All posts by twowingstogod@gmail.com

An Act of Charity?

Abortion, Bioethics, Science, , , , , ,

In the last post, it was discussed that an evolutionary paradigm, motivated by a spirit of transhumanism that was at the heart of the development of the new delivery methods for so-called vaccines.  It was also mentioned in passing how much of the debate so far as centered upon the question of the use of aborted fetal tissues in both the testing (Moderna and Pfizer) and delivery (AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson).  Despite this connection to abortion, there are many in the Church that have reasoned that it is morally licit and perhaps even laudatory to receive the vaccine.  In this post, we will discuss why it is neither and we should avoid these and all abortion tainted vaccines.

As usual, the devil is in the details—except this time, the Devil really is in the details.  The four current vaccines all make use of fetal cell lines originating in an aborted child.  Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca all used cells derived from the HEK293 cell line while the Johnson and Johnson used cells from the PER-C6 line.  These came from different children; the former came from the kidney (HEK=Human Embryonic Kidney, one can imagine that it was not the only sample since it has the number 293,even if it is the most “fruitful” of the collection) of a child in 1973 and the latter from the retina of a child in 1985.  The degree to which each of these vaccines is tainted by the evil of abortion is certainly different.  Although whether this is morally relevant or not is open to discussion.  Before getting to that however, it is good to ponder just what we mean when we say it is tainted by abortion.

The Devil Is in the Details

Most of us would have difficulty imagining how these cell lines are gathered.  Perhaps we might think that a bunch of abortions are performed and they have a bunch of tissue left over that they then sell to harvesters and researchers.  Or maybe we think that the harvester went door to door at abortion mills and ask if they had any extra tissue around.  In truth however the harvester must have arranged a priori, presumably through informed consent of the mother, to gather the cells from the child at the time of the abortion.  Like regular organ donation, fetal organ donation must be fresh in the sense that the live tissue would be preserved right as the abortion is happening.  It might also be that the child is removed along with the womb and kept alive until the harvesting could occur at some secondary site.  The point is that the developer wasn’t just some opportunist, but absolutely complicit in the abortion.  He arranges with both the abortionist and the mother beforehand and does nothing to stop it at the time. Presumably, there is compensation both to the abortionist and the mother, meaning that he has actually encouraged it.

But it isn’t just the abortion that is the problem now.  The developer of the line commits a further evil when he keeps the child alive and harvests his or her organs.  Let that settle in—a child is removed from (or with) his mother’s womb, possibility refrigerated and then, while still living, has his organs removed.  This is the stuff of Mengele’s dreams.  The evils now begin to multiply.  The researcher, because he demands the cell lines for testing, may or may not be cooperating with the abortion, is most certainly cooperating and complicit in organ harvesting.  So while we might be able to say there is a moral difference between simply using the cell line for testing versus using it for delivery, it is not a difference in degree but in number.  Any researcher that uses the cell line formally cooperates in the organ harvesting.      

In order to avoid the reductio ad Hitlerum accusation, it is important to discuss the reference to Josef Mengele.  Regardless of the usefulness of the results and the data, everyone agrees that to use data from any of his experiments is unethical.  This is because the way in which these experiments were conducted was so evil that conscience forbids the use of the results.  Certainly a Catholic conscience should shudder at having anything to do with abortion and organ harvesting tainted vaccines, regardless to what degree a given Pharmaceutical Company used them.  Some actions such as harvesting organs from innocent, living pre-born children is so evil that there is no good that would justify using them.  As the former abortionist Bernard Nathanson said, “it is impossible to separate the issue of abortion from the use of the tissue obtained therefrom.”

Appropriation vs Cooperation

This is why framing the use of these vaccines only in terms of cooperation is incomplete at best.  Cooperation with some act in the past is almost always remote.  Appropriation, that is, whether we can reap the fruits of someone else’s past evil act in the present is another question.  We might not cooperate to the evil of abortion and organ harvesting, but that does not automatically mean we are free to benefit from it.  For example, suppose I buy a bike that I later find out was stolen.  I am obligated to return that bike to its rightful owner, regardless of whether I actually cooperated with its theft and regardless of how desperately I need the bike. 

The theft of the bike is illustrative because in a very real way the organs have been stolen from these children.  Once we become aware of that fact, we must make restitution by returning them to their rightful owner, God by providing them with a proper burial.  This is why it is always an act of charity to bury a person.  When these aborted children were murdered, in justice they must be buried and as long as they remain unburied, the evil is ongoing.  While we may not have the means to gather up all the remains from this child, we most certainly have no right to benefit from their murder and dismemberment.

This is why the two vaccines, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca, that deliver the vaccine through cultures grown in the cell line (that will contain a part of the child’s body, namely their DNA) must be avoided.  There is no question as to whether if there is a grave enough cause or not. It is a clear violation of justice.  The other two vaccines currently on the market, might be justified for an extremely grave reason.  I say might because it is hard to imagine that given the evil that has been done to the unborn persons anyone would in good conscience be willing to do so.

What is clear is that receiving any of these vaccines can not be reduced to an act of charity nor as an obligation to the common good.  Charity is a love of God and love of neighbor for His sake.  It cannot be an act of charity to compromise with evil or reap the fruits of a gravely evil action.  Furthermore, the common good must work for the good of every member of a society.  For the vaccines to truly be instruments of the Common Good, then the goods attached to them must flow back over even the unborn members of society. Clearly, these vaccines are prejudiced against some of the unborn.

In closing it is worth mentioning that the Church’s teaching that focuses on the principle of cooperation has truly backfired.  There are many cases in which a child (or an adult with the COVID vaccines) receives a “a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin” when there is no serious “danger to health.”  Not surprisingly the “the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available” (c.f. Donum Vitae, 8) has fallen upon deaf ears.  We are currently 0 for 4 on the COVID vaccines and there is no reason to think that will change.  Perhaps if, and this would need to happen from the top, Catholics en masse refused the Covid vaccines, then we wouldn’t be in this moral quandary. 

Evolution and the COVID-19 Vaccine

Abortion, Anthropology, Bioethics, Evolution, , , , , , ,

It has been noted on a number of occasions on this site, the bait and switch that those wedded to scientific materialism use to sell their evolutionary worldview.  They use the term Evolution in such an elastic manner that it is refute.  Only the most narrow-minded Fundamentalist would fail to see evolution in action in even the tiniest bacteria that grows resistant to antibiotics.  Darwin himself used the example of finches on the Galapagos islands with their varying adaptive beak lengths.  In short, the fact that there is abundant evidence of limited variation within species does not allow us to conclude that finches turned into something else.  This grand claim does not follow from the smaller claim.  In fact, the smaller claim fits perfectly well with the Biblical notion that God created various kinds of creatures.  But this foundation of limited variation (or what we might call microevolution) is not strong enough to carry the weight of Macroevolution.  In fact, intellectually honest scientists all admit that limited variation is little more than a prop for Evolution because there is no currently accepted mechanism among scientists by which, even given long time periods, one kind becomes another.  The insistence that the evolutionary claim is true, despite no solid evidence, is really meant to be a smokescreen that scientists are actually not as sure as they present themselves to be.  This smokescreen is necessary because it is really because Evolution is a philosophy and not about science at all.

Humanism and the Evolutionary Smokescreen

For evidence of this we need look no further than the ongoing Covid crisis.  Under the microevolutionary model, we should expect that as time goes on, different variants of Covid-19 would tend to be more contagious and less deadly.  Why is that?  Because of survival of the fittest.  Those variants which are able to spread easier while not killing their host, would naturally be selected.  Viruses that are deadly, even if they are highly contagious, simply don’t last because they kill their host.  Assuming that the numbers are accurate, this is precisely why we are currently seeing an uptick in “cases” while the attributed deaths are in decline.  This is exactly what should be expected according to the microevolutionary model.

Why then, if we are following the “science” should we have terror in our hearts for the new variants?  Because science, even when it fits the evolutionary narrative, always takes a backseat to philosophy.  The philosophy that is propped up by scientific evolution is humanism and when science is not useful then it must be discarded or ignored. 

Humanism represents a catch-all philosophical school in which man is the measure of all things.  All forms of it end up in the deification of man and the de-deification of God.  It is at the heart of the not-so-modern attempt to fulfill the promise that “you will be like God”.  Buttressed by the view that man has evolved from bacteria rather than as a Special Creation from the hand of God, it professes that man is at the pinnacle of reality.  Every problem, every limitation, natural or not, can be overcome by human reason aided by technology.

Humanism and the Vaccine

It is this viewpoint that causes the oligarchs to set aside actual science in pursuit of their humanistic ambitions.  If the evolutionary truth that the virus is losing some of its power gets out, then people will not get the “vaccine” which is, in a very real way, the next step in humanism’s evolution of man. 

I put vaccine in scare quotes because what is currently being pedaled as a vaccine isn’t a vaccine, at least in the traditional sense of the term. Vaccines are artificial attempts to trigger the body to act in a natural way, enabling it to defend itself when it encounters the wild-type virus.  There are various schools of thought as to whether this triggering of the immune response works, but its goal is to keep you from getting sick using the natural processes of the body.

The new mRNA vaccines, at least according to the manufacturers, are altogether different.  Rather than acting as vaccines, they are akin to gene therapies.  They do not keep the person from getting the virus but instead attempt to stimulate them to create it.  More specifically, it injects a strand of artificial mRNA into the person that causes them to create the S1 spike protein.  In short, it has your body create the very toxin that normally makes it sick.  The hope is that your body will become “familiarized” with the protein and not have as strong of an immune response when it encounters it in the wild.

The details matter not just from a health standpoint but also from a moral and anthropological standpoint.  The ongoing debate in the Church about the moral obligation to receive these vaccines and their complicity in abortion is mostly a red herring.  And not just because these are not vaccines in the traditional sense, but they also represent an attempt at transhumanism.  Coaxing the body to produce something that is not natural is simply an attempt to modify human nature.  It is not in accord with the nature of man to make spike proteins.  This power of making spike proteins, in other words, goes beyond (trans) human nature.  And the Church has always taught that such attempts to alter human nature, either temporarily or permanently, is a grave evil.   

Summarizing then we can say that these “vaccines” even if they didn’t rely on aborted fetal cells would still be wrong.  Catholics should recognize that they are thinly veiled attempts at transhumanism and the Church should condemn them for what they are.  Unfortunately, the pandemic of humanism has even infected many in the Church as well.

It is an evolutionary mindset that is behind this attempt.  If random selection is true, then tinkering with human nature itself is not only licit, but laudatory.  It is simply speeding up man’s ultimate deification through evolution. As Harvard University Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson once said, “The fact that man knows he evolves entails the possibility that he can do something to influence his own biological destiny. The fact that uncontrolled evolution often leads to denegeneration and usually to extinction makes it highly advisable that man take a hand in determining his own future.”

This understanding of reality, in which man is “nothing but” a collection of cells arranged by natural selection, means that it is possible to manipulate man’s production of certain cells, without upsetting the rest of the body.  This paradigm ultimately does great harm to the whole person because the body is not just a conglomeration of parts, but an integrated whole designed by God. If the vaccine ultimately doesn’t work then it really doesn’t matter because the more fit will survive either way.  There is no way to lose because it has moved evolution chain ever upward to man’s deification.

The Visible Church

Bible, Church, Church Authority, Defending the Faith, Ecumenism, Protestantism, , , , ,

Sacred Tradition is, and always has been, a great obstacle for Protestants to overcome.  There is an utter incongruity between the Christianity of history and Protestantism that requires much mental gymnastics to avoid.  St. John Henry Newman put it another way: “if ever there were a safe truth, it is this…To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”  The early Protestants, because they were drawn from the ranks of Catholics, knew this so that their theological acrobatics required them to discredit, or at least mitigate the role of the Catholic Church during the first fifteen centuries of Christianity, while still maintaining the revealed truth that the Church could not totally fail.  From this they developed the idea of the “Invisible Church” as the true Church.  This “spiritual” society was to be comprised of all the just men and women.  It would only be made visible to the extent that the various religious communities more or less perfectly realize the ideal proposed by Christ.  All of this leads to the notion that one Church is as good as another and only the “heart” of the individual believer really determines whether they are a part of the true, invisible Church.

We must admit at the outset that this ecclesiastical sleight of hand by the original Protestant revolutionaries was deliberate.  But for Protestants today, it is simply an unquestioned maxim upon which the entire façade of Protestantism rests.  This is why Newman thought, especially from his own personal experience, that studying the Church Fathers would lead one to the conclusion that the Protestant Fathers invented a new Christianity that was, at least in theory, based on the Bible alone.  But prior to this study it is often necessary to raze the foundation upon which the entire building of Protestantism rests—the invisible Church.

That Christ intended to form a single Church is clearly testified to in Sacred Scripture.  The one mustard seed, the one field, the one Bride of Christ and telling it to the Church all put this unity on display.  He prayed to the Father before making His sacrifice that all believers would be one.  Of these facts both Catholics and Protestants can agree.  But in order for this unity to real, there must be certain characteristics among the body of believers.

For any society to exist there must be a true union of minds and wills between members.  This unity in intellect means that the same doctrines are known and professed by each of the members.  Likewise, the union of wills means, not just that they do the same things, but that there is submission to a common authority.  Because man is not just a mind and will however, there must also be a third characteristic.  This third characteristic is a set of external signs that symbolizes this internal unity. 

Unity in Visible Government

In merely human societies, this unity is usually realized imperfectly.  Nevertheless, there are some core set of beliefs, recognition of authority and visible signs that mark members of a society as belonging to that society.  In the supernatural society that is the Church, these are necessarily realized perfectly.  No mere core set of beliefs will do because of the Divine promise of being given “all truth” (Jn 16:13).  There are no “core beliefs” in Christianity because the Truth is one.  This unity of doctrine likewise means a unity of acceptance and a unity of government. 

The Truth must be guarded and protected so as to avoid corruption.  Protestantism bears this aspect out.  Because there is no unity of belief, there can be no unity in government and thus we have thousands of “denominations.”  Protestantism, rather than leading to the unity willed by Christ, has led in the opposite direction.  This government must not only be one, but it must be visible.  The Government of the Church, because of the nature of man and the nature by which men are cooperators, must be something visible and external. 

As Leo XIII said in Satis Cognitum:

The Apostles received a mission to teach by visible and audible signs, and they discharged their mission only by words and acts which certainly appealed to the senses. So that their voices falling upon the ears of those who heard them begot faith in souls-“Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ” (Rom. x., 17). And faith itself – that is assent given to the first and supreme truth – though residing essentially in the intellect, must be manifested by outward profession-“For with the heart we believe unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. x., 10). In the same way in man, nothing is more internal than heavenly grace which begets sanctity, but the ordinary and chief means of obtaining grace are external: that is to say, the sacraments which are administered by men specially chosen for that purpose, by means of certain ordinances.

SG, 3

Unity in Visible Worship

But this visibility in government is not the only aspect by which the Church must be visible.  Since it is a religious society, there must be a unity in worship.  It is this unity of worship that signals to the world that the Church is one. 

Man, on his own, is incapable of worshipping God in a fitting manner.  For that, God must reveal the form of worship that is pleasing to Him. Throughout salvation history, God always makes a covenant with Israel that includes regulation of a concrete form of worship that God seeks.  The New Covenant is no different in that regard.  The worship that God seeks, the only worship that is pleasing to Him is the Mass.  This is exactly the point that St. Paul makes to the Corinthians.  First, he reminds them that the liturgy is their source of unity: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?   Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1Cor 10:16-17).  Then he tells them that the form of the liturgy, including the manner in which they participate, is regulated by Christ Himself: “In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes” (1Cor 11:25-26).

Practically speaking then there can be no true Christian Unity without unity of Faith, government and worship.  True Ecumenism then must always have as its purpose conversion because until we have unity in the True Faith, governed by the True Church and worshipping with the True Sacrifice, we remain a divided society.

A Healthy Sense of Sin?

Freedom, Sacraments, Sin, , , , , , ,

In a 1946 Radio Address, Pope Pius XII said that “perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”  There has been no great moral awakening since he uttered those words so that what was begun has found its completion in our age.  The widespread loss of a sense of sin has led to a great spiritual malaise in which any semblance of shame has been lost and sins are demanded as rights.  The soul of our culture is dead, which is not surprising because its natural soul, the members of the Church, have also lost their sense of sin.  Communion lines grow longer while Confession lines grow shorter and even public sinners are given Communion as a right. 

A Great Spiritual Awakening

Pope St. John Paul II thought that the only way to stimulate a Great Awakening was to restore this sense of sin:

“The restoration of a proper sense of sin is the first way of facing the grave spiritual crisis looming over man today. But the sense of sin can only be restored through a clear reminder of the unchangeable principles of reason and faith which the moral teaching of the church has always upheld.  There are good grounds for hoping that a healthy sense of sin will once again flourish, especially in the Christian world and in the Church. This will be aided by sound catechetics, illuminated by the biblical theology of the covenant, by an attentive listening and trustful openness to the magisterium of the church, which; never ceases to enlighten consciences, and by an ever more careful practice of the Sacrament of Penance.”  

Reconciliation and Penance, 18

The Holy Father was reminding the Church that one of her essential tasks in to preach the bad news of sin.  In fact, the Church has no mission if there is no sin, or at least if there is no sin to be forgiven. Just as the Father sent the Son into the world for the forgiveness of sins, so the Son sends the Apostles and their successors (c.f. John 20:21-23).  To omit the reality of sin from the Gospel renders the Good News utterly senseless. 

The Pontiff did not just say that a sense of sin was necessary, but a healthy sense of sin.  Sin and guilt, at least according to spirit of the world, are things to be explained away because it is unhealthy.  That we can develop a healthy sense of sin is itself Good News because it frees us from not only rationalization but also scrupulosity.  Both of these ensnare us because they leave us closed to the reality of God’s mercy.  What then would a healthy sense of sin consist in?

Elements of a Healthy Sense of Sin

We must first see sin for what it really is.  First and foremost it is an offense against God, but not God as Divine Rulemaker, but God as Father.  In fact, JPII says that all sin is ultimately a rejection of God’s fatherhood.  God gave to us the gift of freedom, but not so that we choose whatever we want, but so that we can choose Him.  He is at every moment providing (e.g. Providence) the means for us to do that.  We only need to orient our freedom towards this reality.  Sin then is disorientation, setting our eyes off in the wrong direction and away from God.  And this is why one of St. Thomas’ thought that “God is offended by us only because we act contrary to our own good” (SCG, 3.122).

A healthy sense of sin then begins by orienting our freedom with acts that are truly good.  When we see sin as ultimately harmful to us and enslaving us, we lose the desire to rationalize and self-forgive.  Now we desire to flush our sin and move forward in freedom.

But it also consists in seeing sin through the lens of God’s Providence.  God only permits our sin if He can turn it to our good.  The obvious example is the “happy fault’ of Adam that won for us the Redeemer.  But this principle applies to each and every sin that we commit.  Ultimately, we are permitted to commit certain sins and not others because those certain sins ultimately can be oriented by God towards our sanctification.

This sense of sin is unfathomable unless we drop the God strictly as Rulemaker paradigm.  He is not sitting in Heaven with His Divine Gotcha Button waiting for us to mess up.  From all eternity He plotted how He was to redeem me and you and that would include using those sins we commit as a means to that sanctification.  This is not to trivialize our sin, but to see them from God’s perspective.  We are permitted to commit certain actual sins because those are the sins that, when repented of, will draw down upon us the grace of a true and deeper conversion.  So that when we sin, the grace of repentance follows right behind it, causing us to run back harder and faster than when we fell.  This healthy sense of sin then takes the focus off of our actions and shines it upon Divine Mercy.  In other words, a healthy sense of sin sees all personal sin as a means that Providence uses to glorify God’s Mercy and save our souls.  Only a healthy sense of sin rooted in this reality protects us from falling into scrupulosity.    

Make Lent Hard Again

Fasting, Lent, Prayer, , , ,

In an age afflicted by ecclesial bar lowering, there is always a great danger that the inherent rhythm in the liturgical year will lose its meaning.  This is perhaps most true when it comes to the season of Lent.  Lent “officially” begins on Sunday, but Pope St. Gregory the Great added the four days between Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday in order to add four extra days so that the Faithful would fast for a total of forty days between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday (Sundays and the two Solemnities of St. Joseph and the Annunciation being days to relax the fasting).  In other words, unlike in our own times where we are required to fast two days during Lent, the great Pope wanted to raise the bar and make it harder!  It is in this spirit that we should all resolve to make this our hardest Lent ever.

A Harder Lent?

Now admittedly, Gregory the Great was not simply trying to make it harder, even if that was one of the side effects.  Instead, he was adjusting it so that Lent would retain its meaning.  He wanted us, day by day, to join Our Lord in the desert during His great fast.  Our Lord, true God and true Man, merited specific graces for each one of us individually each day that He fasted and fought in the desert.  Lent is meant to be the time when we receive those graces, but our Lord asks us to meet Him in order for Him to give them to us. 

It was no accident that Our Lord chose 40 days.  Whether it is the forty days and nights of rain during the Flood, the Forty Years spent wandering in the desert, or the 40 days by which Ezekiel had to lay on his side, forty is the number of punishment and affliction.  It is also the number of reparation with both Moses and Elijah joining Our Lord in reparatory fasting for 40 days.  It turns out, although not surprisingly, that forty is also the magic number for developing a new habit.  It is as if forty days of affliction and reparation is written into our fallen nature. 

Because Christ first instituted Lent in the desert, it has all the qualities of a Christian mystery.  And like all Christian mysteries it was instituted in order to bestow grace upon us.  It is like a sacrament, or better yet, a sacramental.  A sacred sign that is given to us that disposes us to receive grace.  Living out a true Lenten spirit disposes us to receive those graces Our Lord wants to give us.  Prayer, fasting and almsgiving take on a sacramental meaning, but especially fasting.  The emphasis of Lent is on fasting for good reason—Our Lord sanctified and weaponized it in the desert.  Lent is meant to be 40 days of hard fasting in reparation for our sins and growth in virtue. 

Lent Began Well, Ends Well

Another key component of Lent is the reception of ashes on Ash Wednesday.  This is not, as many think, because it is only a symbol of our sinfulness and need for Penance, but because it is a Sacramental that, when received in faith, disposes us to the necessary graces to live a hard Lent.  This disposal happens through the prayer of the Blessing of the Ashes.  One of the prayers of blessing in the Novus Ordo Mass says:

O God, who desire not the death of sinners, but their conversion, mercifully hear our prayers and in your kindness be pleased to bless + these ashes which we intend to receive upon our heads, that we, who acknowledge we are but ashes and shall return to dust, may, through a steadfast observance of Lent, gain pardon for sins and newness of life after the likeness of your Risen Son. Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

As I have spoken of previously, the power of Sacramentals come through their actual blessing and so we must, in order to properly take advantage of them, pay attention to what they have been empowered to do.  The ashes in particular then are true Sacramentals that, through the power of the Church, dispose us to receive all the graces necessary to have a “steadfast observance of Lent” and “gain the pardon of sins.”  By receiving the ashes, we are each individually guaranteed to receive the prayers of the Mystical Body that we can live a hard Lent.

As an aside, Ashes are a prime example of why the blessings from the Tridentine Rite are far superior to those of the Novus Ordo.  As a side-by-side comparison, take a look at the prayers.  The former clearly gives a more abundant blessing upon the ashes, rendering them far more powerful to aid us during Lent.   This is not a shot across the post-Vatican II bow, but a comment that, objectively speaking, the Church was far more generous in bestowing blessings upon the Faithful in the pre-Vatican II era.

Either way, armed by Our Lord in the desert and further disposed by the Ashes, we have everything we need to live a hard Lent.  What if each one of us, rather than measuring out “what we will give up”, went “old school” and fasted for these 40 days.  I have found that Dr. Jay Richard’s method detailed in his book is particularly effective for growing in the virtue of fasting and implementing as a daily practice in Lent.  Recalling that one of the reasons why the Church had so many fast days previously was so that we could develop the virtue of fasting, we may have to start at a level that is proportional to our current level of virtue.  But by the end of Lent we should all have developed the virtue and that only comes about through making it hard.

The “Great Bar Lowering” then must be met by a voluntary raising of our own bars.  Genuine contrition of soul can never be achieved without mortification of the body.  We are both body and soul and any attempt to separate the two in practice leads to great harm to our persons.  A hard Lent, fasting especially, will create in us a disposition of sorrow for our sins and a generosity of spirit in making reparation to Our Lord.  It is as if the diminishing of our physical energy brings about a supernatural energy.  Make Lent Hard Again!

Scoffers in the End Times

Evolution, , , , , , ,

In writing about Our Lord’s second coming, St. Peter says that despite the fact that “the day of the Lord shall come as a thief,” (2Peter 3:10) there is a sure sign that the end is near.  In those days deceitful scoffers will arise saying “Where is his promise or His coming? for since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:5).  He goes on to describe these scoffers as “willfully ignorant of, that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God.  Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.  But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:6-9). 

What the Scoffers are Scoffing About

A moment’s reflection on his words will allow us to realize that these “scoffers of the End Times” are living in our midst.  Peter the Rock is telling us that the scoffers will be those who insist that “things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”  They are, in short, evolutionists.  Evolutionists are those who believe that everything in the universe is a result of an unfolding of naturalistic processes that began with the Big Bang.  There is no room for God in their view and evolution forms the philosophical foundation for their secularist vision of reality. 

Given St. Peter’s caution then, it is odd that many Catholics are so quick to accommodate these scoffers by subscribing to what might be called Theistic Evolution.  They proclaim that Evolution is the mechanism by which God created the world and everything in it.  This proclamation comes despite the clear testimony of Scripture and Tradition that creation was not a result of the unfolding of some natural process, but a supernatural one in which God created each thing immediately.  He did not create by some natural law, but created the natural law along with the rest of creation.  Long before Darwin, the Church Fathers knew of evolutionary explanations for Origins and rejected them (see Summa Theologiae I q.73 a.1, obj 2-3 for a good summary of the Fathers’ explanation).

This accommodationist position usually presents in one of two forms.  Because it seeks to accommodate “science” it only concerns itself with human origins specifically.  These might aptly be called natural transformism and special transformism.

Natural Transformism

Those who hold the position of Natural Transformism hold that man was created through some natural process.  By some “accident” of nature, two primates, through normal reproduction, prepared a body that was capable of receiving a human soul.  This spontaneous generation of a human being from primate parents has been condemned by the Provincial Council of Cologne (which has approval of the Holy See):

“Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that the opinion of those who do not fear to assert that this human being, man as regards to his body, emerged finally from the spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith.”

It also suffers from a common sense problem as well.  This “accident” would also need to be met with a simultaneous “accident” of the creation of another (wo)man that would allow for reproduction or else this first human would have to mate with another non-human.  To accommodate to this position, rather than synthesizing faith and reason, is destructive of the Faith and requires further setting aside of the perennial teachings of the Church related to the Special Creation of Eve and polygenism.

Special Transformism

Special Transformism is usually presented as Evolution preparing the body of some brute and then God infuses a soul into it.  To at least discuss this as a possibility is not out of the question.  In the most authoritative teaching on Evolution, Pius XII’s Humani Generis, the Holy Father said that it was licit to make inquiries “into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter… However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.” 

Most read this freedom to discuss as freedom to assert it as true.  The Holy Father was quite clear that this was not the case: “Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.”  Using this as a guideline, let us see what we can say about Special Transformism and what we can’t.

First, we cannot say, without falling into some form of dualism that the body of the primate did not also undergo a transformation.  The soul is not some add-on to a body, but its form (see CCC 365), making it what it is.  We have spoken previously about this type of change as a substantial change, but this position creates a metaphysical Catch-22 such that before the matter that was the primate’s body can take on the form, it must already be a human body.  The only way for this to happen would be if God intervened and changed the body such that it was capable of receiving the human soul.

How this “miraculous” intervention is any different than holding a literal interpretation of Genesis 2:7 is not clear.  Whether God used inanimate matter (the slime of the earth) or previously animate matter (the body of the primate) really makes no practical difference.  Both stretch the limits of scientific explanations for our origins and strike down any concession that involves evolution preparing a body for man.  It is probably better to stand with Moses, St. Peter, Augustine, Chrysostom, St. Basil, Aquinas, and more and stick with a literal interpretation of Genesis.

Theistic Evolution, then, rather than appearing to be an enlightened compromise, actually turns out to look really dumb.  The problem is that Evolution and Christianity are completely incompatible and any attempt to reconcile them simply enables the Scoffers to keep on scoffing.  Moses said one thing about our origin, Darwin said another and the two shall never meet.  You are either a creationist or an evolutionist, but you can’t be both.

Confronting the Mass Identity Crisis

Angels, Church and State, Creation, Culture, Devils, , , , , ,

When Our Lord and His Apostles came to the great rock of Caesarea Philippi, He asked a poignant question about His personality: “Who do you say that I am?”.  Only Simon, enlightened by Divine grace, saw Our Lord for Who He really was: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).  Once Peter identified Our Lord, Our Lord in turn gave him his true identity as the Great Rock upon which the Church herself would be identified.  Peter was not alone in this regard.  Our Lord came to bestow our identity upon each one of us.  He identified with us in order that we might come to share in His identity as “sons in the Son.”  Modern man, perhaps more than any other ailment, suffers from a great identity crisis that makes this moment in Our Lord’s Life particularly important. 

The First Identity Crisis

Lucifer had the greatest natural endowment of all creatures.  In this way he was entirely unique and, created in a state of grace, he was the most like God.  This was his true identity. Rather than receive this identity as a gift, he instead chose to create his own.  Lucifer became Satan and lost his true identity forever.  He became, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger an “Un-person”, corrupted beyond any personal recognition.  Out of envy, Scripture says, Satan then became an Identity Thief attempting to steal everyone else’s identity.  He began by coaxing a third of the angels to follow him in asserting their own identity.

Misery loves company and so Satan set his sights upon mankind.  Ultimately his temptation of Eve amounts to questioning her true identity as a beloved daughter of God.  He tells her that she will become like God.  The problem, of course, is that she already was like God.  God had gifted her with sanctifying grace which already made her “like God”.  Satan tempts her to see her identity as something she must grasp, rather than receive and so simultaneously attacks her femininity.  Likewise, with Adam, both his identity as being like God and being a man.  It was the man who was commanded to protect and till the Garden. 

Our identity crisis has its roots in the Fall then.  Original Sin removed sanctifying grace, which forms our true identity, our God-likeness if you will.  But it also wounded us in our sexual identity, the manner in which we individually image God.  Not only does the distinctly feminine power of childbirth become labor for the woman, but, because man will be tempted to lord over her, she will be tempted to seize masculinity.  Likewise, for man, the uniquely masculine way of working also becomes labor and he will be tempted to seize the feminine.  Not only was God-likeness lost, both forgot what it meant to image God in their masculinity and femininity.

The crisis would grow until the New Adam and his suitable helpmate, the New Eve came. Satan could not steal either of their identities.  He tried to steal Our Lord’s when He went into the desert.  The enmity between him and Our Lady made her immune to Satan’s wiles.  Our Lord and Our Lady then, each in their proper way, cooperated in restoring us not just as children of God, but sons and daughters. 

Our Identity Crisis

Satan may have lost the war, but he is still engaging in the Battle across the centuries, trying to keep us from our true identity.  He has had varying degrees of success but has been particularly successful in our own age.   His battle plan remains the same as always by destroying the image and suppressing our desire for the true likeness of God that lies at the root of our real identity.

Rather than accepting God-likeness as a free gift that comes only through Baptism, we chase immortality through technology.  The Covid crisis has been particularly eye-opening in this regard in that we are all expecting a technocratic Messiah to save us.  Technology can make us like gods.

The Church has not been immune to this attack either, putting bodily health before spiritual health.  One soul, dying in a state of grace, is far greater than 1000 people “safely” locked in their houses without any access to the gift of true God-likeness in the Sacraments.  Christ instituted the Church, so that, throughout all-time, His unique power to bestow our true identity might be made available to all.  When the Church forgets her true identity, then a mass identity crisis is sure to follow.    

While technology is the weapon of choice to suppress our desire for true God-likeness, intersectionality, rooted in identity politics, is the weapon of choice to suppress our identity as being made in the image of God.  Intersectionality attempts to root our identity in victimhood.  Christ became a victim so that we could overcome this temptation and clear the way for our real identity.  Sex, masquerading as gender, rather than being a way in which we individually image God, is simply a social construct made malleable (through technology) according to personal whims.  This Great Lie destroys our identity rather than restoring it.  It sits at the heart of today’s mass identity crisis and is nothing more than a ploy of the Evil One. 

Genesis tells us that the Serpent, in attacking Adam and Eve’s identity was the most subtle of all the wild animals (Gn 3:1).  What makes our age unique is that he has thrown subtlety out the window and has chosen to unmask himself.  That is why we must be prepared to fight the identity crisis by refusing to be a party to any of the lies that have enabled the crisis to become so deep.  Too often we simply go along to get along.  The Devil has been hard at work stealing people’s identities, we need to be equally hard at work helping them find their true one.

Making the Ordinary Extraordinary Again

Church Authority, Eucharist, Magisterium, Sacraments, , , , ,

G.K. Chesterton once said that there is “a silent anarchy eating out our society” because there is a wholesale “incapacity to grasp that the exception proves the rule.”  What he meant by this the very fact that when we treat something extraordinary, we are in fact admitting that there is an ordinary.  The anarchy has come in because we now treat the exception as the rule.  Possible is interpreted as probable and all dogmatic statements are rendered useless.  Unfortunately, this habit has crept into the Church as well and has led to a widescale adoption of things that were hitherto thought sacrilegious.  One such example considers special attention today and that is the use of so-called Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. 

The Church has not been immune to the Covidiocy that has attacked our world, especially in the Liturgy.  Not only was there a long-term liturgical blackout, but the dictatorship of the hygienic has led to all kinds of abuses of Our Lord in the distribution of Communion.  Part of the issue can be placed at the feet of bad catechesis. 

The Real, Real Presence

In the 12th and 13th Centuries, the Church was confronted with a Eucharistic heresy that might be described as an exaggerated realism in which the broken Host or half-filled chalice was thought to no longer contain the whole Christ since the sacred species had become corrupted.  The Church, adopting the view of St. Thomas that Christ was wholly present as long as the appearances of bread and wine were not corrupted (say through digestion for example) was quick to defend the truth that Christ is wholly present in even the smallest particle of the Host or the smallest drop of the Precious Blood.  As St. Thomas puts it:

If there be such change on the part of the accidents as would not have sufficed for the corruption of the bread and wine, then the body and blood of Christ do not cease to be under this sacrament on account of such change, whether the change be on the part of the quality, as for instance, when the color or the savor of the bread or wine is slightly modified; or on the part of the quantity, as when the bread or the wine is divided into such parts as to keep in them the nature of bread or of wine. But if the change be so great that the substance of the bread or wine would have been corrupted, then Christ’s body and blood do not remain under this sacrament; and this either on the part of the qualities, as when the color, savor, and other qualities of the bread and wine are so altered as to be incompatible with the nature of bread or of wine; or else on the part of the quantity, as, for instance, if the bread be reduced to fine particles, or the wine divided into such tiny drops that the species of bread or wine no longer remain. 

ST III q.77, art.4

In summary, provided that the Eucharist does not undergo a substantial change, Christ remains whole and entire in each and every part.  This foundational truth has profound practical implications both in the manner in which we receive and respond.  If Christ remains whole and entire as long as the borrowed accidental appearances of bread and wine are present, then we truly have Christ wholly present within us until the species are digested.  This ought to inspire in us a profound reverence and gratitude by which we remain wholly attentive to the Divine presence.  We should be slow to leave the Church and never omit sentiments of sincere thanksgiving and self-offering.

Our response however is conditioned on our reception and so a special emphasis needs to be placed on the manner in which Communion is distributed.  Communion in the hand, which I have spoken of previously, is one such abuse that should be avoided.  The passing of the Sacred Host back and forth most certainly leads to particles of the Host falling to the ground.  Add to this the phenomenon of masks which are usually touched after receiving the Host in the hand and there is an even greater risk that the small particles of the Host is lost.  Receiving in the hand is also by far the less sanitary means of receiving as our hands are far dirtier than our tongues, especially considering that Communion on the tongue, when done properly, does not lead to any tongue to hand contact the way that there is hand to hand contact when receiving in the hand.

The hygienic considerations hinge on the clause “when done properly”.  Those who receive on the tongue know to tilt their head back and extend their tongue and priests know how to place it on the tongue without touching it.  Consider further that when the Priest is taller than the person receiving (which happens 100% of the time when Communion is received while kneeling) then the chances of contact are far less than if Communion was received in the hand.  The problem of course is that far too often, Communion is distributed by someone other than a Priest.

“Eucharistic Ministers”

All of this leads up to the question of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.  This “office” is a relatively new phenomenon in the Church and was not present anywhere at any time during the first 1900 years of Christianity.  It was added as part of the Liturgical changes made in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.  It was meant to facilitate the distribution of Holy Communion when some extraordinary circumstance dictated it.  The problem of course was that it fell upon the soil of anarchy that Chesterton mentioned so that it became ordinary and thus has led the way to great abuse of the Blessed Sacrament.

One of the reasons the Church has traditionally avoided the sanctioning of Extraordinary Ministers is certainly the practical things we have already discussed.  But there are deep theological reasons for not using them also.  Not only does it lead to abuses of Our Lord in the Sacrament, but it ends up being an attack upon the Faith itself.

Traditionally only men who received the Sacrament of Orders could touch the Eucharist because only they, by virtue of their ordination, have been consecrated to the service of God in the Liturgy.  This consecration is not merely symbolic but real.  Sacraments effect what they signify so that they have been Sacramentally conformed to Christ the Priest through a Sacramental Character.  It is Christ who distributes the Eucharist and only those who have been Sacramentally conformed to Him should do so.  This power cannot be delegated.

If that is true then why did the Church reverse course?  They thought that there might be times when, because of some extraordinary circumstance such as a Priest not being available or too infirm to come off the Altar and distribute Communion.  But like all “exceptions” those who have a clear agenda to Protestantize the Church seized the opportunity to further blur the distinction between the Ministerial Priesthood and the Priesthood of All Believers.  The exception became the rule. 

The Vatican has repeatedly cautioned against the “habitual use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion…[as something that is] to be avoided and eliminated where such have emerged in particular Churches” (Ecclesia de Mysterio, 1997).  Despite the clear mandate and the fact that most churches are now at less than 50% capacity, the practice has continued.

The Mandate

The Congregation for Divine Worship in 2004 called upon all the Faithful to maintain Eucharistic integrity, saying “In an altogether particular manner, let everyone do all that is in their power to ensure that the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist will be protected from any and every irreverence or distortion and that all abuses be thoroughly corrected. This is a most serious duty incumbent upon each and every one, and all are bound to carry it out without any favoritism” (Redemptionis Sacramentum §183).  It is in that spirit that “everyone” should actively work to remedy the abuse.  This can be done, not in some democratic way, but through an application of the law of supply and demand.  Those who want to see greater reverence for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament should not serve as Extraordinary Ministers to cut off the supply.  To reduce the demand, one should avoid receiving from them in situations where it is reasonable to receive from the Ordinary Minister of Holy Communion.

St. Paul informs the Corinthians that many of their infirmities are being caused by their Eucharistic irreverence.  Abusing the Blessed Sacrament is literally causing their sickness.  That is why it is ironic that in the name of keeping people from getting sick, the Church has turned a blind eye to the many Eucharistic offenses.  What if, rather than making it better, it was actually making people get sick?  We need to all work to restore Eucharistic piety, which starts by eliminating the ordinary usage of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.

Guest Post: Against the Institution of Female Acolytes and Lectors

Church, Church Authority, Eucharist, Guest Post, Magisterium, Sacraments, Women's Ordination, , , , ,

Recently, the Holy Father promulgated a ruling which allows for laywomen to be formally accepted into the to roles of lector and acolyte, roles which for sometime they have already been filling in practice. Up to this point, however, the formal acceptance was restricted to men. The move, while having very little visible effect on the current state of the liturgy, formalizes growing problems that will now be explored.

Why is Reading a Big Deal?

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the priest reads from Sacred Scripture from the altar while facing away from the people. This liturgical choice preserves two important ideas: 1) the sacredness of the Word of God and 2) the offering of the Word to God. The first idea, the sacredness of the Word of God, is shown by the fact that only a person that has been in some way consecrated to God is able to the proclaim the word of God in the Church’s public worship. In the past, a distinction has existed between those possessing sacramental ordinations (deacons, priests, and bishops) and those that had received non-sacramental ordinations (lectors, porters, acolytes, exorcists, and subdeacons). Those receiving non-sacramental ordinations (also called minor orders) were understood to be acting as an extension of the ministry of the deacon, who possessed a sacramental ordination.

It is also important to note that, keeping in mind the principle that liturgical actions often have both a practical and symbolic purpose, the restriction of the ability to read publicly to those who will have a clear reading voice and will be knowledgable enough to correctly pronounce the more difficult words in Scripture will stop the proclamation of the divinely revealed Word of God from becoming an event the faithful laugh about on the car ride home.

Why do you hate Altar-girls?

With regards to the second idea, it must be kept in mind that the priest is offering the entire Mass as a sacrifice to God. This reality is reinforced by the priest facing towards the tabernacle while he is proclaiming the Word. The addition of women to the role of lector, in addition to the problems created by reading while facing the people, destroys this because God has always indicated that He desires the priestly ministry of offering sacrifice to be reserved to males.

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, only men are allowed to approach the altar, be it as bishops, priests, deacons, or even humble altar servers. Why is this? Is it because the Church fell to the spirit of past ages and has reinforced in its liturgy sexist ideas? The answer is a clear ‘No.’ To see why this is, one only needs to open a Bible and observe the patterns of worship that have been in place since the beginning and have been shown to please the Lord. (Exo. 28-29, Num. 3) They all contain male-only clergy because they are types of Christ Who will be both Priest and Minister in the New Testament. Those who participate in that liturgy act as sacramental signs of Christ, Who is male. This practice continues into the New Testament when Jesus and His Apostles continued the practice of male-only clergy even though they could have changed it. This change would not have even been perceived as strange outside the Jewish community as female clergy already existed in other religions in other parts of the Roman Empire, e.g., the vestals.

While the change only allowed for female acolytes, the formalization of an altar server, the principle on display is one that would eventually advocate for the female diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. This principle is rooted in the denial of the different roles of men and women in the Church, roles that have been clearly established in Scripture and vindicated by two millennia of tradition.

What about the Priesthood of the Baptized?

Forgetting the problems introduced by these changes discussed above, let us ask ourselves the question, ‘To what end are these changes made?’  Some would advance that it is desire to teach the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized. In response to this, it must be realized that this method will never achieve that goal because it obscures that reality more than it reveals it.

The sacrifice of the Mass is the perfect prayer of the Church and it is the meeting of Heaven and earth. All the faithful ought to hear Mass and offer this most perfect offering to God. An authentic teaching of the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized would teach the faithful how to more perfectly offer this sacrifice, because offering sacrifice is exactly what priests do. However, the priesthood within the liturgy is not the same as the priesthood outside the liturgy.

The ordained priest has been given the honor of offering the Mass and the faithful participate in the Mass to the degree that they spiritually unite themselves with him in his offering. This, however, is precisely the opposite of what is shown by allowing more and more faithful on the altar. Does the man or woman that reads at Mass participate more fully than one that doesn’t? If so, does that mean that we need to multiply roles until everyone attending the Mass is able to more ‘fully’ participate? This, again, is exactly the mindset forwarded by the increase of the roles of the laity in the Church’s liturgy.  From this, confusion emerges and we are left with a faithful that has traded true spiritual participation for a visible and ‘active’ participation and reduced the ability of others to spiritually participate in the liturgy by needlessly multiplying distractions.

Stripping down the Priesthood

What these changes leave us with, in addition to a liturgy less able to lead the faithful to union with God in prayer, is a sacramental priest stripped down and lacking identity. The priest has a sacred duty to offer sacrifice to God, namely the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. At the center of his spirituality must be this sacrifice and his entire life must be conformed to this sacrifice such that his entire life becomes a sacrifice. Just as a married man must lay down his life daily for his wife (who is the altar upon which he offers himself to God) and they are so conformed together that they become one flesh, so to must the priest become so conformed to the sacrifice of the Mass that he becomes a Victim-Priest just as Christ was. These changes, however, lead him more towards the roles of presider and orchestrator. One by one, his sacred duties are ‘contracted out’ to the laity and therefore lose their priestly character and change the character of the priest. The retractions are even more impactful to the diaconate, who has the duty to preform the exact ministerial actions that are being given to the laity.

The clergyman (be him a deacon, priest, or bishop) is a man chosen by God and consecrated such that he is given God-like powers, e.g., forgiving sins, calling down Christ from heaven, and strengthening a soul to endure death. Why are we stripping him of his duties and making him seem like an ordinary man? The evidence of this transformation is clear from priests being uncomfortable with saying, “I absolve you”, and replacing the ‘I’ with ‘Jesus’ or something similar. How can a man unconvinced of the massive amount of supernatural grace given to him and unwilling to proudly proclaim, with St. Paul that, “by the grace of God, I am what I am,” (1 Cor. 15:10) going to be able to fill the souls entrusted to his care with supernatural grace. We, the faithful, must support our clergy in living out their vocation by insisting that they keep the clerical duties for themselves.

About the Author

Connor Szurgot is currently a senior study for his BS. He has given multiple talks to the Catholic Campus Ministry at his university on topics such as Eucharistic reverence and mental prayer. He is a member of the Thomistic Institute and is a regular participant in their intellectual formation. He enjoys discussing the practical and philosophical aspects of politics as well as religion, particularly systematic theology.

Plot Holes in Reality

Culture, Evolution, Moralilty, Natural Law, Science, , ,

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas makes the observation that when Aristotle reckons that  “art imitates nature,” he means that man, because he is an intellectual creature, can make things that help him fulfill his nature.  For example, a beaver builds a dam by instinct, while man uses his reason to fashion a house.  But it doesn’t just pertain to servile arts like building a house, but fine arts like making a movie or writing a book.  But because man is also fallen, he can also use those same arts to distort and do harm to his nature.  In this way we might say that, in addition to imitating nature, “art forms nature.”

Examples abound on how this uniquely human capacity is abused, but there is one way that has a profound effect in our age.  The aforementioned storytelling arts use the inherent power of storytelling to activate wonder and convey important truths about what it means to be human.  One way in which this art abuses our nature has been covered previously regarding “Drag Queen Story Hour.”  While this is still somewhat rare, thee is a more common abuse of story that may not even be on our radar at first—it wasn’t on mine until a friend of mine pointed it out.

Tolerating Plot Holes

We have all seen movies in which there are both subtle and gigantic plot holes.  Sometimes they are too much and we turn off the movie, but most of the time we simply tolerate them for the sake of moving the plot along.  We might think that the producers of the movies are simply lazy in not tying up loose ends, but in truth we should expect them when the story presents a falsehood about human life.  The problem is that if we watch enough movies, then we eventually learn to overlook them.  We become, in a very real sense, conditioned to overlook them—not just in the movies but in the rest of life as well.  Point of evidence is the current Covid crisis which is riddled with plot holes that the majority of people of good will simply accept. 

More on this particular example in a moment, but there is something further here that needs to be pointed out.  We accept the plot holes for the sake of the plot and to move the story along.  But if we look at it from the perspective of the producer, he has a plot in mind and includes the plot holes in order to make his story fit together.  In a certain sense then we can say that the plot holes actually reveal the plot and the intention of the producer.

This principle is important because it is applies to the incongruous in real life as well.  We will usually have one of two tendencies; to overlook the plot hole completely or to point out that it makes no sense and then, like the fist tendency, simply move on.  The point though is that it makes perfect sense because it moves the story along.  In other words, if we pay close attention to the incongruities rather than dismissing or mocking them, the plot that the artist is advancing will come into relief. 

Focusing on the plot holes themselves then will enable us to see through the agenda of those who insert them into reality.  These holes may look different in the various arenas of public life, but the principle is always the same.  If we consider three examples from the fields of morality, science and politics then we can learn how to see the plot holes for what they really are.

Plot Holes in the Moral Realm

Any number of examples could have been chosen to demonstrate moral plot holes, but a recent one from Pope Francis is particularly helpful here.  In a documentary that aired in October, the Holy Father was quoted as saying that “we have to create a civil union law.”  While not a tacit acceptance of gay marriage (few things, unfortunately, are tacit with Pope Francis), the comment caused an uproar because he was suggesting that the civil realm should create space for gay couples.

Let us assume that the Holy Father’s “plot” is promotion of the Gospel and true human thriving in this world so as to be residents of the next.  From within that context we would say marriage is a fundamental human good that helps to fulfill human nature.  But not any “union” between two people will do, but only one that is in accord with nature.  In short, as Catholics, we know that only monogamous marriage between a man and a woman leads to authentic happiness.  Any other domestic arrangement leads away from this.  The laws and the practices of the Church herself are reflective of this awareness.  The Church teaches what she does about marriage because she knows that it is a good thing for those involved to act according to nature.

To suggest that this is just a “Church law” or only binding on Catholics with no effect in the civil realm creates a giant plot hole.  No law should be made to protect or promote something that we know will ultimately lead to unhappiness.  By suggesting that there should be some civil law, the Holy Father is really expressing that he doesn’t believe that marriage is a true human good. 

Pope Francis in choosing the name Francis has seen his role as one who would reform the Church.  He has been open about this from the beginning of his pontificate.  Applying our principle of looking along the plot hole (at this and many of his other ones), we can discern what that reform consists in.  The Holy Father is attempting to reform the Church, not according the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of the age. The plot holes reveal the plot.

Plot Holes in the Scientific Realm

Plot holes in the scientific realm are usually more difficult to discern for the layman, but usually become apparent once you check assumptions.  When a scientific theory is full of unsubstantiated claims that are labeled as “assumptions” the plot of the Scientists are unmistakable.

A good example of this is what we is commonly referred to as the Big Bang Theory.  This theory claims that the universe began as a dense ball of primordial matter that exploded and over billions of years organized into the universe that we observe today.  This cosmology is accepted as scientific fact, but once we pull back the curtain we find that it rests on many untested and untestable assumptions.  There is a growing gap between observation and theory and in order to advance the plot, several plot holes needed to be introduced.  According to Big Bang Cosmologists, ~95% of the universe is composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.  The problem is that these hypothetical entities have never been observed and they can’t be measured.  Instead they are theoretical constructs that hold the Big Bang Universe and its accompanying theory together.  You can read more about these two things elsewhere, but the point is that in order to use the theory to explain what we observe in the universe, physicists had to make up an unobservable “force”.  As one physicist observed,

Big bang theory relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities – things that we have never observed. Inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent. Without them, there would be fatal contradictions between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory…the big bang theory can’t survive without these fudge factors.

 Eric Lerner, “Bucking the Big Bang”, New Scientist

The point is that we hold as scientific fact a theory that only explains 5% of what we observe in the universe.

Viewed as plot holes, these assumptions reveal that Big Bang Cosmology is not about the science but about scientism and the ability to explain natural phenomena using only natural causes.  It is an attempt to discredit the Genesis account of creation and theology and create an atheology that is completely devoid of God.  It is essentially the theory of Evolution on a cosmic scale.  The plot holes reveal the plot.

Plot Holes in the Political Realm

 

As is becoming increasingly obvious, the political realm is not devoid of plot holes either.  In fact one could say that the plot holes in this arena of life will be the way in which 2020 is best remembered.  Covid-19 itself is not a plot hole, but the way in which it has been managed has revealed the plot holes in reality.  If we examine them carefully then we can come to see the plot more clearly. 

We will discuss the vaccine some time in the near future, but the manner in which masks, social distancing and closures have been implemented have represented serious plot holes because of their lack of consistency and scientific justification.  I already discussed this with relation to masks, but it also applies to social distancing.  This has never been tried before and it is based on a simulation.  Yes, you read that right, not an experiment, but a simulation.  Drs. Jay Richards and William Briggs cover this in their book Price of Panic in detail, but in short the CDC went with recommendations from this paper in which found that social distancing would “yield local defenses against a highly virulent strain” in the absence of effective treatment. The “science” behind it was simple; you create a model to simulate an environment in which closing schools and implementing social distance measures lower the rate of infection and then you test to see if the rate is in fact lower. Besides proving that you are a good programmer, this also, surprisingly proved that social distancing worked. The fact that it is a simulated environment and not a real one should have no bearing on our decisions, right? This is, after all, Science.  No matter anyway because we now have effective treatment and thus no more need for social distancing, right?

Once we view these inconsistencies as plot holes related to the plot, we can see that there are powers that be that have chosen not to waste a good crisis and to implement their grand plot—The Great Reset—which we will discuss in the coming weeks. The plot holes reveal the plot.

In conclusion, we might be willing to tolerate plot holes in our movies, but we should never overlook them in real life.  If we do, we may find that we are caught up in someone else’s story for how the world should be. The plot holes reveal the plot.

Masking and the New Religion

Apologetics, Church and State, Church Authority, Conscience, Culture, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Marxism, Moralilty, Natural Law, New Age, Paganism, Politics, Sacramentals, Sacraments, Virtue, , , ,

We have been hearing for decades that we are living in a post-Christian society.  This has mostly been a way to describe the fact that Christian values have been in decline.  But Christianity has still been the dominant religion; dominant, that is, until the Covid-19 crisis hit.  The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in our society marked the official changing of the guard.  While we have been hearing about the emergence of a post-Christian society for decades, Christianity was still the dominant religion.  No longer is this true, however.  Christianity has been toppled and replaced by a new Gnosticism that we call Science. 

To be clear, the issue is not against science per se, but what is more accurately described as religion masquerading as science.  After all, as Aquinas says “He who neglects the experimental order in natural science falls into error” in all aspects of knowledge.  To solve the Covid-19 crisis, natural science plays a necessary, although not sufficient, role.  The peddlers of the new religion, would have us believe that it is sufficient because all we need to do is “trust the science.”  We are saved by faith, not in Christ, but in Science.

The New Priesthood

Nor should we be quick to dismiss expert opinion.  But expert opinion is not fact, it still must be based on solid reasoning.  The problem is that expert opinion is often treated like dogmatic truth because the Scientific Elite are the new priests.  Based on their secret knowledge that only “experts” such as themselves can understand, they dictate religious dogma.  Spoken word becomes fact.  Thus says the Scientist—“Masks don’t work” and it is so.  Thus says the Scientist two months later—“Masks do work” and it is so.  The Shepherds have spoken and the Sheeple must follow suit.  Laws are made to punish heretics who dare to question the spoken word.

This, by the way, is why masks have elicited such a strong response.  The High Priest initially said that they don’t work.  Then he spoke again saying they did and that the Priests lied because they were worried about a shortage.  But if a person unapologetically lies once, how do you know they are telling the truth now?  Actually, a leading Priest at Johns Hopkins says, it wasn’t lying but that “[A]t first, researchers and scientists did not know how necessary mask wearing would be among the general public. Now we are aware that wearing masks is an effective way to help prevent spread of this coronavirus” (Emphasis added).  Given the timeframe and the rather dramatic shift from no-mask to mask, where did this awareness come from? Changing your mind is fine. But changing your mind without a change in the data is based not on science, but fiat.  If you search prior to the dogmatic declaration, scientific opinion for the most part deemed them ineffective.  The fact is that the Priests exercised their hidden knowledge (because there was no new data) and declared them so.  I would probably be clothed in a scarlet mask for this statement alone, but let me go a little further as a statistician and speak about what a reasonable approach to this question would look like.

The Statistician Speaks

First, proving a negative is extremely difficult.  To conclusively say “masks don’t work” is a practical impossibility.  Having said that, there is little data to suggest that they do work (a complete summary that is thoroughly documented can be found here).  There have been studies in the last few months that have suggested they might, but these are inconclusive at best.  They are all very poorly done because they are being done in the midst of the crisis.  To study the problem properly you need to set up what would be something akin to a clinical trial in which you had a placebo group to compare it to.  But you also have the problem that mask usage is almost certainly confounded with social distancing.  Is social distancing the thing that helps, or is it masks, or is it both?  You’d have to set up a study to separate them.  Secondly, not all masks are created the same or are equally effective.

Carnegie Mellon tracks (among many other things) mask compliance here.  Notice that many places are in the high 80ish% for compliance and yet “cases” continue to increase in all of those areas.  If any intervention works, then you should expect the slope of the line of increase to decrease (“flatten the curve”).  But the data suggests that the lines are actually steeper.  For example, see the plot below of my home state of North Carolina which instituted a Mask Mandate on June 26th and has had above an 85% mask compliance rate (currently 91%).  North Carolina is far from unique in this regard and you can find similar data for all your favorite states.

If we were true to “Science” we would look at this medical intervention and determine that it does not work.  A drug company running a clinical trial (where they are using their own money) would stop the trial and might even decide that the intervention is actually making it worse.

This might mean that…wait for it…masks are making it worse.  You would again need to study this, but it is a reasonable supposition given the data.  It also makes sense in that it could easily be creating a false sense of security or become a petri dish of germs just waiting to be deposited on someone else or an aritficial barrier suppresses the body’s natural barrier of the immune system.  To be sure though, if we were testing a drug and the data looked like this, we would stop giving it to people.

This tangent was necessary because it speaks to the reasonableness of mask mandates.  Law, according to St. Thomas, is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community and is promulgated.”  Any law that does not fulfill those four requirements—reasonable, aimed at the common good, proper authority, and made known—is not, properly speaking, a law.  Therefore, because they are not reasonable (or at least can not be proven to be at this point reasonable) we have no obligation to obey them.  As true Shepherds of the Flock, Bishops and Priests need to stop being so deferential to mask mandates precisely for this reason.

The New Sacrament

The revolt against masks then is really a revulsion to what they symbolize.  They have been made into sacraments through the words of the New Priests.  They are said to protect and so therefore they do.  Those who do not want to subscribe to this religion therefore will not want to wear them.  It seems like a small thing to do, but it plays a key role in the overall narrative that Science can save us.  As a sacrament it symbolizes the fact that the Coronavirus is a serious threat to our overall well-being.  If you are tempted to think “well 99.99% of people that get this will survive”, then you only have to look around at everyone wearing a mask to tell you that you should be scared anyway.  The smiling face of your neighbor, which would normally comfort you, is now hidden from your sight.  The masks will permanently disfigure us because when the next virus comes along, and it will, they will tell us “this is more serious than the Coronavirus (which it likely will be) you must put the mask back on.” 

By blessing the mask, the Priest also makes it into a Secular Scapular.  Through the words of Mary to St. Simon Stock, we know that the Brown Scapular helps to save you eternally.  Through the words of the Scientist, the mask saves us from Covidoom.  The Brown Scapular is an aid to our growth in virtue, the Covid Scapular signals that we have virtue.

One of the things that the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century was their exaltation of Science as the new religion.  Lenin, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Hitler all committed their atrocities using “Science” as their justification.  Had someone stood up to them early on, one has to wonder whether things would have been different.

The Religion of the Antichrist

Abortion, Church, Church and State, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, End Times, Marxism, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , , , ,

When the wall separating east from west in Berlin fell, millions of people were freed from the shackles of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia.  The man who was instrumental in this happening, St. John Paul II, saw it as part of his divine mandate to facilitate this monumental event.  But as a Catholic who had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, he knew that was not the end of the story.  Russia had spread her errors practically unabated for 75 years; reaching even into our own country.  These errors were not Communism itself, but instead the ideology that underlies it—Marxism.  Marxism is alive and well and is poised to become a global religion through the likes of not just China’s hegemonic aspirations, but the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, WHO’s universal healthcare plan (led by Marxist Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), Black Lives Matter and a whole host of other organizations.

A Global Religion?

To call Marxism a global religion, may, at first glance, seem to be an exaggeration.  Of course, properly speaking, it is not a religion at all.  Religion is always ordered to God which means that there can be only one true global religion.  It is the one founded by God Himself in the Catholic Church.  But the Devil is always on the prowl to ape Christ including by forming his own global religion.  Marxism is the “religion” of choice and should properly be seen as the religion of the Antichrist.

That Marx himself was under demonic influence can hardly be disputed.  Several of his biographers, many of whom are sympathetic to his cause, have mentioned this.  Paul Kengor, in his new book The Devil and Karl Marx, does a thorough job of compiling the case for Marx’s diabolical connections.  Viewed in this way, it also helps to understand the beguiling effect that Marxism has on a lot of people because of its inherent power of mass Demonic Oppression.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were aware of this as they included several schemas on “The Care of Souls with Regard to Christians Infected with Communism” in their preparatory documents.  Unfortunately, these schemas never saw the light of day and would have been a great aid in fighting an “invention so full of errors and delusions.”

The Great Imitation

Besides the global aspirations of Marxism, there are other, more insidious ways in which it will imitate the true religion.  In taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, Christ sought to both repair and elevate human nature making it capable of sharing in the Divine Nature.  In simplest terms, Marxism is an attempt to fundamentally transform human nature through the instruments of politics and culture.  It may have failed to control economics, but that was not the end of it.  Using the Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxists have been wildly successful in “transforming” human nature in the sexual realm.  No longer does human nature thrive through monogamous marriage, the family, and private property.  Parents are not uniquely suited to mold their children according to their nature, but instead human nature is malleable and should be molded into the image deemed useful by the State.  Free will, the mark of the Divine image in man (c.f. CCC 1704-1705), is an illusion and replaced through conditioning according to their social structure (or through the correction of “Unconscious Bias” as the remains from obsolete social structures and implemented through “Corporate Training”). 

Christianity worships Christ Who made Himself a victim for our sins (c.f. 2 Cor 5:21) while Marxism worships the Victim Class.  Man’s nature is not social and marked by complementarity but instead is competitive.  It is to be informed by the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed.  There is a never-ending search of the new victim class in order to keep the worship going.  Virtuous men and women, those who are most like God are scorned and those who have been intersected by the most “axes of oppression” are exalted. 

Finally, just as Catholics offer the blood of the Innocent Lamb of God to the Father, Marxists offer the blood of innocent children through abortion to the Devil.  Marxism and abortion are always a package deal because Marxism, like all religions, needs to offer sacrifice.  The Devil throughout history has always demanded the blood of the innocent in sacrifice.  Marxism in all its instantiations always includes abortion.  It was Russia that became the first country to legalize abortion in 1920 and thanks to the Marxist feminists of the 1960s, the United States followed suit.  You can often identify a Marxist by how insistent they are that abortion is a “right”.

The Spirit of Christ animates the Christian religion and so the spirit of the antichrist animates the religion of Marxism.  The globalists who seek a One World Order are Marxists at heart.  Once a critical mass is met, then the world will be ready for the antichrist.  This is not an inevitability however and so Catholics must fight against Marxism in all its manifestations.  The Church was once instrumental in fighting Communism, but now it too has been infected with Marxists.  We need to pray that Christ will once again cleanse the Temple by setting his sights not on the money changers but the Marxists.  We have Our Lady of Fatima on our side and we can fight its spread through the First Saturday Devotion.  We can also zealously combat the errors where we see them and educate ourselves on this most pernicious enemy because there is one other thing the religion of the antichrist does—seeks to wipe out the believers of the True Faith.

Politcal Parties and Cooperation with Evil

Abortion, Conscience, Culture, Culture of Life, , , , , , , ,

At the beginning of 1931, the German Bishops collectively excommunicated members of the Nazi party and barred all Catholics in Germany from joining.  The excommunication did not extend to those who voted for Nazis, but only those who joined the party.  This ban was put in place even though not all the party platform was evil.  In fact, there were certain policies that were in accord with the Common Good.  Nevertheless, the party protected and promoted certain intrinsic evils that could never be overlooked and washed away in the political give and take that is inevitable in a party system.    Although the ban was walked back slightly after the election of 1933, the German Bishops demonstrated a long-standing Catholic belief that political party affiliation can put one’s soul in jeopardy.

Party Affiliation and Formal Cooperation

Why this is the case can be seen once we examine the principle of formal cooperation.  Recall that the principle of cooperation acknowledges that a number of people often participate in bringing about some evil action.  Moral philosophy makes the distinction between formal and material cooperation.  Formal cooperation means that a person aligns their will with the intention of the principal moral agent.  Material cooperation means that a person offers some material support in the carrying out of an action, even if, they may not be willing participants in the evil itself.

The act of abortion offers an illustrative and relevant example.  Suppose a woman is pondering an abortion so she seeks counsel with a friend.  The friend says she should do it but says she cannot help her get one.  The friend has formally cooperated in the abortion and thus bears the guilt of the act itself in uniting her will to the will of the woman.  She did not, however, offer material support and thus her material cooperation is minimal if non-existent.  When the woman gets to the abortion mill, she is greeted by the janitor outside who is emptying mop water.  He hates abortion but only works here because he needs to feed his family and is unable to find another job currently.  His cooperation too is material, he provides a clean environment for the abortion, but it is remote since it is not vital to the carrying out of the abortion (which is truer than most people would like to admit).  Finally, she enters the abortion mill and is greeted by the nurse.  The nurse too hates abortion (thus no formal cooperation) but her material cooperation is so proximate and vital to the act that she is guilty of cooperation with the evil of abortion.

In summary, because guilt lies in the will, a person is always guilty of sin when they formally cooperate with evil.  A person who formally cooperates with a grave evil bears a proportionate level of guilt for that evil.  They may or may not be guilty when they cooperate materially, depending on their role and their proximity to the act itself.  Related to the topic at hand, a person who is Pro-Choice, even if they never directly assist or counsel a person to get an abortion, simply by making their position known, has formally cooperated with that evil and bear culpability.

The Democratic Party platform, in no uncertain terms, promotes and protects the evil of abortion: “Democrats…believe unequivocally…that every woman should be able to access…safe and legal abortion.”  And because political party affiliation is a free association, any person who joins the party consents to all of the party’s platform.  There is no “I am personally opposed, but …” type logic because of the principle of formal cooperation.  A member of the Democratic Party is aligning their will with that of the other members of the Party.  Why else would they join?  If they did not believe in any of the tenets, they simply need not join.  This was the logic of the German Bishops in 1931, a logic that can likewise be applied to members of the Democratic Party today.

An All-Important Distinction

Please note what has been said and what hasn’t.  The contention is that because joining the Democratic Party constitutes formal cooperation, it is gravely sinful.  This does not mean that voting for a Democrat is always and everywhere gravely sinful.  To extend the arm of sin beyond formal cooperation is a bridge too far.  This was the point that Cardinal Ratzinger made when in 2004 he said,

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.  When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

The key word related to material cooperation is proportionate.  There must be not only a good reason to vote, but a proportionate reason.  On this level this means that if Candidate A is in favor of one intrinsically evil action and Candidate B supports a different intrinsically evil action, then we might vote so as to limit the amount of overall evil present in society.  For example, suppose Candidate A supported abortion but was against Euthanasia and Candidate B supported Euthanasia but was against abortion, you might vote for B because abortion constitutes a greater evil on society as a whole.  The point is that you cannot simply perform moral calculus adding up the evil on each side, but instead the proportionately is related to the presence of intrinsically evil actions, or as the Church has put it, “non-negotiables”.

But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.  In fact, it is really a natural outlook that would motivate a Catholic to vote for a Democrat.  A supernatural outlook of the world would never allow us to vote for someone who we know to be in an objective state of grave sin.  The reason for this is simple—a person in a state of mortal sin is the Devil’s pawn.  Mortal sin places a person under his dominion and they are very likely to commit further evil.  If Christ is not King of their heart, then most assuredly they will be working against making Him King of our Country.  This principle really goes for any politician.  If the person is known to be in a state of grave sin then you should never vote for them.

This sounds “judgmental” to modern ears, but it is simply a statement of fact.  A person who directly wills that abortions be provided remains in a gravely sinful state until such time as they repent.  Because the support of abortion was public, true repentance would have to be public, causing the person to separate themselves from the sinful Party.  A person who remains in the Party has thus remained in their sinful state.

As the November election is fast approaching, we must as Catholics, come to understand that voting is not just a political action, but a moral one and thus we must shine the light of Catholic morality on our voting decisions.    

The Eucharistic Remnant

Eucharist, , ,

Finding that love for God had greatly cooled in his time, St. Ignatius of Loyola placed the blame squarely upon a lack of devotion to the Eucharist.  This, of course, makes perfect sense for they are one and the same thing—“every one who loves the Father, also loves the Son” (1 John 5:1).  The Eucharist keeps our love for God from becoming abstract and always ensures that it remain fully human.  Returning to Ignatius, he says that

“the early Church members of both sexes received Communion daily as soon as they were old enough. But soon devotion began to cool, and Communion became weekly. Then after a considerable interval of time, as devotion became still more cool, Communion was received on only three of the principal feasts of the year. . . . And finally, because of our weakness and indifference, we have ended with once a year. You would think we are Christian only in name, to see us so calmly accepting the condition to which the greater part of mankind has come.” 

In short, we must return to our roots and receive Our Lord daily in the Eucharist.

Our Lord, on the Cross, gave all that was possible to mankind, emptying Himself of every ounce of blood, the symbol of life.  This sacrifice will always remain distant to us individually until each one of us climbs the Mount of Calvary to receive it.  Each Mass situates us really and truly, even if sacramentally, at the foot of the Cross.  But it is not enough to merely be there, His blood must come upon us so that His life becomes ours.  This is not symbolic, for the Creator of all that is needs no symbols, but real.  “unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).

Meeting Our Lord’s Desire Head On

It should come as no surprise then that Our Lord so earnestly desired to give the Church the Eucharist (Luke 22:15).  For our part, we should earnestly desire to receive Him.  The Communion rail should be the place where the two desires collide and are consummated, igniting the fire of Divine Love in our souls.  This holy desire should be wholly consuming.  St. Catherine of Siena compares it to a candle that one carries to Communion:

“If you have a light, and the whole world should come to you in order to take light from it — the light itself does not diminish — and yet each person has it all. It is true that everyone participates more or less in this light, according to the substance into which each one receives the fire. I will develop this metaphor further that you may the better understand Me. Suppose that there are many who bring their candles, one weighing an ounce, others two or six ounces, or a pound, or even more, and light them in the flame, in each candle, whether large or small, is the whole light, that is to say, the heat, the color, and the flame; nevertheless you would judge that he whose candle weighs an ounce has less of the light than he whose candle weighs a pound. Now the same thing happens to those who receive this Sacrament. Each one carries his own candle, that is the holy desire, with which he receives this Sacrament, which of itself is without light, and lights it by receiving this Sacrament.”

Receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist is so vital to our existence that it was the first thing He told us to ask for ourselves; “Give us this day, our daily bread.”  The Eucharist is the only “Daily Bread”.  He tells us to ask food because He hungers to give.  His hunger converts our hunger.  As Christ tells St. Augustine, “I am the food of the strong; grow and thou shall feed on Me.  But you shall not convert Me into yourself as the nourishment of your body, but you shall be changed into Me.” (Confessions Book 7 Ch 10).

Pope St. Pius X in his Decree Sacra Tridentina exhorted the Faithful to receive Our Lord daily in the Eucharist.  But in order to do so fruitfully “one should take care that Holy Communion be preceded by careful preparation, and followed by an appropriate thanksgiving, according to each one’s strength, circumstances and duties.”  We must “approach the Sacred Table Holy Table with a right and devout intention” that is animated neither by “custom, vanity or any human reason but with the desire to satisfy the good pleasure of God while growing ever closer to Him in charity.”  We must receive Our Lord in order to quench His desire to give.

Tying together St. Ignatius sentiment with that of St. Catherine Siena helps us to grasp the ecclesiastical importance of fervent and daily Communion.  Both the sign of and the cause of the mass tepidity is a lack of desire for the Eucharist.  But when a Eucharistic remnant emerges that receives with St. Catherine’s holy desire, the love of Our Lord begins to spread like a flame as more and more candles are lit.  The Early Church was filled with Daily Communicants and they set the world on fire with the love of Christ precisely because they were Daily Communicants.  They gave what they received by bringing new converts to meet Our Lord in the Eucharist.  If you want to change the face of the Earth then commit to living a thoroughly Eucharistic life.  Catholics are Eucharistic Christians and thus meet Our Lord face to face every day.

Our Lady’s Army

Communion of Saints, End Times, Mary, , , , , , , , , ,

Given the present turmoil, devout Christians can’t help but wonder whether the End is near.  We are probably not alone in this consideration as history is replete with Saints and Sages who thought the same thing.  Our Lord, on the other hand, sought to curb such speculation when he declared that “of that day and hour no one knows, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone” (Mt 24:36).  The speculation is not without its fruit however.  Wondering can lead to wakefulness—”Watch ye therefore, because ye know not what hour your Lord will come” (Mt 24:42).  While we should close the door on conjecture, Our Lord wants us to always live as if the End is right around the corner. 

Like the Apostles in the Garden, our battle is to stay awake.  The Satanic Sandman wants to lull us to sleep.  His battleplan is to make us woke so that we won’t be awake.  Knowing how he does this will enable us to enter the fray with eyes wide open.

Staying Awake

In a very real sense we could say that it is of the nature of Man to be a warrior.  When the Enemy entered the Garden and caused the Fall of Adam and Eve, the battle was begun.  It may have been the Fall of Man but it also marked the battle lines by which Satan’s downfall would occur.  Turning first to the Serpent, God said “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed” (Gn 3:15, DR translation).  Just as God in creation separated the light and the dark, He made a permanent enmity between the Serpent and his offspring and the Woman and hers.  The Woman of course is not the Eve of the Old Creation, but the Eve of the New Creation, Mary (c.f. John 2:4, 19:26-27 and this entry).  Once having set the commanders in the two armies, God set forth the foot soldiers—Satan’s demonic and human minions and the blessed angels and Jesus’ beloved disciples. 

In his True Devotion to Mary, St. Louis de Montfort offers and important reflection on what this enmity.  He says it is the only enmity that God has made; He did not merely permit it, but positively created it.  It would be total, indomitable and eternal.  The great Marian Saint says:

God has never made or formed but one enmity; but it is an irreconcilable one, which shall endure and develop even to the end. It is between Mary, His worthy Mother, and the devil—between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and instruments of Lucifer. The most terrible of all the enemies which God has set up against the devil is His holy Mother, Mary. He has inspired her, even since the days of the earthly Paradise, though she existed then only in His idea, with so much hatred against that cursed enemy of God, with so much industry in unveiling the malice of that old serpent, with so much power to conquer, to overthrow, and to crush that proud impious rebel, that he fears her not only more than all Angels and men, but in some sense more than God Himself. It is not that the anger, the hatred, and the power of God are not infinitely greater than those of the Blessed Virgin, for the perfections of Mary are limited, but it is, first, because Satan, being proud, suffers infinitely more from being beaten and punished by a little and humble handmaid of God, and her humility humbles him more than the Divine power; and, secondly, because God has given Mary such a great power against the devils, that, as they have often been obliged to confess, in spite of themselves, by the mouths of the possessed, they fear one of her sighs for a soul more than the prayers of all the Saints, and one of her menaces against them more than all other torments.   

This battle isn’t just between Mary and the Devil, “but between the race of the holy Virgin and the race of the devil; that is to say, God has set enmities, antipathies, and secret hatreds between the true children and the servants of Mary, and the children and servants of the devil. They do not love each other mutually. They have no inward correspondence with each other. The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world (for it is the same thing), have always up to this time persecuted those who belong to our Blessed Lady, and will in future persecute them more than ever…”

If we are to battle on God’s side, under the Standard of the Cross, we must submit to Christ and His Battle Commander.  We must join Our Lady’s army, and because the war is total, we must do so through a total consecration.  That is the only way because God has declared it as such.  When John describes the War in Heaven (Rev 12), Our Lady once again leads her offspring into battle.  For St. Louis de Montfort, this enrollment, especially in the End Times becomes crucial.  These Apostles of the End Times will be the only ones who are able to remain faithful because “the devil, knowing that he has but little time, and now less than ever, to destroy souls, will every day redouble his efforts and his combats. He will presently raise up new persecutions, and will put terrible snares before the faithful servants and true children of Mary, whom it gives him more trouble to surmount than it does to conquer others.”

Living as if the End is Near

If we are to live then as Our Lord commanded, that is, as if the End is near, then we should live consecrated to Our Lady as part of her army.  This consecration also enables us to see the weapons that Satan uses.  Once we realize that this enmity is total, the war absolute, we realize that there can be no compromise between the two armies.  We may actively pursue defectors from the Enemy’s camp, but they must come on Our Lady’s terms.  We can make no compromises with the world or provision with the flesh (Romans 13:13-14) because those are the Enemy’s landmines.  We must take upon ourselves the yoke of Our Lord from the hands of Our Lady.

The Devil’s battleplan is always the same and we would do well to know the diabolical rhythm.  Before he unleashes hell on believers in total persecution, he denies the ontological character of the enmity.  He creates structures and systems that promise a false peace; always false because it goes against reality as God has constructed it.  “Peace” that consists in compromise with the devil, the world and the flesh.  But “Christ must be all in all”  and until His reign is complete we must continue the fight.  We must reject the false messianic hopes of things like Marxism, One World Orders, and technocracy because they are diabolical landmines.  This is his chosen tactic for now, that if we yield, will lead to total persecution.  Those in Our Lady’s Army can never compromise.  It is Our Lady sitting at Our Lord’s right hand (Ps 45:9) that will protect us and obtain for her children true wisdom that never yields to false promises. 

The Church and Democracy

American Founding, Politics, , , , ,

When Woodrow Wilson lead America into World War I, his battle cry was that America needed to “make the world safe for democracy.”  Resting upon the unquestionable assumption that democracy is not only the best, but ultimately the only form of government, democratic principles have come to animate the Western mind.  It has a habit of doing that because it seeks to impose equality by force of the mob.  In a previous post we discussed why this might be not only unjust, but ultimately dangerous.  In this post we would like to pick up on that theme by examining the Church’s teaching on democracy, a teaching that like all things Catholic, takes a “both/and” nuanced approach that also keeps the world safe from democracy, or at least safe from the threat of absolutism that looms over it.

The Church’s political philosophy rests not only upon the teaching of St. Augustine in The City of God, but also St. Thomas Aquinas in his De Regno as well as his Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics.  St. Thomas, despite favoring monarchy was not opposed to democracy because he thought that “all should take some share in the government: for this form of constitution ensures peace among the people, commends itself to all, and is most enduring.”  Nevertheless the “best form of polity, being partly kingdom, since there is one at the head of all; partly aristocracy, in so far as a number of persons are set in authority; partly democracy, i.e. government by the people, in so far as the rulers can be chosen from the people, and the people have the right to choose their rulers” (ST I-II q.105, a.1).

Democracy in the Ideal Government

This ideal, mixed regime that included democracy was based upon a vastly different conception of democracy than we are used to.  “Government by the people” in St. Thomas’ mind is based on how leaders are chosen and not on how they govern.  Once chosen, the leaders are not representatives of the people but instead real leaders.  A leader assumes responsibility and it not a mere spokesman of the people or a party. 

Modern sensibilities reject all other forms of government for two reasons.  First, because each man is “equal”, each must have an equal say in governing and selecting representatives.  Secondly, because authority comes from below, from the individual himself, and not from God, each man can only cede his authority over to some chosen representative.  When these two things are accepted as “givens” then democracy becomes the only just form of government.  Thus, the mission to “make the world safe for democracy” becomes a demand of social justice.

The Church on the other hand, because she views authority as coming from above, thinks any of the three regimes mentioned by St. Thomas is acceptable if justice is maintained.  As St. Pius X said, “Justice being preserved, it is not forbidden to the people to choose for themselves the form of government which best corresponds with their character or with the institutions and customs handed down by their forefathers….Therefore, when he said that justice could be found in any of the three aforesaid forms of government, he was teaching that in this respect Democracy does not enjoy a special privilege” (Our Apostolic Mandate).

The Demon Hidden in Democracy

Francis Fukuyama thought that the rise of democracy marked the “end of history”.  Democracy, viewed as the end of history, is really the beginning of absolutism.  When democracy takes upon itself the mantle of only legitimate regime, it becomes susceptible to becoming tyrannical.  Nearly all of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century had democratic roots and this is because it has no mechanism that checks the will of the people.  A system of “horizontal pressure” develops in which the majority drowns out the minority.  Unless one is conditioned to self-government, that is virtuous, he can become irrational and passion-driven.  Through appeals to the passions and through propaganda, the people become easily manipulated by those in power, all while maintaining the guise of freedom and equality. 

The key then becomes checking democracy against the moral law.  Absent appeals to the natural law, a corrupted democracy becomes the worst of all regimes.  A tyranny of 1 or of few is far better than a tyranny of many.  It was in this spirit that Pope Pius XII examined Democracy as a means of lasting peace.

In his Christmas message of 1944, Pope Pius XII cautioned against blind acceptance of democracy as the only acceptable form of government.  He pointed out that it is only a cause of peace when it is well-ordered to justice.  This ordering to justice can only happen in what he calls “a sound Democracy” which is “ based on the immutable principles of the natural law and revealed truth, will resolutely turn its back on such corruption as gives to the state legislature in unchecked and unlimited power, and moreover, makes of the democratic regime, notwithstanding an outward show to the contrary, purely and simply a form of absolutism.”

The susceptibility of democracy to descend into Ochlocracy is also hastened when it tries to enforce political equality.  Because of the natural inequality in mankind, not everyone should be involved in the political process.  Extending the right to vote based solely upon citizenship is a dangerous proposition.  Most people are not politically engaged enough to make educated votes and thus they are more likely to become a mob rather than an electorate.  Late night TV hosts may find it funny to ask the average Joe questions about various candidates and laugh at their answers, but these people are also the same ones whose votes count as much as the person who learns of different candidates and seeks the common good.  This is one reason among many why a democracy is not the best means for protecting freedom and maintaining natural equality.