The Ark and The Dove

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.

"The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God."

With the Eucharistic connotations of the latter phrase in mind ("eucharist" means "thanksgiving" in Greek), couldn't this exchange be seen as a mini-icon of the Mass?

"Temptation" in the Our Father

Disputations has a good article on this, which may help to resolve some little things people have been wondering about in the back of their mind.

Score one for the good guys

"Freud in Freefall: Robert Royal, president of the Faith and Reason Institute, writes in National Catholic Reporter that the scholarly opinion of Sigmund Freud is falling faster than sales of Britney Spears Perfume."  Full story from DallasNews Religion.

Down with the other two Masters of Suspicion as well!

Indult matters

The other night I promised to a friend an explanation of why although I would certainly welcome it, I'm not as excited about the rumored upcoming universal 1962 Missal indult as some people might suppose me to be.  I said I wasn't going to go into a long explanation on the spot, as it would have been tiresome to shout it at the top of my lungs the way I would have had to to be understood at that time in that place.

As I was about to sign on here and write a piece, I noticed that Dan of the Holy Whapping has written one that closely enough reflects enough of what I think and feel that I will just link to it.

I think what I'd really want as a long-term result from said indult when (if) it is ever promulgated (and I'm not holding my breath), is that wider permission for the older style of Mass will cause people to be reminded about some of the good perennially valid Catholic sensibilities (Vatican II and pre-Vatican II) that we've forgotten about or let slide since the 60s, and that these will be integrated with the good reforms we have already carried out, while we at the same time avoid or divest ourselves of the bad or lazy habits of preconciliar and postconciliar times (maybe I will muse on specific examples of what I mean in later posts).  Perhaps this may seem like an idealistic sort of hope, but since when does one ever make progress in the Christian life without a heavenly ideal to hope for?

De Jesus claims he's De Messiah

Not to mention the Antichrist.

Have you heard of this guy?  There's this bizarre sect I keep hearing about in the news (probably mostly because of the popular taste for the bizarre) whose leader combines more run-of-the-mill Protestant doctrines such as "once saved always saved" and the so-called "health and wealth gospel" with weird stuff, like saying that he is Jesus. 

Now, though, he's decided that he's the Antichrist, and his followers are going out and getting 666 tattoos.  But that's not a Satanic thing, he says; it's a "good" thing, see, because it's a symbol of how he's replacing the Gospel with a new gospel of his own devising.  Sounds to me like reruns from gnosticism.

We'll have to see where this goes.  To be sure, he's an antichrist, but I think it's safe to say he seems like kind of a lightweight for the Man of Sin himself.

Love that chicken from Pope Yes

There's a joke about KFC wanting to make a huge donation to the Church if the pope would only change the words of the Our Father to "give us this day our daily chicken."  In real life, though the restaurant is hoping the Pope will want to endorse the new fish dish they have rolled out for Lent. 

But when it comes to fast-food popery, KFC is the new kid on the block.  Popeyes Chicken is famous for having a logo that looks remarkably like it says "Pope Yes" (or used to, until very recently when they redid the lettering).  It has amused me to call it Pope Yes Chicken ever since since 2005, when I entertained this theory mostly based on how much it entertained me.  I have since learned that 1.) according to Wikipedia, they did at one point decide to have ads with Popeye The Sailor Man because of the similar name, which only confused people, as Popeye eats spinach (and on occasion oatmeal), but has never been known to like fried chicken and 2.) the official story is that the restaurant is for some reason named after the detective Popeye Doyle from The French Connection.

Right after Matt and I had a chuckle over how once you notice this you see it everywhere (especially around us, where there are several Popeyes with the old-style Pope yes sign), the Curt Jester posted on Pope Yes Chicken.

So, in the spirit of the season, here's your Pope Yes Chicken roundup:
Wikipedia: Popeyes    Daddy, why is there a restaurant called Pope Yes?   Not Just For Catholics Anymore   Pope Yes marketing idea   Pope Yes vs. The Incredible Hulk   Cacciaguida's take

As a final note, I think that as far as Lenten fare goes, KFC will not be able to compete with McDonalds: the McFishwich (or whatever it's called) is one of the more penitential foods I know.

It's just good music

From Britain's Catholic Herald (hat tip to Amy Welborn for the article) - England parish's children find traditional sacred music exciting as well as eminently singable.  (Yes, I love talking about music; I enjoyed hearing about this).

A mass of bouncy children appeared at my feet in the main hall of St Wulstan’s in Wolstanton, Staffordshire. They had run down from their choir practice in the organ loft, where they had been rehearsing the plainchant Orbis Factor Mass and a couple of Renaissance motets.
Were they enjoying it, I asked?      “Yes!” they screamed.
And what was their favourite piece to sing?
“Agnus Dei and the Sanctus from the Orbis Factor,” said a couple of the nine-year-olds, quick as a flash.

David and April West...converted from the Anglican faith in 1993 and had no sooner entered their new Catholic community than they had begun to reorganise its musical foundations.
They were trained musicians and were sick of hearing people say there was no decent music in the Catholic Church. “It was crazy to think people actually believed this. I mean, think of all those great Catholic composers,” says David.
So, instead of grumbling, they decided to do something about it.

“We’ve never sung ‘Bind us Together’, nor have we done a single Israeli Mass, nor the [shudder] ‘Gloria, clap, clap,’ ” says David with pride. Contrary to popular belief, these pieces did not have a cachet with the young.

So when the Wests set up a junior choir to run alongside the senior one, they didn’t shy away from the hard stuff – they embarked upon teaching the children serious, unadulterated Church music.
There was to be no talking down to the young’uns; instead, they were to be introduced to some of the finest music ever written. The kids loved it, and were eager to learn.
As a result, they quickly got the hang of the plainsong notation and the Latin, and now have several heavyweight pieces under their belts...

Attention potential combox witnesses

The Washington Post is holding an online discussion series entitled "On Faith," which has as the topic for this week the relationship between religion and sexuality.  Judging from the comments, they are sorely in need of your perspective should you have the generosity and patience to leave a comment.  I know the internet is perhaps not as congenial as face-to-face, but it is the modern agora.  I know that of course you will be very polite, but in terms of advice, I would suggest trying to avoid using too many technical terms of Catholic theology without explanation because most readers will probably have a different theological vocabulary than you are used to.

The format is that the paper selects a question from a reader and has a number of panelists write a short essay in answer, upon which readers can post comments, much like on a blog.  Here's the link.

I notice that Anglican Bible scholar Marcus Borg's essay has the fewest number of comments on it but a very interesting slant - he has brought the idea of sacramentality into it.

New fad for celebrities

While I suppose it's good that Hollywood celebrities are starting to recognize that they have spiritual needs, unfortunately the trend, according to this article, is that more and more of them are turning to Scientology.

How about praying for them to follow Sly's example instead?

Postscript: hm...why is it that I couldn't find a single MSM article on Stallone's return?  Maybe a religion that "at first glance appears to be a series of self-help courses but is based on the idea that we're all immortal, 75-million-year-old space aliens in transient human bodies" is just more along the lines of the sensationalistic sort of thing the papers are looking for.