The Martyrologium Romanum has this entry for 7 February:
16*. Romae, beati Pii papae Noni, qui, veritatem Christi, cui ab imo adhaesit, plane proclamans, multas instituit sedes episcopales, cultum beatae Mariae Virginis promovit et Concilium OEcumenicum Vaticanum Primum ascivit.
UPDATE 5 February:
From the the chant monks, the beer monks of Norcia…
This week, the first major shipment of Birra Nursia left the walls of the monastery and of Norcia and began its long journey to the United States. If you have already placed an order for Birra Nursia, your beer is on its way.
Imagine the journey the beer must take, out of the foothills of the Sibillini mountains, across the Atlantic and over highways and byways of America’s heartland just to reach your door. A great deal of love and prayer went in to the production of this beer. Be assured that each bottle was produced by the monks themselves. The monks are proud that Birra Nursia is a monastic product from start to finish.
[…]
___ ORIGINAL Jan 29, 2016 ___
Did you know that the last entry in the famous Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary, zythum, is a word for beer?
Last October I was at a benefit in NYC for the Benedictine Monks in Norcia, Italy. They have revived a monastic presence in the place of St. Benedict’s birth and they have started a brewery. At that event, I received a couple bottles of their exquisite beer, one of which I still have. I’ve been saving it.
However, I may just crack it open now, because their superb beer will be soon available to you in these USA. You can order it at birranursia.com.
And, what’s more, you can subscribe as part of their Brewmonks’ Club to have beer regularly sent to you.
May I make a suggestion? After signing up for your own membership, how about getting a membership for the priest or priests at your local parish? A subscription or two might help Father get a men’s club going, such as the one at the parish where I help on weekends, the monthly Pints and Pipes meeting. As G.K. Chesterton said, “In Catholicism, the pint, the pipe and the Cross can all fit together.” Our Pints and Pipes usually also involves another P, such as Pizza, or in the summer months, Pistols – before the Pints, of course. As Chesterton also wrote in Orthodoxy, “We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.” And, we should enjoy these activities in the right order. But I digress…
A 1 year subscription has two options: 1 case of 12 bottles or 1 half-case of 6. They also send a case of their glasses. I have two. Like the monks, they are not delicate. They both survived travel in my suitcase.
Drinking your potables from the properly shaped glass can make a difference in your perception of the flavors. Yes, it’s true.
Also, the bottles are large format, 750ml. There is a blonde and a dark. Descriptions HERE. They are both great. I’ve had both, both in events for the monks in these USA and also in Italy. Once, I was with a pilgrimage group which went to Norcia. The monks put out for us their beer along with local sausages and cheeses, etc. It was magnificent.
Just for fun, a few pics from that visit. First, a tour of their brewery.
UPDATE:
I was informed that they have a new glass for the Brewmonk’s Club.
One of these days horrible things will start happening because of the blurring of sex and the because of the sick and twisted “gender” re-engineering that is going. We are hurtling toward the brink.
From CNA:
Could it soon be illegal for doctors to believe in male and female?
Washington D.C., Feb 3, 2016 / 03:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A current proposal by a federal agency[Imagine my surprise as this comes from the administration of the First Gay President.] has raised concerns that doctors may be punished for believing that there are only two genders, rooted in biological sex.
The proposed rule, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says that it is aimed at banning discrimination against transgender individuals under the Obama administration’s “Affordable“ Care Act. [Has your insurance been cancelled yet?]
Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act cites decades-old federal laws that prohibit any individual from being denied benefits or discriminated against in any health program or federally funded activity on the basis of race, color, nationality, sex, disability and age.
However, the Office of Civil Rights is now interpreting “sex” to include “gender identity” and “sex stereotypes.”
The consequences of this change could be wide-reaching.
The proposed regulation defines “sex stereotypes,” in part as “expectations that gender can only be constructed within two distinct opposite and disconnected forms (masculinity and femininity), and that gender cannot be constructed outside of this gender construct (individuals who identify as neither, both, or as a combination of male and female genders).”
Gender identity is defined as “an individual’s internal sense of gender, which may be different from an individual’s sex assigned at birth.”
As a result, doctors and medical institutions could be penalized – or even forced out of business – if they are not willing to perform or facilitate sex reassignment surgeries and other “gender transition” treatments for individuals who identify as transsexual.
[…]
Read the rest there.
Terror-Islamic caliphate on the one side. This B as in B, S as in S on the other.
The proposals in Land Of Promise start sounding pretty good, no matter the challenges.
It seems that Robert Micken’s Lutheran conversion is complete.
You recall that Mickens was fired by The Tablet because of his horrid online denigration of Benedict XVI. HERE
Recently, Archbp. Rino Fisichella announced a couple initiatives for the Year of Mercy to boost confessions and to bring the relics of saints, Sts. Padre Pio and Leopold Mandić, to Rome so that pilgrims may venerate them more easily.
On the promotion of the Sacrament of Penance, Mickens scoffs…
No, he called the presser to offer details about two events that are taking place in the next several days leading up to Lent.
Both of them are aimed, fundamentally, at one thing — getting people to go back to confession, a practice most Catholics gave up a long, long time ago.
Well, good luck, fellas.
Pope Francis is popular and influential, but it’s unlikely that even he will be able to spark a revival in a practice that most Catholics know (correctly) is not essential to their membership in God’s household.
But this is one verdict of the “sensus fidelium” that it seems the pope does not want to acknowledge.
Apart from the obvious point that Mickens doesn’t understand sensus fidelium, Francis is now being attacked from the Left because he talks too much about confession!
Clearly the emphasis on confession from Fisichella is what Francis wants him to say.
Not essential to membership in “God’s household”…? Good luck with that, my friend. I respond… GO TO CONFESSION.
In any event, Luther would be proud of this. To wit, about confession:
I consider one of the greatest plagues on earth whereby you have confused the conscience of the whole world, caused so many souls to despair, and have weakened and quenched all men’s faith in Christ. (Luther’s Works Vol 34.19).
Going on, let’s see what sort of view he has of the notion of confession, absolution, mercy…
[…]
Archbishop Fisichella noted that these [Missionaries of Mercy] envoys would have the “mandate to announce the beauty of the mercy of God while being humble and wise confessors who possess a great capacity to forgive those who approach the confessional.” [He really doesn’t like this, does he.]
We don’t have a list of these 1,071 missionaries of mercy, because the archbishop said if the names of these “super confessors” were published they might be subjected to an avalanche of emails and phone calls. Really? Are there that many people out who have committed one of the five sacrileges that only the pope’s delegates can forgive? [Even if there were only a few…. What’s his problem?]
In any case, the “missionaries of mercy” concept sounds extremely dubious. Some would even say kooky. [I grant that I scratched my head a little when this was announced and wondered what it was about, but… “kooky? See what contempt the Left has for the Church’s affirmation that there is such a thing as personal sins?]
But wait… he goes on …
But not nearly as kooky and outright weird as the second Holy Year “event” that Fisichella unveiled last week.
Here it is: the Vatican will be displaying the bodies of two dead Capuchin saints for an entire week for its Holy Year pilgrims to venerate. They are shipping them in from their normal resting places on either ends of the Italian peninsula.
It’s more than a little ironic that Fisichella, who is considered to be one of Italy’s most intelligent theologians, is being asked to promote this medieval, pietistic practice. He’s the same theologian who, along with then-Cardinal Ratzinger, help ghostwrite John Paul II’s 1998 encyclical, Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason). [Of which, I’m sure, Mickens is a huge fan.]
He did his best to make a kooky idea sound as reasonable and normal as possible by emphasizing that “urns containing the relics of Saint Leopold Mandi?? and Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina” were being brought to Rome. [Yes, the body of Padre Pio will be in Rome, so that pilgrims who might come to Rome once in their lifetime won’t have to go to San Giovanni Rotondo. Also, Pio was a great confessor. He would regularly read souls and expose the sins that penitents didn’t confess. No wonder the Left hates this idea and calls if kooky and weird. Pio reminds people of their sins and the need for confession. The bodies of saints remind us that we are going to die and, if we don’t repent and amend our lives, we won’t be admitted to heaven. St. Leopold Mandi? was physically deformed in life and had difficulty walking. Perhaps he might inspire people on pilgrimage. Will Mickens mock the handicapped people who come to venerate St. Leopold as being kooky and superstitious?]
But they are not urns. They are glass coffins.
And under each of them is showcased the embalmed corpse of a bearded friar dressed in a new brown Capuchin habit.
These life-sized “urns”, as the jubilee organizer calls them, will be displayed in two different churches in Rome for public veneration on Feb. 3 and 4. Then on the evening of Feb. 5 the two transparent caskets will be carried in a long, solemn procession from the opposite side of the Tiber River all the way up and into St Peter’s Basilica.
The dressed-up corpses (let’s call them what they are) will then be placed in front of the main papal altar for veneration for the next several days until Ash Wednesday.
Fisichella said people would be able to view them in the same way folks paid their respects to John Paul II in 2005 as he lay in state several days prior to his funeral.
But this is not a wake and the two Capuchin saints did not give up the ghost only yesterday. Padre Pio died in 1968; and Leopoldo Mandi? in 1942.
But, beyond all that, this is the 21st century. Not the Middle Ages. [Sounds like a Lutheran.]
Do the men in the Vatican — including our dear Pope Francis — really think that dressing up dead bodies, even of the holiest of saints, is really going to help people “understand the ways in which God’s great love manifests itself in their daily lives”? [Maybe he understands more than you.]
Most reasonable Catholics — Italians included — disagree with the need for such props and gimmicks the jubilee committee is using to promote the Holy Year. [Promoting confession and displaying the body of Padre Pio… “props and gimmicks”…]
The Vatican — and, again, even the pope — categorizes these as “popular devotions.” But most of them are rooted in Mediterranean superstition and folklore. [Still channeling his inner Luther.] They are completely unnecessary for living the Christian faith and, in some cases, may even detract from the true message of the Gospel. [Which, no doubt, Mickens knows better than everyone else.]
Leave aside the ridiculous notion of cheap grace. This is grace cheapened. [A famous phrase of Dietrich Bonhoeffer… Lutheran.]
(Note: Venerating lifeless corpses has absolutely nothing to do with believing in the communion of saints!)
[…]
I’m surprised he didn’t get into indulgences.
Maybe that will be in his next column.
The National Schismatic Reporter actually published this disgusting rubbish.
At the UConn Drama department:
Puppet Arts
Classes in puppetry were first taught at UConn in 1964 by Professor Frank W. Ballard, who had joined the faculty of Theatre Department as a set designer and technical director eight years earlier. After three years, the demand for these courses had grown so drastically that the department had to limit enrollment in puppetry classes. [Lib liturgists are all aquiver.]
[…]
The promoters of this would have benefited enormously form such a course.
Ah… it never gets old.
Some of you may not have seen this video before.
This, friends, is where progressivist, liberal liturgy winds up.
From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
Yet another weird anomaly for our Modernist parish is having laity assist the priest in blessing throats on St. Blaise’s Feast. The laymen make no “Sign of the Cross” at least, merely place the candles across the throat and repeat the prayer. Is it efficacious? I suppose NOT. And no, the priest and/or bishop will automatically dismiss complaints as “pharisaical”.
I have written about this before.
Traditionally this is unthinkable.
Thus, I don’t know what a “blessing” from a layperson does. I don’t have to wonder much what a blessing from a priest does, all things being equal.
The problem here the theology of the new, uselessly innovative, Book of Blessings, [HAH!] in Latin De Benedictionibus. In its preliminary comments, the BoB departs from the Church’s perennial understanding of blessings and their distinction as constitutive (making something a blessed thing) and invocative (calling down God’s blessing).
In the BoB (which ought to be eradicated, extirpated, eliminated, exterminated) we find a difference in what priests or deacons do and what all laypeople:
PRAYER OF BLESSING
1647 A minister who is a priest or deacon touches the throat of each person with the crossed candles and says the prayer of blessing. Through the intercession of Saint Blase, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness:
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, + and of the Holy Spirit. [The “+” indicates that the priest or deacon makes the sign of the Cross.]
Each person responds: Amen.
During the blessing suitable psalms or other suitable songs may be sung.
1648 A lay minister touches the throat of each person with the crossed candles and, without making the sign of the cross, says the prayer of blessing. Through the intercession of Saint Blase, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness:
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Each person responds: Amen.
1649 After receiving the blessing each person may depart.
1650 If all cannot be blessed individually, a minister who is a priest or deacon, without candles, may extend his hands over the assembly and say the prayer of blessing. A lay minister says the prayer proper to lay ministers without making the sign of the cross.
Other than the fact that the priest makes the sign of the Cross, or extending a hand, does this look different? No.
BTW… The Book of Blessings (may it soon be trashed, deracinated, expunged, abolished, ) says that “an acolyte or reader [lector] who by formal institution has this special office in the Church is rightly preferred over another layperson as the minister designated at the discretion of the local Ordinary to impart certain blessings” (18, d). So, some sense of hierarchy even among the laity remains.
Something is different. It’s just not easy to put one’s finger on it.
On the one hand, anyone can ask God at anytime to pour His blessings down on anyone or anything. When a priest does that, however, as a man whose soul has been ontologically conformed to Christ the High Priest, who acts in persona Christi capitis, something else happens than when a lay person does it. What is that “something else”?
First, I think it has to do with our assurance that the petition for blessing has been heard. In an analogous way, though this limps, we can all earnestly pray to God to forgive our sins and we hope God will do so. We can even tell a friend about our problems and receive consolation and advice. Great! On the other hand, in sacramental confession, when the priest gives you absolution, you don’t have to wonder if your sins are forgiven.
It must be noted that the Rituale Romanum indicated that a lector (in the older sense, not the installed modern lector) could bless bread and first fruits… and he wasn’t ordained as either a deacon or a priest! So, apparently Major Orders are necessary for some blessings.
That said, lay people are baptized, which means that they participate in the priesthood of Christ, though not in the way that priests and bishops do.
Laypeople have vocations which, frankly, call on them to call down blessings!
I have especially in mind the duty of a father to bless his own children. In the ancient Church, catechists would bless catechumens (cf. Traditio apostolica). There is clearly a hierarchical distinction that must be observed: If a priest is present, the priest should give blessings before a deacon would, or layperson. Keep that in mind in the family home: the father, head of the family, should begin the meal blessing. If, however, a priest is your guest, he should do it.
Continuing on my point about the call of lay people to bless, CCC 1669 says:
Sacramentals derive from the baptismal priesthood: every baptized person is called to be a “blessing,” and to bless. Hence lay people may preside at certain blessings; [However…] the more a blessing concerns ecclesial and sacramental life, the more is its administration reserved to the ordained ministry (bishops, priests, or deacons).
So, we come back to the question about the Blessing of Throats for St. Blaise.
Does the St. Blaise blessing have much to do with the ecclesial and sacramental life of the Church? I don’t think so.
In the final analysis, we have to accept that the efficacy of blessings depends on the authority and authoritative prayers of the Church.
Furthermore, the efficacy of the blessing must rely in large part on the will, disposition and desire of the recipient. What is received is received according to the mode, manner, capacity of the one receiving it.
IMPORTANT: The St. Blaise Day blessing isn’t efficacious because of the candles. This isn’t magic.
In sum, there is a difference between what Father does and what lay people do, even when imparting the St. Blaise blessing. I think Holy Orders matters.
What that difference is…. I don’t know.
But … if it were up to me … I’d pass by the laywoman and get into the priest’s line.
Every time I get my throat blessed on St. Blaise Day, I get a sore throat or bronchitis. Although… this year I have already had it, so I hope I’ve dodged for February.
Ever the optimist, I keep going back each year for a blessing of the throat.
Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Blaise, about whom we know very little. We have only this very brief entry in the Martyrologium Romanum:
Sancti Blasii, episcopi et martyris, qui pro christiano nomine Sabaste in Armenia passus est sub Licino imperatore. … [Feast of] St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, who suffered for the name of Christ in Sabaste in Armenia under the Emperor Licinus.
That “pro Christiano nomine” probably needs to be rendered as “for the name of Christ” along the lines of rendering dies dominica or oratio dominica as, respectively, “the Lord’s Day = Sunday” or “the Lord’s Prayer”. It is entirely possible, of course, just to keep it literal and say, “for the Christian name”, which would be pretty much the same thing in the balance.
Either way, he was killed because, as a Christian, Blaise professed belief in Christ.
COLLECT:
Exaudi, Domine, populum tuum,
cvm beati Blasii martyris patrocinio supplicantem,
ut et temporalis vitae nos tribuas pace gaudere,
et aeternae reperire subsidium.
LITERAL TRANSLATION:
O Lord, graciously hear Your people
begging by means of the patronage of blessed martyr Blaise,
that you grant us to delight in the peace of temporal life
and obtain the protection of eternal life.
I take away from this prayer the serious message that life is dangerous.
The word subsidium means “support, assistance, aid, help, protection” and often in liturgical Latin “help”. Either way, subsidium sets up a stark contrast between the life we have now and the life to come. Even the phrase about enjoying the peace of this life, indicates subtly how precarious everything is in this earthly existence which Catholics are accustomed to call a “vale of tears”.
This is firmed up by another wonderful prayer associated with St. Blaise. You all know about the blessing of throats on the feast of St. Blaise. In the older form of the Rituale Romanum there is a marvelous blessing for the candles used to confer the blessing of throats. Here it is:
BLESSING OF CANDLES ON THE FEAST OF ST. BLAISE:
O God most powerful and most kind, Who didst create all the different things in the world by the Word alone, and Whose will it was that this Word by Which all things were made should become incarnate for the remaking of mankind; Thou Who art great and limitless, worthy of reverence and praise, the worker of wonders; for Whose sake the glorious Martyr and Bishop, St. Blaise, joyfully gained the palm of martyrdom, never shrinking from any kind of torture in confessing his faith in Thee; Thou Who didst give to him, amongst other gifts, the prerogative of curing by Thy power every ailment of men’s throats; humbly we beg Thee in Thy majesty not to look upon our guilt, but, pleased by his merits and prayers, in Thine awe-inspiring kindness, to bless+this wax created by Thee and to sanc+tify it, pouring into it Thy grace; so that all who in good faith shall have their throats touched by this wax may be freed from every ailment of their throats through the merit of his suffering, and, in good health and spirits, may give thanks to Thee in Thy holy Church and praise Thy glorious name, which is blessed for ever and ever. Through our Lord, Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who with Thee lives and reigns, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Ah! What a pleasure that prayer is! Or course, the candles are to be sprinkled with holy water after the blessing. Maybe you should print this out and take it to your parish priest “with Fr. Z’s compliments”. It might be that he doesn’t have this text and perhaps would like to (or you would like to) have your throat blessed in Latin!
Here is the Blessing for throats:
Per intercessionem Sancti Blasii, episcopi et martyris, liberet te Deus a malo gutturis, et a quolibet alio malo. In nomine Patris, et Filii +, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Through the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr,
may God free you from illness of the throat and from any other sort of ill. In the name of the Father, and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
I will never forget this formula.
Long ago, as a deacon, I lived at the Church of San Carlo ai Catinari, which is also dedicated to St. Blaise, San Biagio, as co-patron. The Barnabites there have in their possession relics of St. Blaise. There is one in a large reliquary and one in a crystal placed on a large ring held in the fist of one hand (click the photo to see a larger image and inside the crystal). This is what they used to bless throats on this feast.
I was asked by the clergy there to help with blessing the throats of the people who thronged to the church that day. As soon as I donned my surplice every other cleric actually attached to the place vanished. I was left there for several hours. I can’t say how many times I said that formula that day.
The configuration of the candles used for the blessing can vary. Here are a few examples.
This is probably the most common.
And there is the twisty version:
And then we have a high tech approach: [Last year the nice people at F.C. Ziegler saw this – they make this gizmo – and asked me to post a link to it. Okay! HERE]
Finally, there is this contraption, which looks like it is from Star Trek:
Hmmm….
A while back there was a flurry of discussion in Madison, WI about the long-standing, patiently-implemented, diocesan-wide policy of returning the tabernacles for the Blessed Sacrament to the center of churches.
News reached me that in Brooklyn, a church is being restored to its focus on the Blessed Sacrament with the restoration of its altar that was (heinously) removed some 30 years ago.
From the Brooklyn Daily:
An important piece of a Bath Beach church’s century-old altar has returned from the grave thanks to a pious parishioner whose de-shrine intervention saved it 30 years ago, his pastor said.
“The high altar is right in the center of the church, and the piece Bill saved is an important piece of it,” said the Rev. Michael Louis Gelfant.
Bill Coppa rescued the face of St. Finbar Church’s tabernacle — where Catholics store what they believe is the body of Jesus Christ — from a garbage pile during a 1984 renovation. A previous pastor didn’t give a frock about the gilded marble masterpiece, but Coppa thought trashing it was a sin, so he put it in his den, he said.
“I ran back in and I said ‘Father! There’s this beautiful piece there, and it’s thrown in the trash,’ and I asked if I could take it,” Coppa said. “He didn’t mind, so I grabbed it, and I’ve had it in my home office for 32 years.”
The congregation is in the midst of a larger renovation, and Coppa jumped at the chance to return the relic, he said.
Gelfant discovered two other pieces of the altar in a forgotten storeroom shortly after inheriting the flock in 2010, and the revelation inspired him to return the church to its former glory, he said.
“Those two great finds sparked the possibility we could restore it to the way it was,” Gelfant said.
Parishioners raised nearly a million dollars for the renovations, which started in October 2015. The church is tearing up 30-year-old tile to reveal the main sanctuary’s original terrazzo floor, sprucing up pews, and rehabbing the building’s exterior.
Gelfant expects they’ll resurrect the sanctuary, including the altar, in time for Easter, and anticipates the rest done in the following months.
The project has many long-time parishioners excited, and some handy churchgoers even volunteered their talent, Gelfant said.
“The people are so proud they’re getting their church back, and some have donated their labor — it’s been a real community effort,” he said. “People were never really happy with the 1984 renovations, a lot of them called it a ‘wreck-o-vation.’ ”
No, they weren’t. And they still aren’t.
Church architecture and decoration reflect what the Church believes about herself. When we wreck beautiful church, stripping them of any trace of the transcendent, and turn them into confused and tacky meeting spaces, when we build church that look more like municipal airports than they do sacred spaces, we have a clue that something is deeply twisted in our prevailing Catholic identity.
In Wisconsin we had rather dreadful weather and so cancelled the Candle-mass. I am consoled, however, with this.
From a reader…
First mass celebrating the proper feast today in the EF in this church (St. Mary’s, Roslyn, NY – Long Island) for the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary in more than 50 years! Magnificent example of what happens when you’re patient, plan, and execute carefully with a supportive pastor. Beautiful scola – check. Trained servers – check. Supportive congregation who organize and buy candles and necessary items – check. And, best of all, the mass attracts families and men and women of all ages – everyone well behaved and reverent – tonight perhaps more than 100 souls in attendance. The monthly EF mass sees the most young people and children of all masses in the (aging) parish combined! The celebrant spoke about how this may be the longest continually celebrated feast from ancient times, that is documented back to at least the 380s AD.
I found it gave me a big boost.
Hope you’re well, thought you’d want to hear some good news and see some pics. HERE
Here are a few samples…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eddecasey/24158146163/in/album-72157664263327035/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eddecasey/24785009465/in/album-72157664263327035/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eddecasey/24691500831/in/album-72157664263327035/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eddecasey/24785014915/in/album-72157664263327035/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/eddecasey/24417369649/in/album-72157664263327035/
Run, don’t walk, to Crisis to see Fr. George Rutler’s latest. HERE.
The German bishops, theologians and Card. Kasper are front and center.
Here are some of my favorite moments…
[…]
The social consequences of German idealism were hymned in the refrain “Am deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen” (“The German spirit shall heal the world”) and it stained the twentieth century with its bitter irony. By 1912, eugenic theory banned interracial marriage in German colonies. When French occupation forces included African troops after World War I, mulatto progeny were called “Rhineland bastards” and in Mein Kampf, Hitler disdained them as a contamination of the white race plotted by Jews and “negrified” Frenchmen. In 1937, Hitler approved “the discrete sterilization of the Rhineland bastards” by a special Gestapo commission.
While one would not impute such crassness to contemporary intellectuals, mauled as they have been by history yet oblivious to their wounds, [Quod Deus averruncet!] a remnant bias seems irrepressible. During last year’s Synod on the Family, Cardinal Walter Kasper expressed frustration with African bishops for opposing more conciliatory attitudes toward homosexuality that he called their “taboo” and said that Africans “should not tell us too much what we have to do.” Cardinal Kasper denied having said this, and managed an awkward apology when a recording of what he said was presented as evidence. The cardinal’s remarks echoed the poorly tutored John Shelby Spong of the Episcopal Church who said of Africans in 1998: “They’ve moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity. They’ve yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face in the developing world: that is just not on their radar screen.”
[…]
It’s the reference to Spong that makes that a gem.
[…]
After the close of the Synod, the official website of the German bishop’s conference said that the exponential growth of the “romantic, poor Church” in Africa is due to the lamentable fact that “the educational situation there is on average at a rather low level and the people accept simple answers to difficult questions.” And lest anyone think that the “Dark Continent” is a phrase remaindered to the dustbin of history, the website added that in Africa “the growing number of priests is a result not only of missionary power but also a result of the fact that the priesthood is one of the few possibilities for social security on the dark continent.” If this reeks of “the white man’s burden,” let it be noted that Rudyard Kipling actually coined that phrase, not in reference to Africa but to the Philippines during the Spanish American War, and would have been appalled by the German “Uberlegenheitskomplex”—superiority complex.
That complex is redolent of the disdain shown toward the early Christians by Pliny the Younger, Lucian of Samosata, and Celsus who, like the writer for the German bishops, Bjorn Odendahl, [ROFL!] regretted with imperious loftiness the rusticity, superstition, and poverty of the followers of the Christus. One does not know what Herr Odendahl is paid for writing such prodigious infelicity, but given the wealth of the German Church, he is not on an African pay scale. The German Church is the wealthiest per capita in the world, and the second biggest employer in their country. The German Catholic leaders, for all their claims to social progressivism, are in the pay of the government through tax subsidies, by which arrangement German priests are paid much more than their counterparts in the United States while their bishops are paid upwards of $189,000 a year plus benefits.
[…]
First, Spong and now Pliny.
And the coup de grâce from the tag-team of Stark and Péguy …
[…]
German professor Thomas Heinrich Stark has quoted the aforementioned Péguy with reference to Cardinal Kasper: “Modernists are people who do not believe what they believe.” Surely in charity one would hope that reality might temper the German idealists, perhaps aided by light from the Dark Continent.
[…]
By the way, Stark’s piece in Catholic World Report, though hard, should be your constant reference point when considering the antics of the Germans.
German Idealism and Cardinal Kasper’s Theological Project
Finally… don’t forget The Ten Africans Book™.
Christ’s New Homeland – Africa: A contribution to the Synod on the Family
Ten African cardinals and bishops wrote essays about the attitudes of Africans about marriage and the family. The indomitable Francis Card. Arinze wrote the preface.
Among the cardinals and bishops are
Card. Sarah
Card. Arinze
Card. Tumi
Card. Sarr
Arcbp. Kleda
Get a Kindle now, if you don’t have one already. USA HERE – UK HERE
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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Second coming! Church’s rescued relic restored 