Pope Francis gets it exactly backwards in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium

A friend posting at OnePeterFive mentioned (and kindly linked to) Bergoglio outragous comment in the pope's Apostolic  Exhortation EVANGELII GAUDIUM, section 161, that:

It would not be right to see this call to growth exclusively or primarily in terms of doctrinal formation. It has to do with “observing” all that the Lord has shown us as the way of responding to his love. Along with the virtues, this means above all the new commandment, the first and the greatest of the commandments, and the one that best identifies us as Christ’s disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). Clearly, whenever the New Testament authors want to present the heart of the Christian moral message, they present the essential requirement of love for one’s neighbour: “The one who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the whole law… therefore love of neighbour is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom 13:8, 10). These are the words of Saint Paul, for whom the commandment of love not only sums up the law but constitutes its very heart and purpose: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Gal 5:14).

Ambaist! What a perversion to write this. Read John 15, from the first verse to 17. Note how not so subtly Bergoglio perverts it. St. John is quoting Our Lord as saying, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love." (Verses 9-10) Clearly the idea is to be right with with God, to place God first, as He must be, necessarily so. One cannot "love" (in the high sense, charitas, agapē) without loving God first. Matthew 22:37-39 "Jesus declared, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.’" 

Instead, as my friend pointed out, Bergoglio makes a Humanist statement, not a Catholic theological one. As I wrote in answer to his post:

Naturally, Bergi has got it exactly backward. First things first, and God necessarily – by essential definition – comes first; but our Caudillo puts Man first, and of course he puts himself first among men.

What kills me is it is all so banal, so lame, so stupid -- could anyone design anything more likely to turn off people to religion than the Vatican II Church and its Bergoglio? What homosexuality is to procreation, what Modernism is to Aquinas, what the N.O. is to the TLM, that's what the Vat2 Church is to Catholicism.

AnP

In Memorandum, Winston Churchill

Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was a strange one. 

A political opportunist of the first order, possessed of an immense vision along with a genius for disaster – breaking a legal contract with Turkey and keeping what became the H.M.S. Agincourt from the Turks – a "white elephant" of a dreadnought which fired exactly ONE salvo at Jutland – but his seizure of it helped push Turkey in on the German side in WWI. Then he birthed the disastrous Gallipoli campaign to undo his mistake. 

After that, a lonely Demosthenes warning of Hitler and the Nazis, turned to in desperation in May, 1940, and made P.M., wherein he earned undying fame for his oratory about "fighting on the beaches...we will never surrender" but otherwise leaving a very torturous record in WWII. 

Amongst other follies were the terror bombing of German cities, the Singapore fiasco: losing 100s of thousands of men over an empty naval base – and really, ringing the death knell of the British Empire – not to mention redrawing Poland's borders to please Stalin; but worst of all, he fought like a devil to keep the U.S. from invading France in 1943, which would have ended the war a year earlier. See: 1943, The Victory That Never Was by John Grigg, 1980, for an excellent, in-depth discussion about this fascinating, but utterly depressing, scenario.

Yet the man had courage, a genius-level IQ, and an astounding memory, honestly. Just one of history's strangest almost – though never quite – Great Ones; and on top of the rest of it, a miserable father to his son, Randolph – though to be fair, his own father was a pitiful man, and his mother, the American heiress whose reputation suffered (shall we say politely?) of whom Churchill wrote, "I loved her dearly – but at a distance".

An Préachán

"Conversion Therapy" and Gender Dystopia counseling about to be made illegal nationwide?

Absolutely evil: The Equality Act passed by the Democrats in the House...

This is just insane. Absolutely insane. Utterly madness.

And when did the Gays just completely take over the country?*

(I honestly can't believe it has gotten as bad as this.)

*Regarding some fascinating background material on the (clearing failing) presidential candidate, Pete Buttigiegs. Patrick Coffin interviews E. Michael Jones, who lived just a few doors from the Buttigiegs family in South Bend. Well worth listening to. 

N.B. Of course, Jones has notoriety for being labeled an "anti-Semite", and Vatican II Catholics shun him completely. But Jones is so often a trenchant commentator or culture and economics, that a lot of what he says is of great interest, (I like his take on what happened to architecture), and he also apparently predicted Buttigiegs' rise a couple of hears ago. So far as I know, Jones is no Holocaust denier, or anything on that order. And naturally it is absurd to insist no criticism of anything remotely Jewish is allowed. No one is above criticism, especially the Vatican II Church, which seems to have gone quite far along the road to excommunicating anyone who says Christians should try to convert Jews.

(YouTube has apparently banned Jones' own videos -- there's just way too much censorship going on -- as in the anti-Conversion Therapy legislation above. Trump had better act to stop it or Orwell's 1984 will be our full reality.)

An Préachán

Linguistic Meaning Reflection on 1 Corinthians 13

Note: This is a cut-out and development from the previous post regarding the words caritas and agapē.

First Corinthians 13: The only way to really translate the passage today into English is to use "caritas" directly, or ἀγάπη, agapē. A modern-language word just won't work: they're too overloaded with being "imprecise metaphors" and connotations that distort the original idea. One might as well use the old words as they take less explanation than "undoing" the modern word!

The original meaning of the Greek agapē, recorded in Homer, was to greet or show hospitality, from the verb ἀγαπέω, agapáō. I suspect at heart it has the idea of justice, to show justice by properly greeting or showing right respect, as for the dead, or visitors. (The idea reminds me of the Irish fáilte, the proper welcome guests can expect, though now it is too often used as an Irish equivalent for the English "parlor polite" thank you or the German bitte.)

Therefore, should your English-language Bible in First Corinthians 13 use "love" instead of "charity", it is simply a bad translation, for "love" can mean a host of quite different affections. The real problem is "charity" – why it was dropped in the past 60 years. in popular English it now means something different than "caritas". Etymonline.com says the English word "charity" is from: late Old English, "benevolence for the poor," also "Christian love in its highest manifestation," from Old French charité "(Christian) charity, mercy, compassion; alms; charitable foundation" (12c.), from Latin caritatem (nominative caritas) "costliness; esteem, affection," from carus "dear, valued," from PIE *karo-, from root *ka- "to like, desire."

AnP again: You can see why, from an Old English "benevolene for the poor" the modern English "charity" would be entirely used for the crass "social justice" bureaucratic maintenace of the "poor". "Charity case" or "I don't need your charity." Etc.

My wife noted that "Carissimo / carissima" means "dear, dearest", come from the Latin had cárus, dear. 

See Wikionary here for semantically related Semitic words, such as may have been used in Aramaic that Our Lord spoke. 

Irish
There's also the modern Irish word "cara", friend – Scottish Gaelic "caraid" – from the Old Irish "cara" (Krarant is a possible recreation of the oldest form of the word.) The Old Irish verb was carim, caraim, "I love". (Today one uses the lovely word "grá" for romantic love, as in "Tá grá agam duit.") Welsh had caraf, Breton quaret, and the Gaulish was carantus, perhaps as in the name Caractacus of the Catuvellauni, a name cognate with Welsh Caradog, Breton Karadeg, and Irish Carthach. 

Here is the Douay-Rheims (1899) of 1 Corinthians 13:

13 If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2 And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

3 And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up;

5 Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never falleth away: whether prophecies shall be made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

12 We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.

13 And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.

Let's not go back to the Vatican I Church; to the Counter-Reformation Church, yes, or the High Middle Ages Church

If there's a Church we need to go back to, it's the Counter-Reformation Church (1540-1648) or the High Middle Ages Church (1051-1278), not the Vatican I Church (post-Napoleon to 1958).

I had a great-aunt, prettiest girl in her family, who back about 1910 or so, when in high school -- maybe, maybe it was middle school -- was lured away into a convent life. (The school she was in was run by a religious order, naturally.) Of course, alas, it didn't work out. I was given to understand these were German nuns and very strict, and this pretty Irish girl spent a decade on the floors of the convent, scrubbing. In despair, she left -- IIRC, before final vows.

Well, her family, except for her two brothers (one of whom was my grandfather) disowned her. She was a few notches below person non grata. The two brothers were married by then (and a third brother of her age had died tragically). Her two sisters, Brigid and Mary (how Irish can you get?) wouldn't speak to her (and "Aunt B" was "too holy to have lived", it was said), so my disgraced (literally) great-aunt wandered into the empty regions of Pluto, or its earthly equivalent, marrying eventually a kind-hearted Protestant man who tried to care for her, and she died, forgotten by all but my mother, who visited her a few times in her remote, rural exile.

That, too, was the Vatican I Church, the Festung Katholica. I'm sure bishops of the time of Vatican II, and even a latter-day individual like Bergoglio, had similar stories to tell. Any older Catholic you might meet may well have such a story. In fact, many Protestants could tell stories of a not unrelated character. In everything religious, as far as Christianity is concerned, we need to radiate caritas. 

1 Corinthians 13 Douay-Rheims 1899 

13 If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity*, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2 And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

3 And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Charity is patient, is kind: charity envieth not, dealeth not perversely; is not puffed up;

5 Is not ambitious, seeketh not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never falleth away: whether prophecies shall be made void, or tongues shall cease, or knowledge shall be destroyed.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.

12 We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.

13 And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.

*If your Bible here has "love" instead of "charity", it is simply a bad translation, for "love" can mean a host of affections. The real problem is "charity" – in popular English now means something different thann "caritas". The only way to really translate the passage is to use "caritas" directly, or ἀγάπη, agapē. The original meaning of the Greek, in Homer was to greet or show hospitality, from the verb ἀγαπέω, agapáō. I suspect at heart it has the idea of justice, to show justice by properly greeting or show respect, as for the dead. 

Luther and Zwingli Defended Our Lady's Perpetual Virginity; a Pity Modern Protestants Don't

A great article at the Catholic Herald, from January 2017.

An excerpt:

Bishop Hugh Latimer – a staunch Protestant burned at the stake by Queen Mary – goes to great lengths in his St Stephen’s Day Sermon of 1552 to rebut the arguments of those who reject Mary’s perpetual virginity, blasting them as “heretics” who “violate, toss, and turmoil the Scriptures of God, according to their own fantasies and foolish minds.” In a letter to a Catholic in 1749, Methodist founder John Wesley – himself an Anglican priest – professed his belief that Mary “as well after as before she brought [Christ] forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin.”

With this in mind, it is intriguing to see how universally – and often how vociferously – ancient Christian teaching on Mary is rejected by most evangelical Protestants today.

A typical example comes from respected Presbyterian scholar Peter Leithart, who has just published a robust attack on the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity at First Things.

Leithart claims that that when the Gospels say Joseph did not have relations with Mary “until she had borne a son” (Matt 1:25), this implies the couple did have marital relations after she gave birth.
To understand why this view is mistaken, Leithart need only have consulted the footnotes of the classic Protestant Geneva Bible published in 1560, in which the translators note that the word “until” is not an indication that something different happened afterward. When Jesus says, “I am with you always, until the end of the world” (Matt 28:20), obviously this does not mean he ceases to be with us in the afterlife.

Leithart claims that Joseph did not have sex with Mary during her pregnancy because the temporary presence of Jesus within her body rendered it holy, like the Temple in the Old Testament. After this, however, she “reverted to ‘common’ status.”

But this is to overlook what the Trinity teaches us about what it means to be a person – that who we are as persons is defined, in part, by the relationship we have to other persons. Mother of God (Theotokos) – the relationality that Mary had to Jesus – was not a function she performed for a period of time, like an incubating machine. It was part of who Mary was as a person, and who she was always destined to be.


The Council of Ephesus in 431 reaffirmed Mary’s traditional title of Mother of God, not for the sake of her own honour but to rebut Nestorianism, a bizarre Christological heresy which claimed that Jesus, while one individual, was two persons (one human and one divine). Ancient Marian teachings all serve a similar function, protecting the integrity of what Christians believe about Jesus.

"George III was but a boy stealing a peach from your lunch..."

"...by comparison with our plumed and puffed liberty-thieves and governors."

So writes Anthony Esolen in an article here at American Greatness. Good article, and a lot of quotes from ol' Herman Melville. But of course the doom for the U.S. was written on the wall at the beginning. "Liberty" was a false god, a sort of pied piper leading its adherents along the famous "primrose path" until boom, disaster befell them. Esolen writes eloquently (when does he not?) :

"We need not confine ourselves to the legal. There is also the customary. Free men honor the good and wise, the benefactors of their nation. Slaves toady to the famous. Free men make their own entertainment. Servile men are content to consume it ready-made. Free men seek out the dangerous space, as Melville sought out the sea. Servile men demand the safe space, where they may suck their thumbs. Free men fight in the open. Servile men sneak about, bear tales, attack the weak like a pack of jackals, and couch their enmity in soft and seductive slogans. Free men raise their own children. Servile men submit their children to be raised by others. Free men take their pedigrees from almighty God. Servile men seek out means of establishing a factitious superiority over their peers or their betters: a diploma, a bank account, a big house, a title, a special status as favored victim."

Reads like a description Cicero could have written. So we are replaying the drama the Romans lived through. What recreated Rome in the East, in Byzantium, and in the West, ultimately as the High Middle Ages, was Christianity, and not imputed-grace Protestantism but rather the Theosis-Faith of the True Church, that God became Man not merely to save us from our sins, but to elevate us as new creations in Christ (as St. Paul wrote so often and in so many ways, as did St. John). For a fascinating discussion on Theosis, the forgotten teaching of the Church, see this podcast at (rather absurdly named) "Pints with Aquinas". The theologian being interviewed is Fr. James Brent, O.P.

But America, the United States, never had that, a secure foundation on the profound teachings of Historical Christianity. Instead, the country was founded by Puritan fanatics in New England and Capitalists in Virginia, and then given a national government by the godless (James Madison, Alexander Hamilton) via a Constitutional Convention they themselves created in Philadelphia (after a failed attempt a year before – 1786 – in Annapolis). The new U. S. Constitution intentinoally left God totally out of the picture and if God is out of the picture, no "rights" of any sort can be guaranteed, and even the nature of man and the point and bounds of his life are all "up for grabs". Which, need I point out, are precisely what plague the poor country today, what with its Gay marriage imposed from above, and Tranny rights, and absolutely shocking political malfeasance.

"Liberty" is the false god, "freedom" the true one – if one understands by "freedom" the freedom to be what God intended you to be. As I have written many times, and as have others before me, we're like gasoline engines, we humans; i.e. we're like engines meant to run on gasoline, and gasoline only. Not kerosene, not diesel, not propane, not natural gas or whiskey or aviation fuel. "Liberty," that pied piper, would have one believe one can run on anything one wants. The more choices the more "liberty". Simple enough, except that it doesn't work. And when you of course, necessarily break down, when you "crash and burn", well, too bad. 

With most everyone in the U.S. now wanting to run on everything from unicorn urine to sea water, it's no wonder the country exhibits the morals that even the pagan Cicero would lament. 

An P

Hell, the Happy Home of Absolute Refusniks

Amici,

The following is a series of Comments I made at 1Peter5 about the reality of Hell to someone who seems to support Universal Salvation, a pernicious doctrine that will be getting a lot of press (literally) soon with the publication in November of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved: Hell, Heaven, and Universal Salvation.

It always amazes me how difficult it is for Moderns to "get" Hell. Modernism, the heresy, is utterly opposed to this basic doctrine, and the Vatican II Church has run from Hell with its (collective) hair on fire. 

But no more basic Christian doctrine exists. One can truly say that the Dogma (a doctrine that must be believed) of Hell is THE most importent teaching of Christianity, because, if there's no Hell, there's no need of a Savior. The Universal Salvation crowd, the Anti-Hell Hard Core, see the doctrine of Hell as a perversion of our (necessarily) limited understanding of God; they think we Traditionalists see God as a grumpy old sky god zapping us with thunderbolts now and again. 

And they replace the Dogma of Hell with that of Purgatory, writing that "Hell" is a kind of Purgatory wherein a "just" punishment is meted out for sins and when everyone has been cleansed, they get to go to Heaven. But as I wrote below in my Comment to a Universalist, NO disciplinary action would "fit their crimes" because their basic "crime" is their free-will rejection of God Himself and what He made them for. 

So what follows is my defense of the Infernal Regions, and their (alas) ever-growing population stats. 

Excuse me, but let me "unpack" your Comment.

1. You seem to be arguing for "Universal Salvation" and that I distort it, is that correct?

2. Who are "Those who have taught this (Universal Salvation, correct?) from the earliest days of the Church"? Please list some names and references. You sound like an avid fan of David Bentley Hart and his yet-to-be-published That All Shall Be Saved: Hell, Heaven, and Universal Salvation, to be published in November of this year. I don't know but I assume he'll dwell at length on this Pauline text.

3. You think I am distorting Universal Salvation by mockery, writing that Hitler (and I didn't mention Hefner by name) could just enter Heaven?

4. You have spoken to people who know about Eternity? That Eternity has time?

5. You quote 1 Timothy 2:4 that it is God's will all will be saved, and thus clearly, by the context of that section of your Comment, think that Hell is just Purgatory. Is that right? Otherwise God would be merely seeking Revenge, getting even (revenge again) or angry at sin? All too-human traits?

Answer to 1 (assuming I have gotten that and the rest of your Comments correctly): I think Universal Salvation a wildly out of context distortion of 1 Timothy 2:4. The context of this comment is that Christians are supposed to pray for their rulers (at that time, all pagans) so that Christians may be left alone to pursue a Godly life. Then comes the "Universal Salvation" statement, as a sub-point to living the Godly life, and then the famous Protestant "Control Quote" that there is one God, and one, sole mediator between men and God, the "man" Jesus Christ. Arians and non-Trinitarians no doubt love that phrase because of "the man, Jesus Christ" ref, but standard Protestants quote it to "disprove" the Catholic practice of praying to saints. (There are a dozen or so "Control Quotes" Prots use to interpret Scripture, to filter it -- all of it -- through them; it is called "Scripture interpreting Scripture.")

Yet the context of the entire second chapter is about the problems of discipline in the Church (a few verses later St. Paul ends up once again writing about women's hair!) and the "God wills all men to be saved" clearly is not a formal, all-important doctrinal statement. To try to make is so is an absurd proof-texting, as is what Prots do with "No mediator but Christ" verse. Nowhere else in Pauline literature does he teach anything like "God wills all people to be saved and will save them after proper chastisement." Nothing like that exists in the entire Bible, for that matter.

So just as you read me out of context, you read St. Paul out of context.

Cont.

Point 2: I will await enlightenment. But I suspect that your sources will be taken out of context, for the simple reason that in the world of "universal" this and that, the "universal" Church has clearly taught most of the Human race will be lost to Hell, and has taught the reality of Hell as Dogma, from the beginning, starting with Our Most Blessed Lord Himself, Who warned us to be afraid not of those who kill the body, but the soul, and that "Satan was a murderer from the beginning" (Matthew 10:28; John 8:44 -- these verses are clear, absolute, and central to why we need a Savior to begin with), meaning that Satan murdered the spark of Divine Grace in souls, angelic and human.

Point 3: My point about Hitler and a pornographer (unnamed) is that they would refuse Heaven because it is NOT WHAT THEY WANT. Why is Hell so difficult to understand? This isn't "rocket science"! People, like the Angels before them, must choose to submit, to serve, to obey God and God's Will for them. About a third of the Angels chose not to do that. We humans can't choose quite the way they did because we exist in time and "make the choice" for or against God in small daily increments, such that on Judgement Day we'll know clearly what we've chosen. (Occasionally, on willfully committing of a mortal sin, we make a BIG choice.)

It's simple. And as any angel, even the dumbest, is smarter than a human being (exceptions can occasionally exist about little bits of info, but that is a very small side point), and yet one-third of them chose Hell, we can logically conclude that the far dumber human race can also chose Hell, and on a massive scale.

For let's get this clear: HELL IS NOT GOD BEING VINDICTIVE, BUT GOD GIVING PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT! And if they don't want Him, He's not going force Himself on them. God wants faithful servants so he can "Theosis-ize" them into sons, to Divinize us with a portion of His Own Nature, not 'bot slaves having no free will. (Sheesh, how hard is this?)

Nor would any temporary Purgatory-like punishment suffice for those who have rejected Him. No disciplinary action would "fit their crimes" because their basic "crime" is their free-will rejection of God Himself! (Again, how hard is this to understand? Reread that previous line again, please.) Purgatory is the place for working out "just" punishment, giving the unconfessed and/or un-penanced sins of those who choose God their due; Hell exists as a Eternal Home for Absolute Refusniks.

Cont.

4. Whatever Eternity is, however we experience it – or how Angels do, and they no doubt (being pure spirit) experience it differently than we possibly could – the things that happen in Eternity are Eternal. A choice made there is eternal. One can't undo one's choices there. That's true in a sense now, for us. I can't undo an important decision or act in my life: I can repent it, I can confess it, I realize I took a wrong turn on a road trip, and can "go back and do it over" a bit differently, but so what? I can't possibly actually undo it. This reality will be much more "present" to us in Boethius' The Boundless Now.

Point 5: I've taken care to answer this at some length in the above comments concerning Points 1 to 4.

Pax.

An Préachán 

Heaven, Hell, Limbo, General Thoughts

A great essay by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has been posted at OnePeterFive.  However, just a note: Dr. Kwasniewski didn't mention Limbo. For a review of that, see this old Catholic Encyclopedia article for a discussion of Limbus patrum and Limbus infantium. Regarding the latter, after reviewing it, I was once again struck by the severity of the disagreement between the most eminent theologians in the Church's history.

Being followers of the Lord Christ isn't easy, on many levels, as all here know and have often attested. Even Dr. Kwasniewski has discussed how difficult his life has been -- has been made to have been -- for following the Traditional Faith. And in general, for a Christian, the question of Hell and who goes there is one of the difficulties. We can read Holy Writ that makes it plain those without Our Blessed Lord are Hell-bound, and He Himself plainly says the road to Hell is wide and easy. (Matt 7:13, for example.) But he also tells the Pharisees "not to judge" -- meaning not to judge specific individuals' final destination. (He clearly teaches us to judge immoral behavior and shun those who insist on practicing it: see Matt 18 about the brother who sins.) And what of all those of the human race who never heard of Him at all?

Also, if we stress Hell too much, we turn off people. Now, mind me, I don't mean the modern Vatican II Church's pablum about that; I mean in the old-time preachin' down in the hills, or among the Calvinist Orangemen: the endless focus on Hell produced serious neurosis. I've heard a number of first-hand accounts of individuals who either went mad or certainly got as far away from "religion" as they could because of it. Ironically, a successful revival, like The Great Awakening, too often left what wags called a "Burnt out" or "Burnt over" district. As in most things, I suppose, there's a Golden Mean in preaching Hell. Clearly, though, we've gone far, far, way too far into the "Don't worry, there, there" school of religion as therapy. The Christian Faith is Faith first, the Transformation in Christ, the infusion of Grace; and if there's anything "therapeutic" about that, it comes of Our Lord's boundless Grace.

But perhaps the real problem is that while it is clearly necessary to preach Hell, we can't judge individuals as to whether they go there or not. (So many of us SO want to say that of people we know, but it is as much the sin of presumption as saying a recently deceased went to Heaven!)

Oh, certain cases are plain: Hitler, for example. If Adolph went to the Pearly Gates and St. Pete threw them wide open and said, "Adolph! Come on in!" Hitler would look in and see countless Jews -- Ancient Jews, Jews at the time of Our Lord on Earth, and Jews in plenty thereafter because we non-Jews become descendants of Abraham and members of the Covenant via Baptism and especially the Most Holy Eucharist. Hitler wouldn't enter Heaven because it is full of Jews! Or take a pornographer (various names come to mind): they'd look in through the Pearly Gates and see the most beautiful, attractive people imaginable, beyond their imagination, indeed! But they'd see NO lust! "To Hell with this!" they would say and go look deep past the Gates of Hell. There they'd see infinite ugliness, but lust the likes of which they never dreamed of. Guess where they'd go. In a real way, one can say, each individual chooses Heaven or Hell for themselves, with Our Lord God on Judgment Day reflecting them back to themselves in perfect clarity, such that each of us will know upon that instant whether we really wanted to do God's will in our lives, or thwart it. (In that moment, we'll be like the angels were on their Day of Judgment, knowing what they knew in absolutely perfect clarity.)

[Note that Matt 25, starting at verse 31, would suggest everyone is surprised by their sentence of Bliss or Damnation, the opposite of this idea I mention, or seemingly so. One must remember that the dead are outside of time, in what Boethius called "the Boundless Now", so all moments are eternally "present". No one will celebrate their millionth year in Heaven or lament their millionth year in Hell: time there doesn't exist as we experience it on Earth.]
Finally, there's the question of justice. Justice is giving something its due. Rejection of God is due Hell, as a matter of justice. Without Hell -- which as Dr. K shows the Vat2 Church really isn't "into" ("We're just so NOT into Hell, peeps!" say the hip Vat2 prelates), there's no justice for those who reject Our Lord, and they deserve justice just as much as anyone else; in other words, without Hell, there'd be no justice for those who obeyed Him, either, those who entered into the Covenants He established for our salvation, and who, despite temptations, and by God's bountiful Grace that enabled us to stay in the Covenants, stayed fast. The "there's no Hell/no one in Hell" crowd have simply no answer to this argument.

Ultimately, there's one thing I certainly believe about this matter, one sure and certain thing. All the Damned and all the Saved and all the (I suspect, just an opinion, quite a host) in Limbo, will all aver with the strictest conviction what ol' Abraham Lincoln said in his second inaugural, when he quoted the Psalmist, in the second half of verse 9 of Psalm 19, "...The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

Amen to that!

An Préachán

Recommended Article: "Why Heretics Hate Mary and We Should Love Her More"

Amici,

I'd like to recommend this article at OnePeterFive, "Why Heretics Hate Mary and We Should Love Her More", by Timothy Flanders. 

I wrote the following Comment to it. 

Thank you, THANK YOU, Mr. Flanders for this essay and for highlighting: "But it is even more disturbing when we read how the Rhine group at Vatican II successfully suppressed the document on the Mother of God, relegating it, by a narrow vote, to the final section in (against the protests from Eastern Catholic bishops and others)..." and noting Ratzinger's Marian "weakness". ALL those reformers, the hard core (Schillebeeckx, Rahner, Küng) and the milder revolutionaries (de Lubac, Balthasar and Ratzinger), were together weak on her. And thank you for pointing out that "Gay Blade" James Martin ignores her, as well. (True women bring out true men, after all.)

They were weak on her or ignore her because of pride, among a host of reasons, but perhaps mainly because they just didn't get it: that through the young peasant teen's freely-given Fiat, the Jewish girl Miriam's name became known throughout the Catholic world beyond, resonating down two millennia now; an utterly obscure girl from a stunningly obscure time and impossible-to-be-more obscure place became the most famous woman -- indeed, the most famous purely human being -- since Eve; and more famous than Eve, really -- because Miriam is the New Eve, and through her we have Salvation, Salvation Incarnated, which is then, through the Most Holy Eucharist, Incarnated in us.

That's the Catholic Faith, the Incarnation Incarnated in us. It's the Faith of the Historical Church down through the millennia. Protestants reject it, formally rejecting the Real Presence, legalistically denying it in their founding documents: rejecting God's Incarnation in us (and insisting God's grace is only imputed to us, not infused into us), and naturally the Muslims went them one better 1,000 years before Luther was even hatched by rejecting the Incarnation in itself, in its First Instance.

When we participate in the Most Holy Eucharist, as you-all know here, we partake of the Divine Nature of Christ AND His Human Nature; through this Real Presence, we ourselves now have the elevated Incarnated Nature of Christ in us (no matter how small and yet fragile) as well as His Human Nature, which He inherited from His Mother. We literally ARE the Blessed Mother's children. Through Our Lord, we have her DNA. And as all Jews are Jews because they inherit it from their mothers, so now do we inherit the blessings and participation in the Covenants, all through the New Covenant. For to be The People of God (a Vat II favorite phrase) we need to be literally in and of the Body of Christ, and we have that status and true condition through Mary's Fiat.

This should humble us; it should not make us prideful. Well and truly you write, Mr Flanders, that: "True devotion to Mary keeps us safe from the excesses of pride." Amen to that!

Thanks again!

An P

G. K. Chesterton's Cause for Sainthood dropped by the "fog of mediocrity"

I've been a fan of G.K.C's since high school, when I discovered his book Orthodoxy in a "Catholic Corner" of a Christian bookstore. It was a revelation. I had never read anything like it, and I had grown up (I mean through grade school) reading 19th century authors and then in high school, my two "go-to" authors were (kinda extreme) poles apart: H.P. Lovecraft on one hand and Plato on the other. (Lovecraft, I know realize, was channeling in Infernal, but I met Tolkien at some point in high school and J.R.R. drove out H.P., though one is never quite the same after one reads Howard Philips.)

To a very large extent, certainly on an intellectual level, I owe my Catholicism to Chesterton and Tolkien. The American Catholic Church taught me nothing, less than nothing, in fact. To these two Englishmen (and Chesterton was very English indeed, as Tolkien was -- one might say -- Old English) I owe my intellectual participation in the Catholic Church. Life is full of irony; I'm sure there's an Irish phrase for that. (BTW: there's a movement beginning for J.R.R.T.'s eventual canonization.) 

So, a few years ago, when I read that there was a movement to investigate Chesterton's cause for sainthood, I thought that was fitting. Quite fitting. He's certainly the patron saint of Catholic English-language writers, Catholic apologists in general, journalists and of course fat guys with mustaches and curly hair, and (let's not forget) beer drinkers. Seriously, though, he's certainly not an exemplary layman "martyr" saint, or a suffering layman saint like the lovely souls St. Gemma Galgani and now the Blessed Chiara Badano (http://www.chiarabadano.org/ ), but he is kin to Aquinas (another rather overweight fellow) and G.K.C. "channeled" St. Thomas for "everyman" better than any professional academic has ever done.

Gilbert was an amazing "Everyguy" sort of saint, a husband, a writer, trying to make a living as a (sort of) journalist, and saintly he was, in temperament: just compare him to his great friend, "Old Thunder", Hilaire Belloc. (A "suffering saint" if one may make so bold; one who didn't tolerate fools, however, whereas G.K.C. was kind to everyone, even George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.)

And of course, Belloc had every reason (times 100) to be bitter. He coined the phrase I quote in the title about the Catholic bishops of England in the 1930s being "a fog of mediocrity". They still are! We languish in a soup of never-ending foggy mediocrity in our bishops! I cannot think of how I could chew up the modern hierarchy remotely like Old Thunder would have done were he still be alive today.

But as one of the people quoted in this Catholic Herald article says, it was "political correctness" that did in G.K.C.'s cause for sainthood. He was "anti-Semitic", you see. (Eye roll) So today, England has a huge anti-Semitic problem (Muslims, and Leftists, oh my!) and thus G.K.C., who would have been disgusted with both, is shut of his Church because of them. It is a calumny. Old Thunder would have thundered on and on about it, but not the kindly G.K.C.

An Préachán

PS: 

You can read a lot of G.K.C.'s work at Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=G.+K.+Chesterton

But I didn't find his St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox there. However, I located it at Gutenberg Australia: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100331.txt