The Ark and The Dove

Thank you, Get Religion

For your coverage of the coverage of the Apostolic Exhortation.  Too bad everyone who reads the papers won't read this.

Missale Ambrosianum

I know Mike and all other wannabe Doges will like this Milanese-fest that you can find over at Orbis Catholicus.

"His fears are a century out of date"

Intentional Disciples Blog on the old-fashioned progressive's fear of evangelizing.

Nietzsche's contribution to the Holocaust

Fr. Cantalamessa, the papal household preacher; covered by NCR.

Style

Isn't it interesting that when you tell a story, everything you do has connotations, including what you choose to omit?

Exhortation

Here's the text.  Believe it or not I haven't read it yet; I will when I get the chance.  Looks thought-provoking (or meditation-provoking, as the case may be): The Eucharist, the Food of Truth; The Eucharist, the causal principle of the Church; the Eucharist and the Trinity.

Rumor Mill

An Australian newspaper claims that Pope Benedict plans to release the rumored indult as a motu proprio soon.

Things that you should know that reporters probably do not know to tell you:

1.) Rumors.  The exact same rumors were bandied about at this exact same time last year.  Only I didn't hear the thing about the printers.  But even if it's a true rumor, it could be true for the more remote future rather than the near future.  You know how the Vatican works.

2.) The "Latin Mass."  Vatican II did not "get rid" of Latin, although a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking so.  So far as I know, every Sacramentary has the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin.  If you look in the front of an English Sacramentary, you will see a decree from the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments dated March 26, 1970 stating that the Latin edition of the new (1970) Roman Missal may be used immediately as soon as it is printed, but other languages must wait for special permission.

3.) What changes I expect you will (or won't) see in the near future.  Don't suppose that there will be this huge tide of 1962 Missal (aka the Tridentine Mass) sweeping in.  If you don't understand how this works -  How many priests do you know who are prepared to celebrate Mass according to the current (1970) Roman Missal mostly or all in Latin (which is right now always allowed and requires no special permission)?  Divide that number by (by my  guess) ten or perhaps more and you will have an estimate of how many might be interested in celebrating 1962 Missal Mass.

Change:

High-powered theologian nun, once an advocate for women as priests, comes to understand the Church's teaching; writes a book on it.

Year of the Eucharist Exhortation

Remember when the Pope proclaimed the Year of the Eucharist?  That was back in 2005, so long ago I can hardly remember. 

Well, the Holy Father is (just now) about to release the document on what they decided on at the Synod at the end of it.  That was a while ago, but apparently whatever it is is important enough that it's still worth talking about.  Of course some people say that it took so long to finalize because it's going to be a big announcement of some sort.  But I won't speculate because, aside from, no doubt, a reaffirmation of the Church's traditional teachings on the Eucharist, I don't know.

Re: Belloc and skepticism

Maybe the Belloc piece was less accessible than I thought, but then I read a lot of old things, and I've read a lot of him and his contemporaries.  I remember that GK Chesterton took me some getting used to until someone explained to me how he operated, and then he became one of my favorite authors.

Anyway, I thought the main thrust of the article was that in dealing with people who are good at rational thinking but don't yet have faith, it is helpful to be aware that some of the truths of the Catholic Faith are accessible to human reason without the help of revelation, while others - the mysteries of faith, while just as true, are not. 

This is what I thought the main things to take away from the piece were:

1.) You can't go around getting all offended that people who aren't Catholic don't believe the articles of faith.  This is not only silly and illogical, but scandalous and harmful to evangelization:  if you go around acting like any reasonable person should be able to arrive at the mysteries of faith, all you do is convince rational people that the Catholic Church is silly and illogical, just another lazy man's substitute for clear thinking.

2.) There are a lot of people who are competent rational thinkers, but not having the benefit you have of revelation from God, are basically trying to figure out the nature of the world and human life from scratch.  Maybe, since they don't know if you're on the right track and don't know the Church and so can't be expected to accept her authority right off, it would be good with them to start with the truths of religion that can be reached by reason alone (of which there are many).  Then when they see how reasonable and truthful the Church is, they can be invited to consider that the Church is right about things that can't be known except by divine revelation, like the Trinity, and the Incarnation, and so forth.

This latter, in essence, was recently proposed to us by Pope Benedict, who suggested that we might start with the content of Natural Law as a basis for dialogue with unbelievers.  Except that nobody in the media understands what is meant by the term "Natural Law," since it's an infrequently used term in common speech these days, and since it's the contrary of Relativism (the only mode in which many people in our culture are used to thinking), so this didn't get a lot of reportage.