tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91202656420593385822024-03-17T22:03:00.567-05:00ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACCORDORDERING THE LOYALTIES AND DUTIES OF MENanthropology of accordhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10920801433904606203noreply@blogger.comBlogger1066125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-27281662265164838012024-02-22T00:00:00.000-06:002024-02-22T00:00:00.124-06:00February 22: The Feast of the Chair of Peter. Pope Francis and the leadership lessons of Lincoln<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />Chair of St Peter. A wooden chair given to a Pope by an Emperor in 875 AD. Gilded in bronze in 1647. </td></tr>
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<div>On the birthday of America's founding patriarch (see Feb 22 below), the Church dedicates a Feast Day to celebrate a Chair given as a gift from an Emperor to a Pope. We are meant to contemplate this symbol of authority and the Petrine office. <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/01/catholic-sociobiology-authority.html">Community demands Authority.</a> Pope John Paul II asked all Christians to suggest how this office should be lived to bring Christian Unity. Pope Francis has called together all the heads of Bishop Conferences and heads of religious orders to a summit in Rome "to listen to the cries of the little ones." A major theme of the Pope for episcopal and priestly reform is the necessity of synodal governance of the Church.(<a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2015/october/documents/papa-francesco_20151017_50-anniversario-sinodo.html">His address on 50th anniversary of Bishop Synods</a>) He called the February 2019 gathering to show the Church in a synodal form addressing abuse of minors. He is at all times keeping in mind the bishops of the Orthodox tradition and the need for unity with them so the Church can "breathe with two lungs". He has strongly resisted the American desire to insert lay people into Church governance. He has called the Apostles together to confront the pain of the victims and assert their every bishop and bishop's conference must go back to their home territories and show mercy by ruling justly. His gathering of the leaders is to insure that the sins of some do not diminish the authority of the Apostolic whole. His war against clericalism is not a war against the sacral Apostolic character of priestly identity. Unlike his predecessors, Pope Francis has shown any individual can be stripped of his rank to purify the priestly bond. The dramatic reduction of Theodore McCarrick the big spending, high flying American to the lay state is a vivid reminder that the old days of gentle whispers are over. The communal whole is greater than the wealthy maverick.</div><div><br /></div>
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In this conference he is pointedly not addressing homosexuality in the priesthood as a root cause of the crisis. This does not mean other bishops and free flowing press conferences cannot forcefully make the connections. Rather the Pope is mustering the authorities in the ecclesial form of the corporate brotherhood in prayer and parrhesia(fearless speech). This is the antidote to the lobbyists, the magnified little men behind the curtains of media, the secret intriguers who fill the chanceries and Curia, the "homosexual parish" that shapes Catholic clericalism. He draws bishops together as he expects them to assemble their priests---in public, face-to-face, man-to-man encounters of fraternity under the Father. He has always emphasized that in synodal gatherings the bishops meet <i>with (cum) the Pope and under (sub) the Pope. </i>The problem with the Church is not an all male clergy. It is an emasculated clergy that has lost its sacral identity as a fraternity of fathers.</div><div><br />
<i> </i>Pope Francis knows the clerical rot is deep and he will need many new men and groups of men rising within the diocesan and national gatherings of the ordained. He sees the synod in the Church the way he sees fraternity among the world religions and the nations. Fatherhood and brotherhood are the antidotes to spiritual incest. These are built in the many communal forms of the priesthood and episcopacy. The Holy Father always starts with the whole before the part. He has written about this for decades (see <u>The Mind of Pope Francis)</u> </div><div><br /></div>
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President Abraham Lincoln faced the division of the American nation as he assumed the Presidency in 1860. Slavery was the fundamental sin which could not be reconciled with the Declaration of Independence though it was allowed in the Constitution. Many abolitionists demanded he build his campaign and Presidency on condemning the evil of slavery. But Lincoln understood he must hold together the Union or he would never have the authority to end slavery. He built his Presidency and his Second Inaugural on expanding the civic brotherhood upon which the nation was founded. The Pope is acting like Lincoln and many of us critics (self included) are playing the abolitionist. We should pause to see the whole and respect the Chair. ( There may be a lesson from the world of motorcycling explained in Matthew Crawford's book on <u>The World Outside Your Head. </u>He says when you are walking, you keep your eyes on a hazard ahead to avoid it. But if you are on a high speed motorcycle you must deliberately keep your focus on the clear road ahead not the hazard. )From the beginning of his papacy the <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2013/september/documents/papa-francesco_20130921_intervista-spadaro.html">Pope has said he will not focus</a> on "contraception, gay marriage and abortion". He is not an individual writing a blog entry. He is on a very fast and dangerous motorcycle, directing a global Church. His vision and words must inspire millions of poor fathers trying to find work in the megacities before placating hundreds of western elites debating their abominable perversions.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another Man who understood the Authority of His Chair</td></tr>
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<br />All those who have taken this crisis as an opportunity to strike at the liturgy of the <i>Novus Ordo,</i> the validity of the Second Vatican Council, and the papacy of Pope Francis should consider the whole. They are in very dangerous waters playing the Accuser in trying to discredit the true agents of the Holy Spirit. They do the Accuser's work more efficiently than enemies who display no veneer of "faithful Catholics' to fool the faithful. They recoil with righteous indignation when they and their fraudulent clerical heroes (Vigano and Burke) are exposed for helping the Serpent who wants a headless Church. Those two same Chief Pharisees were quick to accuse the women in adultery after the Papal <i>Amoris </i>document but were not so authoritarian as they let two notorious homosexual bishops (Nienstedt and Apuron) slip through their perfumed hands of mercy. So stringent with the lady in the back pew with her kids; so gentle and accompanying with the predator clerics. Those polluted priests have done much more to desacralize the Eucharist from the priest side of the altar than any lady reaching through the crowd to touch Christ's garment. As Pope Francis says, there is something of the Black Mass with the predator priests. <i>"The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord." </i>It is not the <i>Novus Ordo</i> that desacralizes the Mass. That is another smokescreen from diabolos. It is the Nienstedts and Apurons and McCarricks and Spellmans. It is not the sins of the laity which threaten our liturgical life--it is the priestly pollution.</div><div> <br />The "traddies" and "resistance" should be mindful. Their momentary media bubble is a glass house built on sand. As the traffic generated by their hysteria recedes, they will have time to remember the first rule of regicide. Be sure you kill the king, if you are going to shoot at him.<br />
For those of us who want to help the Father clean the filth we must reassert the whole with Pope Francis. Vatican II is "rereading of the Gospels in a concrete historical situation." The event of Vatican II and especially the liturgical reform is the biblical answer to modernity not the fruit of modernism. The renewed Church of Vatican II will be composed of synodal brotherhoods not the hidden clerical cliques of chancery, Curia, and "the lavender parish".</div><div><br />
One principal storyline of the Francis papacy is restoring the Papacy as Shepherd-Ruler after the papacies of the philosopher-prophet and the theologian-priest. The journey Pope Francis is walking with us cannot be interrupted for you tube monologues contrasting two American queens like Raymond Burke and James Martin. We must think much bigger to think with Francis who is not the provincial that American neoconservatives label him.</div><div><br />
It is not only the Church but the nations which constitute Christendom and humanity. Pope Francis understands the Church must go 'to the periphery" to baptize the nations or the Church forfeits her mission. Pope Francis is calling together the Apostolic Church as a Synodal fraternity to reform herself and function as a template for humanity. He is leading the biblical People of God amidst the nations. He is showing us the public fruits of Vatican Two are still maturing while the twisted fruits of hidden clericalism are rotting. Following the true Spirit of the Second Vatican Council, he has initiated his unique <b><i>diplomacy of fraternity</i></b> to Confucian China and Islam. He answered the beheading of the Coptic martyrs on the shores of the Mediterranean with public Mass on the sands of Arabia. Synodal brotherhood in the Church and fraternity amidst the religions and nations of mankind may just be the wholistic approach that will best isolate the lavender Judas in the Vatican and the salafist Cain in Mecca. Let us pray for Our Holy Father on this feast day and honor that Holy Chair. He has a large plan and we can all agree he has not yet found his General Grant. </div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-10982179983158255862024-02-20T00:00:00.000-06:002024-02-20T00:00:00.129-06:00 President George Washington: All Praise the Patriarch <i>by David Pence</i><br />
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This Monday’s federal holiday officially commemorates the birthday of our first president George Washington (b. Feb 22, 1732). In many states this is called Presidents Day and is meant to both commemorate the men who were presidents and honor the office which they held. In five states (including our own Minnesota) those February Presidents <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/10/friday-bookreview-harry-jaffa.html">Lincoln</a> and Washington are the special objects of our civic honor.<br />
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Patriarchy means rule of the father. A patriarch can also refer especially to the beginning father or the founding father. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel) are called the patriarchs of Judaism. Christianity is deeply patriarchal with the model prayer taught by Jesus petitioning that God our Father will extend His rule in heaven over all the earth. Americans have always referred to Washington as a founding father, and our most affectionate name for Lincoln came from the black tradition: 'Father Abraham.'<br />
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We honor George Washington today (Read <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/02/friday-bookreview-george-washington-by.html">this AOA profile</a> as your civic duty for the holiday) for leading our first national army to victory in winning independence from the British, for acting 8 years as our first president under the 1787 Constitution, and for giving up the office of authority establishing a tradition of peaceful succession for the commander-in-chief of the military. "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." In Washington’s farewell address to his troops, he prayed that the brotherly bonds of affection forged in war would animate the bonds of citizenship in the new republic. Men who believed in republics rather than monarchy still believed in authority, fatherhood, and God. They knew that men in protective and productive civic groups needed strong leaders with considerable discretion to act for the group. As Washington wrote:<br />
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<i>"It is impossible to govern the world without God. It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly implore his protection and favor."</i><br />
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There is in our land a hatred of the father and a rebellion against authority which destroys community. It is a repudiation of God the Father and disrespect for authority figures from the local policeman to the President. Abraham Lincoln in one of his first public speeches as a young man to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield decried the mobs and hate and violence that were infecting public life and replacing the civic bonds of affection that come from men living under God and the Law together. (See <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/04/friday-bookreview-bonds-of-affection-by.html">Matthew Holland’s Bonds of Affection</a> describing the twofold love of American civic life.) President Trump reminded us <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/01/americas-new-leader.html">in his inaugural that the loyalty of patriotism</a> by its very nature deepens the loyalty of Americans to one another. (<a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2018/01/president-trump-and-american-culture.html">AOA on our current President)</a><br />
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There can be <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/01/catholic-sociobiology-authority.html">no community if there is no authority</a> and respect for law. The baby boomers were wrong and <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-playboy-and-feminist-civics-lesson.html">that disastrous party is now over</a>. The adolescent death yelp we are hearing across the nation is a primal recognition that a certain kind of partying is coming to an end. There can be no <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-trumpet-of-american-brotherhood-is.html">civic peace in our cities</a> unless there is a renewal of fatherhood in our families. But we do not have to wait a generation for the spiritual renewal of marriage and good dads. There are city fathers in blue patrolling every city in America. A great blessing of American civic life is the republican tradition of <b><i>local universal male protective duty</i></b> expressed in the militia tradition and policing as a local responsibility. The local male citizens in every city, town and county can offer to young males the identity and status which comes from taking up our shared duty of protection. This is the classic definition of that much abused form of male bonding-politics. <div><br />If the criminals are getting the upper hand in certain neighborhoods, then there are American fathers garbed in blue who can come in and take care of our spiritual widows and orphans. Politics is the communal strategy of making fatherhood available to all young males in the territory. The anti-political forces are a strange combination of brutish predators, violence prone adolescent anarchists, and effeminate careerists. They all would undermine a civic presence of masculine protectors. Patriarchy and fraternity are not the problems -- they are the solution. Fathers know we need a brotherhood of fathers to protect a nation or a city. We know fatherhood and duty are not based on color but they are entirely dependent on gender. We know the household is not safe if the city is not strong. The great Presidents and Patriarchs called men and their sons into a common identity as American citizens. The founding fathers who shaped the initial bond of American citizenship and the brave men who secured that Union under Lincoln have bequeathed to American men of every color a template for civic brotherhood under the Fatherhood of God. <br />
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<b><i>Let us build our country. Let us thank our God. Let us teach our sons. Let us honor our fathers.</i><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #252525;"><i> </i> </span></b></div>
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<b><span face="sans-serif" style="color: #252525;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZ2WH5C5C28TOr2PDt5q28QPzI0zVwcNW8cgWPm887lPacBQRE9xlXGKrtbt7qKI4WwURn5oXAbl4zUKyAKQCF65tNz5xKWzmaLc9wMQk5teUlI8XikLcNOmlEarhdvdxrabN0ks37HI/s1600/policemen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZ2WH5C5C28TOr2PDt5q28QPzI0zVwcNW8cgWPm887lPacBQRE9xlXGKrtbt7qKI4WwURn5oXAbl4zUKyAKQCF65tNz5xKWzmaLc9wMQk5teUlI8XikLcNOmlEarhdvdxrabN0ks37HI/s320/policemen.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></b></div></div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-14949619339408173422024-02-14T00:00:00.001-06:002024-02-14T00:00:00.244-06:00Ash Wednesday: a few thoughts on Inquisitions and Penitentiaries[first published March 3, 2014]<br />
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<i>An interview with Dr. David Pence:</i><br />
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<b>We've come round to another Ash Wednesday. Do you remember how Father Neuhaus [the late founder of <i>First Thing</i>s magazine] referred to the American bishops' response to sexual abuse as "The Long Lent of 2002"?</b><br />
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The American bishops and their fraternity of priests never had a long Lent or any Lent at all! Lent is confession of sins, repentance, reparation, and reform. There has been no real confessing of sins nor repentance nor judgment and punishment of any group of bishops or priests inflicted by churchmen on churchmen. Newspapers have exposed and courts have punished, but the Church herself has not acted to purify the priesthood by her own standards.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">Eastern State Penitentiary, one of the prisons visited by Tocqueville in 1831</span></td></tr>
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<b>You contend that Church leaders have to use ecclesial institutions to punish priests who have offended. Why does it seem that nowadays if an evil priest hasn't been convicted in a criminal court, we shower him with "disability pay" and other perks?</b><br />
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Reform in a hierarchical Church comes from the Pope and bishops, but each in his own place. Diocesan reform will be initiated by a particular bishop who has a critical mass of priests with him ready to truly purify an existing diocesan prebytery. The reform of bishops will require another mechanism, but it will be more local and synodal than papal. Just like we need model saints who inspire all of us, bishops need a model bishop to clean not the whole world but a particular diocese. A bishop who wants to lead the bishops of his nation and the Church must put his net down right where he is -- and reform his local presbytery. The diocese will be the locus of the deepest reform.<br />
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All reform will start with a true aggressive investigation and assessment of priests. This can be carried out by a well-known Catholic instrument: the <i>Promoter of Justice</i>. This man must look much more like Eliot Ness searching for the trails of crime than an ACLU lawyer insisting on Miranda rights. This is what once was called an INQUISITION. An aggressive questioning in pursuit of real justice for the Church which means unfaithful, sacrilegious, and immoral priests are pursued, confronted, judged, and punished. Professor Mirus does a good job of <a href="http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=1161">explaining this in a recent column.</a><br />
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Offenses against the Creed, the Sacramental/Liturgical Order, and Morality are the standards by which bishops must purify the priesthood. These are sections of our Catechism. No court of law will uphold these standards. No secular newspaper will be outraged at a breach of these duties. The Church has a legal system and a demanding code of conduct. Pope Benedict, in <a href="https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/Article/TabId/535/ArtMID/13567/ArticleID/5827/Light-of-the-World-Excerpts.aspx">an interview in 2010</a>, talked about the role of punishment in church governance:<br />
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<i>"The Archbishop of Dublin told me something very interesting about that. He said that ecclesiastical penal law functioned until the late 1950’s. Admittedly it was not perfect -- there is much to criticize about it -- but nevertheless it was applied. After the mid sixties, however, it was simply not applied anymore. The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but rather a Church of love; she must not punish. Thus the awareness that punishment can be an act of love ceased to exist. This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people. </i></blockquote>
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<i>Today we have to learn all over again that love for the sinner and love for the person who has been harmed are correctly balanced if I punish the sinner in the form that is possible and appropriate. In this respect there was in the past a change of mentality, in which the law and the need for punishment were obscured. Ultimately this also narrowed the concept of love, which in fact is not just being nice and courteous, but is found in the truth. And another component of the truth is that I must punish the one who has sinned against real love."</i></blockquote>
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(ADDENDUM AUGUST 2018<br />
<a href="https://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=21242">A description of the liturgical rite of by which a bishop was degraded of his office</a>. Benedict XIV promulgated this ritual in 1862)<br />
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<b>Explain your notion of how we provide for these priests according to canon law, while having them live a life of penance. And what is this about donning a distinctive cowl?</b><br />
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We hear that canon law requires that the local diocese must "provide" for all priests. "It's simply justice," they say. Well, fine... let's be serious. Get a building, and provide housing and simple food while requiring prayer and labor. They should wear a distinctive garb showing they are penitents, and special markers if they are sexual predators. This is meant as punishment. It is meant as reparation -- and if a priest will not comply -- then his disobedience is grounds for laicization. Criminal priests are exploiting their clerical state and playing on the interests of their superiors in preserving an employment entitlement program. The idea that these guys are on a voucher system which we owe them, is a sham perpetuated by clerics who see the priesthood as lifetime employment. This is how the previous vicar general, Fr. McDonough, sounds in most of his pronouncements on these questions -- he was an unholy blend of urban ward-heeler, union steward, and defense attorney.<br />
<br />
No reform in any diocese could bolster the worldwide church more than instituting a real place of penance and public acknowledgement of betrayal by predator priests. This reform must be enacted by a local bishop; it cannot be a papal reform. The pope knows what we all know. Local bishops must govern; and to govern is to punish when crimes are committed. Abbotts too. A place like St John’s Abbey [in Collegeville, Minnesota] should immediately require a clear and distinctive garb for all monks under restriction. St Benedict in his original Rule provided a multitude of ways to distinguish monks following the Rule and those being disciplined.<br />
<br />
The Church did not sin. Men sinned, and individual men should do penance -- not Holy Mother Church, who Herself has been besmirched.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1h0R3qEoKdssp75giSfdRuu7200-YC577R23BN1u2ETcf0wefjFyICxNLvuz5AL2psvt-nG7XtQBoSZK0aYtNur3tBVva9YxXO3tiuyIBeIPqLthP2oTrwak2TG4u0jIvbr4YKBSCkhU/s1600/z_unkchristdoc.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1h0R3qEoKdssp75giSfdRuu7200-YC577R23BN1u2ETcf0wefjFyICxNLvuz5AL2psvt-nG7XtQBoSZK0aYtNur3tBVva9YxXO3tiuyIBeIPqLthP2oTrwak2TG4u0jIvbr4YKBSCkhU/s1600/z_unkchristdoc.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: start;">"Christ among the Doctors of the Law" (Paolo Caliari, 16th century)</span></td></tr>
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<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<b>What is your reaction to the comments of Fr. Kevin McDonough in this <a href="http://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/02/24/catholic-church/mother-of-wehmeyer-victims">recent news story at MN Public Radio</a>? How could the vicar general thoroughly delude himself that a pastor -- arrested separately for trolling for young men in a public park and in a bookstore -- posed no danger to the boys in his parish?</b><br />
<br />
Father McDonough throughout his career has run interference for the huge homosexual subculture in the St Paul Seminary system and the local priesthood. This most notably included his homosexual priest brother who was teaching seminarians “the gift of gay celibacy” decades ago. It is an axiom in the Catholic gay subculture that homosexuals are no threat as pedophiles. (It was a corollary that they made better priests because of their sensitivity and non-interest in football, war, or any male group effort to organize the protective use of force). That is why McDonough remains so adamant to this day that "there was no evidence Curtis Wehmeyer was a threat to children." For Father McDonough, stubbornly not "outing" the homosexual proclivities of a predator took precedence over protecting young males.<br />
<br />
The corrupting role of an influential secretive "gay subculture" in a priesthood -- whose most fundamental oath is tied to a purity code -- is the story that the vicar general kept hidden for decades, and that our secular newspapers still can't quite figure out how to tell. The Church will properly practice Lent when a bishop takes his priests behind closed doors as individuals and as a group, and institutes a program of priestly purification which must include aggressive questioning (call that the Inquisition) and just punishment for the sins of omission and commission which have corrupted the fraternity (call that the Penitentiary). We could call that a good Catholic Lent.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>If a Catholic is completely fed up with the decadent rot of the Petrine face of the Church -- almost tempted to flee -- how should he fight that? </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
He must focus on that reality of the Church which has never sinned. The Marian Church is still pure. The Church herself has been defaced and dragged through the mud, but still she is holy. Churchmen have sinned, not the Church. Ponder the heart of Mother Church. Do what the devout women did during the 1970s: they kept alive the adoration of the Eucharist while trendy seminarians ridiculed the “wafer worshipers." The spotless Church and her corrupted priesthood has the Eucharist; and we must eat to live.<br />
<br />
The Church has the Spirit, and He will reform the Church. The Ark has a noxious stench, and a lot of the present crew are cowards or worse, but we can’t jump the Ark. It was built at too high a price. Look outside before you jump; the Flood waters are even worse.<br />
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</div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-19007222739814431652024-02-02T00:00:00.001-06:002024-02-02T00:00:00.247-06:00February 2: Candlemas -- A Light to the Nations<br />
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<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>
<i>by David Pence</i><br />
<br />
<br />
It was ordered that forty days after a "son opens the womb", he must be consecrated to God. Jewish males had been spared on the night of the first Passover in Egypt 1500 years before the birth of Christ. Jewish parents acknowledged that their first born sons were not their own and they presented them in the Temple to God. For millennia the<i> Pidyon haben</i> (redemption of the first-born son) has been performed. In present day Judaism, this custom is now seen as ransoming the boy from his duties as priest. Thus, a Kohen is often paid in his stead.<br />
<br />
When Jesus was brought to the temple for this offering, an old man who had been promised that he would see the Messiah before his death, greeted Mary and Joseph and took the boy in his arms and gave thanks to God. Simeon spoke this short song or canticle which is now prayed daily by priests and religious in the official night prayer of the Church.<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">"Lord now let your servant go in peace;</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">your word has been fulfilled;</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">My own eyes have seen the salvation</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">which you have prepared in the sight of every people</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">A light to reveal you to the nations</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">and the glory of your people Israel."</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>
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Jesus revealed the glory of Israel through His mother Mary. The God of the Universe chose Israel among all the nations of the earth and His Son was born to a Jewish Virgin-mother. Thirty years later as a man, Jesus would draw twelve Jewish males into the apostolic brotherhood of the Church. That sacred fraternity would be a template for the territorial nations in which men live bound together as fellow countrymen under a law and leader. The Church and the nations are meant to form the ordered biblical pattern of male agreement in the Kingdom of God. The 2500 bishops and patriarchs during the Second Vatican Council (1961-1965) put forth the Catholic Church's interracial and international priestly brotherhood as such a template for the nations. Their document on the Church was called <i>Lumen Gentium: </i>a light for the nations. On this 40th day after Christmas, every February 2, candles are lit in memory and fulfillment of Simeon's words. The love by which Christ bound his apostles has formed the living foundation stones for the Church. An analogous public love binds men as citizens in nations from Ireland to China. This kind of Love is like Light -- public and emanating by its very nature. Interlocking sacral patriarchal fraternities constituting the Church and the nations are meant to order the public loves of mankind into a single Body under God. Thirty three years after Simeon said that Christ would reveal God to the nations, Christ completed his offering as the Beloved Son. His words fulfilled the promise made at His Presentation in the Temple: "Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit."<br />Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-36722534771208721262024-01-28T00:00:00.000-06:002024-01-28T00:00:00.134-06:00January 28: St Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Scholar[first published January 28, 2015]<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>by David Pence</i><br />
<br />
The "scientific revolution" was a centuries-long project of dividing man from the primary powers of his intellect to synthesize, categorize, and know as a sacral being in terms of a sacred whole. The modern scientist came to think very much of himself and very little of man. Hundreds of years before that egotistical destabilizing fragmentation, a great Dominican saint rose in Italy to do just the opposite. Thomas Aquinas was educated by the greatest natural philosopher (student of physical and biological sciences) of his time: <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/dan-burke/st.-albert-the-great-the-church-and-science-are-not-at-war">Albert the Great</a>. He benefited from the rediscovery of Greek texts of Aristotle and thus learned the metaphysics, ethics, politics, and categories of the Greeks. He knew the Bible intimately and prodigiously. His New Testament commentary, verse by verse, is a compilation of the Church Fathers' commentary as well.<br />
<br />
His purity was no small part of his clear vision; and his humility no incidental in his ability to properly categorize. He was called the <i>'angelic doctor'</i> because the towering intellectual understood the metaphysical necessity and scriptural testimony of those spiritual beings who so embarrass the modern Catholic PhD. Above all, he knew how to pray first -- and write and formulate from that posture. The best biography of Aquinas is G.K. Chesterton's <u><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas-The-Dumb/dp/1475167571">The Dumb Ox</a></u>. <br />
<br />
The online site <b><i><a href="http://www.universalis.com/20150128/today.htm">Universalis</a></i></b>, which provides the prayers of the Daily Office in a usable everyday form, also provides a short bio of saints of the day. Below is their excellent synopsis.<br />
<br />
To honor St. Thomas, consider going to Universalis and joining the worldwide church in one or more of her daily prayers. It will aid your struggle for holiness and make you smarter as well.<br />
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<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274) </span></b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"He was born of a noble family in southern Italy, and was educated by the Benedictines. In the normal course of events he would have joined that order and taken up a position suitable to his rank; but he decided to become a Dominican instead. His family were so scandalized by this disreputable plan that they kidnapped him and kept him prisoner for over a year; but he was more obstinate than they were, and he had his way at last. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"He studied in Paris and in Cologne under the philosopher Saint Albert the Great. It was a time of philosophical ferment. The writings of Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of the ancient world, had been newly rediscovered, and were becoming available to people in the West for the first time in a thousand years. Many feared that Aristotelianism was flatly contradictory to Christianity, and the teaching of Aristotle was banned in many universities at this time – the fact that Aristotle’s works were coming to the West from mostly Muslim sources did nothing to help matters. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Into this chaos Thomas brought simple, straightforward sense. Truth cannot contradict truth: if Aristotle (the infallible pagan philosopher) appears to contradict Christianity (which we know by faith to be true), then either Aristotle is wrong or the contradiction is in fact illusory. And so Thomas studied, and taught, and argued, and eventually the simple, common-sense philosophy that he worked out brought an end to the controversy. Out of his work came many writings on philosophy and theology, including the <u>Summa Theologiae</u>, a standard textbook for many centuries and still an irreplaceable resource today. Out of his depth of learning came, also, the dazzling poetry of the liturgy for Corpus Christi. And out of his sanctity came the day when, celebrating Mass, he had a vision that, he said, made all his writings seem like so much straw; and he wrote no more. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to inspire us, like St Thomas, to love God with our minds as well as our hearts; and if we come across a fact or a teaching that seems to us to contradict our faith, let us not reject it but investigate it: for the truth that it contains can never contradict the truth that is God."</blockquote>
<br />
<u>UPDATE</u>: Don't miss this <a href="http://taylormarshall.com/2015/01/7-reasons-love-saint-thomas-aquinas-plus-4-catholic-videos.html">short video on Aquinas' central teaching</a> on <b>nature and grace</b>, by Taylor Marshall; and another on the reasons why Catholic men in every generation should love the Italian saint (who's buried in the <a href="http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g187175-d246617-i108281403-Church_of_Les_Jacobins-Toulouse_Haute_Garonne_Midi_Pyrenees.html">southwest of France</a>).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tomb of Thomas</td></tr>
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Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-28053365514629503002024-01-15T00:00:00.001-06:002024-01-15T20:44:45.938-06:00In remembrance of Martin Luther King: Sacred Selma is no bridge to Sodom[first published March 17, 2015]<br />
<br />
<b>{Jan 21,</b> <b><i>2019 Addendum--<a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/20/covington-catholic-student-video-issues-statement-his-side-story/2634008002/">Student statement</a> on fabricated racism event at pro-life march by students from Catholic Boys School-a white teen guilty of looking an old fraud in the eye. Looking eye to eye is the Latin root of the word RESPECT</i></b>}<br />
<br />
<i>by David Pence</i><br />
<br />
One of the themes preached at Brown Chapel Church in Selma, on the day before the 50-year commemoration of 'Bloody Sunday,' was how the liberated Israelites forgot their true destination and were soon worshiping false gods in the wilderness. <br />
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In the spring of 1965, local Negro Christians led a procession across the Alabama River in response to the shooting of a black Baptist deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, two weeks earlier. The purpose of the march was to link the shooting to the need for black voting rights in the state. The destination was Montgomery, the capital 50 miles away. When the marchers left the city limits and crossed the Pettus Bridge they came under the jurisdiction of the county sheriff and state patrol. The sheriff, Jim Clark, had called all white males over 21 to be deputized as a county posse. The state troopers were George Wallace’s men, and eager to strike a blow for a segregated "Heart of Dixie." Several national TV camera crews recorded the onslaught. A nation still capable of moral outrage was shocked.<br />
<br />
It was several days later that Reverend Martin Luther King and ministers from across the land came for the second Selma march. They only went to the end of the bridge, obeying a federal injunction against completing the march to Montgomery. After kneeling in prayer where the violence had occurred, they then turned around. Some of the younger black activists criticized King and dubbed that day "Turnaround Tuesday." It wasn't a compliment.<br />
<br />
The third march (Mar 21-25,1965) two weeks later was allowed and protected by federal military policemen, army troops, and a federalized Alabama national guard. They completed the march to the state capitol in Montgomery four days later. This time, preachers from all over the country and famous entertainers were in the crowd to hear Reverend King's <a href="http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_address_at_the_conclusion_of_selma_march/">"How Long, Not Long" speech</a>. He praised "white Americans who cherish their democratic traditions over ugly customs and privileges of generations to come forth boldly to join hands with us." He gave a history lesson on Jesus and Jim Crow:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If it may be said of the slavery era
that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said
of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave
the poor white man Jim Crow. (<i>Yes, sir</i>) He gave him Jim Crow. (<i>Uh huh</i>)
And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets
could not provide, (<i>Yes, sir</i>) he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that
told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better
than the black man. (<i>Right sir</i>) And he ate Jim Crow. (<i>Uh huh</i>) And
when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low
wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in
the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. (<i>Yes, sir</i>) And
his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, (<i>Speak</i>) their last
outpost of psychological oblivion. (<i>Yes, sir</i>)</span></blockquote>
He explained the many contorted forms of segregation that it took to divide a Christian nation by color:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">They
segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores
from the rich whites; (<i>Yes, sir</i>) they segregated southern churches from
Christianity (<i>Yes, sir</i>); they segregated southern minds from honest
thinking; (<i>Yes, sir</i>) and they segregated the Negro from everything. (<i>Yes,
sir</i>). </span></blockquote>
But for this Christian movement the cry of "no justice, no peace" was not a threat of violence but the continued soul-power of love restoring men to brotherhood: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">"And
so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to
nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to
win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek
is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.
And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be
the day of man as man."</span></span></blockquote>
Finally he reminded us that persistence in protest does not come from the defiant wills of clenched fists, but the open hearts of men who trust in God: <br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">"How long will justice be crucified,
(<i>Speak</i>) and truth bear it?" (<i>Yes, sir</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I come to say to you this afternoon,
however difficult the moment, (<i>Yes, sir</i>) however frustrating the hour,
it will not be long, (<i>No sir</i>) because "truth crushed to earth will
rise again." (<i>Yes, sir</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How long? Not long, (<i>Yes, sir</i>)
because "no lie can live forever." (<i>Yes, sir</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How long? Not long, (<i>All right.
How long</i>) because "you shall reap what you sow." (<i>Yes, sir</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How long? (<i>How long?</i>) Not
long: (<i>Not long</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Truth forever on the scaffold, (<i>Speak</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Wrong forever on the throne, (<i>Yes,
sir</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Yet that scaffold sways the future,
(<i>Yes, sir</i>) </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And, behind the dim unknown, </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Standeth God within the shadow, </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Keeping watch above his own.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How long? Not long, because the arc
of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (<i>Yes, sir</i>)</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">How long? Not long, (<i>Not long</i>)
because:</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Mine eyes have seen the glory of the
coming of the Lord; (<i>Yes, sir</i>)"</span></blockquote>
</div>
Reverend King called <a href="http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-3386">President Johnson's speech</a>, given ten days earlier on the Voting Rights Act, "an address that will live in history as one of the most passionate pleas for human rights ever made by a president of our nation"; and he noted it was given by a "president born in the South."<br />
<br />
After his speech to a joint session of Congress, LBJ ordered that protection be provided to the Selma marchers. He challenged an attentive, wary, sparsely applauding legislature:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation. For with a country as with a person, 'What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' "</blockquote>
The Voting Act became law on August 8, 1965.<br />
<br />
John Lewis, congressman from Georgia, was one of the few men who spoke at the 50-year commemoration who also marched on Bloody Sunday. In his short and stirring speech before President Obama’s address, Lewis quoted LBJ's opening words to Congress: "At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."<br />
<br />
Johnson said in the same Selma-inspired speech: "I want to be the president who helped to end hatred among his fellow men and who promoted love among the people of all races, all regions, and all parties." John Lewis began his talk not addressing the dignitaries, not even the president. He said, "Beloved brothers and sisters." He said we are here to "renew the soul of America." The movement was about love -- and John Lewis still remembered. It was about love of God and love of neighbor. It was not about black men yelling 'racist' at white men, but calling them brothers and calling them to love as Christ had commanded us. It always began in churches; and there was a lot of spiritual healing and calling on Jesus to grant courage. It was about redeeming love; and we cannot properly remember this day without remembering that building the spiritual bond of civic charity was driven by the redeeming suffering love of the Gospel. <br />
<br />
Lewis remembered: "We walked down that sidewalk over there. With a kind of military discipline, we were so peaceful, so quiet." Listen to the voice of Lewis, listen to his plea, and the spiritual echo of that day will come clear. Only their prayer time in a church when they were not so quiet had armed them for what would come next. It was not "their will against the will of the policemen," as the president said. For when Israel fights its enemies depending only on itself -- on its own will -- it always loses. These men and women knew they were following the will of God, and that is why eventually as Lewis said, "they knew the truth would win out." It was not their will that triumphed that day. Someone else was writing in His own hand, turning the soul-force of unrequited suffering into Victory.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHx41fsXoVW-kIqTyS28-2uekW0QH-8Af3Zmns9vVy_UG18bGfnVdkHJrYs-PigdMrXfNTVqfkNHFmHwAERA-hSz2E_Hllq02yV94KXZzraJ4QdL4M8vlm2Hz1lSJNlAWsSbBMNVZA4HY/s1600/John+Lewis.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHx41fsXoVW-kIqTyS28-2uekW0QH-8Af3Zmns9vVy_UG18bGfnVdkHJrYs-PigdMrXfNTVqfkNHFmHwAERA-hSz2E_Hllq02yV94KXZzraJ4QdL4M8vlm2Hz1lSJNlAWsSbBMNVZA4HY/s1600/John+Lewis.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rev King flanked (at far L) by Rev Abernathy and (far R) by John Lewis</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It was shortly after Selma that a lot of <i>chosen people</i> forgot, again, where they were marching and Who was directing their march. Five months later the first great urban burning and looting riot would occur in Watts, California. That looked a lot more like the revelry at the Golden Calf, than the redeeming march through the parted waters of the Red Sea. Younger men turned the movement for Christian brotherhood into something very different -- black power, color identity, hatred, and a glorification not of redemptive suffering but redemptive violence. The Christian themes of following God’s will and reuniting a beloved community in the brotherhood of men under the Fatherhood of God gave way to color consciousness, sexual licentiousness, envy, greed, and wrath. “Soul” which once meant that spiritual principle of human life, which was instantly recognizable by men of every color, was turned on its head and came to be shorthand for “Black.” The jutting of the chin, the militant posture on college campuses, and the celebration of the criminal inside the confines of black ghettos had replaced the open hearts and hands seeking love.<br />
<br />
The devil loves to tear apart. He is a divider and a liar from the beginning. He loves to come disguised as an angel of light, fighting for liberation but still peddling his same old chains of slavery.<br />
And just what the racists had predicted started to happen. All the moral capital of the innocent, beaten by lawmen, was set aside. The march for freedom was perverted into a license for revelry -- just like the pagan erotic cult at the foot of Mount Sinai that had so angered Moses. The higher morality of love over law became the immorality of disrespect for authority and the law. "The Man" became the enemy. Another kind of male became the <i>Superfly</i>. Then, the greatest metaphysical error in American political history insured that the movement among men for the equality of public brotherhood was hijacked by the protest of middle-class white women against the sexual order of marriage and familial duty. This was coupled with a wild sexual rut among the males, again masquerading as a freedom train. <b>The women said they would not be mothers</b> and clamored for abortion, <b>while the men said they would not be soldiers</b> and ran from their protective duties. So many times during this forty years of wandering, the devious cults of "self" came cloaked in the sacred cloth of Selma.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dY3iF7kcBkHkNbG-iTJj2poGj1UcGEf_khNoKnurY2jwXGjOu5uw72l9evavkjj7HU8imVVC7JKrEyTbD54lvP7epfnIFg6Tms_LvomYaczmyyL7NChLi2yxccnY8PCiUYosOQaK1CA/s1600/Golden+calf.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dY3iF7kcBkHkNbG-iTJj2poGj1UcGEf_khNoKnurY2jwXGjOu5uw72l9evavkjj7HU8imVVC7JKrEyTbD54lvP7epfnIFg6Tms_LvomYaczmyyL7NChLi2yxccnY8PCiUYosOQaK1CA/s1600/Golden+calf.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Adoration of the Golden Calf" by Nicolas Poussin (1634)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
White feminists were quite content that black men were into separatism. Back then, black men did not treat the analysis of the white chick with the obeisance we see now. The feminists left the black man his urban streets and the prisons. She and her soft white male allies took the universities, churches, and public service unions. Later, a crass calculation of everybody against the white male (down with patriarchy!) would lead to the diversity racket of electoral majorities and cottage industries in big cities, universities, and the world of non-profits. As Eric Hoffer said, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."<br />
<br />
Black men who wanted to progress in public office drank the feminist Kool-Aid in public speeches and policy, if not in their personal lives. Religious institutions rejected the patriarchy of the Lord's Prayer for the gender obfuscation of inclusion. The widows begged for husbands and the orphans for fathers -- and in the name of civil rights we gave them sexual anarchy, making more spiritual widows and orphans than ever before in our history. Under the rubric of diversity, a coalition was struck of rights and reparation, the black power movement, the feminists, and finally the homosexuals. The party of city immigrants and working men turned into an umbrella for diversity. God was exiled, the beloved community abandoned, and idols erected by a coalition of the oppressed. <br />
<br />
The faith-healing, Scripture reading, and Gospel singing that broke the back of racism were sent to the back of the bus. It could be resurrected when needed for nostalgia, but it could no longer be taken seriously as a spiritual organizing principle. It was not a worship of the mighty God, though He still could be evoked for the closing of speeches. It was a celebration of "us," of the humanistic pride that turned worship of God into a celebration of congregations. The people celebrate themselves, savoring the wounds of their parents while rejecting their wisdom. This communal celebration of self had happened long ago. The people set out to make a name for themselves and forgot God. They built a tower at Babel. <br />
<br />
The ordered relationship of sexual fidelity in marriage, the purity in thought and speech toward the sacred goods of God’s name and the marriage act -- these ordered relationships became the enemy of the new freedom divorced from freedom’s Author. And that public form of Christian love -- fraternal brotherhood among adult men -- now became the love "that dare not speak its name." It became a mantra of militant black men that they did not seek to love or to be loved by the white man. Brotherhood was for wimps, and soon the wimps would rule in a way no American man of fifty years ago could ever imagine. <br />
<br />
The integrated body politic, the black and white males in a posse for justice who would protect the widows and orphans of every color -- that dream became a joke. The marriage of a black man and white woman or a white man and black woman -- that sacred bond was now allowed. But in a bizarre twist that could only come from the twisted Father of Lies, this natural love has now become a rallying flag to honor the unnatural. Those who marched at Selma would wonder at a president who diluted their blood with such acts of sexual sacrilege. All of us who were in the movement, we exchanged our glorious God for a grass-eating bull. Elections indeed were won, a coalition with those serving other gods was struck…but what doth it profit?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmguZisUDjNxi9KnuA-orQMvWhb99h89WwoziIXjdMKNiNRuZ7KDtVy0XZSw0sDU0hlocREfVis3n6g00aMM-cdVJBDPW7VH2nV51p_tRkQZAHy-rpN4TApVA2LvpcKypDiEmo-JsMFtI/s1600/Selma.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmguZisUDjNxi9KnuA-orQMvWhb99h89WwoziIXjdMKNiNRuZ7KDtVy0XZSw0sDU0hlocREfVis3n6g00aMM-cdVJBDPW7VH2nV51p_tRkQZAHy-rpN4TApVA2LvpcKypDiEmo-JsMFtI/s1600/Selma.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bloody Sunday in Selma</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
There are many more female black faces in high places, and yet so many more male black faces in jail. Every third pregnancy by a black female is aborted -- five times the rate of white women. There are black males in elected offices, but all must worship at the altar of feminism to be admitted to the club.<br />
<br />
In his speech at Selma, President Obama broke open the moral capital of the Selma "bank account" and distributed blank checks to the sexual pretenders. It had been his honest claim as a black man to that social capital which helped him defeat an entitled feminist for the presidency in 2008. But any honest assessment of Mr. Obama reveals he has done much more for the sexual revolutionaries than for interracial brotherhood among men. He said <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2013/01/pence-on-inauguration-moses-joshua-and.html">he would be Joshua</a>, but the feminist brain chip is the paradigm most deeply implanted in his heart. The sense of solidarity with the men of his country or the men of other cultures who rule by the traditional male forms of patriarchy and fraternity is not part of the moral grammar of this mother's son. He considers patriarchy an evil, and masculine fraternity as fun for the playground but oppressive in religion and politics.<br />
<br />
The billy clubs and tear gas of Sheriff Clark could crack open a man's head and break up a marching crowd, but they could never touch the movement's soul. But now the blood of the martyrs has been polluted at an altar to a foreign god in the wilderness. Our souls no longer rest in the Lord. The shame of our president is that <b>his speech at Selma was a sacrilege against a sacred space</b>. The president, whom so many of us voted for as an act of racial reconciliation, once again used his pulpit to preach not the saving grace of brotherhood but the enslaving confusion of the sexual revolution. <br />
<br />
The Christian movement brings us back to the original promise of the country and the truth of Scripture. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Real peace comes from deeper and broader bonds. The tenor of the Christian movement, even in its dreams, was a return to some order that lay at the heart of our nature <a href="https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2017/01/16/letter-from-birmingham-jail-2/">as creatures of God with human souls</a>. It was a check written long ago which we had come to cash. We were not looking for endless change, and more and more categories of the oppressed that might be released from social obligations and rules of decorum. We were seeking something old -- that men might live like brothers, that a man and woman might marry and raise their family in peace, that elders would be called Mister and Missus.<br />
<br />
Selma was a place in history where the fate of a nation was hinged. It still is such a place. As President Johnson said:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans -- not as Democrats or Republicans -- we are met here as Americans to solve that problem."</blockquote>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnUw52oEf_k6TTsV1qvGboRpUzbALY0z8ue4v2wZUdU6v9i_4RlC4A2QRH5bLcnUVqlsK1YMoJQbgKGRQrCiXRd0wI0vzdli2XdV1M3DWA5hwRcFwb8VwFYtzmv45cSij24QxgCI8H1Y/s1600/LBJ.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsnUw52oEf_k6TTsV1qvGboRpUzbALY0z8ue4v2wZUdU6v9i_4RlC4A2QRH5bLcnUVqlsK1YMoJQbgKGRQrCiXRd0wI0vzdli2XdV1M3DWA5hwRcFwb8VwFYtzmv45cSij24QxgCI8H1Y/s1600/LBJ.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Johnson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Every crucial speech from that era reminds us this was a <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2014/12/friday-bookreview-stone-of-hope.html">Christian movement of brotherhood</a> that was deeply resonant with the initial Christian movement that formed the colonies and towns of America’s Protestant seaboard.<br />
<br />
We cannot leave the interpretation of this day to the mistaken notion that sexual disorder is Selma's fruit. The bridge from Selma led to Montgomery, not Sodom. Montgomery was the city where the Reverends King and Abernathy first joined as ministers to unite the Negro community as Christians, and renew the whole city as a "Beloved Community" of fellow citizens. Sodom was destroyed; Montgomery was to be renewed. Selma was a spiritual movement that galvanized white and black people across the country. That’s why, within two weeks of Bloody Sunday, armed American white men protected the marchers from their persecutors. That’s why five months later a Voting Rights Act could be passed. If we can unite ourselves again under God and sing His praises loudly, then we can renew a brotherhood of fathers to socialize all our young men -- black, white and Hispanic -- into the Christian form of masculine love that is citizenship.<br />
<br />
This spiritual renewal of the American soul is how the South will rise again. Let us be renewed in the public Biblical faith and Christian love of Selma. It is the road to the <i>New Jerusalem</i> which will shine with the glory of God when He comes to dwell amidst His people. Let us not ignore the living Lord or surely we shall be chastised; and the blood drawn at Selma will lose its sacred power "to renew the soul of America." Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-57327398493529519202024-01-08T07:05:00.000-06:002024-01-08T07:05:00.141-06:00The Baptism of Jesus<br />
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<br />
<br />
<i>Pence writes:</i><br />
<br />
"It was at the Jordan River that Joshua commanded the priests to precede with the Ark of the Covenant, followed by the sons of Israel who – now properly ordered behind the Ark – could enter the Promised Land.<br />
<br />
"When Christ emerged from that same river, he was enclosed not by the Ark but revealed in the first manifestation of the Trinity. His Father’s voice proclaimed Him; and the hovering Spirit anointed Him. On this day, the entry of all men to the Promised Land was made possible.<br />
<br />
"All the sons of men who would be baptized in the new Adam could now be incorporated in Son-ship with the triune God. Christ’s Baptism washed away Satan, the world, and the flesh – and revealed the sacramental strategy for incorporation in the new Adam.<br />
<br />
"The just angels marveled in awe at the new-found glory of man, while Lucifer resentfully plotted a meeting in the desert."<br />Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-66652675534042785622024-01-08T00:00:00.001-06:002024-01-08T00:00:00.136-06:00THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST: the Theophany of God and the Baptism of Christ<br />
(first published January 12, 2014)<br />
<br />
<i>David Pence writes: </i><i> </i><br />
<i> </i><br />
<br />
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<br />
<i> </i><span style="font-size: large;">"... the Sun of righteousness washing in the Jordan,<br /> fire immersed in water..."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
The Sunday after Epiphany, the Church celebrates the Baptism of Christ. It marks the end of the Christmas season and the beginning of Christ’s public life and “Ordinary Time.” In an older calendar, the Epiphany was celebrated as an eight-day feast. The coming of the Wise Men, the first miracle at Cana, and the most important manifestation – the theophany at Christ’s baptism – were all considered epiphanies which explained the true identity of Jesus Christ. In the Orthodox Churches, the “twelve days of Christmas” are the feast days observed from the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem to his Baptism in the Jordan which is called the feast of the Theophany.<br />
<br />
The Baptism of Christ is not merely about God and water, or God and nature, or even God and man’s salvation. This is not just an event of Divine Economy – God’s relation to creation. At the Baptism of Christ, something happened quite unexpected. The Baptism is THEOPHANY – the “appearance of God” – and for the first time Jesus is revealed as Son of God; and God reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
For a moment let us forget about ourselves. Let us even forget about the sacramental order of saving our souls. Let us contemplate what was revealed here about the reality that preceded the creation of heaven and earth. Let us think of God before Satan rebelled and man fell.<br />
<br />
Who could imagine this? God is three in one. There is a reality called personhood, which can be united in love, as many in one. On this day, in the Father’s voice, we are definitively told that Jesus is God. We are shown “the Spirit of God descending on Him like a dove.” This is how the Christmas season ends: with a lesson about the identity of Jesus as Divine, and the nature of God as an interpersonal love relationship that constitutes the ultimate reality.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><b>Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. </b></i><br />
<br />
<i><b>In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.</b></i><br />
<i><b> </b></i><br />
<i><b> </b></i><br />
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<br />
"Today the nature of the waters is sanctified,<br />
The Jordan bursts forth and turns back the flood of its streams,<br />
<div>
Seeing the Master wash Himself.</div>
<div>
To the voice of one crying in the wilderness, </div>
<div>
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, </div>
<div>
You came, O Lord, taking the form of a servant, </div>
<div>
Asking for baptism though you have no sin. </div>
<div>
The waters saw You and were afraid. </div>
<div>
The Forerunner began to tremble and cried out, saying: </div>
<div>
How shall the lampstand illumine the Light? </div>
<div>
How shall the servant lay hands upon the Master? </div>
<div>
Sanctify both me and the waters, O Savior, </div>
<div>
Who takes away the sins of the world."<br />
<br />
(Orthodox hymn for Theophany)<br />
<br /></div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-37591731220645837422024-01-06T00:14:00.001-06:002024-01-06T00:14:00.150-06:00The Feast of the Epiphany and the true Age of Enlightenment[first published January 6, 2016]<br />
<i><br /></i><i>by David Pence</i><br />
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Epiphany means 'manifestation.' The Christmas season is a series of liturgical celebrations of different events in the life of Christ that manifest who He is, and why calendars all over the world begin their numbering of the years based on His coming. The naming of Jesus and his circumcision complete the Christmas Octave (Jan 1st); the twelve days of Christmas end with the “Christmas for the Gentiles” and the coming of the Magi (kings or wise men) on Jan 6th or the Sunday nearby. For centuries this day was associated with the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Our Lord and his first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana. All of these were manifestations of the unique event that was celebrated at Christmas. The celebration of Epiphany ends with the manifestation of the Trinity revealed at Christ's baptism by John in the river Jordan. A few other traditions extend the season the full 40 days to his Presentation in the Temple as the first-born Jewish son on Candlemas Day (Feb 2nd). <br />
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At the feast of the Epiphany he does not transfigure himself, nor do we hear the voice of God or songs of angels. The scene at the epiphany is three kings representing the monarchs and nations of the world bowing to the King of Kings; and acknowledging that from this birth forth, the destiny of nations would be determined in relation to the new King. Not only human history but all of physical nature is reconfigured to the <i>alpha male</i> of humanity -- the Lord of nature and perfecting head of our species. The star pointing the wise men to his person shows that a new law of personal gravity is in effect that will allow Peter to walk on water, and the human species to escape the sure death awaiting any planet tied to the finite life cycle of a medium-size star. The Star of Bethlehem foreshadows the domination and reorganization of nature that the God of eternal life promises. On this 12th day of Christmas let us promise, with the wise men, that we will always teach the truth of nature and the physical sciences, as well as the meaning of history and the story of nations in light of God -- who made Himself fully known during the <b>true age of Enlightenment: Our Lord’s earthly lifespan 2000 years ago--the <i>axis mundi.</i></b><br />
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<i>"The wise men, seeing him, so fair,</i></div>
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<i>Bow low before him, and with prayer</i></div>
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<i>Their treasured eastern gifts unfold</i></div>
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<i>Of incense, myrrh, and royal gold.</i></div>
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<i>The fragrant incense which they bring,</i></div>
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<i>The gold, proclaim him God and King;</i></div>
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<i>The bitter spicy dust of myrrh</i></div>
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<i>Foreshadows his new sepulchre.</i></div>
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<i>All glory, Lord, to thee we pay</i></div>
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<i>For thine Epiphany today;</i></div>
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<i>All glory, as is ever meet,</i></div>
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<i>To Father and to Paraclete."</i></div>
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<a href="https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/01/06/wise-men-from-the-east-and-the-feast-of-the-epiphany-of-the-lord/">Addendum 2019-The three men in history and art by Sandra Meisel.</a></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-77223435756747952812024-01-01T00:54:00.001-06:002024-01-01T00:54:00.139-06:00JANUARY 1 -- Consecrating Masculine Fraternity: the formalized covenant of circumcision [first published New Year's Day 2015]<br />
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<i>Dr. David Pence writes:</i><br />
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<b>"When eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Christ, His name was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived."</b></blockquote>
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On New Year’s Day we celebrate a Divine resolution to reorder the public life of humanity and the material cosmos. The old order of the cyclic movements of stars and planets – that ends in the burning out of the stars and the dissipation of matter in an expanding universe – demonstrates how the Laws of Matter alone lead to death. But as Christ's blood is shed publicly for the first time, the spiritual message of an angel is no longer hidden in the womb of Mary. The young male is incorporated into the public covenant of Jewish brotherhood under God. He is not just Christ, the Anointed, the Messiah of Israel. He is named Jesus: "He who saves," the Deliverer, the one who rescues. His mother will be known as <i>Theotokos</i> ('God-bearer'). We will come to see that this Messiah to the Jews is named Jesus, not because He will free Israel from the Romans but because He will save mankind from death and the Dragon.<br />
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The human species has been recalled to our original mission to live forever in communion with God, who created the visible and invisible world. Most of the material world and many angels of the immaterial world are being cast out into oblivion and isolation, but humanity is meant to be drawn into the eternal life of communion and interpersonal love with the Trinity. A new Adam is named this day and will conform His will to the Father – as the first Adam failed to do. Part of his flesh is discarded as a prelude to the discarding of the old man by every Christian in the sacrament of Baptism. The first patriarch’s failure to accept the rule of the Father led to the murder of brother by brother. Because Adam failed as a son, he could not rule as a father; and the fraternity of his sons was replaced by fratricide. The great communal strength that Adam would have known as the father of sons in brotherly harmony was never to be. The new Adam, however, paints us a vivid picture of the fraternal bonds he forges, beginning with his circumcision and naming. He has allowed His blood to be shed, and has been incorporated in a Chosen People set aside as a holy nation to be a blessing to all the nations. He will show us the missionary nature of patriarchal fraternity – the miraculous incorporation that the love of Father, Son, and brothers has instituted for all humanity.<br />
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On New Year’s Day we remember Christ submitting to a religious ceremony for males, which binds them in a common duty to shed blood for the group defined by this Covenant with God. Forty days after His birth, Jesus alongside other firstborn males will be presented to God in the Temple of Jerusalem. The male covenant engenders a great communal strength that can tempt men to violent acts of domination. That is why numbering the able-bodied warriors was often depicted as an act of pride. The male covenant is necessary for survival, but it must always be subordinate to the will of God.<br />
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"God said to Abraham... This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you."</blockquote>
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This fraternal shedding of blood foreshadows the Apostles' priestly participation in the "blood of the New Covenant." Just as the masculine covenant of circumcision will define Israel, so the priestly sharing in the chalice of Christ's blood will define the Apostolic Church. (The sharing of the priestly chalice with the laity was a central liturgical demand of the Protestant Revolution which eventually proposed a Church built on Baptism not Holy Orders.) The Judaic formalization by circumcision of shared male protective duty limited by the defined territory of a Promised Land <b>will become the republican template of the nations.</b> The public relationship (<i>res publica)</i> of shared masculine duty will become the fraternal lattice of classical politics and citizenship.<br />
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<i>"It appears clear that contemporary ethical systems remain incapable of producing authentic bonds of fraternity, since a fraternity devoid of reference to a common Father as its ultimate foundation is unable to endure. True brotherhood among people presupposes and demands a transcendent Fatherhood. Based on the recognition of this fatherhood, human fraternity is consolidated: each person becomes a ‘neighbor’ who cares for others."</i><br />
(POPE FRANCIS -- January 1, 2014 --<br />
<a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/messages/peace/documents/papa-francesco_20131208_messaggio-xlvii-giornata-mondiale-pace-2014_en.html">FRATERNITY: THE FOUNDATION AND PATHWAY TO PEACE)</a></blockquote>
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The Pope speaks of fraternity in its most generic form: all men and women acting as brothers and sisters under God. That general fellowship, however, has an undeniable masculine foundation in biblical communities. Peter and Andrew, Phillip and Bartholomew are blood brothers in a spiritual brotherhood. These bonds are not set against each other, but reinforce the anthropological nature of male spiritual accord. The high calling of classical citizenship has a similar masculine character. In all classical thought, man as "a political animal" (<i>politicos</i>: a member of a city) refers to a shared form of piety, protective duty, civic friendship, social status, and masculine identity.<br />
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Fraternity to be most effective must be formalized. The <i>polis</i> is defined by city walls and social contracts. Nations need their boundaries and constitutions. This formalization of male duty for the group is expressed in Catholic sacramental life through the priesthood and the diocesan character of the Eucharistic bishop and his priests. Fraternity is formalized in civic life by young men being socialized as citizen soldiers, city fathers, state militias, and other masculine covenants to protect a defined territorial group. This public male bond of shared duty and law transcends kinship and the family justice system of blood vendettas. Formalized male socialization systems are foundational to the merit-based and duty-bound "wide radius" social trust systems that Francis Fukuyama explains in his books on <u>Trust</u> and <u>The Origins of Political Order</u>. Both the Pope and Mr. Fukuyama seek a richer deeper social bonding at the heart of political life. Neither one is quite ready in this feminist age to see masculine socialization as the source of that social capital. Shared fraternal duty elevates man's political vocation far above the soulless instrumental state managing the claims of atomistic rights-bearers. Patriarchal fraternities were foundational expressions of the Christian way manifested in those most pivotal institutions of the Christian republic: the monasteries.<br />
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The masculine territorial relationship "sacramentalized" in circumcision provides a form that limits the boundless ambitions of empires, utopias, and universalistic ideologies. The personalities of male protectors guard particular lands and cheer for the athletic victories of the local club. There are no Pollyannish laws against bullying, but many well-placed men who do not tolerate the strong exploiting the weak.<br />
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Men are meant to live together in communal work and protective groups. Patriarchy and fraternity constituted the original plan of love for Adam and his sons, the prophetic structure for Abraham and the nations, and the fulfillment of the Kingdom found in Christ and the apostles. <br />
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The Gospel is meant for all the nations – it is not a creature of "the West." It came out of one nation to all the nations. Jesus the Savior of the world, the Messiah of the Jews, was marked in his manhood as a living part of God’s plan of old. He circumcised the souls of his apostles with the character of the priesthood to ready them to go forth and call back the sons of Adam into one Body. He called men from one territorial region: Galilee. Those men who shared the local ties of a common fishing district would be shaped into a priestly brotherhood for the cosmos. They would be sent out to find men in their tribes and cities and nations; and baptize those natural fraternal ties of land and country into the Universal Church representing our common humanity. In the ancient liturgy of the Church, the priest looked north to proclaim the gospel. The priest directed the good news to the periphery. The apostles were sent to preach to the nations -- Biblically depicted as the 70 grandsons of Noah. The 70 different nations under a common God and descended from a single patriarch is the Biblical blueprint for humanity's public life. <b>We are not trying to eliminate the bonds of the nations, as at Babel; we are trying to baptize them. </b>The oneness of humanity comes from religious incorporation in Christ. The natural form of the nation was consecrated in the circumcision covenant, which marked Israel in a special way. The other Abrahamic nations were blessed as well, but in a different manner. All the nations, though, would be blessed in Israel by adopting an analogical masculine form of communal duty and civic life. Baptizing the nations does not necessarily mean bringing them into the Church, but bringing them into fraternity under God, which allows the Temple of the Church to be built within the walls of a just city.<br />
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The Jesus, who was named on this New Year’s Day, had bigger plans for the nations than allowing them to fight it out like so many new Cains and Abels. He called a fraternity of men to drink a blood covenant with Him; and establish a Kingdom set above all the nations, and yet living within each of them. The nations must answer to a transcendent authority. Because both priests and presidents can be corrupted, it is good that there are many nations, and good that there are the two swords of Church and State.<br />
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Eight days after we celebrate the birth of Christ, with the joy of this season still reverberating, we honor the shedding of a Son’s blood necessary to establish the new Kingdom. The circumcision of Abraham is no longer necessary for salvation, but the new priestly blood covenant will provide the Baptismal and Eucharistic bond to Christ by which the human species will participate in eternal life. <br />
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New Year’s Day is a public setting of our calendar to the Supreme Authority who manifested on this day His Name as Savior. His name carried by the angels was planted in a covenant of fraternity, which was public, masculine, and sacrificial. Such covenants are the heart of our nations and the order of the Eucharistic priesthood of the Church. They mirror the interpersonal unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The new commandment Christ gave to his apostles was to love one another as the Father loved Him, and He had loved them. That is very different and much more profound than loving others "as we love ourselves." <b>True masculine loves are driven outward in a saving mission to all humanity. </b>The love which bound the Father to the Son is the love than binds men together as fellow Christians, and is leaven to the love of fellow citizens.<br />
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Because the world is beset by evil, <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/04/fatherhood-filiation-and-fraternity.html">fatherhood needs a faithful son and a band of brothers (fraternity)</a> to effectively exercise authority. The fighting missionary bond of men was the proper formation to strike and defeat the principalities and powers which held the material world in slavery. The word "Israel" derives from STRUGGLE. Men cannot be good fathers unless first they are good sons, as Francis teaches. But it is also true that men cannot be good fathers unless there is a public socializing fraternity which strengthens, teaches, and assists men to safeguard families from the vicissitudes of nature, the marauding of criminals, and the perversity of Satan. No man can guard his house alone. A large group is needed because of the strength of our foes. A large group is needed because of the harshness of winter. A large group is needed because young males look not only to their individual fathers, but social groups of larger spatial-temporal consequence to establish their identity in the world as men. Most of our obstacles in nature and our enemies (seen and unseen) cannot be overcome by a man alone. When the male bond is broken, it is the widows and orphans who weep and the predators who cheer. It is the young males who become lost and disoriented.<br />
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On the day our Savior was named, Jesus entered the consecrated communal bond of Israel which He would reconstitute in priestly and political forms. Through His priestly Church and the baptized nations, He builds His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Fraternity is not only the foundation and end of peace – it is the pathway as well.<br />
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<a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/12/catholic-sociobiology-nature-communio.html"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/12/catholic-sociobiology-new-paradigm.html">Our full set of essays on Catholic Sociobiology</a></div>
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</div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-50986202010510388232023-12-28T00:00:00.001-06:002023-12-28T00:00:00.134-06:00December 28: The Feast of the Holy Innocents[first published December 28, 2014]<br />
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<i>David Pence writes:</i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioc1-G61mvrvBKtVGbcA3rtH81q10NIKsV_TSkqNG5ILTf0d_pGLvKsxo53NoJA0VFyIH0aQCMZbHr0A_B30dqFlrNRm7OeP08SX8a6TiVAcwvRKdH9jF1lycac4qMZ6EeqYVNLmC_Nn0/s1600/Holy-Innocents1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioc1-G61mvrvBKtVGbcA3rtH81q10NIKsV_TSkqNG5ILTf0d_pGLvKsxo53NoJA0VFyIH0aQCMZbHr0A_B30dqFlrNRm7OeP08SX8a6TiVAcwvRKdH9jF1lycac4qMZ6EeqYVNLmC_Nn0/s1600/Holy-Innocents1.jpg" width="202" /></a>The birth of a baby in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago revealed to chosen witnesses what his mother had kept hidden for nine months, and his Father in heaven had concealed before the foundation of the world. The angels sang hosanna from heaven, three wise rulers knelt to recognize a new kingdom was being established, and all wisdom would be recast in light of the star over the manger. The Jewish shepherds were there to acknowledge their Messiah and keep away the wolves. For whenever innocence and purity show their face in this still-fallen world, the wolves gather to destroy.<br />
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The day after Christmas, the Church reminds all whose hearts were warmed by the babe in the manger that Stephen was stoned for attesting to the baby-Savior’s true identity. Three days after Christmas, the Church liturgically remembers the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The three wise kings had bent their knees in homage and conformed their minds in faith. But a proud and ignorant Herod ordered a horrible bloodletting, so the screams of Jewish mothers losing their sons might erase the songs of joyous angels welcoming the Son of God.<br />
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Vigilant Joseph was warned in a dream of the danger and led his holy family hundreds of miles across hills and desert to the safety of Egypt. He must have pondered the death of so many sons of his countrymen as he guarded his sacred charges during the flight.<br />
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The Church also ponders their deaths on this day, and awards to those Holy Innocents the keys to the kingdom granted to martyred saints. Possibly their deaths and celestial fate may be a lesson for all who have suffered death as an "innocent:" the children at the time of Noah’s flood, the dutiful soldier drowned in the Red Sea, the cremated and tortured prisoners of the tyrants, the villagers buried by molten lava <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw0vfA33mIU">or a raging sea</a>. This day we reflect on how deeply ingrained and inescapable is suffering to the Christian vocation. And, possibly, this day we can also find meaning in those other deaths of innocents -- the child or mother or father who appear on God’s strange and deadly list of patients afflicted by infection or malignancy. May all who experience the mysterious reality of human suffering know the crown of glory bestowed upon the Jewish baby boys who were killed at the births of Moses and of Our Lord. <br />
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UPDATE -- From a sermon by Saint Quodvultdeus (a student of Saint Augustine):<br />
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"When they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come. </blockquote>
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"Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil... </blockquote>
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"How great a gift of grace is here! To what merits of their own do the children owe this kind of victory? They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ. They cannot use their limbs to engage in battle, yet already they bear off the palm of victory."</blockquote>
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FINALLY -- on this day, we Americans are mindful of our own slaughter of innocents. In some ways it is more horrible that Rachel, instead of weeping, is the one who brings her babe to be slaughtered for career or convenience. Feminism is a bloody Pharaoh. When the sacred goods and the innocents are defiled, sometimes we must cover our own and flee as did Joseph. Other times we must remember <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/12/father-and-sons-defending-sacred-real.html">the Maccabees at Hanukkah</a> and gather our brothers under the Father to stop the evil. For sure, we need a new approach as a profile movement <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/04/pro-life-professionals-jump-on-trump.html">organizing a culture of protection</a> not making one more claim for rights.Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-31921113194664701712023-12-25T00:00:00.001-06:002023-12-25T00:00:00.123-06:00CHRISTMAS: “Mortals, join the mighty chorus / which the morning stars began”[first published Christmas 2013]<br />
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<i><br /></i><i>David Pence writes:</i><br />
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On April 30, 1916, Germany and Austria introduced the first Daylight Savings Bill to reduce the evening use of lamplight fuel during the Great War. This resetting of clocks was to better harmonize man’s calculation of time with the physical experience of daylight in the summer months of the Northern Hemisphere.<br />
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On December 25th of every year, there is a world-wide resetting of our spatial-temporal and emotional clocks to an axial experience in the story of man. Every nation looks to Bethlehem, and remembers that in the time of Augustus Caesar a new Adam came to light their way. Our calendars pivot from B.C. (before Christ) to A.D. (<i>annos Domini</i>: the years of the Lord.) In the midst of that blessed night the Incarnation of Our Lord, which for months had been hidden in Our Lady, was made manifest to the Jewish shepherds of Israel. Days later the manifestation ('epiphany') would be experienced by the searching men of the Gentiles. It was a day that reordered the palette of human feelings by elevating joy in God’s presence over all the other emotions. The child in a crib reorganized the physical world bending a star toward Bethlehem to signal that all of matter had a new center of gravity.<br />
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Let angels and men sing the Good News – that the Creator of heaven and earth has come to pitch his tent among us. Let us rejoice and be glad. Let us never shrink this day that takes a season to celebrate into "all about family." To be sure families congregate to share the joy and awe but this is a cosmic feast day-an event for humanity. The true Age of Enlightenment is upon us and our calendars proclaim the new beginning.<br />
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UPDATE:<br />
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N.T. Wright on the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/12/19/4594929.htm">word made flesh.</a><br />
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<a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2012/12/chesterton-on-christmas.html">Chesterton on Christmas from The Everlasting Man</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://aleteia.org/2018/12/19/the-beautiful-polish-tradition-of-breaking-bread-on-christmas-eve/">The Poles share a special bread.</a><br />
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Puritans say a religious no while Victorians say a secular yes-<a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2018/december/putting-christ-back-in-christmas-not-enough-nativity-americ.html">A history of Christmas in America</a><br />
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<br />
<i>And finally, from Dale Ahlquist and the American Chesterton Society --</i><br />
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Why is celebrating Christmas an act of defiance?<br />
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We should not be surprised that Christmas is controversial. After all, as G.K. Chesterton points out, the word consists of the two most controversial and divisive words in the world: Christ and Mass. And so, in a culture that is increasingly anti-Christian, and especially anti-Catholic, we can expect that celebrating Christmas is going to be counter-cultural.<br />
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But we are not celebrating it in order to defy the culture. We are celebrating it because we are happy. We commemorate a joyful event, and we commemorate it joyfully. Of course we will sing and pray and worship. We will also eat and drink and laugh. But the celebration is still an act of defiance. What we are defying, however, is much bigger than our current culture. It goes back much further. It goes back to Pagan times.<br />
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“Why, course!” you say. “The pagans didn't like Christianity, and so naturally, celebrating Christmas was an act of defiance against the ancient pagan culture.”<br />
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No, that's not what I'm talking about. In fact, Christmas is not an act against the Pagan culture, it is an act very much in keeping with the Pagan culture.<br />
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“What?” you ask, slightly startled.<br />
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You heard me. Chesterton says it is the one celebration that survives out of all the ancient festivals that once covered the whole earth: “Christmas remains to remind us of those ages, whether Pagan or Christian, when the many acted poetry instead of the few writing it.”<br />
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“What?” you ask again, because you have no idea what that means.<br />
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I will try to explain, and I will keep quoting Chesterton, who says there is in this old festival something that is both Pagan and Christian: “... that trinity of eating, drinking and praying which to moderns appears irreverent, the holy day which is really a holiday.”<br />
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You still seem puzzled, so you ask: “Are you saying Christmas is a Pagan celebration? That the Christians simply borrowed it from the Pagans?”<br />
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No, that's not what I'm saying. The Christian meaning of Christmas is certainly not borrowed from anywhere. It is unique. We believe that a virgin gave birth to God Incarnate, that the divine babe was worshipped by angels and shepherds and eastern kings, that he came into the world to save the world from the eternal self-destruction of sin. It was this good news that changed the Pagan world forever. How did it change? It became Christian.<br />
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But the celebration of Christmas, a feast that has continued for two thousand years and has spread across the world like light from heaven, has fulfilled a need that men have had for at least the two thousand years that preceded it, that continued through the next millenia after it as the Gospel spread to lands where similar feasts were held in the names of gods who are now no more than footnotes. The feast remained after the Pagan gods were gone. It became the Christmas feast, but the feast itself had an important meaning that also remained even after it was christened.<br />
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“Explain,” you say, now losing your patience.<br />
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No, I respond. I will have Chesterton explain: “Christmas occurs in the winter. It is the element not merely of contrast, but actually of antagonism. It preserves everything that was best in the merely primitive or pagan view of such ceremonies or such banquets. If we are carousing, at least we are warriors carousing. We hang above us, as it were, the shields and battle-axes with which we must do battle with the giants of the snow and hail. All comfort must be based on discomfort. Man chooses when he wishes to be most joyful the very moment when the whole material universe is most sad. It is this contradiction and mystical defiance which gives a quality of manliness and reality to the old winter feasts which is not characteristic of the sunny felicities of the Earthly Paradise.”<br />
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A feast in the middle of winter is defiant of the winter. A fire blazing indoors is defiant of the cold world outside. It is a bold act of faith to have such when the circumstances are completely against it. It represented hope on the part of Pagans. It represents fulfillment on the part of the Christians, for Christ has come. And it is fitting that Christ should come in our “bleak midwinter.” He is the light that comes into a dark world. He is the hope that comes in the middle of despair. The lonely world has been crying out for him. And he has come. His name is Emmanuel. God is with us.<br />
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The darkness has not overcome the light. The brute cold has not quenched the flame. So of course we celebrate. And the celebration itself has warmed the whole world. Even the newly-polished pagans and the half-hearted heathens of the modern world, who avoid Christ, cannot help celebrating with the Christians at Christ's birth. They want to join the winter feast rather than pretend to prefer the cold. Christmas is lovable, and they know it. Love and joy come to you, and to you a wassail, too.<br />
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<br /></div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-46170811802846066842023-12-15T00:00:00.001-06:002023-12-15T09:01:13.867-06:00Father and Sons Defending the Sacred: The Real Hanukkah Lesson for Christians<i>by David Pence</i><br />
<i><br /></i>Hanukkah begins this evening. It will end in eight days. It is not "the Jewish Christmas." Several hundred years before Christ, the Greeks, the very cosmopolitan educated Greeks, ruled over Palestine. When Antiochus had become the ruler he sought a uniformity of customs and loyalty. Circumcision -- that sign between Abraham and G-d that all the males would shed their own blood to be united as a people in Covenant with the Almighty -- was banned. The sacred precincts of the temple were defiled. Women who had their sons circumcised "were publicly paraded with their babies hanging at their breasts and then thrown from the top of the city wall." <br />
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"... the Gentiles filled the temple with debauchery and revelry; they amused themselves with prostitutes and had intercourse with women even in the sacred court. They brought into the temple things that were forbidden, so the altar was covered with abominable offerings prohibited by the law." Most defilements were done by consenting adults and there were plenty of Jewish collaborators. "There was great mourning for Israel. Virgins and young men languished and the beauty of the women was disfigured. Her sanctuary was desolate as a desert. She became a stranger to her own offspring. Her feasts were turned into mourning, her sabbaths to shame, her honor to contempt. Her dishonor was as great as her glory had been and her joy was turned into mourning."<br />
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Against this sexual perversity so deeply linked with the defilement of sacral things, <b><span style="font-size: large;">Mattathias</span></b> and his five sons withdrew from the over-educated Greeks who scoffed at their ancient purity codes and rituals of divine worship. Before they organized to fight, the patriarch and the brothers "tore their garments, put on sackcloth and mourned bitterly." They knew the evil that had befallen their fellow Israelites followed their infidelity to G-d. They also knew they must organize to fight. They had seen a group of Israelites come before the Greeks and "refuse to profane the sabbath. Then the enemy attacked them and they did not retaliate... and they died with their wives and their children and their cattle to the number of a thousand persons." Mattathias resolved: "If we all do as our kinsmen have done and do not fight the Gentiles for our lives and our traditions they will soon destroy us from the earth. Let us fight against anyone who attacks us on the sabbath so that we may not all die as our kinsmen died in the hiding places." Mattathias and his men tore down the pagan altars. They also forcibly circumcised any uncircumcised boys they found in the territory of Israel." They stitched back together the only bond capable of ridding the land of abominations. They conscripted their state anew to guard the sacred of old. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmrrQ9YPqd4t6COScZ3cGsFsiGyR3xv6F6df33pUCoIGFkY1H9gJnkeM0rqlyRdnirpUhF4y2pMMZwusCDSq13SlGqcH5v0CkjceQNR9n6qtMf4WmxiEzVB_bwz_6j_AOHFj662neEioA/s1600/Mattathias.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmrrQ9YPqd4t6COScZ3cGsFsiGyR3xv6F6df33pUCoIGFkY1H9gJnkeM0rqlyRdnirpUhF4y2pMMZwusCDSq13SlGqcH5v0CkjceQNR9n6qtMf4WmxiEzVB_bwz_6j_AOHFj662neEioA/s640/Mattathias.jpg" width="409" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sculpture of Mattathias by Boris Schatz (d. 1932)<br />
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"When the time came for Mattathias to die, he said to his sons, 'Arrogance and scorn have now grown strong, it is a time of disaster and violent anger. Therefore, my sons, be zealous for the law and give your lives for the covenant of our fathers." He appointed his son Simeon because of his wisdom to be "like a father to them," and appointed his son Judas (called Maccabeus, the <i>'hammer'</i>) to be "the leader of your army and direct the war against the nations." His sons and the men they gathered around them defeated the Greeks. They tore down the defiled altar and built a new one with uncut stones. They repaired the sanctuary and purified the courts. On the anniversary of the day the Gentiles had defiled the temple they reconsecrated the sacred precinct with song and acts of worship. For eight days they celebrated the dedication, and then "Judas and his brothers and the entire congregation of Israel decreed that the days of the dedication of the altar should be observed with joy and gladness on the anniversary every year for eight days…" <br />
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There are many tales of noble martyrs who refused to profane the commands of the Lord before the Maccabees restored a civic order in consonance with G-d's decrees. In the Book of Maccabees the most notable was the mother and her seven sons who refused to defile themselves by eating pork. The holy mother watched her sons be tortured and killed and urged them one after another to persist in courage. Then "her womanly heart with manly courage" was pierced as well. In the Babylonian Talmud there is the story of the miracle of the oil in which one day's supply lasted for eight. When the Church recounts this re-dedication of the temple in her late November liturgy she couples the reading from Maccabees with the Gospel of Jesus cleansing the temple. Two centuries after the Maccabees, the Jewish convert from Tarsus asked Christians, "Do you not know that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit?"<br />
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For eight days let us Christians look for the lights of the candles shining forth from Jewish homes. They are not lit for the use of the household, but to give glory to G-d by reminding all who see them that the sacred practices of a culture can only be protected if there are fathers and sons who will covenant together under God to fight for them.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIN_yEZSlZXHZoy5t6yO4VLMLvXPdfCN5muZMfKyFWzujMGnBZtYi5AR4WK_e8SKSOVaB5cTEkAPcidlRT0gxyKYEpYFWOqgfc8i8I9uVor_TMCf_4JN6TTCicfeeTf-FJlWWF6sHoNME/s1600/candles.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIN_yEZSlZXHZoy5t6yO4VLMLvXPdfCN5muZMfKyFWzujMGnBZtYi5AR4WK_e8SKSOVaB5cTEkAPcidlRT0gxyKYEpYFWOqgfc8i8I9uVor_TMCf_4JN6TTCicfeeTf-FJlWWF6sHoNME/s400/candles.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hanukkah candles in Jerusalem</td></tr>
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Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-34079778625776661612023-12-12T00:00:00.001-06:002023-12-15T09:00:17.231-06:00December 12: Queen of Mexico, Our Lady of the Americas [first published on December 12, 2014]<br />
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<i>by David Pence</i><br />
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On October 12th of that seminal year of 1492, <b>Cristóbal Colón</b> named the land he sighted on the feast of Our Lady of the Pillar after her son: <i>San Salvador</i>. Thirty years later (1519-1521) Hernando Cortez would defeat Montezuma and the Aztec Empire, establishing the new Spain and eventually the nation of Mexico. Ten years later (1532-33) his second cousin, Francisco Pizarro, would defeat Emperor Atahualpa of the Incas in Peru. These military victories would set the groundwork for the Spanish nations of South and Central America.<br />
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In the same era another event would lay the "true spiritual foundation of America -- and of all the nations of the Americas -- North and South." The apparition of <b><span style="font-size: large;">Our Lady of Guadalupe</span></b> to the Nahuatl convert Juan Diego (December 1531) would synthesize the indigenous natives and Spanish warriors into a single <i>La Raza</i>. She appeared as an Aztecan beauty and told Juan Diego’s uncle (whom she healed) that her name would be Santa Maria de Guadalupe. This was the same name as the black Madonna of Castile – an inspiration to the Catholic warriors who established the nation of Spain through the <i>Reconquista</i> against the Muslims. That centuries-long war ended in 1492 just as Christopher Columbus (Cristobal Colon) planted the Christian vine in the Americas. She said she would be “the merciful mother of all of you who live united in this land, and of all mankind.” She was both of the natives and of the Spaniards, and she left Castilian roses and the name of a river in Spain to accompany her beautiful native countenance. <a href="https://onepeterfive.com/the-two-guadalupes-mary-and-the-crescent-moon/">(The Spanish Guadalupe and the meaning of the Crescent)</a><br />
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As Catholics <a href="http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20141212/news/141208286/">gather in ever growing numbers on this American feast day</a>, let us honor Mary and her Son by deepening our public bonds of religion and national citizenship. Our Lady of Guadalupe integrated cultures in her very person and provided a path to the syncretistic national identities of 8 million converted Aztec Indians and the evangelizing Catholic conquistadors. Gathering to acknowledge her loving motherhood, hundreds of miles north and half a millenium later, may our liturgical actions forge the new personalities of Catholic nation men who belong to the supernatural organic community of the Eucharistic Church as well as the covenanted civic brotherhoods of our respective nations.<br />
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<b>Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles</b>, who called her appearance “the spiritual foundation of the Americas,” has written <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/12/friday-bookreview-from-soul-of-bishop.html">a little masterpiece on immigration.</a> He categorizes immigration reform as a religious project, for America is a spiritual adventure. It is here in America that Chesterton says a “cosmic commonwealth” is being formed by “molding many peoples into the visible image of the citizen.” Archbishop Gomez, unlike all too many immigration proponents, sees a restoration of the idea of citizenship and an integrating Americanization as the necessary spiritual alternative to the "anarchy of diversity" and the destructive bias of "our elites" against "the ideals of citizenship and integration around a common national identity."<br />
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On this feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Catholics across the Americas will unite as brothers and sisters under our common mother. On other days our civic task will be to reestablish the distinct religious national brotherhoods of the United States and Mexico, which have been so frayed and torn in this age of atheism. May we mend our sacred flags and meet our complementary destinies as Christian nations acting in history to fulfill God’s Providence. We must ask the Queen to bring forth new <i>Cristeros</i>. Authoritative masculine civic personalities will be the blessed "peacemakers who will be called the sons of God.” A strong Catholic Mexican leader must regain control over outlaw provinces and diabolic criminal networks. A renewed Christian America will be led by men reasserting the police power of states to once again outlaw those federally sanctioned abominations that would make an Aztec blush. May Our Lady of Guadalupe provide the spiritual ground where brother nations can stand in fraternity to do the Will of Our Father.<br />
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<br />Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-25493401665979455202023-12-08T00:00:00.001-06:002023-12-08T00:00:00.132-06:00Dec 8th -- IMMACULATE CONCEPTION: She who is the greatest instrument of the Holy Spirit<i>[first published December 8, 2013]</i><br />
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In a pure act of mercy and grace God called Mary into existence free of original sin to be the new Eve. This truth was long held by Christians, but formally acknowledged by <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/LIBRARY/PAPALDOC/P9INEFF.htm">Pope Pius IX in 1854</a>.<br />
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Amidst these years of too many corrupted churchmen, it is no coincidence that the two infallibly declared papal dogmas of the last two centuries define the spotless beginning and the incorruptible end of Mary’s life when <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/08/august-15-solemnity-of-assumption.html">she shattered the ultimate glass ceiling. </a>These truths remind us that at her core the Apostolic Church is Marian, and she hath not sinned. It is a singular gift to the Catholic imagination that we have a feminine beauty to inspire our poems, our songs, and our prayers. Her ever-pure life cleanses the mind that contemplates her. Our understanding of Mary is a school in which we learn to understand our own human nature. For those of us who love her, humans are never <i><b>by nature</b></i> either neutered or depraved. <br />
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"Mary Immaculate, star of the morning,<br />
Chosen before the creation began,<br />
Chosen to bring in the light of thy dawning,<br />
Woe to the serpent and rescue to man.<br />
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Here, in this world of both shadow and sadness<br />
Veiling thy splendour, thy course hast thou run:<br />
Now thou art throned in all glory and gladness,<br />
Crowned by the hand of thy Saviour and Son.<br />
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Sinners, we worship thy sinless perfection;<br />
Fallen and weak, for thy pity we plead:<br />
Grant us the shield of thy sov’reign protection,<br />
Measure thine aid by the depth of our need.<br />
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Bend from thy throne at the voice of our crying,<br />
Bend to this earth which thy footsteps have trod:<br />
Stretch out thine arms to us, living and dying,<br />
Mary Immaculate, Mother of God."<br />
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On this <a href="http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6547">feast of the Immaculate Conception</a>, here is part of a prayer by Saint Maximilian Kolbe:<br />
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<b><i>O Immaculata, Queen of Heaven and earth, refuge of sinners and our most loving Mother, God has willed to entrust the entire order of mercy to you…</i></b></blockquote>
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<b><i>For wherever you enter you obtain the grace of conversion and growth in holiness, since it is through your hands that all graces come to us from the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.</i></b></blockquote>
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<b><i>V. Allow me to praise you, O Sacred Virgin.</i></b> </blockquote>
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<b><i>R. Give me strength against your enemies.</i></b></blockquote>
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<b><i>Amen.</i></b></blockquote>
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Father Kolbe organized his spiritual Militia in fealty to her who <b>"cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array"</b> (Song 6:9).<br />
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<a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/12/09/the-crowning-jewel-of-americas-catholic-church/">The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception</a> was recently crowned with its finally completed Dome of the Trinity. The Immaculate Conception is the patronal feast of the American Church. Ponder this prayer that Pope Francis wrote to the Immaculata:<br />
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"O Mary, our mother,<br />
today the People of God feast in hailing you as Immaculate,<br />
preserved forever from the contagion of sin.<br />
Receive the homage I offer you in the name of the Church<br />
that is in Rome and across the whole world.<br />
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To know that you, who are our Mother, are totally free from sin<br />
gives us great comfort.<br />
To know that, over you, evil has no power,
renews our hope and strength<br />
in the daily struggle that we must undertake<br />
against the threats of the evil one.<br />
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But in this fight we're not alone, we are not orphans, because Jesus,<br />
before dying on the cross,<br />
gave you to us as our Mother.<br />
We, then, while being sinners, are your children,<br />
sons and daughters of the Immaculate one,<br />
called to that holiness which shines in you from the beginning by God's grace.<br />
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Enlivened by this hope,<br />
we today seek your motherly protection for us,<br />
for our families,
for this city, for the entire world.<br />
May the power of God's love, which preserved you from original sin,<br />
through your intercession, free all humanity from every spiritual and material slavery,<br />
and make victorious, in our hearts and in events,
the design of the salvation of God.<br />
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Make it so for us, your children, that grace might prevail over pride<br />
and that we might become merciful<br />
as our heavenly Father is merciful.<br />
In this time that leads us to the feast of the Birthday of Jesus,<br />
teach us to go against the current:<br />
to strip ourselves, to lower ourselves, to give of ourselves;<br />
to listen, to be quiet, to focus away from ourselves,<br />
so to make space for the beauty of God, the source of true joy.<br />
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O our Immaculate Mother, pray for us!"<br />
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UPDATE -- It is on this day in 2015 that the Holy Father is instituting a Year of Mercy:<br />
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<b>"I have decided to call an extraordinary Jubilee that is to have the mercy of God at its center. It shall be a Holy Year of Mercy. We want to live this Year in the light of the Lord’s words: 'Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (cf. Lk 6:36).' "</b></blockquote></div>
Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-82622809332957127082023-12-03T00:00:00.003-06:002023-12-03T00:00:00.134-06:00December 3: Saint Francis Xavier--Completing the Body of Christ in the EastFrancis Xavier was among the original companions of Ignatius Loyola. They had a different view of male fellowship in their beginning. Instead of "small group accountability self help sessions" or even worse the affectionate perversions of spousal friendships, the 16th century brothers in Christ took the globe and divided it among themselves for the Kingdom. Xavier was sent to the East.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A men's group feeling accountable:--Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Peter Faber</td></tr>
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In India he wrote:<br />
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<i>"Many people hereabouts are not becoming Christian for one reason: because there is nobody to make them Christians. Again and again I have thought of going around to the Universities of Europe , especially Paris, and everywhere crying out like a madman riveting the attention of those with more learning than charity: "What a tragedy; how many souls are being shut out of heaven and falling into hell, thanks to you." </i><br />
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After his work in India, roughly five centuries ago, <b>Francis Xavier</b> stepped ashore the southern port city of Kagoshima. The Gospel had arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun.<br />
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Francis was enchanted by the people: “It seems to me that we shall never find…another race to equal the Japanese.”<br />
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From a letter that the Basque saint wrote to his fellow Jesuits back in Europe:<br />
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<i>“The Japanese doctrines teach absolutely nothing concerning the creation of the world, of the sun, the moon, the stars, the heavens, the earth, sea, and the rest, and do not believe that they have any origin but themselves. The people were greatly astonished on hearing it said that there is one sole Author and common Father of souls, by whom they were created. This astonishment was caused by the fact that in their religious traditions there is nowhere any mention of a Creator of the universe. If there existed one single First Cause of all things, surely, they said, the Chinese, from whom they derive their religion, must have known it. For the Japanese give the Chinese the pre-eminence in wisdom and prudence in everything relating either to religion or to political government. They asked us a multitude of questions concerning this First Cause of all things; whether He were good or bad, whether the same First Cause were the origin of good and of evil. We replied that there exists one only First Cause, and He supremely good, without any admixture of evil.”</i></blockquote>
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The Japanese who <a href="http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/landry/00705.html">did come to embrace the fullness of the Faith </a>were remarkable in never flinching at the “cost of discipleship.” Our review of the chilling novel of Japanese Christianity, <u><a href="https://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/03/friday-book-review-silence-by-endo.html">The Silence.</a> </u> The unique view of Singapore's Rev. Dr. Simon Chan on Christianity and evangelizing Asia<u>- Grassroots Asian Theology </u> <u> </u><a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/05/friday-bookreview-grassroots-asian.html">Our Review.</a><br />
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The definitive authority on the interplay of Catholicism and Japanese national culture is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Xaviers-Legacies-Catholicism-Japanese-Religions/dp/0774820225/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403491716&sr=1-1&keywords=xavier%27s+legacies">Professor Kevin Doak.</a> Our review of <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/09/christian-realism-mystical-body-of-japan.html">Japan's Holy War by Walter Skya </a>on the sacral nature of Japanese Shintoism. <br />
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Pope Francis has a very Jesuit approach to the great eastern nations including China. <a href="https://doctorpence.blogspot.com/search?q=pope+francis+chinese+christians">He is not betraying the Church in China. </a> Just as the Church must breathe with both lungs and reconcile with Eastern Orthodoxy so the Body of Christ is incomplete without humanity's elder brother of China, and the other great civilizational nations of the East-- Japan, Vietnam, and Korea. There is no better feast day to look seriously at true reconciliation of our nation with these great civilizational national cultures. There are all sorts of candidates running for the American Presidency stoking enmity with Russia, Iran or China. If there is enough hatred and fear, Americans might think we need the pugnacious leadership of a Niki Haley or Marco Rubio to protect us from these perils. On this feast day let us remember the Jesuit missionaries and especially Francis, the missionary of the East, who sought to <a href="https://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/03/christian-realism-new-paradigm-for-china.html">draw men into Christian fraternity not Darwinian war.</a>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-38361968027830489652023-12-03T00:00:00.001-06:002023-12-03T00:00:00.134-06:00ADVENT and the three comings of Christ(first published December 1, 2013; edited 2017)<br />
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<i>by Dr. David Pence</i><br />
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The Church year begins today as we enter into the Advent season to prepare for the Coming of Christ in History, in Mystery, and in Majesty.<br />
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First we recall the long period of history before He came to Mary at the Annunciation and was born in Bethlehem the first Christmas night. We reflect on the setting aside of Israel and the setting aside of Mary – the perfect temple who is a template for our souls. But the significance of Christ's entrance into history cannot be confined to the short time humans have been on earth. His coming is the cosmic culmination of matter itself. The Incarnation of Christ is the epicenter of <i>natural history</i>, in that physical matter now has a new interpersonal center of gravity in Christ and His Queen Mother. The great mass of the physical universe dissipates into space while the tiny earth is set aside for life. The garden is set aside for man, the Israelites for Mary, and Mary for Christ. His life and death will form the center of human history as he makes holy the forms of interpersonal communion that will be the foundation stones of a Living Temple. He establishes his holy priesthood. His sacred brethren will man the Ark of the Church and lead the hunt to separate the Evil One from the communion of the living. <b>Christ has come in history. </b><br />
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The separative and unification acts which characterized His coming in history are continued in the liturgy. The Holy Spirit draws mankind into the Trinity by incorporation in the Body of the Son. The Apostolic Church fishes for men dispersed at sea and reconstitutes mankind through Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. This present-day coming of Jesus is fully experienced only in the sacramental life of the Church. His Real Presence is still with us here on earth. We are not just with Him but becoming Him through the Eucharist. Being in the s<i>tate of grace </i>secures us to an ark of angels and saints amidst the floodwaters about us. The unspeakable intensity of this Eucharistic incorporation has always made Catholics less likely to discuss our day-to-day "personal relationship with Christ". <i>Theosis</i> or becoming a member of the Mystical Body of Christ through sanctifying grace seem better ways to express this sacramental reality. <b>Christ comes today in mystery. </b><br />
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Christ has established His Kingdom on earth and is reorganizing all social relations around the Eucharistic priesthood, the sacrament of marriage, and the covenants of the nations. He is moving history to its culmination when He will return amidst his angels and the Church to fully restore His kingship by uniting the submitting nations and dispersing the Evil One from the earth. We are not waiting for our individual souls to go to heaven. We are working to draw humanity into the Body of Christ. That is truly the Opus Dei which Christians share. Led by the Holy Spirit, we conspire to make humanity fit to be the Body of our returning Head. This is the one true world wide conspiracy. We have put on the Heart of Christ and are building the Kingdom on earth to be consummated in the fitting time of the Lord. Our mission is to be sure at that time of the final separation and expulsion, the Devil gets as few of our people as possible. <b>Christ is coming in majesty. </b> <br />
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So let us begin our Advent – the little Lent in which we set aside some part of ourselves to better attend these three comings.<br />
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Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-46998035147395976072023-11-30T00:00:00.000-06:002023-11-30T00:00:00.130-06:00Nov 30: Saint Andrew and the 2,000 Byzantine monks on the Holy Mountain[first published November 30, 2016]<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">MOUNT ATHOS</span></b> in northeastern Greece is one of the powerhouses of prayer that keeps our tired old world going -- because sturdy men of faith submit their hearts to God.<br />
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On this feast day of the <a href="https://oca.org/saints/lives/2016/11/30/103450-apostle-andrew-the-holy-and-all-praised-first-called">Holy Apostle Andrew</a>, it is right that we deepen our understanding of our Christian brothers in Greece and Russia. East and West, the bonds of a praying brotherhood define the monastic and <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/06/solemnity-of-saint-peter-and-saint-paul.html">Apostolic Church</a>. But in the heart of this all-male environment where even the animals must be male, there is a special presence and she is decidedly<a href="https://anthropologyofaccord.weebly.com/mary-video-series.html"> feminine.</a><br />
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"There are 20 monasteries on Mount Athos of which 17 are Greek, one Russian, one Serbian, and one Bulgarian. There are also twelve <i>Skites</i> (similar to monasteries but much smaller), a large number of <i>Kellia</i> (large farm houses), <i>Kalyves</i> (smaller houses), <i>Kathismata</i> (small houses for a single monk) and <i>Hesychasteria</i> (hermitages or caves in desolate cliff faces, for the most austere hermits)."<br />
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From the parish bulletin of a Russian Orthodox church in Minneapolis:<br />
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Last October, Fr. Andrew and I visited Mt. Athos, <b><span style="font-size: large;">affectionately known as the Garden of the Theotokos.</span></b> As we experienced this beautiful place where God’s glory seems to radiate from everything, we were made aware of her presence. When we spoke to the monks in that holy place, they would refer to her and say things like: "Whatever the holy Mother wants." They live in humble submissiveness to her and understand the value of her intercessory prayers and guidance. We met an older monk on one of the remote walking paths by his hut (it was very old and abandoned-looking), who explained to us that he had lived 30 years alone with the Mother of God in "her garden." </blockquote>
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Sit back and enjoy one of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RwLvywlFC8">finest segments</a> that has ever appeared on "60 Minutes."<br />
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UPDATE: Here is a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQm3Xti2w-k">short video</a> of one of President Putin's visits to Mount Athos. He was joined by the Patriarch of Moscow.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">Let us praise Andrew, the herald of God, / the namesake of courage, / the first-called of the Savior’s disciples / and the brother of Peter. / </span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;">As he once called to his brother, he now cries out to us: /<b> "Come, for we have found the One whom the world desires!"</b></span></i></div>
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Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-18967537628294380632023-11-26T00:00:00.001-06:002023-11-26T00:00:00.138-06:00Bending the knee to "Christ the King of Fearful Majesty" as the Church Year ends with the final Drama [first published November 25, 2011]<br />
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<b style="font-size: x-large;"><i>"Yes, I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice." </i></b><b style="font-size: x-large;"><i> (Gospel of St. John)</i></b></div>
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<em>Dr. Pence writes:</em></div>
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The liturgical year of the Church ends with this feast day to remind us how sacred history will come to its fulfillment with the return of Christ as King. Yes, Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior. He is also the Ruler of Nature, the Lord of History, and the Slayer of the Leviathan. We know Him in the Eucharist as we are becoming not his friend, but incorporated in His Body. We remember his Incarnational transformation of physical nature at the Annunciation, and we await his triumphant coming again as Head of the Mystical Body incorporating all of humanity in Himself. Catholics are always living within these three comings of Christ. Maybe because the Eucharist is less like friendship and more like incorporation, we don’t emotionally emphasize our "personal relationship with Christ" -- but we look, instead, from the vantage of Holy Communion, both backward and forward to the actions of the Cosmic King.</blockquote>
The feast of Christ the King was instituted by Pope Pius IX in 1925 as atheistic movements were persecuting Catholics in Spain and Mexico and the Orthodox in Russia. In his encyclical <i><b><a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas.html">Quas Primas</a></b></i> he asserted the independent authority of the Church in relation to States. He also asserted that political communities were subject to the authority of Christ as well. Christ is King of the whole man and the whole of his social relations. This feast calls Christian men to understand that civic life cannot be divorced from God. As we deepen our bonds in the church we must shape our nations as well in a fraternal international order in consonance with Divine Providence. Establishing the Kingship of Christ is more a matter of ordered loves than creedal assertion. Christ the King and devotion to the Sacred Heart are deeply tied. Pius IX ordered on this day every year that MANKIND <a href="https://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/06/from-personal-piety-to-social-kingship.html">be consecrated to the Sacred Heart.</a> Politics is one of man’s highest callings when understood as forming fraternal bonds to provide for the civic common good by enforcing justice. Such <i>a city on a hill </i>gives honor to Christ as King and Lord. A man is a sign of Christ when he exercises legitimate authority. This feast is a good day to reflect on this dimension of Christian identity. We are meant to be rulers over ourselves first. The father and mother are to rule over their children. Politically men are called to establish law and order to rule our civic communities and lastly as a human race we are ordered to have dominion over the earth. It is a great threat to both Church and State that the ruler as an integral part of the Christian personality has become so neglected. This is particularly true in the priesthood which is the primary Christian template of a fraternity of ordered love and authority.<br />
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Christ shows us not only the face of God, but He has enlightened us to our own true nature as well. Man is by nature a <i>eusocial</i> organism in which all of humanity is united in an interpersonal union headed by the alpha male. That is our final perfection as creatures truly made in the image of an interpersonal Trinity. On our way to that final union we live in the communal forms of marriage and nations. Christ’s Kingdom on earth is His Father’s Kingdom. Christ is King, but he is a Son as well. We are incorporated in his sonship-filiation. This is what we pray for in the prayer He taught us, that the rule of the Father would be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let us bow to the king and accept the order of patriarchy. A particular concern of Pius IX in declaring this feast was to reassert that modern man is not an emancipated individual but still a subject to the authority of the one true King. Let us contemplate this final feast in the Church calendar, in order to better greet the baby at Christmas and receive His Body in the Eucharist -- remembering that when the trumpet finally sounds, indeed, he will "bestride the narrow world like a Colossus" <b>and Eternal King</b>. </blockquote>
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UPDATE -- A stanza from a translation of the <a href="http://www.preces-latinae.org/thesaurus/Trinitas/TeDeum.html">'Te Deum'</a>:<br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;">"From Thy high celestial home,</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"> Judge of all, again returning,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"> we believe that Thou shalt come</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"> in the dreaded Doomsday morning;</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"> when Thy voice shall shake the earth,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-large;"> and the startled dead come forth."</span></i><br />
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Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-61385149086727256642023-11-23T00:00:00.001-06:002023-11-23T00:00:00.138-06:00THANKSGIVING: Don’t call it Turkey Day[first published November 22, 2012]<br />
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<i>David Pence writes:</i><br />
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Thanksgiving Day is an embarrassing holiday for the atheists. <b>Whom</b> should one thank?<br />
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Nonbelievers first turned <b>this day of formal national prayer </b>into a rekindling of an earlier bliss betwixt Pilgrims and Indians. A little rewriting, and secularists turned the feast into a memorial of Pilgrim settlers thanking the native-born Americans for their ecological wisdom that allowed us a full table and survival through the winters. As usual, the guilt-ridden white folk reminded us of something true but missed the real story. There were formal acts of prayerful thanksgiving before we became a nation but unfortunately for the Protestant imagination the first such acts were in that old liturgical form <a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2014/05/13/americas-first-mass/">of the Catholic Mass.</a> <br />
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The Pilgrim parable was soon debunked by Indian activists who reminded the well-meaning storytellers that the only gifts white men gave Indians were smallpox blankets. "Who wants to celebrate that, white man?"<br />
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Instead of returning to the first Congress or Washington or Lincoln to get the holy day back on track as a civic duty of a repentant nation to a Sovereign God, our adaptable consumer culture had a new answer. Let the appetites be sacralized! There was a surge to elevate not "<b>Whom</b> We Thank" but "<b>What</b> We Eat." Turkey Day was proclaimed!<br />
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No more messy cross-cultural narratives. Instead of asking that our sins be forgiven and as a nation we bow to God, a turkey was pardoned and the whole affair was consummated in a next-day orgy of shopping called Black Friday. That spin-off Feast Day is demanding a vigil service of its own, which may drive the whole embarrassment of public thanksgiving to God back in the memory hole where school prayer now abides.<br />
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Contrast our evolving celebration of <i>Black Friday Eve</i> with George Washington’s understanding of Thanksgiving Day in the first sentence of <a href="http://www.pilgrimhall.org/ThanxProc1789.htm">his 1789 Proclamation</a>:<br />
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<b>“Whereas it is the duty of all nations to recognize the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor…”</b><b> </b></blockquote>
Contrast <i>Turkey Day</i> with the content of his prayer:<br />
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<b>“And also that we may unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions -- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually…”</b><b> </b></blockquote>
This is a day as a nation we are supposed to perform a religious <u>duty</u><b> </b>-- to ask forgiveness and give thanks to a Divine Ruler who governs not only the lives of men, but the public communal forms of men: the nations. That is what Congress requested Washington to declare; and that is what this national day of prayer for forgiveness and thanksgiving is still meant to be. Let us assemble in our houses of worship, at community kitchens, and at our family tables but remember we are acting as members of the larger national political community. Let us ask God forgiveness for turning away from Him and allowing these sacred goods to be defiled: His holy Name, our sacred flag, our national brotherhood, the institution of marriage, the protective love of mother for child, and the sacred virginity and innocence of our young. In Lincoln's words: <b>"with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience...we fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and union."</b><br />
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UPDATE: Be sure to check out <a href="http://praybrethren.blogspot.com/2013/11/thanksgiving-religious-and-civic-holiday.html">Andrew Lynch's essay.</a><br />
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The <a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/first-national-thanksgiving-proclamation-1777">Thanksgiving proclamation</a> of our First Continental Congress.<br />
A reminder from "War on the Rocks" that Thanksgiving is a <a href="http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/thanksgiving-an-american-holiday-forged-in-war-2/">holiday forged in national wars.</a><br />
<a href="http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm">Lincoln declared the last Thursday of every November as a national holiday</a> at the bequest of Sara Josepha Hale, editor of the popular magazine, <i>Godey's Lady's Book. </i><br />
<br />Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-14309591137141021802023-11-22T00:00:00.001-06:002023-11-22T00:00:00.142-06:00NOVEMBER 22 -- The Maturation of Christian Manhood: John Kennedy and the Spiritual Destiny of Nations<div>
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<i>Dr. David Pence writes:</i></div>
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"A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket." </div>
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(Charles Peguy)<br />
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A half-century ago, on the feast of Saint Cecilia, an armed atheist assassinated the first Catholic President of Christian America. It was a well-aimed blast. Those ringing shots of death silenced the voice of an elected Knight who was calling his nation and other nations into an articulate and armed defense of the ordered liberty that is the hallmark of Christian civilization. </div>
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John Kennedy was a masculine liberal. He went forth to lead the land he loved, knowing that establishing a just political order amidst the nations was an assignment that God had given the laymen of the Church that claimed him since infancy. Deep in his heart, in his mind, and in his soul he understood that our shared identity as Americans was built on a band of brothers who had fulfilled a sacred obligation. When he spoke, the timbre of his voice called men into that band of brothers. Women cheered that such a bond would protect them.</div>
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When he spoke <a href="http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/ALL6YEBJMEKYGMCntnSCvg.aspx">in 1960 to the Houston Ministerial Association</a> on the religious question, he turned their eyes outward to the atheist menace that threatened Protestant and Catholic alike in our shared nation under God. He reminded them there was a military oath that secured religious liberty in the dangerous world of tyrants and the mass armies of paganism. That same military oath drew together Catholic and Protestant men at the Alamo. Only the record of their last names would attest their ancestral faiths, for "there was no religious test at the Alamo." It was this brotherhood of battle that Washington had hoped would leaven the national feelings of affection among Americans. It was such bonds that Lincoln proposed as the sinews of a new nation baptized in the bloodshed of Gettysburg. It was such bonds that the patriarch Abraham marked in that first shedding of male blood to forge a public. All nations were blessed in Him when he fathered the masculine covenant that sustains every nation.</div>
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On that day in Houston, Kennedy reminded the religious men of duty who gathered to hear him that he, his fallen brother, and they were bound by a common civic duty. He offered himself to fill the office, which would govern the military brotherhood, which secured their liberty as ministers to fulfill their religious obligations to God. He ended his oration reminding his listeners that the presidency was an oath, and he had taken oaths before -- "so help me God."</div>
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A decade before his speech to the Protestant ministers, Kennedy explained his understanding of the person, national loyalty and the Kingdom of God <a href="http://www.npri.org/docLib/20121003_JFK_speech_at_Notre_Dame_searchable.pdf">to students and faculty at Notre Dame.</a> </div>
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<i>“You have been taught that each individual has an immortal soul, composed of an intellect which can know the truth and a will which is free. Because of this every Catholic must believe in the essential dignity of the human personality on which any democracy must rest… A Catholic’s dual allegiance to the Kingdom of God on the one hand prohibits unquestioning obedience to the state on the other hand as an organic unit.”</i></div>
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Five months before his assassination, Kennedy demonstrated his providential view of the role of nations in the destiny of mankind <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9317">during his visit to Ireland.</a></div>
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<i>“For the Ireland of 1963, one of the youngest of nations and the oldest of civilizations, has discovered that the achievement of nationhood is not an end but a beginning. In the years since independence, you have undergone a new and peaceful revolution, an economic and industrial revolution, transforming the face of this land while still holding to the old spiritual and cultural values…</i><br />
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<i><br />"Self-determination can no longer mean isolation. No nation, large or small, can be indifferent to the fate of others, near or far. Modern economics, weaponry and communications have made us realize more than ever that we are one human family and this one planet is our home.</i></div>
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<i><br />" 'The world is large,' wrote John Boyle O'Reilly.<br /> 'The world is large when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide,<br /> But the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.'</i></div>
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<i><br />"The world is even smaller today, though… across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.</i></div>
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<i><br />"Some may say that all this means little to Ireland... It may be asked, how can a nation as small as Ireland play much of a role on the world stage?</i></div>
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<i><br />"I would remind those who ask that question, including those in other small countries, of the words of one of the great orators of the English language:<br />'All the world owes much to the little five feet high nations. The greatest art of the world was the work of little nations. The most enduring literature of the world came from little nations. The heroic deeds that thrill humanity through generations were the deeds of little nations fighting for their freedom. And oh, yes, the salvation of mankind came through a little nation.' "</i><br />
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John Kennedy as a Catholic man of the Irish tribe integrated the male citizenship of powerful and accomplished Anglo-Saxon Protestant America. He furthered this integrative work by proposing immigration reform no longer linked to racial ancestry quotas. He, slowly but then surely, argued the case for racial integration. Like Eisenhower before him, he sent federal troops to save black students from the fury of the huge popular protest movements against integration. The first cries of “power to the people” against authority in the 1960s were white mobs opposing integration.<br />
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Catholic Kennedy had argued that public offices could have no religious test. In his televised address to the nation on civil rights he proposed that America could not fight tyranny abroad if it was not colorblind at home. “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution… I want to pay tribute to those citizens North and South who have been working in their communities to make life better for all. They are acting not out of a sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency. Like our soldiers and sailors in all parts of the world they are meeting freedom's challenge on the firing line, and I salute them for their honor and their courage.”</div>
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Always he spoke of honor, courage, and shared duty.<br />
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That November when he died had begun with the assassination of two Catholic brothers who were fighting for their Asian nation in the struggle against the armed atheism of state tyrannies. <a href="https://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/11/november-2-assassination-of-president.html">On All Souls Day the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were assassinated in a military coup inflamed by newspaper reporters, and instigated by the new US Ambassador and members of our State Department.</a> The CIA, the US military, and the Catholic Attorney General opposed the killing. President Kennedy mismanaged the rift in his government leading to the killing he called "abhorrent." The <i>Mandate from Heaven </i>was removed from both Catholic Presidents that month of the dead in 1963.</div>
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John Kennedy, like King David, marred his public life by sins of infidelity. Like King David he wept at the death of an infant son; and like David, his older son would die hanging between heaven and earth. He paid for his sins against marriage with the deaths of his male heirs. He paid for his betrayal of his Asian Uriah with his own death by the hand of their common atheist foe.</div>
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An ancient Roman liturgy, which he attended on Sundays and Days of Obligation, shaped John Kennedy. He knelt to pray and went to auricular confession. He lit candles in churches all over the world for the soul of his brother killed in a naval plane crash over the English Channel. He saw religion as a public duty to the Sovereign of the nations. He saw the nation as a brotherhood of protectors, and he understood an alliance of nations as the agents of History. He had a deep Catholic sense of humanity as one, and a sailor’s view of the earth as a small ship upon the sea of the universe. He knew what Nikita Khrushchev knew and Mao Tse-tung did not appreciate. He knew nuclear war must be prevented. He also knew what both of them knew: that there was a great conflict about how mankind should be organized. He wanted the flourishing of free nations under God. The Communists would use "national fronts" to re-institute the Tower of a Globalist Atheist Babel, which needed no god and would in time dispense of the churches, nations, and families.<br />
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A hero like Kennedy has many descendants who claim his name but few men who share his heart. He tried to replace the overwhelming technology of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with Special Forces of men who would fight on the ground and win the hearts and minds of the new national leaders of Africa, South America, the Mid-east and Asia. He would replace the fleets of nuclear bombers with Green Berets and helicopters for security; and the Peace Corps and water wells for infrastructure and education. Launching unmanned drones inside Muslim nations and bombing the Orthodox cities of Serbia as a substitute for foot soldiers countered his legacy. </div>
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He was no stuttering king in the war against the armed atheists of state tyrannies. Archbishop Philip Hannan, the combat veteran who gave JFK’s funeral homily, built it on Kennedy’s Scriptural syntax. The celibate combat bishop and the biblical fighting liberal are men our nation needs again. Their world was one of embedded un-chosen obligations, marked by protective duties assigned by gender, and priestly piety and purity proclaiming the supernatural order. On this feast of the virgin martyr, whose sweet life made her the patron of music, let us remember the warrior king who made words beat to move the hearts of his countrymen: </div>
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<b>“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”</b><b> </b></blockquote>
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Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-44118824504808366592023-11-19T00:00:00.000-06:002023-11-19T00:00:00.137-06:00November 19: “Give rest, O Savior, to the soul of thy servant”<i>“…whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet…” </i><br />
<i> (Ishmael in <u>Moby Dick</u>)</i><br />
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Entering this week of high anniversaries of President Lincoln’s <a href="https://www.greatamericandocuments.com/speeches/lincoln-gettysburg/">words at Gettysburg</a> (Nov 19, 1863) and of <a href="http://m.washingtonpost.com/local/at-jfks-funeral-50-years-ago-a-buglers-broken-note-spoke-for-a-grieving-nation/2013/11/10/a565c2f0-4625-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html">John Kennedy’s death</a> in Dallas – as well as the liturgical year drawing to a close, with the Church bowing before the authority and power of Christ our King – the opening scene of Pasternak’s <u>Doctor Zhivago</u> came to mind:<br />
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<b>They walked and walked and sang “Memory Eternal,” and whenever they stopped, the singing seemed to be carried on by their feet, the horses, the gusts of wind. </b><b>Passersby made way for the cortege, counted the wreaths, crossed themselves. The curious joined the procession, asked: “Who’s being buried?” “Zhivago,” came the answer. “So that’s it. Now I see.” “Not him. Her.” “It’s all the same. God rest her soul. A rich funeral.” </b><b>The last minutes flashed by, numbered, irrevocable. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and those who dwell therein.” The priest, tracing a cross, threw a handful of earth onto Marya Nikolaevna. They sang “With the souls of the righteous.” A terrible bustle began. The coffin was closed, nailed shut, lowered in. A rain of clods drummed down as four shovels hastily filled the grave. Over it a small mound rose. A ten-year-old boy climbed onto it.</b><b> Only in the state of torpor and insensibility that usually comes at the end of a big funeral could it have seemed that the boy wanted to speak over his mother’s grave. </b><b>He raised his head and looked around from that height at the autumn wastes and the domes of the monastery with an absent gaze. His snub-nosed face became distorted. His neck stretched out. If a wolf cub had raised his head with such a movement, it would have been clear that he was about to howl. Covering his face with his hands, the boy burst into sobs. A cloud flying towards him began to lash his hands and face with the wet whips of a cold downpour. A man in black, with narrow, tight-fitting, gathered sleeves, approached the grave. This was the deceased woman’s brother and the weeping boy’s uncle, Nikolai Nikolaevich Vedenyapin, a priest defrocked at his own request. He went up to the boy and led him out of the cemetery.</b></blockquote>
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<i>“Alleluia. Weeping at the grave creates the song.”</i><br />
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<br /></div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-89616553021440327252023-11-18T00:00:00.001-06:002023-11-18T00:00:00.138-06:00The Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul[first published November 18, 2015]<br />
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<i>by David Pence</i><br />
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The Catholic Church on this day each year celebrates the dedication of the churches of St Peter and St Paul in Rome. St. Peter and St. Paul drank of the Lord's Chalice and were both martyred in Rome. “Those two famous shoots of the Divine Seed burst forth in a great progeny.” <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/06/solemnity-of-saint-peter-and-saint-paul.html">Their sacral brotherhood of blood served as the foundation stones of the apostolic Church.</a><br />
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Their tombs were pilgrimage destinations from the beginning. The basilicas were built over their sacred remains by Constantine in the 4th century, and then refurbished and rededicated in later centuries. Christianity’s priesthood is centered in Rome where the graves of the martyred blood brothers signal the early development of Christ's Body as surely as Bethlehem and Nazareth. The reclamation project of winning back territory from the Prince of this world is celebrated<a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/12/father-and-sons-defending-sacred-real.html"> especially when a sacred space is carved out of the land and stone to consecrate a church. </a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Interior of St Paul's</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Basilica of St Peter</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU2Gev8qFd9nXbiscj-BLzl_UGGISGcS0b9sbVTQxhVAuxReHgbaqy5B9JSg53ss0QnOdioEHYC_1UkrF_Tm7R3uogp38KPFepC5V0aE_npLM8-LzRyvM-wiS3nwGnbk81CAO8fuOCres/s1600/Peter%2527s+chair.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU2Gev8qFd9nXbiscj-BLzl_UGGISGcS0b9sbVTQxhVAuxReHgbaqy5B9JSg53ss0QnOdioEHYC_1UkrF_Tm7R3uogp38KPFepC5V0aE_npLM8-LzRyvM-wiS3nwGnbk81CAO8fuOCres/s640/Peter%2527s+chair.jpg" width="432" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Chair of Peter upheld by<br />
Saints Ambrose, Athanasius, John Chrysostom, and Augustine<br />
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Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-68738098074201739172023-11-09T09:18:00.001-06:002023-11-09T09:18:00.135-06:00Nov. 9th -- Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome: Sacred Space and the Cleansing of the Temple(first published November 9, 2014)<br />
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<i>by David Pence</i><br />
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It may seem odd that a feast day celebrates the consecration of a church. Think of it as a time to reflect on all the ways God and his Church have set aside sacred space to bring Creator and man in closer union. Out of nothingness, he set a platform of matter where man could stand and know and love. In the hostile expanding universe, He set the solar system and earth in just the right place for life. Then, from inanimate matter he enclosed a cell: a set-aside enclosed space which is the structure of all physical life. He set aside a garden amidst the earth for the best of his handiwork.<br />
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After man was cast out from the holy place because he defiled it, Noah and his sons were instructed to set aside an ark where they could survive the Deluge. God made all the men under Abraham a set-aside sacred brotherhood when he ordered them circumcised. When He gave Moses the Ten Commandments, He also instructed him in building a new sacred space: the Ark of the Covenant. There God would dwell amidst his elected people. That holy chest of the desert wanderers eventually became the Temples of the Promised Land. And from that Jewish culture came the Virgin-Mother, the new sacred Ark. She was set aide in her beginning by her Immaculate Conception and at her earthly end by her Assumption into Heaven. She was the ultimate sacred space. And He dwelt among us.<br />
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There is a setting aside of sacred spaces, and days and persons, because the whole of matter and living beings is not destined to be drawn into the Body of Christ. There is a separation which makes this ground here, <b>holy</b>; and that ground over there, <b>profane</b>. There is a separation that will send the devil to Hell, while drawing <i>the poor in spirit into the Body of Christ. </i>Maintaining this separation is so crucial to the divine plan that spaces and persons which have been consecrated must be destroyed or purified if they become contaminated. The root of the word "holy" actually means "set aside or separated."<br />
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The celebration of Hanukkah by the Jews is an 8-day commemoration of the Purification of the Temple after it had been defiled by a desecrating Greek king. When the Maccabees cleansed the temple altar from the Greek abominations, they destroyed the old altar and then rebuilt a new one. <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/12/father-and-sons-defending-sacred-real.html">The Maccabees could end the desecrations only by warfare. </a>They were led by a father and his sons. Once again we hear the biblical lesson that without a fighting patriarchal fraternity there is no defense of the sacred center. (Hanukkah really isn't "the Jewish Christmas.")<br />
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The liturgy of this day reminds us that human beings are temples of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit of God dwells within us. Ezekiel has his vision of the sanctifying sacramental graces flowing like a river from the new temple of the Church. This day's Gospel recalls the Maccabees. Christ swings a purging whip to cleanse his Father’s house. In that same week on the night before he dies, he will do his other great pre-Crucifixion purifying act when he cleanses his sacred Apostles of the Judas-priest and orders them to do the same through the ages. Today,<a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/07/catholic-sociobiology-only-sacred-is.html"> let us reflect on sacred spaces</a> and our duty to <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2015/07/friday-bookreview-in-defense-of-purity.html">keep them pure</a>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">by El Greco (d. 1614)</td></tr>
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UPDATE: The Lateran in Rome was dedicated in November 324. It was the first Church built in Rome after Constantine's Edict in 313 allowed Christianity a recognized public identity. Emperor Constantine convoked the first Ecumenical Council - at Nicaea -- the following May.<br />
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"The beauty and harmony of the churches, destined to give praise to God, also draws us human beings, limited and sinful, to convert to form a “cosmos,” a well-ordered structure, in intimate communion with Jesus, who is the true Saint of saints. This happens in a culminating way in the Eucharistic liturgy, in which the “ecclesia,” that is, the community of the baptized, come together in a unified way to listen to the Word of God and nourish themselves with the Body and Blood of Christ. From these two tables the Church of living stones is built up in truth and charity and is internally formed by the Holy Spirit transforming herself into what she receives, conforming herself more and more to the Lord Jesus Christ. She herself, if she lives in sincere and fraternal unity, in this way becomes the spiritual sacrifice pleasing to God.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dear friends, today’s feast celebrates a mystery that is always relevant: God’s desire to build a spiritual temple in the world, a community that worships him in spirit and truth (cf. John 4:23-24). But this observance also reminds us of the importance of the material buildings in which the community gathers to celebrate the praises of God. Every community therefore has the duty to take special care of its own sacred buildings, which are a precious religious and historical patrimony. For this we call upon the intercession of Mary Most Holy, that she help us to become, like her, the “house of God,” living temple of his love. "</span></i></div>
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<b>— Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, November 9, 2008</b></div>
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<br /></div>Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9120265642059338582.post-610420124965111352023-11-02T11:30:00.001-05:002023-11-02T11:30:00.134-05:00NOVEMBER 2: The assassination of President Diem<i>[first published November 22, 2012]</i><br />
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The tumultuous November of 1963 began with the assassination of a Catholic president: Ngo Dinh <b><a href="http://ngothelinh.tripod.com/NgoDinhDiem.html">Diem of South Vietnam.</a> </b>Three weeks later, another fell.<br />
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For years the U.S. strongly supported Diem, but the turning point was JFK’s appointment of <b>Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.</b> (Nixon’s running mate in 1960) as our ambassador – replacing Frederick Nolting.<br />
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Lodge – with allies such as Averell Harriman and newspaper reporter David Halberstam – completely undermined the Vietnamese leader.<br />
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Diem’s younger brother and top advisor, Ngo Dinh Nhu, was killed along with him. The widow of the latter, <b>Madame Nhu</b>, had acted as first lady since 1955 when the unmarried Diem had become the country’s first president. <br />
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(The always colorful Madame Nhu lived long in exile; she died last year in Rome on Easter Sunday. After the Saigon assassinations on the second day of November, All Souls Day 1963, she said: <b>"Whoever has the Americans as allies does not need enemies."</b>)<br />
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Dr. Pence says that <a href="http://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2016/11/november-22-maturation-of-christian.html">JFK’s greatest failure as a public leader </a>was his betrayal of our ally, President Diem. Kennedy was never proud of having allowed his underlings to give the green light to the coup; and in a mysterious way, it marked the loss of the American leader’s <i>‘Mandate of Heaven’</i>…<br />
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[Diem’s older brother, Thuc (d. 1984), was the archbishop of Hue. One of the nephews of Diem was Cardinal Thuan (d. 2002), who after being imprisoned for years in the North, served as head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace].<br />
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Check out <a href="http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1974/jan-feb/hasdorff.html">this interview</a> with Ambassador Nolting, in which he calls our involvement in Diem's overthrow "disastrous."<br />
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Here is <a href="http://kyotoreview.org/book-review/book-review-diems-final-failure-prelude-to-americas-war-in-vietnam/">a review</a> of Philip Catton's book, <u>Diem's Final Failure: Prelude to America's War in Vietnam</u>.<br />
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2017 UPDATE: <a href="https://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the-man-who-held-the-mandate-of-heaven/17285">Interview with Geoffrey Shaw</a>, the author of <u>The Lost Mandate from Heaven: The Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam. </u>This is the definitive account of the greatest blunder of the Vietnam war-the American inspired assassination of President Diem in Nov, 1963. The man with the heart of darkness was Averell Harriman of the State Department. The young atheist news reporter David Halberstam could never understand the Catholic Confucian president who was much more an authentic nationalist than Ho Chi Minh. Replacing Ambassador Nolting with the Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge left no one to counter Halberstam's prejudicial reporting and Harriman's sinister machinations. The champions of secular liberal democracy orchestrated the murder of the one leader who could have negotiated a settlement in Vietnam. This primal political lesson of the Vietnam War was hinted at but inexcusably misrepresented by the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/home/">Ken Burns PBS series</a>. It is easier to paint an Asian Catholic as a tyrant than accuse a liberal Democrat and secular journalist of leading roles in a generation's greatest tragedy. The wrenching <a href="https://doctorpence.blogspot.com/2017/05/friday-bookreview-collapse-of-saigon-in.html">Last Man Out account of the fall of Saigon.</a><br />
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Here are State Department documents and analysis-D<a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm">id JFK order Diem assassination? by John Prados.</a><br />Andrew Lynchhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10012777785933071773noreply@blogger.com0