On this year's production of the Oberammergau Passion Play
An article posted at AQ contained the following paragraph:
Somewhat more removed from Church control is the Oberammergau Passion Play,the famous Bavarian portrayal of Christ’s Passion which is by now a huge commercial institution. This year, for the first time, the play is designed to emphasize that Jesus was a reform-minded rabbi who was unalterably opposed to institutions and hierarchy. Thus the new play demonstrates once again the dangers of interpreting Revelation without a guiding authority. Suddenly the Meaning of Life is determined by our own (or, more likely, some elitist director’s) vibes.
[http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31858
and that whole article is worth reading for its point about a teaching authority being necessary for the faithful transmission of any body of revealed truth]
There's also more on this silliness
here("Jesus was against hierarchy and against institutions") and in the comments
here.
Death of Mr. Geoffrey Chapman
From an obituary in Saturday's edition of
The Sydney Morning Herald:
Geoffrey Chapman, 1930 - 2010
Sydney seminarians were Geoffrey Chapman's best customers in the Commonwealth when he began publishing Catholic books in the late 1950s.
Their support enabled him to build a small suburban press into the leading English language purveyor of the ideas that led to Vatican II.
When the council concluded, its documents, translated into English, aptly bore the imprint of Geoffrey Chapman. By then, he was the publisher of choice to the Vatican II generation of Catholics.
[...] At university, [Mr. Chapman and his wife] had been part of the vibrant Catholic subculture energising the Newman Society of Victoria. They had resisted B. A. Santamaria's attempts to take over the society. In London they made contact with like-minded Catholics in the church's main youth movement and offered to see through the press two collections of vanguard writings. Thus they discovered a vocation to be publishers.
On borrowed money Chapman travelled to the US, where Fides Publishers took him in and taught him the trade. ''They fed him, lodged him, encouraged and gave help, ideas, information and friendship,'' his wife later said. ...
[...] Soon, however, he and Sue were seeking authors of their own. An outstanding editor, Sue scoured the Catholic world to find writers who could explore the new territories opening up in church life. Many of her authors were French and all of them looked forward to a better church. Among these early books were essays by the Melbourne group gathered around the poet Vincent Buckley and lectures given in Sydney by an English scholar, Alexander Jones.
[...] The opening of the Second Vatican Council, in 1962, took Chapman to Rome, where he got to know and assess bishops and the experts brought to the council. Never overawed by bishops, he yet found lifelong friends in the hierarchy. One was the Archbishop of Durban, Denis Hurley, a courageous opponent of apartheid. Others were the Archbishop of Hobart, Guilford Young, star of the Australian bishops, and Cardinal Augustin Bea, the Vatican's point man on ecumenism.
When the Herald's Rome correspondent Desmond O'Grady alerted Chapman to the publication of a diary kept by the late Pope John XXIII, he rushed to Rome and sealed a deal giving him exclusive world rights to an English translation. Competitors were kept at bay, making its publication, in 1965, a coup for the Chapman firm. By request, first copies went to Buckingham Palace and to Pope Paul VI's personal library.
By then, Geoffrey Chapman publishing was well known throughout the English-reading world. Needing recapitalisation, in 1969, the firm was sold to a US conglomerate. A few years later, both Chapmans joined the William Collins firm as the nucleus of a liturgical publishing enterprise. Their task was to mass produce missals and service books in English in line with the Vatican II reforms of Catholic worship. Later they would do a broad ecumenical hymnbook for Australia and a multilingual prayerbook for South African Anglicans.
[...] His place in history is assured by the fact that no one can tell the story of Vatican II without reading the books he published.
[... Obituary by] Edmund Campion
[http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/reformed-catholics-publisher-of-choice-20100528-wlb4.html?skin=text-only]
See also
here and
here. His enthusiastic involvement in the diffusion of the Spirit of Vatican II notwithstanding, may he rest in peace.
Prof. Ormerod on Vatican II
An article at
CathNews mentioned the following about its author:
Neil Ormerod is Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic University. He contributed to the volume of essays, Vatican II: Did anything happen? He also has an article soon to appear in Theological Studies (Sept 2010), on the debate on continuity and discontinuity at Vatican II.
[http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=21520]
The first people in Scripture to cry “judgmental” were the Sodomites, who
surrounded the house; 5 and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” 9 But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them” (Gen. 19:4-9 RSV-CE).
Plus ça change...
Comment by Hieronymus Illinensis — 30 May 2010 @ 2:44 am
[bold and italics in the original,
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/05/being-judgmental-fr-finigan-hits-for-six/#comment-207277]
Vynette on Tradition
Here's a comment by Vynette, whom you might recall from her visit to Mr. Schütz's blog last year, in
a thread at Catholica:
Roch,
You are assuming that the late "oral transmission" theory championed by so many biblical scholars is the correct one.
In fact, the New Testament is so full of Semitic syntax, vocabulary, idioms, and thought patterns that these intricacies and peculiarities could not possibly have survived years of oral transmission, particularly in a foreign environment and language [Greek], and then been written down in a foreign [Greek] language.
Some of the New Testament's apparently difficult passages can only be understood by studying the underlying Hebrew text.
In reality, the gospels we have now were written originally in Hebrew, or compiled from Hebrew notes, before the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.
["by vynette, Brisbane, Australia, Friday, May 28, 2010, 08:37 (4 days ago)",
http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=48884]
But if the New Testament "can only be understood by studying the underlying Hebrew text" (which Hebrew text we don't even have), then what good is it to those who aren't experts in Classical Hebrew and its literature and culture? We can't all be expected to attain that kind of expertise, so wouldn't some kind of teaching authority be necessary? With a Divine promise of indefectibility, such a teaching authority would be secure against the pitfalls from which oral Tradition would otherwise suffer.
An index fund aimed at Catholics
Here's a story from page 2 of yesterday's Sydney
Daily Telegraph's
Your Money supplement:
Many of us look for divine intervention when it comes to investing, so the answer may be upon us.
The Stoxx Europe Christian Index has been launched and the index fund has been Vatican-approved.
The fund is a compilation of 533 European companies that adhere to Catholic values, which means no profits from porn, gambling, weapons, tobacco or birth control.
Faith funds have been around for a long time. In fact, back in the 18th century the Quakers refused to invest in tobacco and the slave trade.
There are kosher funds in Israel and Sharia compliant funds operate through the Muslim world.
In Australia, we have ethically and socially responsible investment funds. Returns from these types of funds have been around the average.
H.H. The Pope on freedom of religion and its relation to democracy and development BENIN: JUSTICE ALWAYS ACCOMPANIES FRATERNITY
VATICAN CITY, 28 MAY 2010 (VIS) - ...
[...] "I also wish to express my appreciation", [His Holiness] concluded, "for the efforts being made by everyone, especially the authorities, to strengthen relations of respect and esteem among the country's religious groups. Freedom of religion helps to enrich democracy and promote development".
CD/ VIS 20100528 (540)
Disappointing to see that kind of unqualified endorsement of 'freedom of religion', which, understood as a civil liberty, is evil in itself and is only conducive to the common good when it is the lesser of the two evils of, on the one hand, offences against the Catholic religion and, on the other hand, the disruptions which would result from repression of offences against the Catholic religion when there are many such offenders.
Blog/DB comments by me
At AQ:
"We were troubled with equating a living Catholic prayer for the conversion of Jews, newly endorsed by the Pope, with several obscure references from the Talmud that have no practical role in Jewish life today."
Really, "no practical role in Jewish life today"? Not according to Prof. Shahak:
"Of particular note, however, is the fact that the daily "blessings" of Judaism contain a curse against Christians. As Professor Israel Shahak of Hebrew University tells us, "in the most important section of the weekday prayer--the 'eighteen blessings'--there is a special curse, originally directed against Christians, Jewish converts to Christianity and other Jewish heretics: 'And may the apostates have no hope, and all the Christians perish instantly.' (20)" "
[http://mauricepinay.blogspot.com/2007/03/talmudic-touch-real-story-of-offertorys.html]
Furthermore, if someone says to you 'I will give you something which you would value greatly if you give me something which you value little' then you'd accept the offer, wouldn't you? So if a Catholic prelate says to Mr. Foxman 'We will given you something which you would value greatly--namely, the removal of liturgical references to the conversion of the Jews--if you give us something which you value little--namely, "several obscure references from the Talmud that have no practical role in Jewish life today"', then he should eagerly accept the offer, shouldn't he? Or is the Talmud more valuable to him than he is letting on?
[http://angelqueen.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=31844]
At Terra's blog:
Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/05/church-and-mission-2-importance-of.html]
Cardinal Pole said...
There's a good comment at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's post on the topic--unsurprisingly, it turns out that the Sodomites (note the capital s) are the first people recorded as complaining about people being 'judgemental'!
June 1, 2010 4:26 AM
Your comment has been saved and will be visible after blog owner approval.
[http://australiaincognita.blogspot.com/2010/05/on-judging.html]
At Mr. Schütz's blog:
Cardinal Pole
June 1, 2010 at 5:30 am
In other words, it forbids the Social Reign of Christ and imposes the Social Reign of Pilate.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/simon-shama-on-the-snares-of-history-for-the-secular-humanist/#comment-15040]
Cardinal Pole
June 1, 2010 at 5:32 am
I’ve been interested in the Australian experience of Vatican II for some time now, and so I checked out this programme’s website last week (the Compass website didn’t have a transcript). I suspected that the website’s “Talent profiles” page told me all I needed to know about its agenda: Not one of the priests interviewed could be bothered wearing conspicuously clerical attire, and the rest of the interviewees seemed pretty ‘Spirit of Vatican II’. If I understand correctly, did they not interview anyone who opposed the illicit marriage of Revelation and Revolution and the bastard rites which issued therefrom? Didn’t the producers think to visit an S.S.P.X. chapel and interview one of the older members of the congregation? They had a token Aborigine (despite the fact that, by the look of her, she wasn’t even old enough to remember the early post-Vatican-II period, though corrrect me if I’m wrong), but they couldn’t find a token Traditionalist? I suppose that that wouldn’t have ‘woven seamlessly’ into their ‘narrative’.
[http://scecclesia.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/challenge-change-faith-catholic-australia-and-the-second-vatican-council/#comment-15041]
