Fully Pagan Bergoglio: Perils of his Environmentalism apparent at last

Amici,

At The Federalist, Maureen Mullarky (great Irish name) has an article on the radical environmentalism of Pagan Pope Francis, and any Catholic, or indeed Christian of whatever group, or Jew, should read it because Maureen reveals the end game of Modernism and all the ecological claptrap of the Bergoglian Church: The New Paganism. 

First, some background:

Christianity versus Paganism

Christianity

Christianity is a completely anthropomorphic religion in that God became Man to save Mankind from its fallen nature. One enters into this salvation only by physically partaking of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, through the Covenantal Most Holy Eucharist (i.e. the Covenantal meal of the Seventh Covenant as Passover was of the Fifth Covenant). Failure to do so means you do not have the Life of Christ within you, as St. John explains at length in the 6th chapter of his gospel. (He wrote his gospel last of the gospels and after St. Paul's letters, and he clearly thought it necessary to compose this 6th chapter stressing the Eucharistic source of "being a new creation in Christ", as St. Paul so often phrases it.)

But then again, as the ancient Hebrew revelation itself made clear in the beginning, God made Man in God's own "image" (it is the only time "image" is used positively in Genesis, if I recall correctly). God didn't have a physical human form, but He gave Man free will, intellect, rationality, and the soul's immortality. Then, with the Incarnation, made a necessity by Adam and Eve's Fall, God sanctified and elevated the human form by Incarnating Himself in it. Because He took on Human nature, humans can now via divine grace take on God's nature and indeed, literally be "new creations in Christ". 

• So this part of God's creation – the physical universe resulting from the Big Bang (as is now generally thought in physics) – is doubly blessed, both in its beginnings when God declared it good and made his Covenant with it (first couple of verses in Genesis Chapter 2) and now in God's Incarnation into it (New Testament). It belongs to God who created it, and to mankind whom God made within it and tasked with protecting it. We're here to govern it, "keep" it/maintain and cultivate it. Aside from loving and serving God, it's our foundational job in mortal life, and indeed, we love and serve God in our assigned acts of cultivating and "keeping it clean". And it is widely known that working outdoors, keeping a garden, long walks in the countryside, etc., all promote mental health for everyone. However, none of this means we ought to worship it. 

Paganism

But paganism is quite different. Firstly, it has no knowledge of a personal God, whether the Unity of Jews and Muslims or the Most Holy Trinity: "...holy Lord, Father almighty, eternal God: Who, together with Thine only-begotten Son and the Holy Ghost, art one God, one Lord: not in the Oneness of single person, but in the Trinity one Substance...without difference or separation...unity in Essence, and equality in Majesty." (from the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity)

Instead of all that, Paganism's deities are generated by nature, and exist wholly within it. Secondly, in Paganism you don't care for or cultivate nature – you worship it because Paganism is about worshiping the life force. It is our mistress, not our servant or ward. That's why stone phalluses were so often made and worshiped in most cultures around the world, from Ancient Greece to modern-day Japan, where one can see devotees praying to them. These images were of that which was essential to generating new life. 

Human beings by definition have no special place in Paganism; indeed, the gods who made mankind were themselves generated by the life force. Death, then, was no absolute cut off from this world, but a portal back into it, eventually. Again, that's because we are merely an element to it. This was as true of Druidism as it is today of Hinduism. "T'is all one," as Shakespeare would say.

Now, with all that backgroun in mind, consider what Maureen Mullarky writes in her article:

Francis rails against the West’s “tyrannical anthropomorphism.” His accusation borrows from Boff’s many restatements of historian Lynn White’s influential charge published in Science in 1967. Lynn attributed “ecologic crisis” to the Christian/biblical tradition. He indicted Christianity as “the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen” because it teaches that only man is made in the image and likeness of God. (Boff scoffed at the teaching as “an androcentric archaism.”)

Francis anticipated this month’s campaign by anthropomorphizing nature. Creation has a “voice.” A suffering earth “cries”; it issues “an anguished plea” that “laments our mistreatment.” The “grandiose cosmic choir” sings reminders that “we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures, but joined in a splendid universal communion.”

[However] Only conscious beings can commune with each other. Promises — such as God’s to Noah and Abraham — can only be made to persons. Francis’ call for “a covenant between human beings and the environment” attributes sentience to the environment.

AnP again:

The entirety of Christianity, as with Judaism before it, is built on the Covenants God made with certain people for the sake of, eventually, all peoples. (Islam rejects, and damns, the Covenant system entirely.) But Bergoglio and Modernism stand all that on its collective head and crashes it completely for the sake of what is a narcissistic fad: "Oh, look at me! I am environmentally conscious!" or a thanatos "death wish", i.e. "We humans must go extinct in order to save the planet". (Christianity is at pains to assert the immortal worth of human beings; paganism isn't that interested.) Bergoglio would break ALL that and the entire Covenant system by insisting God makes covenants with the environment, an insane notion that necessitates elevating the environment into a conscious being. Whatever else that is, it is a rejection of Divine Revlation.

Clearly, Jorge Mario Bergoglio cannot be considered to be pope in any sense whatsoever with him not merely thinking along these lines, but promoting them! He constitutes as much a danger to the Church as Biden (meaning whoever is pulling his strings) does to the American republic or the WEF does to Europe, etc.

Beware. And be warned.

  An Préachán

Psalm 146 of the Douay-Rheims: verse 9:

Who giveth to beasts their food: and to the young ravens that call upon Him. (This verse delightfully indicates the natural world's true relation with God.)

"The Pope of Mercy...Has he nothing better to do at Christmas? Is he possessed, or just senile?"

 Amici,

Overview

Alas, another day, another shockingly insane edict that goes against everything we've known throughout our lives to be worthy and good. This time please note it alights on us from Pope Francis' henchmen, creatures, and hangers-on, rather than Tony Fauci or Joe Biden or Boris Johnson or the governments of Austria or Germany or Australia/New Zealand/New York/California (i.e, the creatures and hangers-on of Bill Gates, George Soros, and of course, Klaus Schwab).

Yes, indeed. And at a Christmas, too. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a.k.a. Pope Francis, a.k.a. anti-pope Bergoglio, a.k.a. The Pachamama Papa has just made it clear, through a thuggish brute of a bishop sadly bearing the Irish surname Roche (this Roche slug was known for being the nastiest piece of episcopal work in all Britain when he was bishop of Leeds and so of course Bergoglio elevated him to the Vatican bureaucracy), that the Traditional Latin Mass is kaput, cut off,drawn-and-quartered, extinct, and thrown under the bus and backed over repeatedly. Then drowned. Buried. Dug up after that and sealed in a basement wall with a sour cask of wine. Etc. As Fr. Hunwicke recently put it (I paraphrase) "Yes, let's rush from 2021 not into 2022 but back to 1970!" (1970 was when the Novus Ordo was hatched upon our heads and the world.)

It's quite stunning, this news. Jaw-dropping.

I cannot exaggerate this one, my friends.

You-all know that a while ago "Bergi", that "Pope of Mercy" and "Accompaniment" and "Dialogue" issued an order, a motu proprio that was actually an insidious fatwa, titled "Traditionis Custodes" (correctly translated as "Jailers of Tradition") that severely restricted the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) after Pope Benedict tried to free it from its Modernist chains in 2007 with his motu: "Summorum Pontificum", issued on the seventh day of the seventh month of 2007, emphasizing that there are seven Covenants in the OT/NT upon which are founded the Seven Sacrament, the last of these, the Seventh Covenant, being itself the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist, the "New Covenant" via which our humble participation in makes us "New Creations in Christ", (as St. Paul liked to say, repeatedly). Benedict freed THE Sacrament/Covenant from its modern-day Babylonian Captivity.

And now today you may have heard Bergoglio and his peeps have just rung the TLM's death-knell, or so they hope. It's supposed to be the second of a "one-two punch".

• Theoretically, of course, this is impossible. Popes and bishops and priests and theologians are guardians of tradition, not its jailers or rewriters. A pope can't just overturn a previous pope's dicta, assuming those were in accord with Tradition and Holy Writ and accepted by the Faithful, especially so after which much time has gone by. No pope sits on on the U.S. Supreme Court, cancelling precedent at a whim. Should a pope assume such power, then every new papal election would produce a new religion. But the pope is not the prophet of the Mormon Church, a position of which the man who occupies it can change anything he wants, whenever he wants it.
• But Pope Francis apparently is a Mormon, or at least a TV preacher: he thinks nothing of tossing aside Sacred Tradition as he has demonstrated time and time again. That's not something a valid pope can do, let alone would try to do, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
  
• And anyway, tossing aside the central act of worship of the Church, the Seventh Covenant and greatest Sacrament, something in which the Most Holy Eucharist, itself the New Covenant/New Testament and the means of our salvation, has been worshiped in the West in for nearly two millennia, something in place since the early Christian "dream-time", is literally insane. As Pope Benedict mildly put it, something that "was sacred, remains sacred and cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful."
  
• Bottom line: whereas Paul VI cried (he was always weeping) when he found out what the infamous Freemason "Grace of Ba'al" Bugnini did to the Liturgy, Pope Francis grins.
  

For details, here's the report from The Remnant Newspaper, written by Michael J. Matt.

Please note The Remnant provides the actual dubia, questions and Roche's answers.

An excerpt:

Remnant Editor's Introduction

It is indeed reassuring to know that Francis will—in fact and on occasion—answer certain dubia raised by his bishops, even if we’re still waiting for an answer to those raised by Raymond Cardinal Burke et al some years ago regarding Amoris Laetitia and the pope’s decision to authorize unrepentant public adulterers to receive the Sacraments.

These days the pope's got more important things to think about, which is evidently why he swiftly answered the dubia of bishops wanting clarity on when and just how fast the Church of Accompaniment is to abandon millions of Traditional Catholics around the world who adhere to the Traditional Mass and Sacraments.

Those dubia have been most efficiently and expertly addressed by the 85-year-old Pontiff a day after his birthday and a week before Christmas. In a nutshell, the Pope of Mercy has officially proclaimed that it is time for the Traditional Catholics of the world to, well, go to hell.

Pope Francis’s March to the Sea soldiers on, but not against abortion, apostasy, or gay ‘marriage’. No, nothing like that. But against the Sacraments of the Catholic Faith, instituted by Christ Himself to give grace.

No matter what religion you are, you must pay attention to this because it has everything to do with tyranny and injustice for all. The Chaplain of the New World Order is old, he’s angry, and he’s hell bent on helping his globalist friends demolish the last line of defense against what Pope John Paul II called the “Silent Apostasy” and now, I would argue, against the nascent New World Order itself.

To the proposed question:

Why would a pope be cracking down on faithful Catholics in the middle of a worldwide lockdown, at Christmastime, and when millions are afraid, out of work and suffering economic collapse? He’s got nothing better to do? This is the moment when this obsessed globalist decides he needs to take away the spiritual consolation of millions of faithful (any disproportionately young) Catholics? Is he possessed, or just senile?

The answer is: 

Francis is implementing a global ban on Old Normal Catholicism in order to make room for the New Normal Religion of Equity and Climate Change.

A monstrous act by a monstrous little man, to be sure. But here's the thing: The monster has jumped the shark. This is not 1972. The world can see clearly now that the Novus Ordo experiment has left the Church in the shambles of global clerical sex scandal and silent apostasy.

So when the Pachamama Papa decides to take a crack at destroying the healthiest movement left in the Church today—a movement bursting with vocations, new religious orders, new churches being built, and teeming with millions of young adherents--it's not going to go over at all well. Catholics are done with this man, which is why he will most assuredly fail in his effort to do what Paul VI and an entire Ecumenical Council failed to do some 50 years ago.  

But, by all means, Holiness, do carry on. This act of desperation only means the revolution against the Faith of our fathers has failed.  One does not persecute that which one does not fear has the potential to rise up against him.  Francis will unite the Traditional Catholic Counterrevolution--the clans--like nobody ever has. He is already awakening the sleeping giant.

And so, with all our hearts and with God as our witness, we say to Francis with una voce: WE RESIST YOU TO YOUR FACE! – Michael J. Matt

AnP again:

And of course, you can read about this new development from the Bergoglian Vatican in many articles that will be propping up over the next few days, and all the videos released, and so on. Representatives of every Catholic persuasion will be offering their opinions. But this action is so drastic that Trads of all tribes will unite against this evil. And and the "Conservative" Catholics like Robert Royal, etc., have no wiggle room any longer.

As for me, I agree with Michael Matt: i.e., Keep going, Francis. You are whistling up a firestorm, you are seeding the wind and your Modernists will inherit merely the typhoon. This is not the late 60s and early 70s; you can't get away with what the "Wrecknovators" did then. You're obviously unhinged by loathing of Trad Catholics and of the most vital, most clearly faithful branch of the Church, the wing of the Church that is growing in every way. You have a visceral fear of it. Francis, your hatred is tangible in all this. So keep going. You are the tail-end of the viciousness, and naturally you are going to go all out. But your days are numbered as were those of King Herod.

1. Standard Catholics content with the current liturgy might ask: have the Trads been actually persecuted?
   
2. They have. I mean this: since Vatican II ended, they've been openly persecuted by the Official Church since the 1960s, for Heaven's sake.
   
3. And that "persecution" included being shamelessly lied to from the beginning. I mean in every way they've been treated like guano for a half a century.
   
4. They were not welcome in the New Church, and they weren't even remotely understood by most of the ecclesiastical bigshots.
   
5. They're the only segment of Holy Church to endure this perpetual flogging, and if some might have been either confused or cowed by it as my mother's two brothers were, graduates of Aquinas High School in the 1930s (and you in Columbus know exactly what that means, the laity elite of the elite), others "went with the flow" and their children largely abandoned the Faith (as in my extended family)...
   
6. Yet a few resisted through Sauron's long Dark Age, and clearly "the signs of the times" indicate the Babylonian-Mordorian captivity is now breaking down against the obvious "Satan-Rising" age we languish in.
7. The Vatican II Church is being whisked away by indifference, total apathy, and of course Covid and all it represents: materialism, selfishness, and the new totalitarianism of The Great Reset.
   

In his terminal segment of Vatican II's "long march" to turn the Church into was is essentially a crappy NGO, Bergoglio talks to everybody on the Left of the political lines and embraces social and economic spectrums inimical to the Faith as it has been understood since the beginning. The "Pope of Mercy" wants to "accompany" all the sexually confused and economically illiterate, he wants to "accompany" adulterers and fornicators (sexual and otherwise) while actually he's quite busy desacralizing the Church. The Novus Ordo Mass – and I must brook no wobbly fence-sitting here because I lived through it, a decades long spiritual die-to-the-last man Tarawa-like (Betio Island) fight – is a desacralizing tool. (I do not mean its sacraments are invalid; that's a red-herring Modernists love to cast at us: I mean as many have been said, attending a TLM means it is impossible not to know a miracle is taking place; attending an NO needs a miracle for you to know a miracle is taking place.)

I attended NO Masses of all sorts for 40 years, and can compare them to both Melkite Liturgies and the TLM. I also grew up with Protestants and have been in and out of Protestant churches all my life (and as coincidence would have it, right now I am editing a finely crafted Presbyterian theological essay). Even now I myself could give a "down-home" sermon that would have set Billy Graham's hair on fire. Through no strength of my own (it is God's doing alone that I'm not among the standing stones of Lugh Lámhfada Samhaildánach), I am a religious-minded survivor who attended wholly secular schools that would have made Caligula blush, and trust me, I know the iconoclasm madness when it screams at me.

The excellent priest and psychologist and exorcist, Fr. Chad Ripperger, has recently said Satan told him during an exorcism that God is soon going to cut Satan's power. Soon. The timeline is set and the denizens of Hell are besides themselves with spite (Spite is the characteristic cast of mind of Hell). The denouement is almost here, though of course that doesn't mean we won't be suffering ourselves like all Hell through the long fallout.

Pope Francis' recent actions against the TLM mean his time is about over and the TLM will triumph. Bishop Athanasius Schneider says the TLM's restoration is clearly the work of the Holy Ghost and can't be stopped. Review this lovely video to remind yourselves of its ancientry and beauty, and its conformity to God's will.

An Préachán

Latin Mass, Jews, & "Pope Francis is tearing the Catholic Church apart..."

 Amici,

Here's some reflection on the Traditional Latin Mass issues that the Catholic Church seems to be wrestling with.

Extraordinaryform.org

First, a long but detailed article at this extremely helpful site: the extraordinaryform.org, to which I repair often for Sunday and Weekday Propers and much else beside. I highly recommend the site. They say, BTW: A NOTE TO THE FRIENDS AND USERS OF THIS SITE:

While we are saddened by the lack of charity evinced in the motu proprio "Guardians of Tradition," and, while our site's name may have been 'abrogated' - we are not going away.

Be assured, our mission to propagate the Mass of the Ages will continue unabated.

An P again:

There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes of any even small event, let along a major one. I'm sure there's a lot of "worms in the wainscot" regarding the current occupant of the See of Peter and his attempt to squish the TLM. Please be cognizant of the fact that any "Modernist" in the Church believes, deep down, that the Church MUST "modernize" or "evolve" or "reform" radically if it is to survive. So strong is this idea in Modernists that I'm sure if you could somehow infallibly (pun intended) peer into Bergoglio's mind, you would find, even more deeply than any religious dogma, this idea that the Church must evolve and change to suit the times or it will die. Ergo, since TLM is "rigorous" and its priests and congregations are "rigorous", they have to be eliminated. 

• This notion exists because Modernism, which began in the mid-19th century in Protestant Germany, was heavily influenced by Darwin and the theory of evolution. Really, Modernists believe that all life evolves, human life has evolved, humans evolve during their own lifetimes, going to idea to idea, and the Church must evolve. Ultimately, of course, they believe God evolves. God is something we created, ourselves, and the Modernist "higher criticism" has revealed the Bible is the evolutionary history of our evolving religious belief.
• This is why the vast majority of sexual deviance in the Church's ranks occurs among those – regardless of just when they were ordained – who embraced the basic tenets of Modernism. After all, if we're evolving all this, then sexual morality evolves, too, right? And all those old, careful, even draconian strictures of the lives of priests and religious, well, we've evolved far, far beyond those! Alas, these "grandiose ascenders", obnoxious "I'm too spiritual for carnal desire or sin" types are easy prey for Satan. Communists have long known this. Their rule was never try to logically argue atheism with a cleric of any sort. Just get 'em drunk and "shacked up" and you've "won" the argument! (There's actually something weirdly Cathar-like, Albigensian, in all Modernists.)

The Jews

The Traditional Latin Mass isn't muti-cultural friend, esp to Jews

It is controversial to many to bring Jews up in any context, but it is a necessity regarding the TLM once you consider it. Why? Because they're not fans of the TLM. For those Jews of influence in the world, the Catholic Church is a concern. (Christianity is a concern!) They want it to refrain from anything that might encourage what they consider antisemitism, at worst, or renewed conversions of Jews (even worse). In the world we live in, even criticism of Israeli government policies can easily get one called "antisemitic". And with Muslim attacks on Jews in Europe, one can see why they're so touchy. But Islam is not Christianity.

Jews and the Church

One thing you won't hear much about, unless you are remotely familiar with E. Michael Jones (many consider him anathema), is the strength of Jewish influence the modern Church. There's always been a back and forth between the two since Our Lord's days in Galilee and Judea. Christians are supposed to be the "new Jews", the "Synagogue of the Risen Messiah King", the "grafted in" inheritors of the ancient Covenants. That is insulting to Jews by itself, but St. Paul clearly teaches Jews are lost unless they convert. Now, that is anathema to Jews, and has been since the beginning. (Most early Christians were Jews, of course.)

Yet they've played a significant role in the Church since Vatican II because the Holocaust occurred in nominally Christian (mostly Catholic) countries, at the hands of people who were, nominally in many cases, "Christian", and important figures in the Church have been deeply shamed ever since. Indeed, one of the reasons behind calling Vatican II was to somehow make the Church morally relevant after World War II, and make up for what a lot of critics considered its failure during the Nazi period.

So, Vatican II produced the document NOSTRA AETATE to patch things up with the Jews in particular. But again, the two religions, though Biblically and in Christ Himself "joined at the hip" in Siamese Twins style, just are pretty much mutually exclusive. So, some Jews, certainly, were they to have a mind to, are in a position and have motive to influence the Church. Jones makes the case – and it is easy to make – that Jews put the kibosh on the TLM because of course, bringing it back restores a lot of supposedly "anti-Semitic" New Testament texts that have been studiously left out entirely from the Novus Ordo Mass.

• Jones also thinks Jozef Ratzinger is sort of "bi-polar" considering he came of age in an occupied Germany that nearly starved in the winter of '46/47 because the infamous Morgenthau Plan, something (Jones doesn't mention) didn't happen that winter in part because of the exertions of one Herbert Hoover, former U.S. president. (No one ever seems to remember that Hoover had an important "after-life" after he left the White House.) George Marshall would later put the kibosh on the Morgenthau Plan, and replace it with his (surprise, surprise) "Marshall Plan". 

So much for ancient history. Why would certain Jewish concerns (George Soros, for example, or influential Jews in academia) be concerned with the TLM? And if they they were, what could they do to the Church? Well, it is not antisemitic to observe that influential Jews do make up an important segment of the world's banking and financial services area, and the Church is a "big business", with land holdings galore, investments in all sorts of enterprises, good and bad, and huge funds stored up over the past 100 years or so. In Germany, the Catholic Church is the largest employer outside the governmental system (Bild asserts this). And we all know, or ought to, that financial scandals are an even bigger millstone around the Church's neck than the sex scandals. Bergoglio himself infamously "rehabilitated" the putrid, diabolical Theodore McCarrick to go to China and "make a deal" with the Chicoms that involved betraying the underground Church there, for money. (McCarrick is far, far, light-years far more evil, carnally insane and putrid than ANY Renaissance Pope, or all of them together – or basically anyone since Judas Iscariot – to serve in the Church.) "Reform" of the financial aspects of the Vatican seem far more impossible than reform of anything else!

Therefore it would easy enough for important financial concerns to jerk Bergoglio's chain. (It has been long alleged that Benedict XV had to become "Father Benedict" because the Vatican bank lost its ability to serve its bank teller machine.) Bergoglio is also a Jesuit, and for a number of reasons, those Jews of influence who bother about the Catholic Church naturally have more access to him than they would, say, to Ratzinger or even Karol Wojtyła, who grew up with Jews as neighbors and friends in pre-war Poland.

So all in all, I think it is a good bet that culturally influential people, whether Jewish or cultural/entertainment big shots (often Jews, of course) do NOT want to see a restoration of a strong Catholic identity via the TLM – and all that goes with it; i.e. strong families, traditional morality, etc. Remember that during the '20s and '30s, the Catholic Church backed "National Legion of Decency" played havoc with Hollywood's incessant demoralization (literally) of the popular culture. A Catholic Church buggering boys and mouthing saccharine platitudes fits better for ANYONE seeking to make money off of "sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll."

"Pope Francis is tearing the Catholic Church apart..."

Michael Brendan Dougherty is not someone I quote from often, but he's always been very strong on the Traditional Latin Mass. He had an op ed at the NYTimes, and I refuse to even register with them, but I found it here at this site. I recommend it. (Not a high recommendation, exactly, but a solid one, nonetheless.)

Fr. Zuhlsdorf has an important, and very short post, here. This one IS a must read.

But Bergoglio is not the only one in these insane times ripping up, tearing apart, out-and-out trying to destroy something they're charged with protecting. We see that in the U.S. to an absolutely insane level. Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote powerfully of that, here. 

The bottom line is common-sense clear: neither Bergoglio nor Biden can be legitimate holders of their offices. We may well be imprisoned tomorrow for any number of reasons, but at least we don't have to warp our minds thinking legitimate rulers are doing this to us. To paraphrase Ann Barnhardt, "The Catholic Church is [not] an abuse cult that operates on gaslighting and Stockholm syndrome!" Even if Bergoglio tries to make it that.

Indeed, it is is not.

An Préachán

Our Lady and the Immaculate Conception Is Central to Our Salvation

Our Lady and her Immaculate Conception is central to our salvation, because just as Our Blessed Lord inherited His humanity -- His Jewish humanity -- through her, and thus could in Himself fulfill all the previous Covenants that God had made with the Patriarchs (the first Covenant being with all Creation, of course, and the second with Adam and Eve, and so on), over time creating, fashioning, the Jewish People in the process, preparing the way for His Incarnation -- so we, through our participation in the Incarnartion via the Most Holy Eucharist (itself the New Testament, New Covenant, not the 27 books of the Christian Bible), receive His Divinized Humanity. Being Incarnated ourselves in the Incarnation now, with our natures changed, is the core of the Faith, and it is something all Protestantism denies -- and denied from the very beginning.

And so our Blessed Mother's Immaculate Conception is the first step in the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, and our own incarnation in Him, we ourselves via the Most Holy Eucharist having Jewish blood in our arteries along with His Divinized Nature, with the Blessed Mother truly being OUR Mother now.

ALL OF THIS the Modernists and their tiresome, quasi-Lutheran, (cretinous, actually), teaching denies. Their understanding of what the Faith is is defective, based as they do base it on Evolution, our evolution in "understanding" and even "God's evolution". This is the unholy seed Protestantism bequeated them when it started, and that has since grown hideous, and it is what they want to foist on the Catholic Church, and what we Trad/Orthodox/Conservative Catholics repudiate.

There can be no "middle ground" with the Modernists.

RC

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

Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin as Dewey, Cheatum, and How, Part II

A Catholic had been arguing with a Protestant on a blog and the former gave in to the latter enough to say that "Justification" comes first, and then "Sanctification", a classic Protestant notion.

I wrote:

If I may interject, an offer an observation. You wrote, "One is justified by faith, that is step one. Step two is sanctification."

No, it's not. 1 Corinthians 6:11 lays out the sequence: "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." Notice how this is

the opposite of what Protestantism teaches. Protestantism teaches you are justified first by faith, then you are baptized as an outward sign of your inner justification, and then you work toward sanctification. But that's NOT what St. Paul wrote. He said you hare first baptized, then sanctified, and then justified! Almost the exact opposite of Protestant teaching.

Your correspondent reads like an excellent person, indeed, but like most Protestants, she doesn't "get it" about what Christianity is: Transformation in Christ. St. Paul, the Protestant go-to guy, is always saying something like "In Christ you are a new creation!" •2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (Again, a new creation.)

2 Peter 1:4 might well put it best, but see also St Paul in Romans, 6:4, 7:6, 12:2; Galatians 3:27; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:8-12. And it's not just Peter and Paul! •John 1:12 “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (Obviously, a new creation.)

St. John's "ye must be born again" fits perfectly into this. To be born again is a new, transformed, creation. "You are a teacher in Israel," Our Lord says to Nicodemus, "and you don't know this?" Israel was all about the Covenants, and our participation in the Covenants transform us just as it did the Jews – far more so, of course. God set up a system of salvation from the beginning, one told through the OT via the Covenants, participation in which transformed "God's people" then and MORE SO now, through Seventh, and Last New Covenant, the Holy Eucharist. The great St. Athanasius said it VERY plainly, indeed. "For the Son of God became man so

that we might become God." (De inc. 54, 3: PG 25, 192B) and [CCC 460] And of course St. Thomas: "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (Opusc. 57, 1-4) [CCC 460]

The traditional Catholic way of saying this was "infused grace", and opposed that the Protestant "imputed grace". We are truly changed in our nature – when the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity became Man, He elevated human nature so it could receive Him, and then through Baptism removes Original Sin's impediment to this, and then the Holy Eucharist fulfills it (with Confession restoring the infused grace if necessary). The Eastern Churches call it "Theosis". There's no more amazing, profound, uplifting, glorious story – yet alas, Protestants are still out in the weeds coming up with theological excuses about how such transformation is both not necessary and impossible.

Martin Luther said we were NOT transformed and grace was not imputed. Rather, we were manure piles covered with God's grace-snow. C.S. Lewis, a Protestant, in his 10th Letter to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, has a gentle, polite, but absolute take-down of Luther's doctrine.

("Jack" Lewis obviously partnered with Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe for the most part, but he clearly kept an untrusting eye on 'em!)

An Préachán

Reflections on Notre Dame, the Fire, the Church, Life and Eternity

Amazing story, of course, and we'll be seeing many, many articles in the near future and documentaries on down the road regarding the Holy Week Fire at Notre-Dame de Paris.

I've always liked Gothic best, and there's an old saying: "Byzantine church architecture brings Heaven down to Earth, but Gothic does your praying for you." I once quoted that to a Protestant friend of mine, a learned, widely experienced man, and he laughed for some time at the denseness of Catholics. But there it is. The Religion is indeed about Salvation, but Salvation is participating in the Incarnation of Christ, bringing God into us, ourselves, through the Most Holy Eucharist (something these churches were built precisely for). The Incarnation and the Resurrection is all about fulfilling the redemption of Creation -- starting with us, of course, but spreading out to everything, and in light of that belief, a Gothic masterpiece is an integral part of that Salvation. (And we humans were made in God's image, remember: He creates and builds; so do we.) Never forget that the First Covenant was the one God Himself made with Creation, when He blessed it and sealed that blessing on the Seventh Day. (Genesis 2:2-3) The Most Holy Eucharist is the Seventh Sacrament, the fulfillment of all the others. They're all part of each, building on the ones going before, till they come full circle, Satan flunks out; God wins. (Good) Angels are in awe of this; they spend their version of time contemplating it. And the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve should too.

Divine symmetry, like one of Notre Dame's blessedly preserved rose windows.

Meanwhile, back to reporting...

French President Macron says they'll rebuild the church in five years. Interesting. Note that the French state owns all the churches in France. So, in whatever way they want, they call the shots.

We've all seen lots of incredible photos all around the Internet. Especially evocative is the one of the interior of the choir with the cross standing, and the Pieta beneath it. Interesting, it is said the high altar is intact while the Novus Ordo Cranmer table altar is either smashed or covered in rubble. Generally speaking, though, it is very impressive that this old girl, this 800-years-young building held up to such a fire. She did her builders proud and reconstruction certainly looks quite possible at this point. The French seemed determined and willing to pay for it. 13 million people visit Notre Dame de Paris every year. Thus, a cynic would say that if only as a tourist attraction, they'll have to try to rebuild her. But I think also this will stir the heart, and the soul, of la belle France. Hope so, at least.

And for the larger Church too, not only the Church in France, which is run by N.O. prelates (as it is in most countries) but has a very large (proportionately) Latin Mass laity. I've seen various article over the past few years suggesting that as many or more priests are ordained each year in France to say the Traditional Mass as the new one. Fascinating trend.

It took almost nine hours to bring the fire under control, more to finish it off.

Notre-Dame blaze: Emmanuel Macron vows to rebuild Paris cathedral as scale of damage emerges - latest news

The fire fighters deserve tremendous praise. Parisian firefighters, Pompiers Paris, are well-known to be world-class excellent; this was a heroic effort on their part. (Apparently they would have had to go inside to fight this fire successfully, with all that heavy timber burning and falling.) I found this U.S. firefighter's comments fascinating: https://twitter.com/GreggFavre/status/1117847726786371585

Lots of expert information and explanation from Greg Favre.

Not only is the famous Crown of Thorns relic saved, and St. Louis' cloak, and more -- it all seems joyous this outcome is the result of one man taking the initiative, none other than the fire department's chaplain: former army chaplain Father Jean-Marc Fournier http://wdtprs.com/blog/2019/04/inside-burning-notredame-a-human-chain-saved-relics-blessed-sacrament-fr-jean-marc-fournier-oorah/ and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6927345/Fire-chaplain-helped-Bataclan-victims-entered-burning-Notre-Dame-save-Crown-Thorns-relic.html and yet again: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/johnclark/meet-the-priest-who-saved-the-blessed-sacrament-and-the-crown-of-thorns

But as noted, even much of the building itself is saved, including the famous rose windows. http://news.trust.org/item/20190416141738-746ml The towers and walls are apparently saved: https://apnews.com/0978e08a5e4848348cdb80745ab2ab8a and https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/15/notre-dame-cathedral-paris-fire-witnesses-describe-plumes-smoke/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget

An excerpt:

Paris fire brigade chief Jean-Claude Gallet said "we can consider that the main structure of Notre-Dame has been saved and preserved" as well as the two towers.

That's all miraculous in itself.

The Medieval masons who built these churches were geniuses, of course, and superb craftsmen. Vauban, the famous military and fortress architect to Louis XIV, upon first seeing 13th century Coutances Cathedral, exclaimed: "Who was the sublime madman who launched such an edifice into the air." Great quote, well worth memorizing.

They don't have such sublime madmen today, though they do have unbelievably detailed observations of these buildings, esp Notre Dame. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150622-andrew-tallon-notre-dame-cathedral-laser-scan-art-history-medieval-gothic/

That's just one example. We have the details to rebuild it. Also, of course, none of these cathedrals are any longer purely medieval. A Commentator named Keeler at TheConservativeTreehouse pointed out about that spire that fell, and other items:

"As I said below, much of the glass work, the spire, and the sculptures around the spire date to the 19th century. Some of the glass work dates to the 1960s. The organ dates to the 19th century and the underwent significant changes during the 1990s. By the early 19th century much of the interior was in poor condition and was subject to major renovation."

On the other hand, Notre-Dame de Chartres has some of the best Medieval windows and sculptures in France. But perhaps suggesting the future of the Paris Notre-Dame, recent renovation work on Chartres has caused outrage: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/arts/design/chartres-cathedral-restoration-controversial.html

An excerpt:

But Prof. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, a medieval art historian at Harvard, said that there is “no reason to be nostalgic or romantic about the dirt.” The association of Gothic buildings with “dark, brooding gloom” is “fundamentally misguided,” he said; they are “not monuments to melancholy.”

The restoration seeks to reconstitute a temple of light, to challenge the popular perception of Gothic dejection. But in doing so, it raises an intriguing question: What happens when our inherited assumptions about the past come into contact with layers of accumulated myth?

About the only continental Gothic cathedral I remember being in was the Straßburg one (thanks to Markus). The windows were great but the very darkened interior made if feel like a cavern, so I appreciate that point about there's "no reason to be nostalgic about the dirt." When finished, These churches were, when new, glowing inside and out, like jewel boxes. Even the Parthenon, when it was new back in Periclean Athens, was painted. Hagia Sophia, when finished, was hardly dark and gloomy!

Many of the big Gothic cathedrals were built in the 13th century (Notre Dame being started in 1163 and built into the 13th century, and Chartres has a similar history, with the latest rebuilding starting in the 1190s and incorporating an earlier church). The 12th and 13th centuries were the Golden Age of the Catholic Church, seconded only by the Counter-Reformation Church. The Golden Age was a recovery period after the dismal nadir of the papacy (and least until modern times) in the 10th century. So it is no wonder the churches built were sunny, brilliant, scintillating -- a good match for the sunny theology of the age.

In any event, however it proceeds, intense inspection and investigation would have to occur before anyone rebuilds Notre-Dame de Paris using what is still standing. Five years is, possibly, too optimistic.

https://www.france24.com/en/20190415-liveblog-fire-paris-france-notre-dame-cathedral

An excerpt:

The chief architect of Cologne cathedral says it could take decades to repair the damage caused to the Notre Dame cathedral by a massive fire, AP reports.

Peter Fuessenich, who oversees all construction work for the Gothic cathedral in the German city, told local broadcaster RTL on Tuesday that "it will certainly take years, perhaps even decades, until the last damage caused by this terrible fire will be completely repaired."

Cologne cathedral was heavily damaged during World War II and work to repair it is still ongoing more than 70 years later.

And of course few craftsmen exist (they do exist, though very small in number) who could work on the rebuilding, yet even so, as one commentator wrote, "The roof was built with the last of the primordial forest, which no longer exists, no trees in France left big enough." Non-French wood would have to be used, or imported, or laminated, or metal used -- the latter perhaps better protection against fire.

Rebuilding normally would be cost prohibitive. But of course this being Notre Dame de Paris, they'll not use that as an excuse. Though as I wrote above, cost isn't the only issue. As far as I understand it, if you had the money to recreate an SSJ Duesenberg boat-tailed speedster, or a Phaeton, whatever body style you wanted, it would not only be simply too cost prohibitive to recreate the famous straight-eight engine and drive train, but absolutely impossible to recreate the car bodies, as the craftsmen who made them were direct descendants of the buggy and coach makers. They had arts and methods we've lost the skill to reproduce. You'd end up with a simulacrum, not the real thing.

And also a medieval cathedral was both a work of piety and civic pride. In the "Multi-Kulti" West of today, how do you recreate that?

Pledges of money are pouring in, as the cliché puts it, with a couple of French billionaires pledging 100+ million Euros. It can be done, sure. But where are the medieval "The singing masons building roofs of gold, the civil citizens kneading up the honey, the poor mechanic porters crowding in." (Henry V, Act 1, Scene 2) Stone-mason craftsmen do still exist, and a good many are French, actually, though as I noted, they are very few.

I know when ancient craftsmen worked on the Parthenon or the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, or the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, they used jewelers' tools. Incredible, but true.

I've seen a lot of comment that unlike, say, Chartres, Notre Dame de Paris has been pretty much an art museum, just too located in just too touristy a spot for many religious purposes. Government owned it is, etc., yet I know the intensely beautiful (if that's a phrase) Chartres hosts Traditionalist Catholic pilgrimages, but I've never heard of Paris Notre Dame used in that way.

And again, maybe this tragedy will "get people's attention" in a religious sense. We'll see. I've seen online vids of bystanders singing/praying to the B.V.M. while they looked on the spectacle. https://churchpop.com/2019/04/16/enormous-crowds-sing-for-hours-outside-notre-dames-cathedral-during-fire-video-inside/ What these churches were is a stage, a theater, an enclosed reredos in which to host the Holy Mass, the ancient Western-rite liturgy; they're a Medieval recreation of Solomon's Temple, actually, built with the Temple's proportions in mind.

Finally, investigations into what caused the fire have begun. Most everyone is saying it was accidental, a result of recent restoration work. Probably that's very likely true. But regardless of that, French Catholic churches have faced an incredible stream of vandalism over the past year. Over 800 attacks, actually. It's a story not much reported on.

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2019/4/10/is-it-a-story-if-french-churches-are-vandalized

This here: https://pjmedia.com/faith/diabolical-islams-past-and-present-attacks-on-european-churches/ is a very important article, as well. Apparently in Bavaria and the Alpine region of Germany, 200 churches have been attacked, and France suffers about two attacks a day against churches. This is insane. Police documents say, 'Perpetrators appear to be youths of an immigrant background.

And of course, Islam has a long history of desecrating churches. Whatever caused the Notre Dame fire, these continuing attacks have to be reported in the media and the general population must discuss them. How many of you knew of this tidbit of news?

Before Christmas 2016, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany—where more than a million Muslims reside—some 50 public Christian statues (including of Jesus) were beheaded and crucifixes broken.

Conspiracy theories are lining up:

So far, I'm seeing three basic conspiracy theories on what happened. First, the French government did it so as to undercut the ongoing "Yellow-Jacket" rebellion. What better way to "unite France" by way of an accident that burned up -- but not too badly -- the most iconic building in France?

Second, Muslims did it, or, less likely, "militant secularists". The Get Religion article above records some of the incredible attacks on French Catholic Churches, and the astounding silence on this news.

Third, were this actually a Muslim attack, you'll never know (and still less if was the government!). The powers that be will keep it silent.

I am not much into conspiracy theories myself. That first theory I noted is another version of the "Bush did it" 9/11 conspiracy theory. As we're seeing with the "Russian Collusion Delusion" in the U.S., such government cover-ups usually get revealed. It might take awhile, but too many people need to be involved to pull such a thing off, and sooner or later, the truth gets out.

Otherwise, if the Muslims did it, how'd they get a fire going in the roof area? They'd have to be employees of one of the restoration outfits. Not impossible, but still unlikely.

Whatever about all that, perhaps such a catastrophe will "wake people up" to what is being lost in the Faith? We can only pray so. With most Vatican II Catholics not knowing about the miracle of the Holy Eucharist, or that the Mass is a sacrifice, the raison d'être of these buildings is no longer understood.

We've a steep, steep hill to climb.

Some interesting articles:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/17/notre-dames-ruin-metaphor-western-church/

An excerpt:

At the time I write this, for instance, the New York Times headlines on the story had exactly zero religious references. They did mention, of course, the building as “an iconic symbol of the beauty and history of Paris” and “a jewel of Medieval Gothic architecture.”

Here's a Ross Douthat article from the NYTimes, to give you a taste of what a "conservative" New York Times Catholic writes about:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/opinion/notre-dame-fire-catholic-church.html?login=smartlock&auth=login-smartlock

An excerpt:

The cathedral will be rebuilt; the cross and altar and much of the interior survived. But all preservation is provisional. The real challenge for Catholics, in this age of general post-Christian cultural exhaustion, is to look at what our ancestors did and imagine what it would mean to do that again, to build anew, to leave something behind that could stand a thousand years and still have men and women singing “Salve Regina” outside its cruciform walls, as Parisians did tonight while Notre-Dame burned.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/17/even-burned-notre-dame-remained-house-prayer/

An excerpt:

The primary function of a church, on the other hand, is something entirely different. Its purpose is not to ensure basic temporal survival, a purpose that could be met adequately, albeit unevenly, by a wide variety of structures. Rather, a church (small “c”) functions as a place to prepare for eternal life those who use it, through the ministry of the Church (big “C”) founded by Jesus Christ. In fact, to paraphrase Le Corbusier in a way that he would find absolutely appalling—which, quite frankly, pleases me no end—we can state that “A church is a machine for living.”

https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2019/4/16/notre-dame-in-flames-what-was-lost-what-was-saved-what-was-news-what-issues-remain

An excerpt:

Watching several hours of television coverage, it became pretty apparent that it really mattered whether newsrooms had people involved in the coverage who knew anything about Catholicism and its sacraments. It was, to be blunt, the difference between news about a fire in a symbolic building, like a museum, that is important in French culture and coverage of the near total destruction of a Catholic holy place, a cathedral, at the start of Holy Week.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/17/notre-dame-isnt-just-symbol-western-civilization-symbol-heaven/

"The burning of Notre Dame is not a challenge to restore a jewel of Western civilization, it’s a call to repent and believe the gospel."

A Rod Dreher article:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/notre-dame-paris-hope-in-the-ruins/

Dreher includes a religious conversion experience he had upon first entering Chartres as a 17-year-old. And then a conversation with a "respected French philosopher" that is quite something to read. But Dreher's religious experience in Chartres brings to mind the saying "Byzantine church architecture brings Heaven down to Earth, but Gothic does your praying for you." An excerpt:

The great and glorious rose window on the west portal of the cathedral held on through the inferno! That entrance is known as the Portal of the Last Judgement. The rose window itself is a symbol of the whole of the universe — all of time, and all of human life — centered in perfect harmony around the God-Man and His mother, on whose lap He sits in the very center of the rose: the King of Creation on his throne. (A Yale professor gives some detail about that window in this short video here.)

In the Middle Ages, when Notre Dame de Paris was built, people read the visible universe allegorically. Cathedrals were called “poor people’s books,” because even the illiterate could be taught how to “read” the symbolism in the glass and stones of cathedrals. Medieval people, like most peoples before them, “read” meaning into the created world as well. At its worst, this was augury, the process of divining the future and the will of the gods by ritual — something that the Bible, in fact, forbids. But it is normal, and well within the Biblical worldview, to regard events in the world as potential messages from God. The challenge is to discern both when an event has meaning, and what that meaning is.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/16/notre-dames-destruction-monumental-loss-acoustic-treasure/

Interesting music history

Just a small sampling. Notre-Dame de Paris (and Chartres and so many others) will go on.