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The Catholic Thing
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The Catholic Thing is a daily column rooted in the richest cultural tradition in the world, i.e., the concrete historical reality of Catholicism.
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A Note on 'Roma Aeterna'
Apr 2400:06:35Tap to summarizeBy Francis X. Maier Rome, if not quite the "Eternal City," is nearly 2,800 years old and counting. I first encountered it in the 1970s, visiting my wife's uncle, a priest who served in the Congregation (now the Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith. What I remember most vividly from those few days is a Fellini-esque evening performance of the opera Aida with live elephants in the Baths of Caracalla, followed by a hair-raising drive home through Roman traffic. The city then was an electric blend of the sacred and profane: a cocktail of religious piety, astounding beauty, garish energy, and opiate nostalgia; strange and intoxicating at the same time. I loved it. Over the years I've returned many times, always with the same mix of feelings. In all those visits, the living Catholic soul of the city redeemed its vulgarity and graffiti porn – a venerable Roman tradition – and offered some clean, fresh joy for the spirit to counter the narcotic scent of the past and its ruins. I'm old enough to remember, as a child, the recorded voice of Pius XII. In the papacies of John XXIII to Benedict XVI, evangelical zeal, pastoral service, and brilliant intellect coincided and reinforced each other. They converted my adult heart. Exacting Catholic thought mattered. It was the fertile soil for Christian action. I visited Rome twice in the last years of the Francis papacy. The mood of the place had changed. Some of my disenchantment with the city doubtless came from age; my own, not the city's. Skepticism tends to grow along with one's years. But it was also more than that. There were days, then, when Catholic Rome felt like Constantinople in the last sclerotic years of the Palaiologoi emperors: a museum amid the hostile and indifferent, curated by the mediocre. For the believer who looks too closely and reflects too long, Rome can sometimes be more of a scab on the spirit than a spring of refreshment. This isn't new of course. Quite the opposite. Martin Luther had the same reaction. That didn't end well. It was new, though, for me and many others who entered their teens as Vatican II opened; years subsequently blessed by a string of intellectually gifted popes who'd suffered and survived the worst years of the last century. Francis came from very different roots. He was a champion of the poor, and his pontificate had important strengths, but not in the same category. His death a year ago this week left a range of internal Church conflicts unresolved. Easter is a time for celebration and renewed hope. In a few weeks we need to carry those qualities into the liturgical season of "Ordinary Time." A question we face going forward is this: How can we heal the frustrations and divisions that naturally come with Church conflict in a time of profound change? Worries and resentments can strip the heart of joy like a plague of locusts at harvest. So I go back, again and again, to three things. First, we need to remember and pray for Pope Francis, and also for our own conversion from the role we ourselves play in today's ongoing ecclesial conflicts. And we need to do it sincerely, with a good will. Second, we need to remember Church history because it's a lesson in hope. Reading Carlos Eire's Reformations, or Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation, or Hubert Jedin's great History of the Council of Trent, or any similar record of the medieval or ancient Christian Church is both sobering and encouraging. Sobering, because division in the Church is a chronic human virus. Encouraging, because Nero (and so many others like him) would be shocked we're still here. There's never really been a golden age of tranquility in Christian life because our nature doesn't allow it. We're flawed creatures. We – and "we" means all of us, from popes to plumbers – do bad things that have big consequences. That's why Golgotha and Easter had to happen. But we're also capable of heroism, virtue, self-sacrifice, and nobility, and God never abandons us. That's why we're st...
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A Cancelled Catholic Philosopher in a Turbulent Age
Apr 2300:06:18Tap to summarizeBy Michael Pakaluk "Our foreign-born citizens must permit us to say that they have been imprudent and have committed some serious mistakes," so writes an esteemed Catholic social philosopher about the immigration question. "It is wrong to claim as a natural right what is really only a boon. No nation is bound to admit foreigners to all the rights and immunities of natural-born citizens." This highly revered author continues, "The nation has the natural right to preserve itself, and that which constitutes what it is, – its national spirit, genius, usages, manners, and customs, – and therefore has a natural right to guard against any influx of foreigners, which, in its judgment, is incompatible with the maintenance of its identity." This Catholic of very good judgment then attacks the universal humanism which some call "globalism": "For foreigners to claim as a natural right to be placed on an equal footing with natural-born citizens, is entirely to misrepresent American republicanism, and to assert the abominable doctrine of the solidarity of peoples, maintained by the infamous revolutionists of Europe, which is incompatible, not only with all regular government, but with all national independence." I will not name him just yet. Let's see if you can guess his name as I say more about him. He's been someone always disposed to say what he regards as true, not what's "politic." Just before he published these words, he had been offered a distinguished professorship at a newly founded Catholic university, in a country from which many of these "foreigners" were emigrating. But the religious leaders of that country, especially the Catholic bishops, were so disturbed by his sentiments, that they insisted that his invitation be withdrawn. In effect, he was cancelled. True, it was an odd invitation in the first place. Although he was a recognized social and political philosopher, and a wide-ranging theologian, he was asked to lecture in a subject outside his expertise. I will reproduce part of the Rector's letter of invitation: we feel it impossible to offer you any inducement sufficient to lead you to connect yourself personally with the institution, nor indeed are we ourselves yet in a position to make such an offer to anyone. But we have thought we might still avail ourselves of the name and assistance of various eminent Catholics, in a way which it is possible both for them and for us to contemplate. What I take the liberty of asking you, is, whether you would consent to accept the office of Lecturer Extraordinary for (we will say) a year. The subject which I should propose to your acceptance would be one of such surpassing interest and breadth that I am often surprised that it is not put more prominently forward in Collegiate establishments. We never omit a professorship of astronomy, but how much more fertile a subject of thought is the province of geography! Viewed under its different heads, as physical, moral, and political, it gives scope to a variety of profound philosophical speculations, which will at once suggest themselves to your mind. It treats of the very stage and field of all history; of the relation of that field to the characters of nations, to social institutions, and to forms of religion, of the migrations of tribes, the direction and course of conquests and empires, the revolutions and extension of commerce, and the future destinies of the human race. This is the subject I offer to your acceptance. This social and philosopher, not inclined to lecture on geography, was disposed to turn down such an invitation. He let some powerful friends know the same, after which the invitation was changed. The Rector sent a revised invitation: it disappointed me that you did not see your way to assist us in the University in the way I pointed out. . . .It has struck me you would not be disinclined to take the chair of Philosophy of Religion, or the Evidences of Christianity, or of the Notes of the Church, especially as viewe...
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St. Isidore Runs the Numbers
Apr 2200:06:51Tap to summarizeBy Casey Chalk It's easy to get lost in Biblical numerological speculation, as even a cursory study of the Church Fathers proves. St. Irenaeus attempted to explain the number of the beast from Revelation 13:17–18 by adding the numerical value of the Greek letters in the names "Evanthas," "Lateinos," and "Teitan" to get the ominous 666. St. Augustine argues that the meaning of 153 fish caught by the Apostles (John 21:11): there are Ten Commandments, the number seven signifies holiness, ten plus seven equals seventeen, and if all the numbers from 1 to 17 are added together (e.g. 1+2+3, etc.) they equal 153. St. Cyril in contrast breaks the number 153 into 100 (the large number of Gentiles to be saved), 50 (the small number of Jews to be saved) and 3 (the Trinity). Given such seemingly unsubstantiated speculation, it's easy to be tempted to throw up one's hands and conclude that looking for spiritual significance in the various numbers of Holy Scripture is not a particularly fruitful enterprise. The writings of the church father and Doctor of the Church St. Isidore of Seville (560-636) – whose feast day we celebrated earlier this month – should, however, give us pause. His work The Mystical Meaning of Numbers in Sacred Scripture helps clarify why the use of numbers in the Bible matters in exegesis and theology. St. Isidore was one of the most celebrated men of the seventh century. Born into a pious family (his brothers Leander and Fulgentius and sister Florentina are also saints), Isidore was in time appointed Vicar Apostolic for the whole of Spain by Pope St. Gregory the Great. He convened a Council of the Church in Spain (the Second Council of Seville) in response to the heresy of the Acephali, which rejected the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon on the union of the divine and human natures in Christ. He also convened the Fourth Council of Toledo, which bound the Spanish monarchy to the Catholic Church and established seminaries for the formation of clergy. Only sixteen years after his death, the Spanish Church at Toledo unanimously agreed he should be declared both a saint and a Doctor of the Church. Because of his writings on numbers, Pope St. John Paul II in 1997 declared Isidore the patron saint of the internet. Holy Scripture teaches: "In measure, and in number, and in weight Thou hast ordered all things." (Wisdom 11:21) Inspired by this, Isidore's Etymology sees a symbolic value in numbers: The importance of numbers should not be overlooked, and in many places in the Sacred Scriptures mystical meanings shine forth through them with radiance and illumination. . . .And if number and quantity were to be taken away from creation, all things would lose their forms and cease to exist. In The Mystical Meaning of Numbers in Sacred Scripture, Isidore walks us through such interpretations, from numbers one through twelve. One, for example, "represents both indivisibility and completeness," whose exemplar and archetype is God Himself, the origin of all things: "One or unity is the seed and basis of all subsequent numbers. For out of unity, all subsequent numbers emanate or are created." Of course the most perfect example of unity is God, as the Shema asserts: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one." (Deut. 6:4) The Church is also one, though the sins of her members undoubtedly harm that oneness, as the sins of the individual Christian harm the integrity of the wholeness of the human person created in God's image. Two is the first number that can be divided, and thus "represents the possibility of fundamental opposition," giving rise to potential conflict: good and evil, light and darkness, life and death. The Old Testament is filled with examples of such oppositions: Cain and Abel, Saul and David, Israel and Judah. Jesus employs it constantly in His parables: wheat and tares, sheep and goats, the two sons. Isidore's analysis also anticipates a response to Protestant thought: "There are two aspects or means which ...
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Knocking Heads
Apr 2100:05:41Tap to summarizeBy Anthony Esolen Last week, King Charles III of England declined to issue an Easter greeting to the people of the church he is supposed to lead, as Defensor fidei. He does, however, make sure to mark Islamic holidays, which has led some to speculate that he is a secret convert to Islam. The speculation is not as absurd as it sounds, since Charles has studied Arabic and has written about Islamic theology. Be that as it may, it fits into a pattern we see in the western churches generally, among "liberals" – I use the term for want of a better word; among those who have lost their grasp on the claim, made by the Lord Himself, that he is "the way, the truth, and the life," and that no one comes to the Father but through Him. Liberals are also strongly represented among those embarrassed by the directive the risen Lord gives to all believers, to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"; among those who assist in the social animus against Christians who hold what have become deeply unpopular beliefs, particularly regarding sexual sins. Paul tells the Corinthians to "flee fornication," but Paul, the liberal says, was an unreliable fellow. The pattern is simply that the Muslim faith is to be honored, its reductive theology is to be overlooked, and its historical record, continuing into the present and remarkably bloody even by human standards, is to be whitewashed. Christians, of course, should hold themselves to the Lord's high standards. That they have not reliably done so is no surprise. We are a fallen race, quick to anger, slow to forgive, and apt to see specks in other people's eyes and miss the planks in our own. But when Christians have accepted the grace of God to raise them above the mire, we see real and astonishing transformations, extending also to the social world. Where is the Islamic counterpart to Matteo Ricci, spending years studying Chinese language, customs, philosophy, literature, and music, so that he could go to the Imperial City and bring to the mandarins themselves the priceless gift of the faith – of Christ crucified, for the sins of all mankind? Or the Islamic counterpart to Father Damian, who stowed away in a ship so he could get to Molokai and minister to the bodies and the souls of the lepers abandoned there? I am aware that when I say that Christians have the truth, and Muslims do not, I must immediately qualify the statement, since God has left no people utterly in darkness. Indonesia, who have never been contacted by the outside world, and whatever they believe about divinity is not going to be found entirely wrong, though I think I would rather not be present at their sacred feasting. But the call to evangelization can be urgent only if you believe that you do possess the truth, and that darkness about the ultimate matters of human existence, about death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell, is a dreadful thing. There is the key. The liberal is confident about his political beliefs, but not so confident about his religious beliefs. Things should be the other way around. He will speak much about providing state care for unwed mothers, but very little about the virtues that make marriage almost universal and unwed motherhood rare, and nothing at all about those virtues as being enjoined by God Himself. He will speak much about the state's duty to relieve suffering in the flesh; rather less about suffering as a gift when it is united to the suffering of Christ; next to nothing about the Church's duty to minister to hearts and minds and souls corrupted by irreligion, ignorance, and licentiousness, and suffering the inexorable spiritual consequences. Thus he wants to believe everything nice about Islam, while practicing an animus against Christians that rub his conscience the wrong way. He has not the confidence of his own faith, and he detests Christians who do have that confidence. So he kowtows to Muslims, trusting that if he is...
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Simeon's Prophesy verses The Blob
Apr 2000:06:35Tap to summarizeBy Brad Miner And Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary his mother: Behold this child is set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be contradicted. (Luke 2:34) By 1973, there'd been one papal trip to the U.S. – by Paul VI in 1965, and that was for all of 15 hours. And before that visit, no pope had even left Italy since Pius VII was forcibly removed to France by Napoleon's troops in 1812. Yet Catholicism managed to encourage converts. I would never argue against evangelization. In one way or another, evangelizing is what The Catholic Thing's contributors do daily. We proclaim, "Jesus Christ and him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2:2) But clerics daily diving into the media scrum or popes having wings (John Paul II made 104 pastoral trips outside of Italy) may not be as conducive to conversions as are the Faith's doctrines and rituals. Besides, not every pope has been as grounded and charismatic as St. John Paul. In any case, when we remember him, we don't think of the comments he made about conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, or South Asia. And this is because, as a rule, he didn't make them. He was more catechist than commentator. At its heart, the Catholic Church is (and must be) opposed to "the world" because Jesus is. When Cardinal Karol Wojtyla gave the Lenten meditations to Paul VI and the Roman Curia in 1976, he welded "a sign of contradiction" onto the Catholic imagination. Jesus is that sign: either you are for Him, or you are against Him. Everything about Jesus Christ flies in the face of all worldly ambition that seeks to see life in terms other than the Cross. Yet the Church, by which I mean official Vatican "voices," now inserts itself into every imaginable secular issue, reducing – to greater and lesser degrees – the message of Christ to a mere alternative to the various Timeses (New York, London, India, Israel), and TASS, BBC, NBC, Xinhua, et cetera, and ad nauseam. The Church seems determined to root us in every imaginable finite business when it ought to be leading us towards the ineffable infinite. And this attention to "the world" inevitably makes the Church seem increasingly worldly. Trump. Putin, Xi. Leo? Take your pick. They all seem to be in the same business. Well, I'm not, though, meaning to suggest the end of Animal Farm: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." In that, Leo XIV surely stands apart. And yet, I believe he has, so far, allowed himself to step too close to the secular abyss. For example: Trump. One might wonder if the pope's decision not to come to the U.S. for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation of his birth had something to do with the current occupant of the White House. I don't know. But a pope's visit to the White House is simply a matter of protocol: one head of state welcoming another. It is in no sense an endorsement of that president any more than a president, by meeting with a pope, is confirming the Holy Father's authority. No pope has slept in the White House, and the only pope-president liaison that became more than mere protocol was the one between John Paul II and Ronald Reagan. Before he became president, Reagan had been inspired by John Paul's visit to still-communist Poland, which became the Reagan Era's template for U.S. and U.S.S.R, relations. And, of course, they bonded over their shared experiences of nearly being killed by assassins. More than that, they liked and admired one another. IF Leo believes he, too, must be a peripatetic pope, he should have made July 2026 to the United States of America among his first journeys. Yes, there'd have to be the obligatory July 3rd photo op with DJT (without expectation of apology from the "leader of the free world" for his anti-Catholic Truth Social rants), but then (the same day, it seems to me) off to Philadelphia for the Fourth, after which off to Chic...
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For God and Country – Or for Myself?
Apr 1900:06:02Tap to summarizeBy David G Bonagura, Jr. I recently discovered All Creatures Great and Small, a 1930s-set British comedy-drama chronicling a trio of veterinarians working in rural Yorkshire. In the latest episode that I watched, Great Britain declares war on Nazi Germany and the draft began. The characters, remembering only too well the horrors of World War I, automatically took up the old practices: advising younger men about enlisting arrangements and rationing food items. That last really struck me. For the vets and their families, Mrs. Hall baked hot cross buns as she had twenty years earlier, using a less-than-ideal substitute for sugar, which was being rationed. The results: a knowing laugh over the poor-tasting treats to come. The United States last practiced rationing during World War II. What would happen today if, for whatever grave reason, our political leaders asked us to ration? I think we all know. We, the citizens of the most prosperous nation the world has ever known, blessed with food and beverage in quantities and quality that the Greatest Generation could not have imagined eighty years ago, would break into open rebellion. Sacrifice? That's no longer a virtue. Personal fulfillment is the name of the contemporary game. And our incredible abundance of material goods, which has spoiled us rotten, exists to serve this end. We ask only what our country can do for us – surely, we don't owe it anything. But it's not just our country we refuse these days. Collectively, as Catholics, we largely do not sacrifice for God either. Our Church-imposed Lenten fasting has been whittled down to the barest minimum of two days; self-imposed fasts – the thing we "give up" – typically are from a single luxury item. We also are not much inclined to put a decent offering into the parish basket each week, and many outright refuse to give to diocesan appeals. Care for the poor, help for the sick, healthcare for retired priests and religious, training for seminarians? No thanks, we tell ourselves – we know better where to direct our money. "For God and Country" was once a proud motto for Americans. We can find the phrase, sometimes in English and sometimes in Latin, inscribed into the cornerstone of churches and even public buildings. Its ubiquity implies widespread acceptance of the need to sacrifice for these two great entities that are bigger than we are. We should serve them – and most once believed that they were worth serving. What's striking today is not the widespread individualism that has long since replaced this service mentality. It's that the leading institutions of God and Country – the Church and the State – have unwittingly contributed to our selfishness rather than call us out of to it. Many Protestant denominations have forsaken the Ten Commandments for a "love is love" ersatz morality. In 1966, the American bishops ended the obligatory penance of Friday abstinence in favor of a penance of one's choosing (an exhortation that almost no one knows about, but I digress). Some Holy Days of Obligation have gradually been lifted or shifted. Most pastors blanch at the suggestion of requiring Mass attendance for children seeking the sacraments. There seems to be a persistent fear that if the faithful are asked to do too much, they won't come back. So they are left to do largely as they please. As religion's influence has waned, the State has tried to fill the power vacuum. Now nearly every aspect of human life is subordinated to it. Having subsumed the roles of community and local governments, the State fans the flames of selfishness with laws that pit individuals over families and local institutions – as well as with programs, such as healthcare and entitlements, that are administered directly from the government to individuals. From 2001-2006, the U.S. Army tried to tap into the individualist mindset with its "An Army of One" recruiting campaign. Can Americans rediscover a love of God and country along with a willingness to serve them ...
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John Paul II and our Elder (Jewish) Brothers
Apr 1800:06:14Tap to summarizeBy Stephen P. White Forty years ago, Pope John Paul II made a historic visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome. He was the first bishop of Rome to visit a synagogue (though presumably Peter, at least, made an appearance now and again). John Paul's visit, so pregnant with symbolism and historical import, was much more than an occasion for "interreligious dialogue" – a phrase that can sometimes suggest a lowest-common denominator approach to religious belief. Much more than a "celebration of differences," as today's parlance might frame it, this was a meeting of brothers, as Pope John Paul II famously put it on that occasion: The Church of Christ discovers her "bond" with Judaism by "searching into her own mystery.". . .The Jewish religion is not "extrinsic" to us, but in a certain way is "intrinsic" to our own religion. With Judaism therefore we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers. As we know – or ought to know from history, Scripture, and perhaps personal experience – friendship between brothers can be a sublime thing. By the same token, few things are more bitter than enmity between brothers. This claim of brotherhood between Christians and Jews is perhaps more significant than we at first would acknowledge. Forty years ago (and 1986 was itself barely forty years after the end of the Second World War) a pope claiming brotherhood with the Jewish people was an unmistakable gesture of reconciliation, of friendship. Coming as it did from a Polish pope, was all the more poignant. From John Paul II's boyhood home in Wadowice to the yawning gates of the "Golgotha of the modern world" (as he called the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau) it is a little less than 18 miles. That enduring symbol of the Holocaust was in Karol Wojtyla's home diocese, the diocese he himself led as archbishop before his election as pope. The point is that the horrors of the Holocaust, which were inflicted especially (though far from exclusively) upon Jews, were much more than abstractions of history for Pope John Paul II. These atrocities happened to his neighbors, to his friends, and in his own back yard. For the Polish pope, accepting an invitation to the synagogue of Rome bore great personal significance. In this context, the kinship – the brotherhood – of Christians and Jews was, in the eyes of Pope John Paul II much more than a mere post-war piety articulated as a vague, humanistic affinity. It was a kinship rooted in the historical faith in the God of Abraham. It was also a kinship marked and tested by profound suffering – of looking for the face of God amidst the worst horrors that human beings visit upon one another. This kinship of Christians and Jews has always been of greater theological importance to Christianity than to Judaism. Simply put, according to Christianity's own claims, the truth of the Christian faith hangs upon the truth of Judaism. The Church cannot forget, as Nostrae aetate puts it, that she "draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles." It matters to all Christians that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob really is the Lord. The converse does not hold. The truth of Christianity is not a theological (still less an historical) prerequisite for Judaism. This means that Jewish willingness to engage with Christians as brothers always entails a kind of generosity and disinterestedness. So, it ought to be noted that Pope John Paul II was invited by Rabbi Elio Toaff to the synagogue of Rome, a detail that might be easily passed over but which bears a significance of its own. For Christians to claim kinship with Jews is, in a sense, a kind of imposition. I don't mean it is impertinent for Christians to claim such kinship, rather that it is a claim which demands a kind of response, as all such claims do. To claim kinshi...
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The Politics of Shill
Apr 1700:06:29Tap to summarizeBy David Warren The pope may be many things in many contexts, but he should avoid becoming a shill for the Democratic Party. This is how he came across when he delivered a political statement just after he had been visited by David Axelrod, Obama's behind-the-scenes heavy. The effect was redoubled when leading liberal Cardinals, including Chicago's Blase Cupich, put on a media floorshow to promote the pope's "message to America." It was prattle we had heard many times before, from nice, peaceful politicians like Jimmy Carter: peace-not-war, appeasement, and negotiation at any price. The pope had been proclaiming this himself on Twitter when he was only Cardinal Robert Prevost: simplistic Leftism along with Democratic talking points, and open immigration. President Trump replied: "Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It's hurting him very badly, and more importantly, it's hurting the Catholic Church." I copy this concluding passage from his "Truth Social," for it is routinely passed over by "the Media." Trump was not attacking the Catholic Church. He was being characteristically candid, as we might hope that churchmen, too, might be candid, sometimes. The contrary impression – that Trump was putting his boot in – was made by spokesmen for the anti-Trump side, with fond memories of the days when the Catholic Church could almost be presented as a department of the Democratic Party. This continues to be part of leftwing mythology, and the media still want to believe it, although American Catholics have mostly risen from the abortion sewer in which it deposited them. Moreover, Pope Leo could not himself have wished to be seen, playing an obvious political game, even if he was. He was being used by a capable professional operative, who was exploiting his naivety and inexperience. He wasn't trying to be mischievous, as his predecessor often was. Of course, Trump can be worse than mischievous, and should practice the custody of his mouth, harder. He is much too articulate. The role of political trolls has now migrated, with other disagreeable creatures, to the Left both in America and in Western Europe. It still has not penetrated deeply into Eastern Europe, where people still retain the experience of Communism, and the many unpleasant connotations of the word "peace" in Communist propaganda. But west of there, are the modern liberal lands, where the words "Trump," and "Jews" (or alternatively, "Israel") regularly fetch an automatic hysteria that was instilled by Cold-War Soviet psychology, designed to flourish in low-intelligence environments. American Democrats can carry the brainless tradition one ocean-width farther. They can now teach Europe a thing or two, for instance: how to become catastrophically "woke." Christ's expression, "Forgive them for they know not what they do," is one that we should all meditate upon. It is not a spiritual advantage to be terminally stupid. And if you are, someone is needed to take care of you, for you will be a danger not only to your community, but to yourself. Indeed, as I have argued here and elsewhere, that is a "problem with democracy," which becomes ever worse, now that we have entered the era of "artificial intelligence." More and more extreme forms of know-nothingness have become possible in the general population. Previously, one had to know at least how to tie one's shoes, and there were levels of common sense that were equivalently "known" to everyone. Now, no matter how low the bar is set, all bets are off. Those who are familiar with Christianity, and for that matter usually the other "great religions," know, or knew, that peace was not obtainable without some level of judgement. If, for instance, someone is plausibly trying to kill you, "peace talks" with him will not necessarily make him desist. If he has, by reputation, the habit of killing anyone with whom he disagrees –...
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A Man in Opposition: Remembering Saint Magnus
Apr 1600:07:17Tap to summarizeBy Amy Fahey But first a note: Be sure to tune in tonight – Thursday, April 16 at 8 PM Eastern – to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss President Trump's blasphemous cartoon (and his insults aimed at Leo XIV), the Holy Father's Apostolic Journey in Africa, as well as other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel. Now for today's column... Today marks the death, over nine centuries ago, of St. Magnus, a jarl or earl of Orkney, those windswept isles off the coast of mainland Scotland. His holy life is recounted in the Orkneyinga Saga, which captures, in spare and forceful language, his Christian witness in an era when violence and ambition regularly upended the lives of ordinary crofters and fisherfolk. The imaginative energies of Orcadian writer and convert George Mackay Brown were fired by the story of St. Magnus, resulting in numerous poems, a drama, an opera (with composer Peter Maxwell Davies), and shorter narratives. The Magnus muse is nowhere more evident than in Mackay Brown's 1973 novel, Magnus. It's a strange work, at once innovative and imitative, proceeding through a succession of interwoven voices and symbols: the rise and fall of oars, scythes, weapons, the chanting of psalms, the web of light and harp and loom. I'm not sure it can even be called a novel. It's more of a dramatic meditation, a stylized, lyrical evocation of meaning – closer to poetry. Perhaps unhelpfully, Brown himself says in his memoir, "Realism is the enemy of the creative imagination." He presents the martyrdom of St. Magnus, betrayed by his cousin and rival earl, Hakon, as an example of a larger pattern: "At certain times and in certain circumstances men still crave spectacular sacrifice," says Mackay Brown. "They root about everywhere for a victim and a scapegoat to stand between the tribe and the anger of inexorable Fate." In his memoir, For the Islands I Sing, Mackay Brown reveals his motives for a strange transposition that occurs when the novel comes to the martyrdom: Quite suddenly one morning, as I was thinking of ways to tell the story of the actual martyrdom in Egilsay in 1117, it occurred to me that the whole story would strike a modern reader as remote and unconnected with our situation in the twentieth century. The truth must be that such incidents are not isolated casual happenings in time, but are repetitions of some archetypal pattern; an image or event stamped on the spirit of man at the very beginning of man's time on earth, that will go on repeating itself over and over in every life without exception until history at last yields a meaning. I did not have far to go to find a parallel: a concentration camp in central Europe in the spring of 1944. With this shift to Nazi Germany, Mackay Brown highlights the terrifying ordinariness of evil, the presupposition that violence and brutality are a default setting for humanity, and defy resistance. Thus, the killing of Magnus is presented in the novel as something administrative, procedural. Lifolf the cook, who has been conscripted by Earl Hakon to carry out the actual murder, repeatedly declares, "Of course it had nothing to do with me. . . . One does not dispute with one's superiors inside the barbed wires." Shakespeare offers striking parallels in the "functionaries" of King Lear. The captain, who surrenders his humanity by delivering Edmund's order for the execution of Cordelia, ironically claims he cannot "draw a cart or eat dried oats" like a brute workhorse, but if "it be man's work, I'll do it." Standing in defiant opposition to the contagious violence of Lear is the gesture of the unnamed servants who minister to Gloucester immediately after the gouging out of his eyes. One perishes trying to stop the brutality...
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On a Darkling Plain
Apr 1500:06:45Tap to summarizeBy Robert Royal. I've been in Lisbon and, the past few days, Rome presenting translations of my recent book The Martyrs of the New Millennium. It's encouraging that Christians in Europe are starting to realize the virulence and extent of anti-Christian acts around the world – including their (our) own "developed" nations. But, of course, I've also encountered sharp reactions here about the troubled relationship between the United States and Europe – the "Western civilization" that we all worry about – especially given the divisions over the current war in Iran. Despite appearances, the two attitudes are interrelated. In the media, you get the impression that the war has turned the entire world against America. That may be the consensus in certain journalistic and intellectual circles at home and abroad. And the president's reckless language about destroying a whole "civilization" in Iran, his ill-informed and bad-tempered rant against Pope Leo, to say nothing of the Truth Social blasphemous image of himself as a kind of savior (now taken down) have not done him – or America – any good, anywhere. Yet the current conflict has caused some people I've met in the past few days to think more deeply about the "West" and the ways in which, as one person put it, we – Europe and America – are unbreakably two sides of a single coin. And will remain so, in the near future, despite current differences. At a conference in Rome this past weekend on the future of liberty and traditional values, one of the themes that clearly emerged was the gulf between the Western nations (with their Christian-derived concepts of liberty and human dignity) and all the others (China, India, the Middle East, even Russia to a degree) where those values are not present. That was also the main point of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's speech in February at the Munich Security Conference: We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir. Some Europeans thought Rubio's speech and, even more so, the earlier (harsher) one by JD Vance were mere scolding of the continent to get in line with American views. But both were in fact a much deeper evocation of something unique to the West on both sides of the Atlantic: the Christian conception of human beings and public affairs. Unfortunately, even the Vatican in recent years has often seemed interested in "openness" to other cultures and religions, and relatively less willing to affirm the Christian nature of our Western foundations. You sometimes hear these days that, given the rift with America, Europe now has to think about going its own way and becoming a "superpower" in its own right. But for several people I've met in recent days here, this is a utopian illusion. Without America, Europe is not much of a global player. Even internally, the individual nations that make up Europe each have their own interests. Sometimes those overlap, sometimes not. They don't even have a common language to unite them. Such unity as they have lies elsewhere, deeper, as Marco Rubio reminded them – and us. The truth about all this is not always easy to see because in "the West" the foundation of our distinctiveness – Christianity – has been in retreat, less in America than in Europe, but to a worrying degree in America, also. To those of us old enough to have read books – actual words printed on paper running to hundreds of pages or more – and who even may have delved into that esoteric thing called "poetry," this can't help but remind us of a once-famous passage from a semi-sage from the Victorian Era, Matthew Arnold. In "Dover Beach," Arnold described how religion, like a sea, once bathed the whole world, "But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdraw...
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