Category: Church

I typically do not encourage readers to go check out other web-logs until my Friday “Weekly Reading” posts; but it comes as no surprise to me that Fr. John Hunwicke compels me to make an exception. Yesterday’s post, “Pope or Tradition?,” beautifully and succinctly expresses, through direct recourse to the Church’s magisterium, the authentic role of the Pope as the defender of Sacred Tradition.

Many Catholics today rightly express dismay over doctrinal dissent, but precious little effort has gone into the matter of certain prelates and laity manufacturing their own magisterium. The phenomenon of hyper-Papalism, or what I and others have referred to as “Neo-Ultramontanism,” is as real as it is troubling. For an alarmingly high number of Catholics, “the Pope is the Faith and the Faith is the Pope”; the Vicar of Christ has become the Oracle of God; and the desire for concrete representation as an earthly affirmation that the Church is “real” now loses sight of what that representation is truly of and for.

Don’t expect this grave confusion to go away this year. Expect it to intensify in the coming months.

Consider that after so many centuries, after so many prayers and sighs, the Messiah, whom the holy patriarchs and prophets were not worthy to see, whom the nations sighed for, “the desire of the everlasting hills,” our Savior, has come; he is already born, and has given himself entirely to us: “A child is born to us, and a son is given to us.”

The Son of God has made himself little, in order to make us great.

He has given himself to us, in order that we may give ourselves to him.

He has come to show us his love, in order that we may respond to it by giving him ours.

Let us, therefore, receive him with affection. Let us love him, and have recourse to him in all our necessities.

“A child gives easily,” says St. Bernard; children readily give anything, that is asked of them. Jesus came into the world as a child in order to show himself ready and willing to give us all good gifts: “The Father hath given all things into his hands.”

If we wish for light, he has come on purpose to enlighten us.

If we wish for strength to resist our enemies, he has come to give us comfort.

If we wish for pardon and salvation, he has come to pardon and save us.

If, in short, we desire the sovereign gift of divine love, he has come to inflame our hearts with it; and, above all, for this very purpose, he has become a child, and has chosen to show himself to us worthy of our love, in proportion as he was poor and humble, in order to take away from us all fear, and to gain our affections.

“So,” said St. Peter Chrysologus, “should he come who willed to drive away fear, and seek for love.” And Jesus has chosen to come as a little child to make us love him, not only with an appreciative but even a tender love.

All infants attract the tender affection of those who behold them; but who will not love, with all the tenderness of which they are capable, a God whom they behold as a little child, in need of milk to nourish him, trembling with cold, poor, abased, and forsaken, weeping and crying in a manger, and lying on straw?

It was this that made the loving St. Francis exclaim: “Let us love the child of Bethlehem, let us love the child of Bethlehem. Come, souls, and love a God who has become a child, and poor, who is so lovable, and who has come down from heaven to give himself entirely to you.”

– St. Alphonsus Ligouri, Doctor of the Church and the Founder of the Redemptorist Order

Yesterday I linked to the Society of St. Pius X’s story that Bishop Bernard Fellay had been invited to the Parliament of the European Union to bless its Nativity scene. Maybe you missed it. During the blessing, Bishop Fellay took a moment to quote Cardinal Pie’s words to Napoleon III: “If the time has not come for Jesus Christ to reign, then the time has not come for governments to last.”

If only that quote could be put on placards to be hung in not only Brussels, but Washington, London, Paris, and even the Vatican. Let us not forget that we are awaiting the Nativity of our Lord and King, one who possesses the right to rule over all the nations of the earth. How quickly we forget that truth amidst the secular mentality we, faithful Catholics, are expected to cozy up to. Thankfully there are still priests and bishops of the Church willing to resist such madness.

I had set out to put something concentrated together for the three Ember Days of Advent, but two pending writing commitments won’t allow that, at least not this year. If you have never heard of the Ember Days, or are only vaguely aware of them because you accidentally opened to their propers when you were flipping to find the right Sunday in your hand missal just prior to the solitary Tridentine Mass the diocese so “graciously” and “pastorally” provides its neo-Pelagians, there is, or used to be, something about fasting and prayer associated with them; no more, of course. No more of that “stuff,” that “rigidity” which proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you possess a disturbing lack of faith, failing, as you perpetually do, to allow a Construct-of-Surprises to knock at your heart.

Earlier this year I took Fr. John Hunwicke’s lead by reminding you, dear readers, that here, in 2014, we should take time to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Blessed Pope Pius XI’s Quanta Cura and the Syllabus Errorum. You can find some of my thoughts on the matter in an earlier post, “The Fortnight and the Syllabus.” Rorate Caeli is also getting in on remembering this important moment in the life of the universal Church. Shouldn’t you, too?

Some say that today’s primary festivity, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, is the most misunderstood feast in the Catholic Church. Perhaps. I would like to think Quanta and the Syllabus are among her most misunderstood documents, for there are far too many who fail to comprehend their relevance to us today.