Category: Catholic Social Thought

Prior to the imprudent liturgical changes instituted in the 1950s, yesterday was the Octave Day of the Feast of Corpus Christi which then led into today’s Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This celebration of Christ’s unyielding love for us, His fallible and petulant children, is accompanied by a spirit of reparation for all of the cruelties, insults, and neglect shown toward our Lord by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Christ, King of Heaven and Earth, is a benevolent ruler who calls His subjects to take up their crosses and follow Him so that we may come to the full knowledge of the truth and enjoy life everlasting. For centuries, since the fracturing of Western Christendom and the diabolical rise of enlightened individualism, we, as a society, no longer recognize Christ’s right to reign; we are no longer devoted to that Heart of infinite love which has revealed God’s precepts in order that we may have true freedom in this life and eternal happiness in the next.

The official website for the Fortnight for Freedom (FFF), established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), has a number of resources available for the faithful, including a series of reflections on Dignitatis Humanae (DH). Each daily reflection takes a different section—or part of a section—from DH and expounds upon it. Curiously missing from this series is any reflection on the opening statement of DH that “it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and of societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.” This is not a throwaway passage, as Fr. John Hunwicke explained some months ago:

For Many Catholics in the United States, today, not this past Thursday, is the day their respective dioceses have designated to celebrate Corpus Christi. (For those following the “Ordinary Form” the feast has been relabeled the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.) Though rarer today than they were in yesteryear, many Catholics still have the opportunity to participate in modest, but spiritually beneficial, Corpus Christi processions. In some areas, including the Diocese of Grand Rapids, processions more befitting our Eucharistic King will be held. Later this afternoon two separate processions, each starting at parishes on the opposite side of the downtown area, will make a three mile journey to a third parish, aptly dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, as part of both the celebration of Corpus Christi and in remembrance of the ongoing Fortnight for Freedom (FFF), which began yesterday.

Earlier this week I offered some thoughts on the Fortnight for Freedom (FFF) in relation to the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus Errorum. The point of that post was to suggest in all sincerity that this time of prayer which begins today ought to be used for reflection on the Kingship of Christ—a doctrine of the universal Church which has been obscured, but not repealed, by certain interpretations of the ambiguous magisterium that has become the unfortunate hallmark of Rome for the past half-century. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which established the FFF, see the matter somewhat differently. For the USCCB and the majority of Catholics who follow that body’s marching orders, the FFF is a time to pray for religious liberty, a conceptual byproduct of the Enlightenment that is, at best, agnostic on the truth of every religion, including the Catholic Faith.

Note: By request I am going to begin restoring some posts from the old Opus Publicum over the next week or so. This one, which originally appeared on 4/27/2014, is not of my own composition. Rather, it is a translation of Dom Gerard Calvet’s sermon given at Chartes Cathedral on Pentecost 1985. You can read the translation at its original host, the defunct Lidless Eye web-log, here. In the hopes of keeping the text available in case Lidless Eye should ever disappear, I have copied the text below. The friend who directed me to it referred to it as “the illiberal Catholic manifesto.” I think he’s right.

Acton University, a week-long series of lectures dedicated to, inter alia, spreading the illusion that authentic Christianity, which is the Catholic Faith, is compatible with social, political, and economic liberalism literally began under a dark cloud yesterday in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In order to spread the message of liberty (libertarianism) beyond the walls of the DeVos Place Convention Center, Acton University established its own Twitter feed and hashtag, #ActonU, which is displayed on its website. While a bulk of #ActonU tweets are from enthralled attendees gushing about the latest bromide they heard from the mouths of Judge Andrew Napolitano or Michael Novak, a few Catholics, concerned with the message of markets, markets, markets and liberty, liberty, liberty being trumpeted at Acton offered some quotes of our own from the likes of Ss. John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. Some of us, including yours truly, questioned Acton’s privileging of freedom as an end in itself, which spilled over into a discussion of art and blasphemy with Acton Institute Senior Editor Joe Carter. Here are the relevant parts of the exchange:

With the Fortnight for Freedom (FFF) just over the horizon and many conservative Catholic eyes fixed anxiously on the Supreme Court as the country awaits the outcome of Sabelius v. Hobby Lobby (the “HHS Mandate case”), perhaps now would be a good time for the Church in America to follow the lead of Fr. John Hunwicke by reminding the faithful that 2014 is the sesquicentenary of Blessed Pope Pius IX’s 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura and its annex, the Syllabus Errorum. Although the Syllabus condemned some 80 propositions, the following sampling of errors could serve as a fruitful basis for meditation before our Eucharistic King during the forthcoming 14 days of prayer prescribed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB):