September 14: The Triumph of the Cross

"Though He was in the form of God, 

Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. 

Rather He emptied Himself and took the form of a slave being born in the likeness of men. 

He humbled himself obediently accepting even death, death on a cross. 

Because of this God highly exalted Him and bestowed on him the name above every other name. 

So that at Jesus' name every knee shall bend in the heavens and on the earth and under the earth and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God the Father: JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!"    

                                                                                                                                 (Philippians) 

          

The Triumph of the Cross is the establishment of a new honor/shame code. The obedience of the Son -- filial piety -- conquered the disobedience of the Evil Angel and the first humans. Even more than the sacrificial love that Jesus shows for all of us in His death, it is His obedient love for His Father that is the driving dynamic of this event. Jesus obeys His Father and allows Himself to be publicly humiliated, with His mother close by as a participant in His suffering. Jesus had asked that this cup pass Him, but He submitted to the will of the Father. Obedience to a sacral order, not equality of station, is the road to Victory. This does not abolish honor codes but elevates a new King and incorporates the angels and martyrs in a new court of reputation. This does not do away with shaming and expulsion but dethrones the Prince of this world and scoffs at the glitter and glamour of sin.

The Triumph of the Cross and the Kingdom of God is established by entering into the sacramental order that flows from the side of the Pierced One. That sacramental order reconstitutes the human species as the Body of Christ. The sacramental order is built on a sacral brotherhood that Christ established to maintain His Presence and His sacrifice to the Father on earth throughout time. Through Christ's Church we are incorporated in the interpersonal love of the Trinity. As brothers in Christ we go forth to baptize the nations to effect the Kingdom of God and Triumph of the Cross. The fraternity of priests sustain the Body of Christ in the Eucharistic forms of local Church and earthly Kingdom. The laymen shape civic territorial circles of patriarchal fraternity and order - -some explicitly Christian; others patterned after other transcendental truths. Creating these concentric circles of ordered fraternity bring men into the formations that protect the Eucharistic acts of worship while preparing humanity for the final Coming and Triumph of the Lord.

 

SEPTEMBER 11: Remember, Reconsider, Redirect

by David Pence

It has been 20 years since 3,000 Americans died in the attacks of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. The New York firefighters and the passenger citizens who prevented the hijacker goals on Flight 93 remind us that a fighting citizenry and local police and firemen are always the primary defense in this asymmetric form of war. The natural response to an attack is for a people to assemble in natural protective relations to safeguard the group. This religious war will be fought by a religious people organized as a nation of protectors in every city and state. A return to God as a people and a renewal of our American national identity are essential elements in our defense. Reversing the asexual modern socialization patterns of young males is just as necessary. Our civc/political failure to link male maturation and patriotic protective duty has spawned, some effeminate and others thuggish, hyper-individualized and ungrateful young males. The 9/11 attacks did bring an outpouring of gratitude and honor toward the soldier, policeman, and fireman -- the traditional male citizen protectors. Our young males need such clarity. Male maturation has nothing to do with color; it is about entering an adult male group united by religious and protective duty. Adolescents think they know it all but real men submit to spiritual authority. Boys are protected by women; grown up men protect women. To effectively protect, we must bond together as a fraternity of fathers. Reversing the cultural lessons of the sexual revolution by reasserting the spiritual meaning of manhood and national brotherhood is another essential response to 9/11.

From the beginning the US governmental response to the attack has misunderstood the religious animus that still motivates our enemies. This has led to strategic incoherence in picking our allies and isolating our enemies. The shock of 9/11 has misguided our tactics as well leading to a skewed emphasis on protecting airplane flights before securing our water supply and electrical grid. We have argued that we must understand the role of religion and nations in framing this conflict. We think there is much to be learned from both Barack Obama and his senior foreign policy advisor (scroll down for interview with Ben Rhodes within this link). They came to understand the failure of our own foreign policy establishment and the mistake in demonizing Shiite Iran when we are fighting a branch of Sunni Islam fostered by Saudi Arabia. This understanding has been deliberately obfuscated by Israeli and Saudi forces who wish to turn the war on terror into a war against Iran. A significant reinforcement  of their narrative is the US Marine memory of Oct 23, 1983. For many soldiers  the Iran/Syrian/ Hezbollah inspired bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut was the "real beginning of global Islamic terrorism." The event was part of the 1982 Lebanon, PLO, Israeli war in which US troops were inserted with no definitive military goals for the forces themselves. There is a great lesson to learn from our soldiers' deaths in Beirut. That lesson is not that Iran is the chief exporter of terrorism in the world.    

The war in Afghanistan is a different theatre than the struggle in the Mideast. But like the fight against ISIS in the Mideast, we will need Iran and Russia as well as India and China in helping bring negotiated peace in Afghanistan. (Scroll to Islam and Mideast in this link for good review of Afghanistan conflict).

The war of the Saudis against the Houthi of Yemen has weakened our fight against AQAP in Yemen. This is directly analogous to our long involvement in aiding jihadist Sunnis against the Assad government in Syria. Our country is an ally in the religious persecution of Shiites which animates so much of Muhammed bin Salman's new more aggressive Saudi foreign policy. This aggression is part of the young Crown Prince's effort to win favor with the Wahhabi clergy in pressing his claims for succession to the throne against his more competent elder kinsmen. The Crown Prince is also the force behind the anti-Qatar campaign (scroll to new Crown Prince). The strategic goals of the US have been obfuscated by confusing them with the goals of our traditional allies. Pakistan in South Asia, as well as Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Mideast have different goals and different enemies than the U.S.

President Trump has advocated an 'America first' foreign policy. Now we need citizens, journalists, scholars -- but most of all the US Senate -- to debate fully what that means. We owe clarity of strategy to our dead, our military, and the young men we are socializing to continue the protection.   This must include trying to resolve the almost 40-year-old Iran/Israeli war which is being confused with the global war against salafist jihadists. (See this excellent summary of Israel's geopolitical stance in which ISIS as a buffer is preferred to a stabilization of Shia-led governments in Iran, Iraq or Syria.)

We now (2018) hear officials and some newsmen say that 9/11 was caused by "radical Islamic terrorism." That is true and that is an advance but that is not enough. That brand of radical Islam which attacked us had a launching pad in Afghanistan but they had a home base as well. The Islamic radical movement which struck us comes from a particular school of Islamic law. They have a territorial address. But after 7 years under President Bush, 8 years under President Obama, and 4 years under President Trump, we have not given them a proper call back yet. Let us remember, let us reconsider, let us redirect.

{Our extended 18,000 word essay published on Sept 11, 2018 places our arguments about 9/11 in the historical context of the 20th century. It is a long illustrated piece-our culminating synthesis.}

2021 Update: In the late hours of 9/11's 20th anniversary, the FBI released a heavily redacted report revealing more links between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi Arabia. It is the first of several documents - all hidden by Robert Mueller - expected in the months ahead. 

August 25: Saint Louis - Authority and the Ruler

by David Pence

"Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee and I have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou shouldest  have no power against me  unless it were given thee from above."

On the same day Jesus rendered unto Ceasar what was his, He perfectly obeyed the authority of His Father. He conquered death in an act of authority over nature that reorganized the biological sphere under a new King. The alpha male of the human species having been born of a perfect Virgin drew a brotherhood of priests unto himself and conferred upon them the authority to maintain His Presence on earth. He made them a special band under a particular leader and ordained that communal hierarchical form of authority for public governance. The Kingdom of God was at hand. The victory of Christ is not a rebellion but a great act of authority and restoration of  proper rule. The great commission was a command to imbibe the new spiritual authority of the apostles in some way with the already existing authority of the civic rulers. The supernatural spiritual organism of the apostolic church was to transform the nations-kingdoms, republics, tribes and cities into a new level of accord.  "And Jesus came up and spoke to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth  has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.' "
                   

King Louis IX of France

There is no personality so absent in contemporary Christian life as the ruler and man of authority. We have been blessed with priests and prophets. We have been cursed by charlatans and weaklings. We hunger for the Kings. Their absence is always a disaster for the weak and the poor. Saint Louis was a king who fought in the Crusades, cared constantly and publicly for the poor of his kingdom, and was a man of deep prayer and many fasts. Here is his beautiful instructive letter to his son that Catholics pray in the Office of Readings every year on his feast day. (A Review of Before Church and State:Social Order in the Sacramental Order of Louis IX)

It is a fundamental obligation of Christian men to rule our civic communities as well as our passions and households. How men participate in civic rule can entail faithful loyalty to a good king or taking up arms as a minuteman in a republic. The servant ruler does not mean that a ruler or citizen soldier relinquishes his sword against external enemies or internal criminals. It means the acts of the ruling authority are done for the good of the community, not the aggrandizement of the ruler. The Shepherd is not a nursemaid. Community without authority recalls the decadent Israel "when every man did as he pleased." Acts of authority are not limited to proclaiming doctrine by churchmen or laws by civil rulers. The actual body -- civic and ecclesial -- must be shaped, pruned, and ruled by the ruling authority. Men are called and promoted. Other men are released. Some men are punished and shamed. Rulers inspire loyalty that shapes men into communal bodies capable of great acts of protection and love.

Saint Louis (b. 1214) did not become a saint by laying down his sword or neglecting the punitive duties of his office. Men obeyed him and some men rightly feared him. Saint Louis, pray for us that God will once again give us men such as thee.
                                                                                   

     
UPDATE:  "We know from Louis’s biographers that 'From the beginning when he came to hold his realm and knew himself of discernment, he began to build churches and many religious houses …' Most celebrated was the Sainte-Chapelle, his royal chapel on the Île de la Cité in Paris."

While on crusade in North Africa, Louis died from sickness in 1270 - four years before the death of St. Thomas Aquinas.

August 22: QUEENSHIP OF MARY - Ruling from the Inside

[first published August 22, 2014]


by David Pence



Keeping sacred time with the Church means that the central events are always prepared for by a season -- Lent for Easter and Advent for Christmas. It also means that solemn feast days are never allowed to come and go with one rising and setting of the Sun. The great solemnities are celebrated as Octaves. Eight days has an ancient meaning as a unit of time signifying a new creation. So, eight days after we celebrated the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven... we are still contemplating her place in her new home as we celebrate her Queenship. A man who desires to love God our Father as a son and build brotherhood in the priesthood, city, and nation can never spend too much time contemplating the perfection of the feminine in Our Lady. These sacral sexual roles depend on each other and are clarified by contrast, complement, and communal context.

Our Lady lived the Trinitarian roles of the woman. She is the daughter of the Father, the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, and the Mother of Jesus. She humbly obeyed her Father. For all His life, she kept hold of her Son wrapped in swaddling at Bethlehem and draped in burial clothes at Gethsemane. Her perfect virginity established a perpetual barrier to the evil of sin while making her permeable to her Spouse: the Holy Spirit. She was "guarded by the angels, prefigured by the patriarchs, and promised by the prophets."

Feminism is the reigning atheist ideology of our day set against the person of Our Lady, as surely as the Dragon was set against her in Revelation. Wherever the confusing mist of feminism infiltrates the mind, statues of our Lady are put in the closet. Wherever feminist language is spoken, her songs are left unsung. Wherever she is photo-shopped into a picture of the Last Supper, the picture of her suffering heart is pulled from the wall as too gruesome. The "feminist implant" of atheist thinking has replaced the armed atheism of Marxism. This is a more devastating lie. Seven demons have filled the house that was swept clear of one. Wherever feminism reigns, Our Lady is dethroned.
 
It is hard for gentlemen to oppose even counterfeit femininity. But we must reject this anti-Marian heresy for the sake of women around the world. The white feminists of the West squandered the moral capital of the Christian interracial movement by twisting the just claims to be colorblind with the less virtuous desire to be sexually confused. The face-to-face sisterhood of Mary visiting Elizabeth was always too small a love for them. Thus they conjure the delusion that the coalition of selfish white female careerists in university, church, and government jobs is a worldwide sisterhood rivaling the masculine protective fraternity of priesthood and nations. Those who kill patriarchy multiply the widows and orphans, and at some point the dark skin of those victims will scream for justice against this racist trickery. Mary did not seek to be an apostle. She is a Queen. As Pope Francis said about women cardinals: "I don’t know where this idea sprang from. Women in the Church must be valued, not ‘clericalised.’ Whoever thinks of women as cardinals suffers a bit from clericalism."

It is an ancient tradition that after Christ’s death, the apostles hid Mary. The Roman soldiers and Jewish high priests could never lay a hand on her. Had they tried, the sword of Peter would not have stayed sheathed. Twenty centuries later the Church with her feast days, prayers, and contemplations tells the whole world who our Lady is and where she is. She is safe now, so the Apostolic Church can publicly proclaim what John and the apostles once held in secret, and the Catholic faithful affirmed in the glorious mysteries of the rosary. The Dragon and the violent world were too dominant for the apostles to speak too loudly and too clearly of her too soon. For it is always an imprudent risk to reveal a feminine beauty in an evil world if one cannot protect her from attack. But, now, let us rejoice and be glad.

Look up on this feast day and see the blue sky with white clouds in the daytime sun. Those are reflections of the Queen’s garments in Heaven. The Virgin Mother is safe up there in the midst of the Trinity, so the Church can now illuminate the world by explaining the nature of her rule. She is queen of the interior life. She rules in the vast expanse of the inner chambers opened by prayer and contemplation. The feminine rules from the inside. There is amidst the Trinity of masculine persons a feminine interior -- a whole, a beauty that is never spoken but is integral to God. That timeless feminine reality precedes Mary who is a creature. Mary is not the fourth person of the Trinity, nor is she the incarnation of the Holy Spirit. She is queen because she humbled herself before the Father. The whole world is at her feet because she opened a virgin’s heart to the wind of the Holy Spirit. In conforming herself to the will of the Father, she exercised the interior freedom of a soul in love. When men follow our mother in such acts of interior surrender we shall regain our stature as lords of creation. Only then will we fulfill the original mission of our species: to rule the Earth in his Name.

                                       

UPDATE: See the Assumption of Mary. And our review of Hildebrand’s classic study of purity and virginity in Catholic culture.

August 15 -- THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION: Femininity Shatters the Glass Ceiling

[first published August 15, 2014]


by David Pence

"By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly declaration of glory.”                (Pope Pius XII, November 1, 1950)

When Christ asked Peter who the apostles thought he was, Peter made the first infallible papal statement. He said, “Thou art the Son of the living God.” Christ made it clear it was not personal insight which allowed this Petrine testimony without error. “Not flesh and Blood but my Father in heaven” had allowed Peter to proclaim this central truth of our Faith for the brethren. And so again, 2000 years later, Pius XII did not wake up one November morning in 1950 and introduce to the flock a novel teaching he and some cardinals had been concocting about Our Lady. He stated what the praying Church had known devotionally for centuries. The pope, though, with a singular voice spoke the Truth from Rome as Peter had spoken for all the apostles at Caesarea Philippi.

The Pope in a few terse words described the perfection of matter -- the most perfect blossom of the tree of Jesse.  She was Immaculate -- conceived without sin. She is the Mother of God -- the locus of the Incarnation where God came into flesh to draw human flesh into his Body. She is ever Virgin -- an intact virgin not entered by man nor torn asunder by birth. And yet in the unity and holiness which the intactness of virginity represents there is a permeability to the Spirit which brings forth the Son. This moment in history of uncorrupted feminine flesh reminds all men of our original nature in Eden and of our present capacity for perfection. This Marian perfection of matter was never allowed to be corrupted by death. In this modern era when the corrupted mist of the world seems omnipresent, the Church reminds us that purity is possible. The person separated from Evil can bear Christ on earth and will be drawn into Him where he sits at the right hand of the Father. Purity on earth is possible and the spiritual ordering of the flesh leads to Eternal life. Humans are not evolving to some higher form; perfection comes from imitating a form who was already here in a specific time and place. Let us sing of Mary.
                                         

Of heaven there is less to say. How will she reign where her son is the King and the King has a Father? She might be drawn to some inner chamber where the feminine holds the three masculine persons of the Trinity in One.  C.S. Lewis described heaven as going higher and higher and deeper and deeper. Mary is not a Queen on a throne; she is the Queen of those depths. There is some inner chamber of the hidden God which we never name with a pronoun… but if we did it would be feminine. For the feminine is interiority.

There is an intact interior that separates God from all creation. This radical separation is the meaning of HOLY. Mary and the consecrated virgins of the Church seek not crowns for their heads, but an interior milieu where their hearts can come to final rest and ponder anew. Come, let us sing of Mary -- who on this day turns our eyes to Heaven where she abides with her Son. Let us admire from a distance the beauty of the Church’s consecrated virgins who keep us vigilant for our returning King by waiting for Him as their Bridegroom.

"Neither the tomb, nor death could hold the Theotokos,
Who is constant in prayer and our firm hope in her intercessions.
For being the Mother of Life,
She was translated to life by the One who dwelt in her virginal womb."


UPDATE: Take notice of what Christ is holding [click on the image above]: a small child clothed in white representing the soul of the Virgin Mary.
Taylor Marshall on the traditional teaching of the Church.

It is a good feast to remember  Dietrich von Hildebrand’s classic reflection on purity and virginity in Catholic culture. 

Here is an August 15th sermon by Monsignor Ronald Knox (d. 1957). A 2017 sermon by Fr Stravinskas.