Friday BookReview: the giant who was Dawson

"The nations will fear the name of the LORD, and all the kings of the earth thy glory."  (Psalm 102)

Christopher Dawson – the towering British scholar who had converted to Catholicism in his twenties as the First World War broke out – died in 1970.

Check out David Pence’s impression of his mid-century essays on Christianity and the Nations.

                     

                 

Here is an excerpt:

"The republication of Christopher Dawson's works has come at a pivotal time in the Catholic Church's life amidst the nations. French political philosopher Pierre Manent asks if the nation is still the proper political form. America's premier Catholic political intellectual, Russell Hittinger, argues that Catholic tradition has been sparse and vague in understanding the polity as a corporate body with its own common good. He argues that while papal teachings have warned the State not to tinker with the sacral institutions of marriage and the Church, there is no recent vigorous defense of the polity as a corporate body with a common good of its own. At Vatican I, the Church relinquished the sword of the State. But the nation state is alive and well and holds its proper sword, for better or worse. Enemies of the Church, the nation, and marriage roam about the world seeking the ruin of all three institutions. Where is the sword of spirit that shall fight them?"

Minnesota, marriage, and the majorities

[Earlier this week Minnesota governor Mark Dayton signed into law a bill legalizing homosexual marriage, saying: "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness certainly includes the right to marry the person you love."]

by Dr. David Pence

                             

The legal designation of same-sex couplings as marriages is a shameful day in Minnesota History.

A solid majority of our elected officials have enacted a law to honor what is immoral and to degrade what is sacred. This is not an elite going against a “moral majority.” This is a trendy people going against God and Nature. We recall the Tower built at Babel when great majorities thought themselves and their building project as bigger than God.

We remember how the great majority of Israelites were caught up in the frenzy of worshiping a golden calf in the place of God who had delivered them from slavery. Today we witness a people caught up in a popular frenzy. They have confused the historical Christian movement for interracial brotherhood with today’s masquerade of disordered desires disguised as civil rights.

We ask God to forgive us our trespasses. Let Christians pray and fast in reparation for this public act which so dishonors the Lord our God, who is the source of both the authority of the State and the sanctity of marriage.        

Ivy League spies offered up their ‘lives, fortunes, and sacred honor’ for Stalin

                                       

“Alger Hiss was not the victim of a witch hunt; he was a witch.”  

                                      (Garrison Keillor)

                                                                                    

The always-fascinating historian, Philip Jenkins, fleshes out Keillor’s point – as well as the broader menace of influential Americans who were so enamored of the “social justice” of Communism that they ended up having no scruple about betraying their own country.

Two of the examples given by Professor Jenkins:

• Harry Dexter White (Stanford & Harvard) who died of a heart attack in Aug 1948, while in his mid-fifties.

[This article from ‘Time’ magazine lays out White’s role in persuading the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor].

• Laurence Duggan (Phillips Exeter prep school & Harvard), who committed suicide in Dec 1948, at the age of 43.
  
  
  

[This site gives a biographical background of the man that Henry Wallace would have made his Secretary of State].

“There was a Soviet espionage network in our government and the fact that Joseph McCarthy was a drunk, a bully and a cynical opportunist doesn’t change that.  Along with a lot of other Democrats, I’ve wasted a lot of time on these issues that I was, in fact, wrong about.”  

                                          (Keillor)

Paul's Letter to the Romans refutes Luther's innovation

                                 

Martin Luther (d. 1546) declared sola fide – ‘faith alone’ – as being “the article with and by which the church stands.”

Several years ago, Pope Benedict said: “Luther’s expression of sola fide is true if faith is not opposed to charity, to love.”

In other words, as Galatians 5:6 has it, “faith working through love.”

The obedience of faith: Saint Paul never separates the two.  Proclaiming “faith alone” is like speaking of the mercy of God, and never bothering to mention His justice!


This is how Paul begins the Letter to the Romans:

“…we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.”  (1:5)

And how Paul ends it:

“…the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed…according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith..”  (16:26)

Of course Saint James, in his letter (2:24), explicitly states “that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

[Saint Paul, who didn't hesitate to employ the word “alone” when necessary, chose not to include it in Romans 3:28 (“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”)
But that did not prevent Martin Luther from inserting the word.  Here is how he defended that move in part:
“I know very well that in Romans 3 the word ‘solum’ is not in the Greek or Latin text – the papists did not have to teach me that… If the translation is to be clear and vigorous, it belongs there.”]

Dusting off “il poverello d’Assisi” from the sentimental shelf

                 

For Saint Francis (d. 1226), his love and devotion for the Holy Eucharist was paramount.  The humble deacon admonished the priests of his day: "Let all who administer such holy mysteries," clean your altar linen and polish your chalices!  

The Poverello always reserved his harshest words for those who ignored the Eucharistic presence.  In a recent biography of Assisi's famous son, the Dominican author says:

"The locus of Francis's 'mysticism,' his belief that he could have direct contact with God, was in the Mass, not in nature or even in service to the poor... For him, the change of the elements from bread and wine to Christ's Body and Blood was like the Incarnation."

It's funny about those who are always tooting their horn of "multi-culturalism” -- their understanding of Saint Francis on his own terms is weaker than a man who claims to know about the Father of our Country because he can parrot back an apocryphal tale or two from Parson Weems!