Posts Tagged ‘catholic’

A Spectacular idea

Posted: April 21, 2010 by datechguy in catholic
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The Anchoress informs me of an incredible suggestion:

So here is my question for you. What if our bishops chose to do public penance? What if they lay prostrate or knelt in front of their cathedrals as penitents before each Mass on the weekend closest to the feast of St.Peter and Paul or on the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or some other appropriate day or days? Or, even better, on the first Friday of every month for the next year starting with the feast of the Sacred Heart or Sts.Peter and Paul? And what if we, as their deacons, as an order in the Church, in all humility, not only called on our bishops to do public penance, but offered to join them in it?

To those who do not understand Catholicism this might not seem like much but within the Church it would be earth shattering, and the suggestion of inclusion of the laity is even better:

As a lay person, I would participate in this prostration, with my pope, my bishops and priests and all the rest. I would participate as a means of communicating to the victims that I have heard them and that I am united to them, angry for them and ashamed on their behalf, and also to express to the whole world that I too am a sinner, in need of mercy. I would prostrate myself as to express unity with the clergy and religious, that they are no more outside of redemption than the rest of us, that they are valued and their healing is as necessary to the Body of Christ as is the healing of the victims.

My participation would also demonstrate my intention to remain within this injured body, contributing to both its weakness and its strengths, because I know my redeemer lives, and that we all shall rise again.

Count me in.

On the most solumn day in the Church’s calendar the Anchoress produces a gem

Posted: April 2, 2010 by datechguy in catholic
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It is available here a snippet:

I remain within, and love, the Catholic Church because it is a church that has lived and wrestled within the mystery of the shadow lands ever since an innocent man was arrested, sentenced and crucified, while the keeper of “the keys” denied him, and his first priests ran away. Through 2,000 imperfect — sometimes glorious, sometimes heinous — years, the church has contemplated and manifested the truth that dark and light, innocence and guilt, justice and injustice all share a kinship, one that waves back and forth like wind-stirred wheat in a field, churning toward something — as yet — unknowable.

The darkness within my church is real, and it has too often gone unaddressed. The light within my church is also real, and has too often gone unappreciated. A small minority has sinned, gravely, against too many. Another minority has assisted or saved the lives of millions.

To say that the whole thing should be read is the understatement of the year. She has gotten interesting comments, about which she says:

Speaking of which, the comments at NPR are interesting and a little amusing, to me. Scorn is so incredibly simple and simplistic, and faith is so incredibly hard, and yet somehow the “world” thinks it’s the other way around – that my faith is simplistic and unthinking, but scornful kneejerkism is profound and deep.

But scornful or faithful she welcomes comments.

BTW you might note we have been very Catholic this week, even more than normal, well this is Holy week and if there was ever a time for religion to be first, this is it.

Hey you’re a biased Catholic, what do Lutherans think?

Posted: April 2, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, media, opinion/news
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Funny you should ask via Fr. Z links to an article at the LOGIA that describes themselves as a quarterly journal of Lutheran theology in it John Stephenson looks at the attacks on the Pope and has this to say:

The secular press has had it in for Joseph Ratzinger for going on three decades. Before his election as Pope in the spring of 2005, he was routinely derided in his homeland as the Panzerkardinal (“tank cardinal”) and caricatured in North America as the “Enforcer” or even the “Rottweiler.” The roots of this negative reputation stretch back at least as far as the book-length interview he granted to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that catapulted him to global fame when published as The Ratzinger Report in 1985. Prior to that juncture, as a heavyweight German academic who had leapfrogged over a major episcopal see (Munich-Freising) to become a leading official in the Roman curia (as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under the still new John Paul II, Ratzinger’s was hardly a household name.

But shrewd observers must wonder about the startling disproportion between the enormous hue and cry artificially whipped up by the media and the softly spoken real life figure who seems always to have avoided hyperbole like the plague.

Let me reiterate that this is from a Lutheran journal. A denomination that refers to the Roman Catholic Church as, in the words of one Lutheran priest: “that institution that is rightly labeled as Antichrist in our Lutheran Confessions”. How bad must things be if the media has these guys defending the Pope? They have their own issues, big ones, yet they have at least eyes enough to see this for what it is. Here is the big finish:

As Easter of 2010 approaches, though, if for no other reason than that we remember Martin Niemöller’s post-war regret at not having spoken up for the Jews in due season, we might fitly major in sympathy, understanding, and prayer for the courteous and learned aged prelate who is right now a walking target for innumerable hellish darts launched by theological Modernists and by the unbelieving world that have between them zero tolerance for any crisp, clear, and confident confession of Christ Jesus our Incarnate God.

If any protestant church proclaiming Christ thinks that the media is their friend their errors are more than simply theological.

Exit question for professed Christians: Do you think it is an accident that the Roman Catholic Church is primary target of the secular media? And if it is not what does that say about the Church as opposed to other denominations that do not seem so worthy of their scorn?

Just one more reminder at the Hour of Christ’s Death

Posted: April 2, 2010 by datechguy in catholic, media
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Although I have and will continue to hit back at those maliciously attacking the Church in General and the Pope in particular, none of this changes our obligation to pray for these people and to keep them in our prayers.

If we fail to do so, we fail as Christians in general and Catholics in particular

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