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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
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- The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
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jsommer on Your Sunday Sermon Notes: 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (N.O. 13th Sunday): “Pastor talked about the Supreme Court ruling on abortion. Read through St. Mother Teresa’s amicus brief to the supreme court’s…”
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”- Fulton Sheen
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- “The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
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As for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
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Recent Posts
- ROME 22/06 – Day 26: Indulgences and indulgences
- Your Sunday Sermon Notes: 3rd Sunday after Pentecost (N.O. 13th Sunday)
- ROME 22/06 – Day 25: Really day 26, but… hey!
- ROME 22/06 – Day 24: “talkin’ ’bout my g-g-generation”
- It’s as if the stars aligned on 24 June
- ROME 22/06 – Day 23: Resistance is futile
- On this Feast of the Sacred Heart, when SCOTUS overturned Roe, remember that “Abortion Pill” use will be pushed hard by the Left, and that there is a SAFE REVERSAL after the first pill. @HeartbeatIntl
- US SUPREME COURT issued Opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson – ROE and CASEY OVERTURNED
- “Perdonamose!” St. John’s Birthday Feast and Midsummer Snails
- ASK FATHER: Pork butt for the Sacred Heart
- What do we do when we synodize?
- ASK FATHER: Does the humeral veil contradict in the use of Eucharistic ministers?
- ROME 22/06 – Day 22: “Even in another church St. Rita is sad… about… you know.”
- Vatican Synod’s (“walking together”) on spirituality of synodality (“walking togetherality”) is coming: The merciful heart loves… demons.
- ASK FATHER: What if 100 priests wanted to leave a diocese because of the bishop?
- LOOK! UP IN THE SKY!
- 22 June in the Novus Ordo: St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More
- ASK FATHER: Bishop bully: You have the right to kneel, but not to a kneeler.
- ROME 22/06 – Day 21: Different kinds of pawns
- “The point of entry must always be ‘situatedness’.”
- Too good not to post
- ROME 22/06 – Day 20: Field of flowers
- ASK FATHER: If a Pope dies or resigns before a Consistory for the creation of Cardinals, are the designated men Cardinals or not?
- Online Conference with a good theme: Be Strong And Courageous – 18-22 July 2022
- Obedience and being a “restorationist”
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- Really?
- ROME 22/06 – Day 18: Honoring the Blessed Sacrament
- Your (Corpus Christi) Sunday Sermon Notes – POLL
- ROME 22/06 – Day 17: SPLAT!
Let us pray…
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
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One suspects that this chap might have a little difficulty with Rerum Novarum.
Thank you Father Z for posting this very important video that I hope everyone will view and share. It pains me to see on the websites of various Catholic Churches, “social justice” written into their “mission statements.” It also baffles me that the Church in America hasn’t cut off the “Catholic Campaign for Human Development” collection in November which is responsible for such “social justice” as aiding the abortion industry, gay marriage crowd and getting Obama elected to impose his version of “social justice” on our country, at the detriment of our Church. When Our Lady of Fatima warned about Russia spreading her errors, she was talking about government-imposed atheism (aka. communism). Socialism is the precursor to communism and if “social justice” isn’t a precursor to socialism, I don’t know what is.
“Social justice” is a term that pervades Jesuit high schools, too. To go along with the video, I would ask students and teachers what it meant and what were the underpinnings of Catholicism to support it. The blank stares said a lot.
It’s unfortunate that Mr. Goldberg didn’t seek to ask how an authoritative source, the Catholic Church, our Mother and Teacher, defines social justice. Here’s what the Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by St. John Paul II has to say:
ARTICLE 3
SOCIAL JUSTICE [I am not a fan of looooong cut-paste posts.]
I was taught in a Catholic graduate school (for what that’s worth) that the term “social justice” is of 19th century Catholic origin, and that the concept was intended to counter Marxist trends. Perhaps it has since been co-opted, and needs to be recovered.
Mr. Goldberg points out (at 3:20 mins) that according to a UN report on social justice those of us that believe in “absolute truth identified with virtue and justice are neither willing nor desirable companions for the defenders of social justice.” Therefore, according to leftists, it doesn’t matter what the Catholic Church teaches about social justice. If Catholics get on the leftist bus of social justice because we think we’ve found allies in our campaign to raise awareness of the dignity of humanity and the necessity for human solidarity, we’re DUPES and RUBES because the left doesn’t want our help and will kick us off their social justice bus at their earliest opportunity because although we use similar lingo, our aims are far from similar.
This was demonstrated in perfect form as some Catholic religious and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops got on the President’s social justice bus in the campaign for universal health care. As soon as their usefulness proved to be concluded, they were dumped off by the side of the road, hats in hand (or zucchetto). The left is not an ally in Catholic social justice. They use our lingo but have vastly different aims. Those Catholics that choose to ally themselves with the left are simply dupes.
Regarding format: Does Jonah watch Voris – minus the hairdo thing!
So, Father, What Does Luigi Taparelli’s Term Really Say?
I have a problem with the term Social Justice (note: not with Church teaching). Justice is a moral act, which requires a moral actor (and arguable, a moral recipient). “Society” as a collective can’t be a moral agent. Nor is it really the recipient of our moral acts. (“What you do unto Society you do unto Me” – #thingsjesusneversaid) Is this term equally “word salad” in Italian or Latin?
If you were to ask ten people at a party what freedom or many other words mean, you would get ten different answers. There is a reason that many politicians are lawyers and that is because lawyers are trained to exploit the vagaries in definitions so that the listener hears what he thinks he wants to hear. The most popular example of this phenomena is President Clinton saying it depends on what the definition of is is.
Profoundly, and it pains me to admit it, but President Clinton was correct. Words have meanings and we must protect against people using words or phrases like “social justice” because to a Catholic that phrase means one thing and to a Marxist that phrase means something different. We must pinpoint politicians down on what they mean when they use a phrase that we think we understand.
Another politician, often today not held as a paragon of freedom said, What we have to fight for is the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may be enabled to fulfill the mission assigned to it by the creator. That politician, of course, was Adolf Hitler and in his mind he was not only a freedom fighter but also doing the Lord’s work!
So, according to the Catholic Catechism, a working man is entitled to a just wage. And, Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages. Freedom is not an absolute. It can, according to the Catechism, be tempered by other concerns. A Catholic can not, morally at least, say that because a worker agreed to a wage that it OK for him to be paid that wage.
Seems the standard work on that is still Fr. Messner’s Social Ethics, original title: “Natural Law” (imprimatur, etc.). I think I remember he had some (limited) positive use for the term.
That said, while the term “social justice” does certainly not figure importantly in moral theology, still moral theology does say that poor are to be helped for reasons of both justice (yes!) and charity (and a sort of intermediate, gratitude).
There are a variety of aspects of social justice, as presented in our Church’s library of Catholic Social Teaching. I hold this in my heart about social justice, from the young Christian community in Acts: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.” (2:44-45)
“All who believed were together and had all things in common”
Those who use this passage from Acts to defend or justify socialistic government/economic policy are forgetting that the early Christians VOLUNTARILY chose to live in this manner; the government did not force them to by law. The same goes for religious orders who live under vows of poverty and hold all property in common — while that may be a “communist” system, it is one they embrace of their own free will and after plenty of time to discern whether they are suited for that life. The evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience all involve voluntary renunciation of things that people have (within reason) a natural right to enjoy: ownership of property, marriage, and freedom to decide where/how one wishes to live and support oneself. The communal lifestyle of the early Christians has as much in common with modern socialism/communism as a loving and holy marriage has with sexual slavery.
I just started reading Ferrara’s Liberty where he tears into the Protestant philosophies of Hobbes and Locke and I happened to see your tag “liberals” on this piece. It would be more accurate to replace it with the tag “progressives” as the liberal moniker isn’t that accurate. Sure in America we call lefties liberals, but that’s only a recent usage of the word. Technically the Acton Institute is about liberal ideas. With “progressive” its more obvious what you’re talking about.