August 8 - MEMORIAL OF SAINT DOMINIC: Teacher and Priest

[first published August 8, 2014]

                             

Dominic (pictured meeting with Francis of Assisi early in the 13th century) gathered a fraternity of preachers and teachers. He recognized that heresies could only be countered by knowledge of the Real Truth and delivery of this Truth by holy preachers. Thus the Dominican motto: VERITAS.

What was particularly lacking in Saint Dominic's day was articulate and intelligent doctrinal preaching. The whole reason of being for the Dominicans was spreading the Good News of our Lord.
(A good summary of his life and an explanation of why Dominicans celebrate another feast day for their founder.)

I came across a sermon by a Polish preacher in which he described Dominic as "God's athlete" for his implacable struggle against the Dragon who tries to deceive us and deliver us to eternal darkness. He mentioned three ways that the Spanish saint did this:

• as is shown by the painting (below) by Blessed Fra Angelico – St. Dominic eagerly adored the cross as the venue where Christ defeated death;

• through the preaching of the Word of truth and life for the conversion of others, St. Dominic tied up the demon by the Word of God, giving to the seekers the light of the true Gospel;

• as one of the Dominican legends says, when Satan visited one of the first convents, he got scared of the 'capitular' – the place where brothers confess their faults; the life rooted in humility, the awareness of the fact of how much a person needs the Savior, this is the moment when Satan loses.

                                               

                                         

"A man who governs his passions is master of his world. We must either command them or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than an anvil."                                (St. Dominic, d. 1221)

Fra Angelico (d. 1455) was one of the countless simple  souls whose spiritual gaze became more luminous through their association with the Dominicans. Pope John Paul II beatified the Florentine painter, naming him the patron of Catholic artists. Here is his free rendition of the Transfiguration of the Lord, with the inclusion of the Virgin Mary and Saint Dominic on either side:

                                 

AUGUST 6 -- Feast of the Transfiguration: "We were eyewitnesses of His majesty on the sacred mountain"

[first published August 6, 2014]

"Send forth your light and your truth...
  let them lead me up your holy mountain,
  up to your sanctuary.
 I shall go in to the altar of God,
  to the God of my gladness and joy."

              (Psalm 43)

                               

Our Lord climbed Mount Tabor with Peter, James, and John -- and revealed his glory as he spoke with Moses and Elijah. As someone has said: we can be transfigured by the love of God or we can be disfigured by the love of sin!

"... and it is indeed appropriate that the greatest God-seers of the Old Testament should be present at the glorification of the Lord in His New Testament, seeing for the first time His humanity, even as the disciples were seeing for the first time His Divinity."

This article explains more of the meaning of the Greek icon above.

["Although the event celebrated in the Feast occurred in the month of February, forty days before the Crucifixion, the Feast was early transferred to August because its full glory and joy could not be fittingly celebrated amid the sorrow and repentance of Great Lent. The sixth day of August was chosen as being forty days before the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14th, old style), when Christ’s Passion is again remembered."]

Saint Helena (the emperor Constantine's mother, pictured) erected a church on Mount Tabor in honor of the Transfiguration, 'the excellence of His hidden dignity.'
                          

"On the mountain wast Thou transfigured, O Christ God, and Thy disciples beheld Thy glory as far as they could see it; so that when they would behold Thee crucified, they would understand that Thy suffering was voluntary, and would proclaim to the world that Thou art truly the Radiance of the Father."

"In the spirit, the angel took me to the top of an enormous high mountain and showed me Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven. The city did not need the sun or the moon for light, since it was lit by the radiant glory of God and the Lamb was a lighted torch for it."    (Apocalypse 21)

One of our writers spent time in the Holy Land and took the photo below of the Church of the Transfiguration, which sits atop Mt. Tabor just south of Galilee. The church itself has two altars: the lower for daily use and the upper to which no stairs ascend. The latter altar has been reserved for the Second Coming. Also noteworthy is the fact that Mt. Tabor overlooks the Valley of Armageddon - the location of the final battle between the heavenly army and the forces of Satan.

August 5: Dedication of Basilica of Mary -- Celebrating Virgin and Mother

Alice von Hildebrand (b. 1923)

Some people consider you a Christian feminist. How do you understand feminism?

To distinguish myself clearly from Simone de Beauvoir's powerful and poisonous book, The Second Sex, I would not call myself a Christian feminist but a champion of femininity. The sublime beauty of the female mission as virgin, wife or mother has been so degraded that I felt a calling to shed light on "the privilege of being a woman," which is also the title of one of my books.

Of all creatures mentioned in Genesis, Eve is the only one whose body is taken from the body of a person; even Adam's body was taken from the "slime of the earth." She is declared by Adam to be the "mother of the living." He is not called the "father of the living." When Eve gives birth to Cain, she ecstatically says: I have brought a child into the world with God's help. Adam, the biological father, is not mentioned. Eve proclaims that the child's soul—which is made to God's image and likeness—is placed by God himself into her body. God, so to speak, "touches" the female body and in so doing gives it a note of sacredness.

The duel which takes place between the Woman and the Serpent, not between "the strong sex" and the Serpent, hints at the crucial role of women in the economy of redemption. The most perfect of all creatures, queen of the Angels, is a woman—not a man. It is high time that women should humbly acknowledge that they are privileged to be women.

Marian Femininity--A video talk

The Feminine Breaking of the Glass Ceiling : The Assumption of Mary

                 Pope Francis visits Basilica of St. Mary Major to begin his papacy

AUGUST 4 MEMORIAL OF ST. JOHN VIANNEY: Priest, Parish, and Practicing Catholics

[first published August 4, 2014]


by David Pence


John Vianney (1786-1859) is the patron saint of parish priests. He worked in a French town of less than 500 souls called Ars, and is often called the Cure of Ars. [It is about 90 miles west of Geneva, Switzerland].

'Cure' in French means priest. The Webster word history is instructive. The old Latin word 'cura' meant "the care given to someone, often medical." Christians expropriated the word to mean "the care of souls." The Latin root passed into French, and then English, with this spiritual meaning as cure in French meaning priest and curate in English meaning "one who takes care of souls, a member of the clergy." This word history reminds us that cultures can sacralize language as well as debase it. What a culture does to the words it receives, depends on what kind of life the people are living in that culture.

Jean Baptiste Marie Vianney was no star in his seminary studies. Thank God his superiors recognized his great soul garbed with a modest mind. He received his earliest sacraments in the underground French Church, avoided Napoleon’s draft to fight the disastrous war against Spain, and was ordained in 1815. His piety, prayer, and penance made his parish a gravitational center for Catholic renewal in post-revolutionary France. He knew the basics. God had become man in Christ; the priest had become sacred in ordination; and the souls of his parishioners would be sanctified only through prayer and penance.

The humble priest provides for us an antidote to living public life "as if God doesn’t exist." The French priest had a cure for practical atheism. He built his life on prayer. He centralized the tabernacle’s sacred space in gesture and building to proclaim Jesus present. He saw men as souls. In his celebration of the Mass, he directed all present to the reality of the Triune God. In the confessional he did not turn his head from the hold of Satan on unresolved penitents. He chastised those who repeatedly failed to "amend my life."
                     

The local parish is still today the physical and communal form of Christ’s Presence shining through the sulfurous mist of practical atheism. The priest is a watchman for the city of God whenever he mounts the walls of the confessional to beat back Satan assaulting the people. The Catholic life is a daily, weekly, and annual set of practices organizing a community of prayer around a sacred space and Personage. The priest prays the daily office of Church in communion with the worldwide apostolic priesthood, and puts on the mind of Christ for his local flock by this practice. Keeping Catholic time draws the local face-to-face body into the Universal Church, and the day-to-day calendar into the timeline of the Divine Drama. The antidotes to the foggy atmosphere of practical atheism are the tabernacle lights of countless parochial sacred hills where men worship the Father. As Jesus promised the woman at the well, there shall come a time when worship is no longer restricted to the mountains of Jerusalem and Samaria. That time has been achieved through the coming of the Spirit in the sacramental Church. Let us rejoice and be glad!

The priest is not a community organizer urging his parishioners to do public service projects or postcard-campaigns to lobby the civil authorities. He mans an ark and pulls us into a sacred space where we are set apart from the corrupting flood-waters of the world. Once in the ark, man can finally see reality with his head above the waters. He has been saved and is enlightened. He understands his purpose because, finally, he stands and kneels where he is fully oriented in space and time to the Divine Person. The parish priest directs hearts to God and cleanses souls of sin. He leads us in prayer, integrates us in the sacramental order of the Church, and teaches us the pillars of the faith -- which explain Nature, History, and Person in the light of Christ. The practicing Catholic becomes a new personality. These new Christian personalities shaped by communal liturgy and prayer will feed the hungry, heal the sick, enlighten the ignorant, protect the widows and orphans, and shelter the immigrant. The men will build cities and nations while the women will build homes, schools, and hospitals. The men will be apostolic in their communal public character, and the women will be virginal in their interior lives and maternal in their care of others. Catholic practice shapes Catholic personalities, and that practice is as tactile as it is local.

Seek first the things above and all else will follow. Holy priests make holy men and holy women. There is only one kind of village that explains the Cosmos -- the parish at prayer. The local parish has never been the end game of the careerist. But it remains the locus of prayer and penance where practicing Catholics muster in the formations which proclaim the Sacramental Presence of Christ in those golden tabernacles, and herald the Final Coming of our Lord and King just over the horizon.

From the Catechetical Instructions by St. John Mary Vianney: 

Man has a noble task: that of prayer and love. To pray and to love, that is the happiness of man on earth. 

Prayer is nothing else than union with God. When the heart is pure and united with God it is consoled and filled with sweetness; it is dazzled by a marvellous light. In this intimate union God and the soul are like two pieces of wax moulded into one; they cannot any more be separated. It is a very wonderful thing, this union of God with his insignificant creature, a happiness passing all understanding... 

Our prayer is an incense that is delightful to God... My children, your hearts are small, but prayer enlarges them and renders them capable of loving God... In a prayer well made, troubles vanish like snow under the rays of the sun.

May Saint John Vianney guide many parishes and their local priests into a prayerful weekly rhythm of the Catholic sacramental order: Baptism, Confession, and the Eucharist.

                                       

"I will show you the way to heaven!"

                                                                                                           

Religion, Nations, and Geopolitical Review: SATURDAY, AUGUST 3

by A. Joseph Lynch
& Past Commentary of Dr. David Pence

THE WEEKLY BRIEF
DEMOCRAT CONTENDERS DEBATE 

Democrats just held their most recent round of presidential primary debates. Absent was any reference to Vladimir Putin, the Russia collusion hoax, and the disastrous Mueller testimony on obstruction of justice. Instead, they practically spent more time criticizing former president, Barack Obama, than they did President Trump. This is understandable as the far Left has pushed the liberal agenda so far that even Obama, the most liberal president in American history, is now seen as too conservative (see this video that shows college students mistaking Obama on immigration for Trump).

The biggest headliner, however, was Tulsi Gabbard's take down of Kamala Harris saying that as a prosecutor Harris "put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana... she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California." It was quite a moment for Gabbard and we hope it is reflected her future poll numbers. Gabbard, however, is seen as too close to Trump in terms of foreign policy and is now facing attacks from the mainstream media for her attack on Harris. Twitter refused to acknowledge her trending after the Kamala take down. She is especially detested for meeting with Assad in 2016. Although it seems like the deck might be stacked against her, we wish Gabbard well in her presidential pursuits. Here is what Dr. Pence had to say about Gabbard after her meeting with Assad, and later President-elect Trump, in November 2016:

"The natural allies for Mr Trump’s foreign policy position should be antiwar Democrats. Representative Gabbard is Hindu and understands the radical Sunni nature of the sources of terrorism (think Pakistan as well as the Sauds). There will definitely be a tilt toward India in a Trump administration. Her being a Hindu is treated as an esoteric curiosity in the diversity conscious strategically clueless mainstream media. Anyone who understands the Pakistan-India world was not surprised at the Hindu nationalist support for his candidacy. One wonders where the antiwar left was in the Democratic primary. Rep Gabbard switched to Bernie Sanders after he lost South Carolina because she was so opposed to the Clinton/Weekly Standard foreign policy. The rest of the antiwar Democrats were in hiding, supporting the hawkish Mrs Clinton as they feared for their places in the pecking order of the brave new Clinton world. Mr. Trump is going to be aggressively opposed by Senator John McCain and insulted by Lindsey Graham as he changes our course in the Mideast. He needs to develop a solid base of Democratic senators and representatives who will help him pull away from war with Russia and assemble the forces (Russia, Syria, Iraq, and Iran?) which can crush ISIS. When it comes to who are our allies and who will be against us,  Rep Gabbard is a good trade for Lindsey Graham."

I. POPE FRANCIS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

OPUS BONO SACERDOTTI: The small non-profit group has been supporting accused clergy for nearly twenty years, operating from un-marked buildings across rural Michigan. Although not "officially" tied to the Church, it was supported by the late Fr. John Neuhaus (d. 2009) and Avery Cardinal Dulles (d. 2008), both known conservatives in the Church. The group has also formed a spin-off group to "assist" accused priests called Men of Melchizedek, or "MOM" for short. How fitting. More from Crux.

CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES: Archaeologists have discovered the ancient church built upon the home of brothers St. Peter and St. Andrew on the northern shores of Galilee. It is also believed that this was the location of the biblical town of Bethsaida. More discoveries are expected in the season to come.

II. PRESIDENT TRUMP AND AMERICA

DAN COATS OUT: Effective August 15, Dan Coats - the director of national intelligence - is leaving his post. This a very good turn of events for the President as he needs more like-minded men facilitating his nationalist vision for America's foreign policy. Rumor has it that Bolton will soon leave as well, another positive development if true. We invite readers to re-read our February 2 post that includes our take on the 2019 threat assessment, partly presented by Coats. Here is an except of what Dr. Pence had to say:

Comey, Brennan and Clapper are gone. The deep state remains. It is not all powerful - it is ever present in its careerism but incestuously small in its grasp of events. There seems no comprehension that the Trump nationalist agenda of meeting with leaders of large influential nation-men can break up the most dangerous scenario of all: Russia and China leading African nations allied with Sunni Turkey and Shiite Iran vs the globalist West led ideologically by feminist Sweden and militarily by a dispirited NATO. If Haspel, Coats, and Wray are now considered "the adults in the room", the baby boomer project of first coarsening, then feminizing, and finally infantilizing American public discourse has been completed.

DEAL WITH GUATEMALA: President Trump reached a deal with Guatemala on immigration. In a huge win for his presidency, Guatemala agreed to a safe third country deal with the US. This now means that asylum seekers who pass through Guatemala, on Mexico's southern border, en route to the US must seek asylum in Guatemala first. The Trump Administration is working on similar arrangements with the two nations on Guatemala's southern border, Honduras and El Salvador. We invite readers to look at our post on mapping Central America to get a better sense of the region and map that might help explain the geographic importance of the agreements being reached.

EXODUS AT THE DCCC: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is seeing a rather large turnover as white leaders and their support staff begin to exit because they have the wrong skin color. Outgoing chairwoman, Cheri Bustos, said in her departure that the DCCC needs "a staff that truly reflects the diversity of our Democratic caucus and our party." Many who have left led the effort to re-take the House from the GOP in 2018. It remains to be seen who effective the new leadership will be in 2020. What's more, will this decrease odds of the two white men leading the pack of presidential contenders, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders? And will all this further alienate white and moderate voters going into the 2020 election? Time will tell.

MAGA HAT WEARER BEATEN: After a minority American who wore a MAGA hat was brutally beaten in NYC for supporting President Trump, liberals on social media said he deserved it, adding that he shouldn't dress that way. The media, which gave around the clock coverage to actor Jussie Smollett when he made the false accusation that MAGA-wearing attackers beat him for being gay, have paid no attention. Instead, they've focused coverage on a Trump supporting throwing a punch at a protester in Kentucky. While there is certainly anger on both sides, we should all be troubled that the media fails to cover it on the Left while liberals on social media attempt to justify violence so long as it's directed towards the Right.

NEW DEFENSE SECRETARY: Mark Esper is the new Secretary of Defense.

III. THE NATIONS

NEW UK PRIME MINISTER: Boris Johnson has won and becomes the UK's new prime ministry - but his Tory majority is holding on to power by a thread. It remains to be seen how this will this impact the October 31 Brexit deadline.

NEW GREEK GOVERNMENT: Dr. Steve Turley on the new Greek government defending its borders and the Orthodox Church.

TURKEY-US RELATIONS: Relations between the Turks and Russians have come a long way since the Turks shot down a Russian fighter in 2015. In buying Russian air defenses, the US cannot sell the Turks the F-35. Pat Buchanan comments as NATO cracks and Mideast tensions continue. 

IV. CULTURE OF LIFE, CULTURE OF PROTECTION

THE GENDER PAY GAP: ...is a myth.

MARIO LOPEZ SCANDAL: Mario Lopez found himself in hot water for making a common sense statement regarding transgenderism and three-year-old children. The fact that he had to apologize is indicative of how extreme the sexual Left is pressing itself in our culture and on cultural figures and celebrities.

GILLETTE - GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Do you remember this advertisement from Gillette accusing men of toxic masculinity? On YouTube it's received twice as many thumbs-down votes as thumbs-up. It's now cost its parent company 8 billion dollars. Insulting your customer is probably not the best way to make sales. P&G said "it was worth it." Was it really?

DECLINING US BIRTH RATE: Demographers are fearing a demographic time bomb if US birth rates continue to decline. 2.1 children per woman is required to maintain the current population, and the US is now down to 1.76. This puts us ahead of Italy's 1.33 and the UK's 1.75 but behind Russia's 1.82 and France's 1.85. All are behind the top ten (all African) nations whose birth rates are between 5 and 7 children per women (see all national birthrates here).

FARMER'S MARKET SHUT DOWN: The mayor of Bloomington, Indiana shut down the city's farmer's market for two weeks after protesters came to decry a vendor, Sarah Dye, with a privately-held conservative viewpoint. How much has this cost other vendors? Will Dye be allowed back?

DANCING, GENDER, AND WAR: An intriguing take on the origins of dancing and its relation to mate-selection and war.