I am going on blogging hiatus for a few days, so I am posting this one up early. Merry Christmas everyone — except my Julian Calendar Eastern Catholic and Orthodox readers. To you I wish a blessed close to the season of Advent.
2014 Year in Movies
I am not a big film buff, and ever since I left Chicago and the early morning discount at the AMC downtown, I am typically disinclined to visit a movie theater. For what it’s worth, here are the top 15 new movies I saw in 2014. Some titles released in late 2013 are on here as well. Oh, and I have seen neither The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies nor Exodus: Gods and Kings. I don’t anticipate that I will ever see the latter, actually.
2014 Year in Books
I’m always making lists. Below are the top 15 new books I read in 2014, with the caveat that a couple of titles published in late 2013 made it on as well. The numbering reflects roughly my sense of the book’s overall worth as determined by a number of idiosyncratic criteria, including whether or not I threw the volume across the room and/or allowed my 18-month-old to play with it.
The Myth of Hart
David Bentley Hart’s essay, “The Myth of Schism,” which was published nearly seven years ago, won’t go away. Though given little notice by the Orthodox community at the time of its release, it has since become one of the lynchpins of Catholic (and some Orthodox) ecumenical hopes and dreams. Just when I assumed the essay had been mined (and criticized) for all that it is worth, along comes Mark Shea to quote the essay’s most perplexing, and some might say mythical, paragraph. Here’s a sample:
I like to think—call it the Sophiologist in me—that the tribulations that Eastern Christianity has suffered under Islamic and communist rule have insulated it from some of the more corrosive pathologies of modernity for a purpose, and endowed it with a special mission to bring its liturgical, intellectual, and spiritual strengths to the aid of the Western Christian world in its struggle with the nihilism that the post-Christian West has long incubated and that now surrounds us all, while yet drawing on the strengths and charisms of the Western church to preserve Orthodoxy from the political and cultural frailty that still afflicts Eastern Christianity. Whatever the case, though, we are more in need of one another now than ever.
Morality Play
As a Catholic, I don’t feel compelled (right now) to offer an intervention on what has turned out to be a fascinating exchange between Fr. Stephen Freeman (Orthodox Church in America) and several Orthodox critics on the topic of “moral Christianity.” Freeman’s posts are linked below. You can find links to his critics from there.
- The Un-Moral Christian
- Of Course We Are Called to be Moral – A Response to My Critics
- Eschatological Eloquence – Fr. Aidan Kimel’s Response
- While We’re At It – An Unmoral Word From the Holy Mountain
Addendum: Because I have already received one iMessage from a perplexed reader, let me be clear that I do not endorse a good deal of what Freeman says; though I believe his writing accurately reflects a certain type of thinking which is prevalent in contemporary Orthodoxy. Also, anytime “the West” is mentioned in a discussion among Orthodox, my eyes roll automatically.
Restoring the Integrity of Catholic Social Teaching
My latest article from The Angelus, “Restoring the Integrity of Catholic Social Teaching,” is available online in front of the magazine’s paywall. Here’s a sample:
Catholic Social Teaching (CST), though rooted in centuries of reflection supplied by some of the Church’s greatest theologians, is often thought to have begun in 1891 with Pope Leo XIII’s ground-breaking encyclical Rerum Novarum. While there is a loud ring of truth to this, traditional Catholics should be well aware that the Church’s modern social magisterium began to emerge following the violent rise of liberalism in France in 1789 and the revolutionary upheavals which rocked Europe throughout the 1800s. With the early decades of the 20th century delivering further global unrest through two cataclysmic wars, a worldwide economic depression, and the rise of racialist fascism and atheistic communism, the holders of St. Peter’s Chair issued further encyclicals reminding the world that neither socialism nor unfettered capitalism were just economic options, and that all political authority comes from God.
Click the link above to read the rest, and do consider subscribing.
A Christmas Message
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.
Stocking Stuffers, Etc.
Christmas is less than a week away; do you still have some shopping to do? Or, come the 26th, will you find yourself fretting over where to dispose the loot given by friends and family who had grown weary trying to figure out what gift to get you? Never fear; some suggestions are here.
- Papa Stronsay Calendar – I have said it numerous times before, and I’ll say it again: this is the single best traditional Catholic wall calendar around. If you don’t believe me, click the link, watch the video, and then order it.
- The Angelus Magazine – Do you know what would go great with a beautiful traditional wall calendar? A year’s subscription to a wonderful traditional magazine. I can’t say enough good things about The Angelus; and it remains an honor for me to be published in it.
- Ordo Recitandi 2015 – The St. Lawrence Press Ordo is the only one available which follows the traditional Roman Rite as it existed prior to the unfortunate reforms of the 1950s and 60s. Even if you rely on the 1962 Breviarium Romanum, there is still a lot to be gleaned from this fine publication.
- Schola Sancta Caecelia, In Bethlehem – As I mentioned the other week, several talented young ladies from my parish have just released their second album of traditional chants and hymns. If you don’t own their first one, Stella Splendens, you can purchase that as well.
- The Remnant Newspaper – The good folks over at The Remnant are offering an array of subscription specials this holiday season; go take advantage of one.
Weekly Reading – December 19, 2014
Storck on Economic Liberalism
Thomas Storck has been keeping up a lively debate with Ryan Shinkel over at Ethika Politika, one which helpfully demarcates the border between authentic Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and liberalism. Storck’s most recent entry, “Markets, Liberalism, and G.K. Chesterton,” throws a bucket of cold water on the idea—often touted by Catholics intoxicated with economic liberalism—that individual good will and private initiative are sufficient for checking capitalism. Storck asks:
Why should economic activity be handed over to Satan while the health of society is guarded merely by good will and private initiative? We must indeed erect buffers against human greed; this is done not simply by private institutions and good morals, but by the way in which we structure and regulate economic life.
Go read the entire article. Read it twice.