thought.

Note from me: please ponder especially that last sentence, and compare it to Descartes’s assertion: Cogito, ergo sum. “I think, therefore I am.” Uncontingent upon anything else. That formulation would be a jaw-dropper to anyone steeped in the thoughts of the classical philosophers, the Church Fathers, or the theology and philosophy of the Middle Ages.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Scholasticism v. Modernism

2005-06-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 59:

Against the Scholastic equation verum est ens (being is truth) [Giambattista Vico (1668-1744)] advances his own formula, verum quia factum. That is to say, all that we can truly know is what we have made ourselves. It seems to me that this formula denotes the real end of the old metaphysics and the beginning of the specifically modern attitude of mind. The revolutionary character of modern thinking in comparison with all that preceded it is here expressed with absolutely inimitable precision.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Scandal of Christian Positivism

2005-05-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, pages 54:

Christian belief is not merely concerned, as one might at first suspect from all the talk of belief or faith, with the eternal, which as the “entirely Other” would remain outside the human world and time; on the contrary, it is much more concerned with God in history, with God as man. By thus seeming to bridge the gulf between eternal and temporal, between visible and invisible, by making us meet God as a man, the eternal as the temporal, as one of us, it understands itself as revelation. Its claim to be revelation is indeed based on the fact that it has, so to speak, introduced the eternal into our world: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (Jn 1:18)…

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Anchoress on B16

2005-05-30T13:19:00.000-07:00

The Anchoress received an uncomplimentary letter concerning Pope Benedict XVI, comparing our new pope with his immediate predecessor and stating that he compares badly. The Anchoress demurs.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Dilemma of Belief Today

2005-05-30T05:13:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, pages 52-53:

Belief appears no longer as the bold but challenging leap out of the apparent all of our visible world and into the apparent void of the invisible and intangible; it looks much more like a demand to bind oneself to yesterday and to affirm it as eternally valid. And who wants to do that in an age when the idea of “tradition” has been replaced by the idea of “progress”?

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Out and About with B16

2005-05-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

B16 visited Bari, Italy, today in his first trip outside Rome since his election. The purpose of the trip was to celebrate the closing Mass of the 24th National Eucharistic Congress. Camillo Cardinal Ruini, the Vicar of the Diocese of Rome, acted as the Pope's special envoy to the Congress.

Earlier in the month, B16 designated two new “blesseds”: Ascensión Nicol Goñi (feast day of Feb. 24th) and Marianne Cope (feast day of Jan. 23rd).

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Problematical Belief

2005-05-29T08:11:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, pages 51-52:

From [the preceding discussion] we can see that it is not just today, in the specific conditions of our modern situation, that belief or faith is problematical, indeed almost something that seems impossible, but that it has always meant a leap, a somewhat less obvious and less easily recognizable one perhaps, across an infinite gulf, a leap, namely, out of the tangible world that presses on man from every side. Belief has always had something of an adventurous break or leap about it, because in every age it represents the risky enterprise of accepting what plainly cannot be seen as the truly real and fundamental. Belief was never simply the attitude automatically corresponding to the whole slant of human life; it has always been a decision calling on the depths of existence, a decision that in every age demanded a turnabout by man that can only be achieved by an effort of will.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Credo

2005-05-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 48:

…for the moment we must put aside both considerations [briefly explored in the preceding text] in order to ask a more radical question and to ponder quite deeply what kind of attitude is implied if Christian existence expresses itself first and foremost in the word credo, thus determining — what is by no means self-evident — that the kernel of Christianity shall be that it is a “belief”. We generally assume rather unthinkingly that “religion” and “belief” are always the same thing and that every religion can therefore just as well be described as a “belief”. But this is true only to a limited extent; many of the other religions have other names for themselves and thus establish different centers of gravity. The Old Testament as a whole classified itself, not as “belief”, but as “law”. It is primarily a way of life, in which, to be sure, the act of belief acquires by degrees more and more importance. Again, by religio Roman religious feeling understood in practice mainly the observance of certain ritual forms and customs. It was not crucial that there should be an act of faith in the supernatural; even the complete absence of such faith did not imply any disloyalty to this religion. As it was essentially a system of rites, the crucial factor was the careful observance of these. We could go on like this through the whole history of religions, but enough has been said to make clear that it is by no means self-evident that the central expression of Christianity should be the word credo, that the Christian should describe this attitude to reality as being that of “belief”. But this only makes our question all the more urgent: What attitude is really signified by this word? And, further, how is it that it is becoming so difficult for our individual personal “I” to enter into this “I believe”? How is it that, again and again, it seems almost impossible for us to identify our present-day egos — each of them inalterably separate from everyone else’s — with that “I” of the “I believe”, which as been predetermined and shaped by past generations?

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

The Curt Jester

2005-05-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

How very odd.

The Curt Jester posts on B16's participation in the Corpus Domini procession for the Feast of Corpus Christi, with a link to pictures posted by Zadok the Roman. That's not odd.

In the same post, he links to pictures posted by John Gibson at Musings of an Ex-Pagan, showing an Episcopalian clown mass. No, really. Yes, the clown mass is odd, but…

Odder still was the justaposition of the clown mass with a story that I read recently from the opening pages of Introduction to Christianity, an allegory originally from Kierkegaard* but retold by Harvey Cox ** before its use by B16:

Anyone who tries today to talk about the question of Christian faith in the presence of people who are not thoroughly at home with ecclesiastical language and thought (whether by vocation or by convention) soon comes to sense the alien — and alienating — nature of such an enterprise. He will probably soon have the feeling that his position is only too well summed up in Kierkegaard's famous story of the clown and the burning village, an allegory taken up again recently by Harvey Cox in his book The Secular City. According to this story, a traveling circus in Denmark caught fire. The manager thereupon sent the clown, who was already dressed and made up for the performance, into the neighboring village to fetch help, especially as there was a danger that the fire would spread across the fields of dry stubble and engulf the village itself. The clown hurried into the village and requested the inhabitants to come as quickly as possible to the blazing circus and help to put the fire out. But the villagers took the clown’s shouts simply for an excellent piece of advertising, meant to attract as many people as possible to the performance; they applauded the clown and laughed till they cried. The clown felt more like weeping than laughing; he tried in vain to get people to be serious, to make it clear to them that this was no stunt, that he was not pretending but was in bitter earnest, that there really was a fire. His supplications only increased the laughter; people thought he was playing his part splendidly — until finally the fire did engulf the village; it was too late for help, and both circus and village were burned to the ground.

Cox cites this story as an analogy of the theologian’s position today and sees the theologian as the clown who cannot make people really listen to his message…

How very odd and strange and pitiable and painful that the Episcopalians would turn the allegory into reality!

* Søren Kierkegaard was a 19th-Century Danish philosopher concerned with the renewal of Christian life.

** Harvey Cox is the Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. The story comes from his book The Secular City.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism, Episcopalianism.

Martin Buber’s Story

2005-05-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

On page 46 of Introduction to Christianity, a Jewish story told by Martin Buber* is included:

An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi’s room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, “But perhaps it is true after all.” The scholar tried in vain to collect himself — his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yetschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: “My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.” The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible “perhaps” that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.

* Martin Buber was a 20th-Century philosopher greatly interested in interpersonal relationships. The story above illustrates the dilemma of both the believer and the unbeliever.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

God is Practical

2005-05-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 17-18:

Yet God is “practical” and not just some theoretical conclusion of a consoling world view that one may adhere to or simply disregard. We see that today in every place where the deliberate denial of him has become a matter of principle and where his absence is no longer mitigated at all. For at first, when God is left out of the picture, everything apparently goes on as before. Mature decisions and the basic structures of life remain in place, even though they have lost their foundations. But, as Nietzsche describes it, once the news really reaches people that “ God is dead” and they take it to heart, then everything changes. This is demonstrated today, on the one hand, in the way that science treats human life: man is becoming a technological object while vanishing to an ever greater degree as a human subject, and he has only himself to blame. When human embryos are artifically “cultivated” so as to have “research material” and to obtain a supply of organs, which then are supposed to benefit other human beings, there is scarcely an outcry, because so few are horrified any more. Progress demands all this, and they really are noble goals: improving the quality of life — at least for those who can afford to have recourse to such services. But if man, in his origin and at his very roots, is only an object to himself, if he is “produced” and comes off the production line with selected features and accessories, what on earth is man then supposed to think of man? How should he act toward him? What will be man’s attitude toward man when he can no longer find anything of the divine mystery in the other, but only his own know-how? What is happening in the “high-tech” areas of science is reflected wherever the culture, broadly speaking, has managed to tear God out of men’s hearts. Today there are places where trafficking in human beings goes on quite openly: a cynical consumption of humanity while society looks on helplessly. For example, organized crime constantly brings women out of Albania on various pretexts and delivers them to the mainland across the sea as prostitutes, and because there are enough cynics there waiting for such “wares”, organized crime becomes more powerful, and those who try to put a stop to it discover that the Hydra of evil keeps growing new heads, no matter how many they may cut off. And do we not see everywhere around us, in seemingly orderly neighborhoods, an increase in violence, which is taken more and more for granted and is becoming more and more reckless? I do not want to extend this horror-scenario any farther. But we ought to wonder whether God might not in fact be the genuine reality, the basic prerequisite for any “realism”, so that, without him, nothing is safe.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Liberation Theology

2005-05-25T12:45:00.000-07:00

From Introduction to Christianity, page 15-16:

It must be admitted: by means of this remarkable synthesis [that is, liberation theology], Christianity had stepped once more onto the world stage and had become an “epoch-making” message. It is no surprise that the socialist states took a stand in favor of this movement. More noteworthy is the fact that, even in the “capitalist” countries, liberation theology was the darling of public opinion; to contradict it was viewed positively as a sin against humanity and mankind, even though no one, naturally, wanted to see the practical measures applied in his own situation, because he, of course, had already arrived at a just social order. Now it cannot be denied that in the various liberation theologies there really were some worthwhile insights as well. All of these plans for an epoch-making synthesis of Christianity and the world had to step aside, however, the moment that faith in politics as a salvific force collapsed. Man is, indeed, as Aristotle says, a “political being”, but he cannot be reduced to politics and economics. I see the real and most profound problem with the liberation theologies in their effective omission of the idea of God, which, of course, also changed the figure of Christ fundamentally… Not as though God had been denied — not on your life! He simply was not needed in regard to the “reality” that mankind had to deal with. God had nothing to do.

This goes a long way to answering the puzzlement of many as to why JPII and B16 could support the resistance efforts in Eastern Europe, but not those of Latin America.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Judgement

2005-05-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 146:

Romano Guardini, who in his inclination to melancholy often felt the dreadful and painful aspects of this world most grievously, like a burden laid upon him personally, said many times that he knew that at the judgment God wuold ask him about his life. But he was waiting for the judgment to be able for his part to put questions to God — the question about why creation exists, about all the incomprehnsible things that have arisen in it as the consequence of the freedom to do evil. The judgment means that God puts this question to himself. Hans Urs von Balthasar expresses it this way: Thos who defend God are not convincing; God has to defend himself. “He did it once, when the Risen One showed his woulds… God himself has to invent his theodicy*. He must already have worked it out when he endowed men with the freedom (and thus with the temptation) to say No to him, to his commands.” At the judgment, in response to uor questions, the Lord will show us his wounds, and we will understand. In the meantime, however, he simply expects us to stand by him and to believe what these wounds tell us, even though we cannot work right through the logic of this world.

* theodicy: “A vindication of God’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.” (The American Heritage College Dictionary, Third Edition)

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Commonweal article

2005-05-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

Michael Perry posts at Mirror of Justice about an article by John Garvey in Commonweal entitled “The New Pope: An Orthodox View.”

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

A Third Slice of Hypobibliophobic Heaven

2005-05-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Ignatius Press is catching up with the backlog of orders for titles by B16. Today’s arrival:

Introduction to Christianity

I will add it to the righthand rail.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Books, Catholicism.

Eternal Life, part 3

2005-05-23T05:39:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 141:

Present and eternity are not, like present and future, located side by side and separated; rather, they are intertwined. That is the real difference between utopia and eschatology. For a long time, we have been offered utopia, that is, the hope of a better world in the future, in the place of eternal life. Eternal life is supposedly unreal; it is said to alienate us from real time. But utopia is a real goal toward which we can work with all our powers and abilities. Yet this idea is a misapprehension that leads us to the destruction of our hopes. For this future world, for the sake of which the present is being used up, never comes to us ourselves; it is always only there for some future generation, as yet unknown. It is like the water and the fruit that are offered to Tantalus: the water always reaches just up to his neck, and the fruit is always just in front of his mouth. But when in his great thirst, he wants to drink, the water withdraws beyond his reach, and when he wants to taste the fruit, in his hunger, the same thing happens. This ancient picture of the damnation of pride, as the most typical sin of man, pinpoints exactly the hubris which replaces eschatology with self-made utopia, that is to say that it intends to fulfill man’s hope by its own powers and without faith in God. Utopia always seems quite close but never arrives because man always remains free and can therefore never be fixed in place in a final state of things. The struggle to keep evil under control, within limits, has to be taken up anew by each generation and can never be removed by the institutional arrangements of an earlier generation.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Eternal Life, part 2

2005-05-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 140:

Thus we see that eternal life is that mode of living, in the midst of our present earthly life, which is untouched by death because it reaches out beyond death. Eternal life in the midst of time, that is the first challenge of the article of belief that was our starting point. If we live in this way, then the hope of eternal fellowship with God will become the expectation that characterizes our existence, because some conception of its reality develops for us, and the beauty of it transforms us from within. Thus it becomes apparent that there is in this face-to-face encounter with God nothing selfish, no withdrawal into a merely private realm, but that very liberation from the self which alone makes any sense of eternity. An endless succession of moments would be unbearable; when our existence is gathered up into the single gaze of the love of God, this not only transforms endlessness into eternity, into God’s today; at the same time it means fellowship with all those who have been accepted by that same love.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Eternal Life

2005-05-21T05:39:00.000-07:00

From God is Near us, page 137:

Eternal life is not an endless sequence of moments, in which we would have to try to overcome boredom and anxiety in the face of what cannot be ended. Eternal life is a new quality of existence, in which everything flows together into the “now” of love, into that new quality of being that is freed from the fragmentation of existence in the accelerating flight of moments. In this, our mortal life, on one hand, every moment is too short, because life itself seems to pass away with the moment before we can catch hold if it; at the same time, each moment is too long for us, because the great number of moments, each always the same as the others, becomes too laborious for us. Thus it becomes clear that eternal life is not simply what comes afterward, something about which we can form no notion at all. Because it is a new quality of existence, it can be already present in the midst of this earthly life and its fleeting temporality as something new and different and greater, albeit in an imperfect and fragmentary fashion. But the dividing line between eternal and temporal life is by no means simply of a chronological order: so that the years before death would be temporal life; the endless time afterward would be eternal life — as we generally think. But because eternity is not just endless time but another level of being, such a merely chronological distinction cannot be right.

As lagniappe — a tasty bonus bite — here are the words that T.S. Eliot gave Thomas Becket:


I have had a tremor of bliss, a wink of
   heaven, a whisper;
And I would no longer be denied; all things
   Proceed to a joyful consummation.

(See the article on T.S. Eliot by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus.)

Technorati tags: B16, Thomas Becket, Benedict XVI, Catholicism, T.S. Eliot, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus,.

Another Slice of Hypobibliophobic Heaven

2005-05-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

Today is another Good Day: two books arrived.

Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977

The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God

The first is late and came via amazon; Ignatius Press sold out and this is from a new press run. Like the titles received earlier this week, it comes with a nifty gold sticker to let me know that “Pope Benedict XVI” had something or other to do with the book. Maybe the author (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) got B16’s imprimatur. (I am of course joking — always an iffy thing to do. It does amuse me, however, that the gold sticker merely trumpets the papal name without any indication at all that Ratzinger and Benedict are the same person.)

The second (also via amazon) is by George Weigel, the biographer of JPII.

I will add the B16 title to the righthand rail.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Books, Catholicism.

Human Life

2005-05-20T05:12:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 122:

Human life is, in the first place, a search for meaning, the search for some message that can show me my path and give me direction. Because of its whole direction, life is a search for a supportive community, since man is created for community. It is a search for a love that shares, that teaches us to trust, and that can be trusted right to the end in mutual giving. And thus it is a demand that the world should be transformed by love into praise: prayer embraces the whole world, and the world is comprehended within prayer.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism, Philosophy.

Hypobibliophilic Heaven

2005-05-20T04:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a Good Day: five books arrived.

Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today

Priniciples of Christian Morality

Behold the Pierced One

Principles of Catholic Theology

The Best of “The Public Square” — Book Two

The first four are tardy; Ignatius Press sold out and these are from a new press run. They each come with a nifty gold sticker to let me know that “Pope Benedict XVI” had something or other to do with the book. Maybe the author (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) got B16’s imprimatur. (I am of course joking — always an iffy thing to do. It does amuse me, however, that the gold sticker merely trumpets the papal name without any indication at all that Ratzinger and Benedict are the same person.)

That last title is a ringer, of course. While the first four are all by B16, the last is by Father Richard John Neuhaus.

I will add the B16 titles to the righthand rail.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI,Books, Catholicism.

At the Death of the Lord, the Veil of the Temple was Torn in Two

2005-05-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 99:

When the Temple veil was torn across, so we had thought, the boundary between sacred and profane was torn apart. The cult is no longer a special, separate sphere but has chosen to be everywhere, has chosen to make itself felt even in worldly things. Entirely practical conclusions have been drawn from this, right down to some concerning priestly dress, concerning Christian worship and church buildings. This razing of the bastions should be carried out everywhere, nowhere should cult and life be any longer distinguishable one from the other. But thereby the message of the New Testament had ultimately been subject to substantial misunderstanding, albeit on the basis of an idea that was itself correct. For God is not withdrawing from the world so as to leave it to its worldliness, any more than he is affirming it in its worldliness, as if this were in itself holy. For as long as the world is imperfect, the distinction within it between sacred and profane will remain, for God is not withdrawing from it the presence of his holiness, and yet his holiness still does not comprehend the whole.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI,Catholicism.

A God So Near

2005-05-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 102:

In today’s reading [Deut. 4:7] there is a marvelous saying, in which we can sense all the joy of Israel at its redemption: “What great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?”

Saint Thomas Aquinas took up this saying in his reflections for the Feast of Corpus Christ. In doing so, he showed how we Christians in the Church of the New Covenant can pronounce these words with yet more reason and more joy and with thankfulness than Israel could; in doing so, he showed how this saying, in the Church of Jesus Christ, has acquired a depth of meaning hitherto unsuspected: God has truly come to dwell among us in the Eucharist.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Sunday is the Lord’s Day

2005-05-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 103:

…let us never forget that Sunday is the Lord’s day. It is not an arbitrary decision of the Church, requiring us to attend Mass on Sunday. This is never a duty laid upon us from without; it is the royal privilege of the Christian to share in paschal fellowhip with the Lord, in the Paschal Mystery. The Lord has made the first day of the week his own day, on which he comes to us, on which he spreads the table for us and invites us to share with him. We can see, in the Old Testament passage at which we are looking [Deut. 4:7], that the Israelites saw in the presence of God, not a burden, but the basis of their pride and their joy. And indeed the Sunday fellowship with the Lord is not a burden, but a grace, a gift, which lights up the whole week, and we would be cheating ourselves if we withdrew from it.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism.

Commonweal on B16

2005-05-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

Hot spoffit! I found a treaure trove: Commonweal magazine has three articles in their May 6, 2005, issue on Benedict XVI:

Cathleen Kaveny describes meeting B16.

The editors of Commonweal expound on B16 in an editorial.

Timothy P. Schilling describes the day that B16 was elected.

And the Ethics and Public Policy Center as two articles:

Colleen Carroll Campbell explores how the St. Benedict might make a good role model for B16.

George Weigel investigates the meaning of B16.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism,Religion.

B16 on the Limits of Political Power

2005-05-16T04:09:00.000-07:00

From “The Presence of the Lord in the Sacrament” in God Is Near Us, page 93:

From [Phil. 2:10] we learn, not only the fact that the primitive Church knelt down before Jesus, but also her reason: She thereby rendered homage to him — to the Crucified One — publicly, as the ruler of the world, in whom the promise of the worldwide rule of the God of Israel has been fulfilled. She thereby gave witness to her faith, over against the the Jews, that the law and the prophets are speaking about Jesus when they mention the “Name” of God; as against the Caesar worship — the totalitarian claims of politics — she insisted on the new worldwide dominion of Jesus, which sets limits to political power.

Those in this country wishing to ban religion from the public square tend to rely on three texts:

“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” (Mt 22:15-22; Lk 20:19-26)

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”(First Amendment, U.S. Constitution)

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” (Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802)

They do so with an eye toward circumscribing the religious sphere of influence, but disregard the possibility of a reciprocal condition circumscribing the political sphere of influence. B16's comments on Philippians should cause them to reconsider.

A Good Enemy to Have

2005-05-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

Planned Parenthood is launching a campaign against Pope Benedict XVI and “his dangerously outdated stances on birth control, abortion and sexuality.”

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism, Religion, Religion in the Public Square.

Anecdotal Torquemada

2005-05-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

I have been busy all day, and didn't have a quote ready-to-hand, so will have to make do with a delightful anecdote courtesy of Peter Robinson in NRO's The Corner about B16's successor as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

B16 at Catholic Culture

2005-05-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

The website Catholic Culture has a special section on B16.

Technorati tags: B16, Benedict XVI, Catholicism, Religion.

A Shadow Hovering

2005-05-13T05:10:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 39:

We can do no more than give a little tentative thought to God, and it is not in our power to know whether or not he responds. This remains the tragic element, the shadow hovering over so many religions, that they are simply a cry to which the response remains uncertain. Only God himself can hear the cry. Jesus Christ, both Son of God and man, who carries on his love right through death, who transforms death into an act of love and truth, he is the response; the Covenant is founded in him.

Technorati tags: Catholicism, Benedict XVI, Pope, Religion.

Santo Subito!

2005-05-13T04:48:00.000-07:00

According to Fox News, B16 has initiated the cause for the canonization of John Paul II, giving permission to lay aside the usual five-year waiting period subsequent to a person's death.

The News Service of the Holy See does not yet have anything posted for May 13th.

It is interesting that B16 announced the decision at the Basilica of St. John Lateran — the home parish for the Bishop of Rome — on May 13th, a day of the month significant in many ways in the life of JPII. Not only the anniversary of the attempt on his life, it also relates to Our Lady of Fatima, whom JPII credited with saving his life after predicting the assassination attempt. Further, the last visionary of Fatima, Lucia dos Santos, died earlier this year on the 13th day of February.

B16 on Salvation for All

2005-05-12T17:20:00.000-07:00

From God is Near Us, page 36:

It is a basic element of the biblical message that the Lord died for all — being jealous of salvation is not Christian.

Technorati tags: Catholicism,Religion.

We're on the Winning Team

2005-05-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

At a general audience on May 11, 2005, B16 addressed the assembly in Italian, then summarized the address in almost a dozen languages and added greetings in those languages.

CNN quotes from the Italian:

History, in fact, is not in the hands of dark forces, left to chance or just human choices… Above the unleashing of evil energy, above the vehement interruptions of Satan, above the so many scourges of evil, rises the Lord, supreme arbiter of history.

From the Vatican website's version of the full address in Italian:

La storia, infatti, non è in mano a potenze oscure, al caso o alle sole scelte umane. Sullo scatenarsi di energie malvagie, sull’irrompere veemente di Satana, sull’emergere di tanti flagelli e mali, si eleva il Signore, arbitro supremo della vicenda storica. Egli la conduce sapientemente verso l’alba dei nuovi cieli e della nuova terra, cantati nella parte finale del libro sotto l’immagine della nuova Gerusalemme (cfr Ap 21-22).

(Hat tip: K-Lo in NRO's The Corner.)

Technorati tags: Catholicism, History, Religion.

Still Catching Up

2005-05-11T18:32:00.000-07:00

I’m running as fast as I can to catch up after being away for eight days — I don’t have a real post on B16 ready for today. Instead, I recommend that you pop over to Fr. Bryce Sibley’s A Saintly Salmagundi and read “an awesome quote taken from a 1986 Bavarian radio broadcast.”

Backordered!

2005-05-10T08:41:00.000-07:00

On returning home from Arlington (VA) and Nashville (TN), I was happy to find that God is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had arrived from Ignatius Press.

I was amused to learn that the other titles by B16 that I ordered from Ignatius are backordered! The publisher is out-of-stock!

Technorati tags: Catholicism,Religion.

More from Eschatology

2005-05-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

From page 5:

…the core of …the Christian message itself [is] the confident, corporate hope for the immanent salvation of all the world.

Smile! Despair has no place in the Christian worldview — if I could only remember that day-to-day.

First Reading: Eschatology

2005-05-07T16:25:00.000-07:00

In an earlier post, I linked to a post by Fr. Bryce Sibley describing a discussion series he will be starting soon on the writings of B16. One of the books that he included in his reading list was Eschatology, volume 9 in a series on dogmatic theology.

I've just finished my first reading — it will take more than one reading to absorb all of it! But I thought that I would share a quote:

Religion does not substitute for rationality, but rather requires it.

Definitely my kinda pope!

Technorati Tags:

catholicism

religion

pope

benedictxvi

dogmatictheology

eschatology

On the Road

2005-04-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

I'll be travelling from now until May 8th, with one of the stops along the way at Blog Nashville. No guarantees on posting until I'm back. Check in on Fr. Bryce Sibley at A Saintly Salmagundi while I'm gone.

Technorati Tags:

blognashville

B16 Papal Coat of Arms

2005-04-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

Via seminarian Bryan Jerabek at Quodlibeta, the new papal coat of arms:

An explanation of the heraldic devices can be found here, with further detail here.

UPDATE: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary has a terrific display of papal cartoons serving as a sort of blessing on both JPII and B16. Not on the list, but one of my favorites:

Technorati Tags:

catholicism

pope

benedictxvi

MOJ: B16 on Social Justice, Economics

2005-04-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

Mirror of Justice has a couple of posts relating to B16:

B16 on the economic life, posted by Tom Berg

B16 on social justice, posted by Michael Perry

B16 on capitalism, posted by Tom Berg

Technorati Tags:

catholicism

pope

benedictxvi

economics

social justice

GodSpy: Four Myths About B16

2005-04-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

Via Kathy Shaidle at Relapsed Catholic, a link to a post at GodSpy that looks at four myths about Benedict XVI.

Technorati Tags:

catholicism

pope

benedictxvi

Sibley on B16

2005-04-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I posted that Fr. Bryce Sibley at A Saintly Salmagundi had announced that he would organize a discussion on the writings of B16.

Today, Fr. Sibley posts a reading list, and it's a doozy! A lot of the books are available from Ignatius Press — the spotchecks I made at Amazon show a 9-12 day waiting period, and have since a day or so after the announcement of B16's election. Alibris doesn't list any of the titles (thought there are other Ratzinger titles available, including his Memoirs). Abe Books lists lots of titles, in about every European language except English!

I hope that Fr. Sibley gives us a chance to order from Ignatius Press before he starts his series.

Technorati Tags:

catholicism

pope

benedictxvi

A Dose of B16: Philosophy and Theology Part Ways

2005-04-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we followed B16 as he explained how philosophy and theology began Christian life conjoined. Today, we'll follow him as he describes how they parted ways, mostly as a result of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas:

Philosophy is the search by pure is wisdom for an answer to the final questions of reality. Philosophical knowledge is exclusively that knowlege which can be gathered from reason and as such can be gathered without the teaching of revelation. It achieves its certainty exclusively from argumentation, and its statements have only the value of the arguments presented in their defense.

Theology is the examination of God's revelation in an attempt to understand. It is faith which seeks insight. It does not determine its own content, but receives it from revelation. It then tries to grasp this content in its inner context and meaningfulness.

Once St. Thomas was through with his X-acto knife, he had sliced Christian philosophy into the separate fields of philosophy and theology. Philosophy studied nature, natural phenomena and pure reason; theology supernature, supernatural phenomena and revelation. The result, in modern times, has been the demotion of theology by relativism, and the promotion of philosophy by the growth of the natural sciences.

Tomorrow, we'll look further at the estrangement of philosophy and theology.

Questions Allowed, But So is Shepherding

2005-04-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

Michael Novak's article at NRO today is very good at explaining that the Catholic Church does not require "unquestioning obedience" — this last an accusation hurled in the direction of B16 as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and now as Pope.

A Dose of B16: Faith, Philosophy and Theology

2005-04-26T05:18:00.000-07:00

Stick with me for a couple of days. I will be quoting from a paper entitled "Faith, Philosophy and Theology" by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger that he presented as part of the Pope John Paull II Lecture Series in 1985 at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. The paper explores how philosophy and theology began life together under the Christian faith, parted ways in the Middle Ages, became estranged in the modern era, and might yet reconcile.

Cardinal Ratzinger starts with sculpted figures found on the sarcophagi of Christian burials from the Third Century AD:

Their motif includes three figures: the shepherd, the "Orante" at prayer, and the philosopher.

Okay, ya got yer basic Christian shepherd and some guy praying: no surprise there. But a philosopher? Where'd he come from? According to B16, the figure has his roots in non-Christian Cynics, "wandering apostles of philosophy," but differs from them because the figure holds the Gospel, an answer to the Cynics'perception of the threat of death.

The figure of the Christian philosopher represents not only a Christian accepting the Gospel, but also Christ as the subject of the Gospel:

In the raising of Lazarus from the dead, he appears as the true philosopher because he has the true answer: he changes death and he changes life.

So philosophy and theology began Christian life together. Tomorrow: how they parted ways.

8 Out of 10 Ain't Bad

2005-04-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

A new poll shows that 8 out of 10 U.S. Catholics approve of the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI.

But Catholics on both sides of these divides agree that the man who led the church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for more than two decades likely will chart a conservative course in the years ahead: Eight in 10 expect him to maintain traditional church policies while only 14 percent believe he will change policies and modernize the church, a course that could further widen the gap between the church in Rome and American Catholics.

B16: Get Yer Mugs 'N' Aprons Here!

2005-04-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Amy Welborn at The Open Book has posted links to sites already selling PopeStuff, including these items playing on the same abbreviation/pun that my blog does, and also these, with the tag line "Fortified Catholicism." I kinda like that. Maybe I'll get myself a mug.

Jeff Miller at The Curt Jester also has Fun with Vitamins.

NRO: The Pope's Still Catholic

2005-04-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Ned Rice at NRO posts that, darn it, the Pope is still Catholic — and that's a good thing:

The Church is not a democracy, and part of being Catholic is being cool with that.

(Hat tip: Fr. Bryce Sibley at A Saintly Salmagundi. Check out his new T-shirt design!)

Mirror of Justice on B16

2005-04-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

There are several posts at Mirror of Justice from several of the group blog's members:

Amy Uelmen posts after reading Salt of the Earth.

Michael Perry posts comments gleaned from the Martin Marty Center of the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Rick Garnett posts on B16, fear and freedom.

Michael Perry posts on Peter Steinfel's "Beliefs" column in the New York Times.

Professor Bainbridge on B16

2005-04-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

Stephen Bainbridge, a professor of law at UCLA, posts excerpts from an article in The Economist on B16, and comments on the excerpts.

George Weigel on B16

2005-04-25T10:07:00.000-07:00

The biographer of JPII has an article in Newsweek on "The Real Benedict":

I've had the privilege of being in conversation with the new pope for 17 years. He is one of only two men I know who, in answering a question, pauses, reflects—and then speaks in complete paragraphs (in his fourth language). Like his great papal predecessor, he has a searching curiosity about ideas, arguments, books and personalities. African, Asian and Latin American cardinals—who may have formed a substantial part of the coalition that elected him—describe him as having been the best listener in the Roman Curia, an environment that too often treats senior churchmen from south of the equator as children.

(Who's the other man?) Read the whole article.

President Aristotle on B16

2005-04-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt pointed out a new blog, President Aristotle, so I clicked over and found several worthwhile posts on B16:

Pope Benedict XVI: LA Times and Latin American Catholics

Waiting for Pope Benedict...

Pope Benedict XVI: Gandalf takes up the staff

Benedict XVI and the Evangelicals: evolution and "faith alone"

If enough bloggers take up the cause, perhaps even the Los Angeles Times might be moved to write something more balanced. That would count as JPII's second miracle. (The first, according to Peggy Noonan, was the election of B16.)

A Glimpse of B16

2005-04-25T05:05:00.000-07:00

In Joseph Ratzinger: Christ's Donkey, Fr. John Neuhaus reviews the then newly published memoirs of then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. A paragraph from that review, which in turn quotes from the memoirs, may give a glimpse of how B16 felt on being elected Pope and presented at the window on St. Peter's Square:

In the mid-1970s he [Ratzinger] was embarked on the ambitious project of writing a dogmatics when his academic life was disrupted by his surprise appointment as Archbishop of Munich (actually, Munich and Freising). His reflection on the way he was received as bishop echoes his earlier description of the response of the people when, as a young man, he had been ordained priest. “So many meople were welcoming my unknown person with a heartfelt warmth and joy that could not possibly have to do with me personally, but that once again showed me what a sacrament is: I was being greeted as bishop, as bearer of the Mystery of Christ… The joy of the day was something very different from the acceptance of a particular person, whose capacities had still to be demonstrated. It was joy over the fact that this office, this service, was again present in a person who does not act and live for himself but for Him and therefore for all.”

New Online Fan Club for B16

2005-04-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

Amy Welborn at The Open Book passes along the URL for the Pope Benedict XVI Fan Club, which I've added to the list on the right.

Amazon Out-of-Stock

2005-04-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

Brian Jerabek, a seminarian at Quodlibeta, posts that Ignatius Press has in stock many of the titles by B16 that are now out-of-stock at Amazon.

Series on the Thought of B16

2005-04-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

Fr. Bryce Sibley at A Saintly Salmagundi posts the good news that he will start "a series of classes on the thought of Joseph Ratzinger."

B16: Apostolic and Priestly Mission

2005-04-24T05:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I posted an excerpt from a homily that B16, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, delivered to the congregation in the College of St. Thomas Chapel in St. Paul, MN, on February 12, 1984. The Gospel reading at the Mass was Mark 2:13-19:

Jesus went back again to the shore of Lake Galilee. A crowd came to him, and he started teaching them. As he walked along, he saw a tax collector, Levi son of Alphaeus, sitting in his office. Jesus said to him, "Follow me." Levi got up and followed him.

Later on Jesus was having a meal in Levi's house. A large number of tax collectors and other outcasts was following Jesus, and many of them joined him and his disciples at the table. Some teachers of the Law, who were Pharisees, saw that Jesus was eating with these outcasts and tax collectors, so they asked his disciples, "Why does he eat with such people?"

Jesus heard them and answered, "People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick. I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts."

Here is another excerpt from B16's homily:

Finally, our text mentions the two essential components of apostolic and priestly mission. They are sent to preach and to have authority (power, exousia) to expel demons. Proclamation and authority — word and sacrament, are the two pillars of priestly service. They remain so for all times.

After the council [Vatican II], some have had the impression that there are now more urgent things that need to be done than proclaiming the word of God and dispensing the sacraments. Some have thought that one has first to bring about a different society before one can take time once again for such things. At the root of these views was a certain spiritual blindness which was only able to perceive the material values and which forgot that humanity always needs the whole, the response to the hunger of body and soul. Improve society, yes, of course, let’s do it! But what is it? What is society? Some think that manipulating society to conform to their image of progress is progress. But what a cruel and insensitive opinion of people that really is! The questions and needs of the soul cannot be neglected or postponed. On the contrary, their postponement and bracketing only provokes other problems and makes them more and more insoluble. For this reason, leading humanity to the living God is not, because it cannot be superfluous. It is always the basic condition for the awakening of the best of human powers, without which human life, in the end, is not possible. The more we ourselves are permeated with the presence of the living God, the more we can bring him to others. To the same degree we will also realize that precisely such true priestly service does not miss real life, but brings it about: “that they may have life and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

Weather Forcast: A Warming Trend

2005-04-24T05:15:00.000-07:00

B16 is already going against the pre-conceived image constructed by those who know little about him:

The 78-year-old Benedict is quickly setting the personal tone of his reign — and it's not the distant and strident papacy that many feared because of his long role as the church's watchdog of theology.

An open-air Mass in St. Peter's Square on Sunday is expected to draw half a million faithful and hundreds of dignitaries to Rome. The decision for an outdoor Mass — rather than one in St. Peter's Basilica — shows Benedict favors the populist touch of recent popes who have made the same choice.

There were other signs the world is warming swiftly to the German-born pope: a Polish archbishop said Benedict would be invited to his predecessor's homeland in August, and the pope's Vatican e-mail address received more than 56,000 messages in the first two days.

I will also confess to knowing little about him — but I do not want to build a bogey-man to joust with. I'm learning more day by day, with daily doses of vitamin B16. Come, learn with me.

The Enforcer

2005-04-23T06:31:00.000-07:00

Tracy Wilkinson, a Los Angeles Times staffwriter who has a lengthy list of articles on B16, falls into step with most of the mainstream media in this excerpt from an article in today's deadtree edition of the LA Times:

Friday's meeting, which was televised live on Italian TV, was the latest in the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's efforts to project a softer, fatherly image in contrast to his reputation as an unbending enforcer of church doctrine. It came as the Vatican prepared for the pope's inaugural Mass on Sunday.

At the meeting referred to, the assembled cardinals formally pledged their support to the new pope.

Adjectives such as unbending and ultra-conservative, nouns such as enforcer, heavy-handed reminders that he headed what used to be called the Inquisition — similar treatment of B16 is widespread, a lazy way to sound knowledgeable, easier than researching his background and writings. There will be further insistence that he's trying to reform his image, his reputation — as if he were a breakfast cereal in need of a marketing campaign.

We will know better, though, because we're going to take a daily dose of B16.

A Dose of B16: Joy in Creation

2005-04-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

B16, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, delivered a homily to the congregation in the College of St. Thomas Chapel in St. Paul, MN, on February 12, 1984. The Gospel reading at the Mass was Mark 2:13-19:

Jesus went back again to the shore of Lake Galilee. A crowd came to him, and he started teaching them. As he walked along, he saw a tax collector, Levi son of Alphaeus, sitting in his office. Jesus said to him, "Follow me." Levi got up and followed him.

Later on Jesus was having a meal in Levi's house. A large number of tax collectors and other outcasts was following Jesus, and many of them joined him and his disciples at the table. Some teachers of the Law, who were Pharisees, saw that Jesus was eating with these outcasts and tax collectors, so they asked his disciples, "Why does he eat with such people?"

Jesus heard them and answered, "People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick. I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts."

Here is an excerpt from B16's homily:

So we can say that friendship with Jesus has to do with joy in creation, joy in its inexhaustible clarity, and in the large and small wonders of the world. But if the call to the mountain is to be fully followed, there is still more: the mountain is also the place of Jesus's prayer. It is his place of solitude where he makes his gift to the Father. It is an expression of the height, the inner transcendence of involvement with the things of ordinary life. The call of the young men proceeds from the conversation which Jesus has with the Father. We only know how to answer the call if we have made this inner ascent with Jesus. If we want to discover the call of Jesus, to accept it and bring it to fruition, we must first know about the mountain of Jesus: freedom from everyday things, tranquillity, composure, the giving of the self to the living God.

We must come in honesty and in all seriousness to hear the voice of Jesus.

Fr. Neuhaus on B16

2005-04-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

Fr. John Neuhaus, reporting from Rome during the funeral for JPII and the conclave that elected B16, writes from personal experience on what we can expect from this new pope.

If you would like further insight from Fr. Neuhaus regarding B16, you might read the introduction to Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, a short collection of essays edited by Fr. Neuhaus that is based on a 1988 ecumenical theological conference featuring Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I was unable to find it either at amazon or alibris or abebooks; I checked it out from my University's library.