Notes: Saturday-Wednesday, November 27-December 1, 2010

1. The Spirit of Vatican II, home Masses, and child abuse

From an article in today's Herald:

From January 1981 Spillane joined a "renewal team" led by the provincial of the order, Father Keith Turnbull, which visited Vincentian parishes around Australia promoting what Spillane called "the teachings and the spirit of the Second Vatican Council". ...

[...] The day after the friend was killed in a car crash, Spillane turned up uninvited at T's house to celebrate a home Mass for the distraught young woman and her friends. ...
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/god-help-me-former-priest-found-guilty-of-child-abuse-20101130-18fe9.html?skin=text-only]

2. Classic Atheist straw man

In a letter in yesterday's Herald:

I am disturbed by the lack of logic in Cardinal Pell's view that atheists are ''frightened by the future'' and that our lives are ''without purpose, without constraints''.

Pell's religious faith is based on the idea that no evidence is required. In fact evidence, or reasoning contrary to religious ideals, is considered a challenge to faith. As such the rejection of that evidence or reasoning is treated as a virtue.

Unfortunately, by religious logic, reason and faith do live in an ''ideological apartheid''. I assume that when Pell says atheists have ''nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss'', he is referring to the evidence-based logic of scientific process that I applied in coming to the conclusion that the God of the Bible does not exist.

Is he really asking me to replace my hard-fought epiphany with the vacuousness of faith? I wish he'd told me earlier. It would have saved me a lot of time and money on education.

Bill Bannister Castle Cove
[bold type in the original, my italics,
http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/frightened-no-finding-meaning-in-our-lives-20101129-18duq.html?skin=text-only]

Why would an Atheist erect such an obvious straw man as "Pell's [or any believer's] religious faith is based on the idea that no evidence is required"? (A similar thing was discussed in recent issues of Sydney Alumni Magazine.) I always want to put the best construction possible on whatever anyone of presumably good will says, so while on the one hand I don't want to infer that it's a lie (i.e., a falsehood which he knows to be false, which would require abandoning the presumption of good will), on the other hand the ignorance involved in thinking that "Pell's [or any believer's] religious faith is based on the idea that no evidence is required" is so gross that it seems not that much less an insulting alternative to the first possibility. Or is there a third possibility which I haven't considered? (And I don't ask that rhetorically. Can anyone think of a third possibility?)

3. "Wong backs SA Labor push on gay marriage"

http://www.smh.com.au/national/wong-backs-sa-labor-push-on-gay-marriage-20101128-18cfu.html?skin=text-only
See also
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/alp-must-support-same-sex-marriage/story-fn59niix-1225962378391
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/alp-brawls-over-gay-unions-greens/story-e6frg6nf-1225962962744

4. "Russian Orthodox Church okays use of condoms"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34925

5. Fr. Kelly on morality

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=24350

A weak article, because although factors other than the object of an act (what Fr. Kelly seems to call the intention involved in an act) influence the morality of an act, even when the other factors are good they cannot, of course, make an act with an evil object good.

6. H.H. The Pope on, among other things, the natural law, the death penalty, and the distinction (but not separation) between Church and State

Obviously it's always disappointing to see a Papal endorsement of opposition to the death penalty, but the disappointment is all the more acute, not to mention perplexing, when such an endorsement is proffered immediately after talking about the natural law:

CHURCH IN PHILIPPINES: CONTINUE TO BE A LEAVEN IN SOCIETY

VATICAN CITY, 29 NOV 2010 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, the Holy Father received prelates from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, who have just completed their "ad limina" visit. Addressing them in English, the Pope referred to the close ties that for four centuries have united the Philippines and the See of Peter, highlighting the benefits the leaven of faith has brought to the Filipino people and their culture.

"To be such a leaven, the Church must always seek to find her proper voice, because it is by proclamation that the Gospel brings about its life-changing fruits", he said. "Thanks to the Gospel's clear presentation of the truth about God and man, generations of zealous Filipino clergymen, religious and laity have promoted an ever more just social order. At times, this task of proclamation touches upon issues relevant to the political sphere. This is not surprising, since the political community and the Church, while rightly distinct, are nevertheless both at the service of the integral development of every human being and of society as a whole".

"At the same time, the Church's prophetic office demands that she be free 'to preach the faith, to teach her social doctrine ... and also to pass moral judgments in those matters which regard public order whenever the fundamental human rights of a person or the salvation of souls requires it'. In the light of this prophetic task, I commend the Church in the Philippines for seeking to play its part in support of human life from conception until natural death, and in defence of the integrity of marriage and the family. In these areas you are promoting truths about the human person and about society which arise not only from divine revelation but also from natural law, an order which is accessible to human reason and thus provides a basis for dialogue and deeper discernment on the part of all people of good will. I also note with appreciation the Church's work to abolish the death penalty in your country. [...]
AL/ VIS 20101129 (600)

7. "Relations between Church and State: theological and historical perspectives": Theme of Catholic-Orthodox Forum

I was very interested to read the second-last paragraph of the following Vatican Information Service daily e-mail bulletin item:

MESSAGE TO BARTHOLOMEW I FOR THE FEAST OF ST. ANDREW

VATICAN CITY, 30 NOV 2010 (VIS) - As is traditional for the Feast of St. Andrew, a Holy See delegation, led by Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has travelled to Istanbul to participate in the celebrations for the saint, patron of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Every year the patriarchate sends a delegation to Rome for the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul Apostles, on 29 June.

This morning the Holy See delegation attended a divine liturgy presided by His Holiness Bartholomew I, at the Church of St. George at Fanar. At the end of the ceremony Cardinal Koch delivered a special Message to the patriarch from Benedict XVI.

"In a world characterised by increasing interdependence and solidarity", the Pope writes, "we are called to proclaim the truth of the Gospel with renewed conviction, and to present the risen Lord as the response to the most profound spiritual questions and aspirations of the men and women of today.

"In order to carry out this great enterprise", he adds, "we must continue along the path towards full communion, showing that we have already united our strengths for a shared witness of the Gospel before the people of our time. For this reason I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Your Holiness and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate for the generous hospitality you offered to delegates of the European Episcopal Conferences who - on the island of Rhodes in October - met with representatives of the Orthodox Churches of Europe for the Catholic-Orthodox Forum on the theme: 'Relations between Church and State: theological and historical perspectives'".

Benedict XVI concludes his Message by assuring the patriarch of the interest with which he follows "your wise efforts for the good of Orthodoxy and for the promotion of Christian values in many international contexts".
MESS/ VIS 20101130 (320)

I would like to read the proceedings of that Forum (but only with the permission of its participants, of course).

Reginaldvs Cantvar

1.XII.2010

Notes: Friday, August 6, 2010

Fr. Donovan on conscience and predestination

http://www.catholica.com.au/gc2/dd/024_dd_020810.php

The Rev. Fr. Daniel Donovan writes that

Predestination teaches that God has pre-ordained those who will be saved and those who will be condemned and the individual cannot alter his/her fate. Needless to say, Catholic teaching has always condemned any form of predestination as heresy.

In fact it is Fr. Donovan who is in error here. The correct teaching is that the Elect are indeed predestined, while the Damned are reprobated (see The Catholic Encyclopedia's article "Predestination" and Dz. 316, 320-22, and 348). It's disturbing to see this kind of doctrinal illiteracy from a priest and "former lecturer in religious education".

Fr. Donovan's understanding of conscience also leaves much to be desired. For the process of decisions of conscience he gives a convoluted and verbose eight-stage sequence, when the process is really quite simple. Judgements of conscience are acts of the intellect, so the process is the simple three-stage one by which the minor premise is referred to a major premise, from which is inferred the conclusion. In the case of moral reasoning, the major premise gives some law commanding, forbidding, or permitting certain acts, the minor premise is the fact of whether the act under consideration is one of those acts, and the conclusion is the judgement of whether the act under consideration is therefore commanded, forbidden, or permitted.

There are other problems with Fr. Donovan's article but I don't have time to go into them all here.

More from Mr. Coyne on "Home Masses"

At the Catholica forum:

I don't know if you'd call it a "house church" but we've been thinking of running an ad up here in the Blue Mountains for a while to see if we might find a few like-minded people to get together occasionally for a simple meal, a bit of prayer and reflection, and basically just seeing if we can form some sort of community to explore this further. I do know of a few established small groups around Australia that follow and pass around amongst themselves some of the commentaries from Catholica. I pick up a sense that there is a hunger for "small communities" (as opposed to the "big communities" of a parish). I have really fond memories of the Home Masses and many inter-Church get togethers I was involved with when I was active in the Hawthorn parish in Victoria in the 1970s.
[my emphasis,
http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=52936]

It amuses me how those of Mr. Coyne's ilk will berate Traditionalists for wanting to 'turn the clock back' when the 'ageing-hippie'-types themselves want to relive a bygone era. (For more on Mr. Coyne's religious opinions, see this Catholica Forum thread, where he writes that

Ultimately I think I am searching for "truth". I'm not searching for "authority figures" who provide me with some kind of emotional comfort. I sincerely want to know what the truth is — about the meaning of my life, what is the end objective of my life, is Jesus the one 'with all the answers', on what 'authority' we can have confidence in his answers.

and

There are things in that which I can agree with and other things I disagree with or I am sceptical about. For example I am not sure that Jesus founded Christianity, or was intending to found "a church", or "the church" which subsequently came to bear his name. From your own commentaries on Catholica I am more of the view today that Christianity as it came to be known was founded more by Paul and Peter and their disciples and, importantly, the "tension" between the contrasting perspectives put forward by Paul and Peter and their disciples. Certainly they and their disciples each drew their inspiration from Jesus but as you yourself have pointed out despite the common source for the inspiration they came up with ways of understanding, and implementing, the Jesus' message that were at times in complete opposition or at least deep contrast.

and

I am particularly interested in seeing what Vynette has to say from her explorations of what view Jesus had of himself concerning his divinity. My own view is that Jesus had no concept of "the Trinity" as that concept was subsequently developed or in the way many Christians think of that concept today. I don't believe though that that invalidates either Jesus or the concept of a Trinitarian God. Jesus certainly "planted the seeds" for the subsequent Trinitarian picture of the Godhead that emerged with his differentiations between himself and "my Father in heaven" and the spirit that would remain after he had gone. Was his view though as "theologically elaborate" as what was subsequently developed by the later Church Fathers?

and most strikingly:

As I argued in another post my sense is that the Jesus we are invited to worship and follow is something much greater than the mere historical figure.

Recall condemned error no. 29 of Lamentabili, the anti-Modernist syllabus:

It may be conceded that the Christ whom history presents, is far inferior to the Christ who is the object of faith.
[http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma21.php]

Mr. Gooley on Scripture, liturgy, and the Traditional Latin Mass

http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=75&articleID=7228&class=Features&subclass=Bite-size Vatican II

The Rev. Anthony Gooley, a deacon in The Archdiocese of Brisbane, writes that

“The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body” (Dei Verbum 21).

This is such a profound image of the two tables yet the truth of it has been obscured historically by the use of Latin and the narrower selection of texts used in the pre-Vatican II liturgy.

The faithful did not receive enough from the table of the word.
[my emphasis]

In other words, for Mr. Gooley, the Traditional Latin Mass deprives the Faithful of a due good. Which makes the T.L.M. ... evil, I take it? But I would contend that it is the T.L.M, not the N.O.M., which leaves the Faithful better acquainted with Scripture anyway. Towards the end of his article Mr. Gooley ask a few rhetorical questions:

To what extent are ordinary Catholics familiar with the Scriptures and use them for daily prayer?

Are Catholics immersed in the Scriptures and more able to meditate on them and read them with confidence?

Is there a repertoire of Biblical texts which Catholics know by heart as they know familiar traditional prayers or the responses at Mass?

Yet by having three readings each Sunday, with a three-year cycle for those readings, the N.O.M. guarantees that only those Catholics who go out of their way to memorise parts of the Bible will be the ones to know much, or even any, of it by heart, not to mention the N.O.M.'s suppression of the Last Gospel.

And Mr. Gooley uses an odd comparison at one point:

We can find in Scripture proclaimed in liturgy food for our spiritual nourishment just as we receive food from the Eucharist to transform us into the Body of Christ.

But hearing Scripture readings produces its effects in us in quite a different way to that in which Holy Communion produces Its effects in us.

"The APA's Biased Paper on Same-Sex Attraction and Therapy"

http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32988

"The Sybil" on the situation in The Diocese of Wollongong

http://wollongongensis.blogspot.com/2010/08/break-picton-and-rome.html

Reginaldvs Cantvar

Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, A.D. 2010