Sarahque adversus Haereticos

His Eminence Robert Cardinal Sarah
(Photo: CNS/Paul Haring)

Readers may recall an article published here on December 4, 2014 entitled Müller adversus Haereticos in which it was reported that Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stated the following:

Any separation of the theory and the practice of the faith would, in its formulation, represent a subtle christological heresy.

It was the strongest, most unambiguous statement made to date by any high-ranking prelate on the matter.

The Radical Catholic is pleased to report that Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, has come forward in defense of the integral relationship of doctrine to practice using exactly the same terms. As reported by Rorate Caeli, the good Cardinal's new book, Either God or Nothing (Original: Dieu ou rien), contains the following equally unambiguous statement:

The idea that would consist in placing the Magisterium in a nice box by detaching it from pastoral practice - which could evolve according to the circumstances, fads, and passions - is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I affirm solemnly that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose every rebellion against the teaching of Christ and the Magisterium.

Some in the Catholic blogging community had wondered aloud as to whether Cardinal Sarah's appointment to the position of Prefect was made in an attempt to bind him more closely to the Curia and, thus, make him more reluctant to openly criticize members of the same. Regardless as to the motives behind the appointment, it seems that Cardinal Sarah is not about to bow down to those who are suggesting to divorce doctrine from praxis. On the contrary, he's coming out with the some of the strongest language in the Church's vocabulary: it's heresy.

Fox News and the Devil

Browsing through the headlines today, I came across the following gem:

LOCAL PRIEST FORMS ALL-INCLUSIVE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN SAN DIEGO

My interest piqued, I clicked the link. I was greeted by the following lead:

(San Diego) A local Roman Catholic bishop is using Pope Francis as an example and creating an all-inclusive Catholic parish that will serve everyone, including divorced people and the LGBTQ community. San Diego Bishop Dermot Rodgers lives by the saying, "Judge none, love all."

As it's Lent, I've been working on the virtue of charity. Really hard. Part of my Lenten practice has been to incorporate meditations on the Sorrowful Passion of Our Lord (from Fr. Lasance's Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook). Yesterday's exterior exercise was "To explain everything in favor of our neighbor." 

OK. Maybe this is a Bishop who upholds Church teaching and just wants to create an atmosphere where people living in sin can feel supported in their attempt to change their sinful behavior and get back into a state of grace. That's at least within the realm of the possible, right?

My penitentially empty stomach began to dance a tango with my spleen (a liturgically approved tango, mind you) as I continued reading:

"One of the earliest statements the Holy Father made about equality and about gays and lesbians in the world is, 'Who am I to judge?'" Rodgers said. "And a whole theology is being formed from that very statement, so not only to affect the LGBTQ community, but also divorced and remarried people and other people who feel excluded from the traditional Catholic Church."

OK. Take a deep breath. Assume the best.

I press on. 

Then, the other shoe drops. Fox 5 apparently contacted the offices of the San Diego Diocese, and received the following response:

Bishop Dermot Rodgers and the group associated with him are not affiliated with the Catholic Diocese of San Diego, and therefore we have no comment.

Wait a minute. What? Just who is 'Bishop' Dermot Rodgers, then? A quick search pulls up the following:

The Most Reverend Dermot Rodgers is currently in the process of completing his transition for Episcopal Incardination into [wait for it...] the Evangelical Catholic Church.

Evangeli... what? Did not the title of the article say "Roman Catholic"? Did not this 'bishop' refer to Pope Francis as "Holy Father"? What's going on here?

And then I realized that, in my effort to assume the best on the part of my neighbor, I fell headlong into the trap of forgetting that the secular media hates the Catholic Church, and will lie through its teeth to get more click revenue.

Well played, Fox News, Agent of Diabolical Disorientation. Well played.

Of Tending Sheep

Tend My sheep.

It's an important passage from the Gospel of St. John, and one which has been given a new meaning under the exegesis of Pope Francis and the 'Age of Mercy' which, with the assistance of the modern Mystics of Mercy such as Cardinal Walter Kasper, he appears intent to let dawn upon the Catholic Church. The sheep, we are told, are those 'on the peripheries,' who have been cast out of society - particularly Catholic society - and it is the duty of every good shepherd to go out to them, to care for them, and bring them back to the fold.

Why sheep? Well, sheep are herding animals. They generally feel safe in herds, and are easy enough to handle in large groups. But when one gets separated from the flock, the lamentable and sometimes positively shocking stupidity of sheephood comes to the fore, and they become very frightened and utterly incapable of helping themselves. I say this as one who spent a season herding sheep in southern Ireland. Though they are lovable, their reputation for stupidity is well-deserved.

Our Lord is, of course, drawing a parallel between sheep and people, and it is a comparison He makes in several places in the Gospel. Not particularly flattering, but nonetheless accurate as far as analogies go. One need only think, for example, of the many thickets of heresy in which our Protestant friends have caught themselves, with little chance of getting free without assistance from above, to see the point being made here.

But notice again the words of Our Lord:

Tend My Sheep.

Notice that He didn't say, "Tend Jehosaphat's sheep," or "Tend thy neighbor's sheep," or even simply "Tend the sheep," but rather: Tend My sheep.

The assumption here is that, like actual sheep, those who belong to the fold of Christ and find themselves, for whatever reason, separated from it want very much to return to it and the safety it provides. Generally speaking, real sheep, after calling out in distress, will allow their shepherd to calm them, to remove the thorny vines into which they have tangled themselves, and to guide them back to the flock. Somewhere in their tiny sheep brains, they understand that they need the help offered to them by the shepherd. They are, after all, his sheep.

I would love to say that this is also the case with humans, that all people, deep down, are calling out to the Good Shepherd to save them from the thicket of sin and self-deception. Alas, this is where the parable breaks down.

The fact is that, in the herd of humanity, there are rogue sheep.

Quite a few of them, actually.

Fr. Thomas Rosica Threatens Catholic Blogger

Fr. Thomas Rosica, C.S.B.

Fr. Thomas Rosica, C.S.B., has threatened Catholic layman David Domet of the blog Vox Cantoris with legal action on charges of defamation.

Mr. Domet received a "notice of action" letter on February 17, 2015 from the law office of Fogler, Rubinoff LLP, informing him that Fr. Thomas Rosica has retained their services in relation to entries made on the blog Vox Cantoris which, in the opinion of Fr. Rosica, are "false, defamatory, or both," and that, unless Mr. Domet removes from the blog all statements regarding Fr. Rosica and issues a public apology to the same, legal action would be taken against him under the Libel and Slander Act, R.S.O. 1990, Ch. L 12. The letter can be read here.

Is the Vatican, through the person of Fr. Rosica, attempting to intimidate independent Catholic bloggers into silence in advance of the 2015 Synod? Michael Voris of Church Militant TV has asked the question, and I think it's a valid one.

Long-time readers of this blog might recall that Fr. Rosica has been mentioned on these pages as well, particularly in regard to his apparent endorsement of the view that the Holy Family (orate pro nobis) represented an "irregular" union. I wrote:

There's been a bit of chatter regarding a tweet made by Salt and Light's Fr. Thomas Rosica regarding a particularly nasty bit of writing. In Fr. Thomas Rosica's defense, it has to be said that he is not the originator of the nastiness; he's actually paraphrasing the last line of the article to which he linked: What Is a Catholic Family? by Peter Maneau, which appeared a few days ago in the Opinion Pages of the New York Times. At the same time, however, it's hard not to see the paraphrase as an open endorsement of the comparison itself. Which, with all the charity I can muster, is positively horrid.

Protecting oneself from malicious detraction is one thing. Wanting to silence faithful Catholics for openly questioning the fidelity of clerics whose words and actions betray serious deficiencies is something else entirely. And, given the vocal support lay Catholic bloggers have received from prelates such as Cardinal Raymond Burke and Bishop Athanasius Schneider for their defense of orthodoxy in the face of the "radical neo-Pagan ideology" currently threatening the moral teachings of the Church, one has to wonder whether this is little more than an attempt to do exactly that: silence the opposition to the now well-known agenda of the 2015 Synod.

Keep both Mr. Doment and Fr. Rosica in your prayers, gentle reader, even if for very different intentions.

The Eucharist: The Bread of Life

Eighth in a Series on the Reasons of the Eucharist

by

Fr. Albert Tesnière, S.S.S.

Dominus Est!

THESIS

The Eucharist is the Aliment of Divine Life in Souls

ADORATION

Adore, before your eyes, behind the veil of the sacramental species, really present and living, God and man both together, who in the days of His earthly life pronounced these words:

I am the Bread of Life; he that cometh to Me shall not hunger. I am the Living Bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this Bread he shall live forever; and the Bread which I will give is My Flesh for the life of the world. He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood abideth in Me and I in him. He that eateth Me the same also shall live by Me.

Listen with the joy of life restored, of life assured, to these words which promise you, with so much certitude, the most beautiful and enviable of lives - Divine Life itself.

All life is in God as in its only source, and when from this universal source issue floods of sentient and rational life, there remains still in God a personal life of His own, a life of holiness, of light, of love, and of infinite happiness. Nothing obliges our Creator to add the gift of this better life to the gift of natural life. Nevertheless, our soul is radically capable of it; and as the first created human soul, that of our first father, was gifted and enriched by the gratuitous goodness of the Creator, our own soul joins to its radical aptitude to possess the Divine Life the imperishable remembrance of the lost possession, an immense desire to recover it, profound sorrow, and an incurable feeling of exhaustion at being deprived of it.

Now, only He who gave this Divine Life the first time can restore it to us; God the Father bestowed the first gift, God the Son restores it. We derive the germ of it when we are by baptism washed in His blood; but in order to preserve so precious a life, to develop it, to render it actual, valiant, and fruitful in holy works, to appreciate all the joys which it contains, there must be an aliment, a regular growth: it is the Bread of Life, the Bread of the Eucharist.

Oh! adore then the Divine Life, the Holy Life, the Happy Life, the Eternal Life which comes to you, which is promised you, given and assured by the Bread of the Eucharist. Adore Jesus Christ, made the living Bread and the Sacrament of divine life in our souls.

THANKSGIVING

If we understand both the horror of death and the benefit of Divine Life for the soul, how shall we be able to refrain from continually blessing, with feelings of the most profound gratitude, the thought which conceived the Eucharist, the heart which gave it to us, the love which preserves it for us?

God is the life of the soul, even as the soul is the life of the body. To be born to natural life without arriving at supernatural life, after God had destined us for it, is to remain uncrowned, it is to give a stalk without a flower, a flower without fruit. More than this, to remain as we were, destitute of life on account of original sin and the sins which we fatally add to it, is to be condemned to degradation, to chastisement, to the privation of all happiness, to estrangement from God, and to be exposed to His anger. Is not this to be dead, and to have incurred death, which means eternal, horrible death?

Well, then! Let us breathe, let us hope, let us rejoice! Behold the Bread which gives growth to life, which repairs its waste, which shapes its course, which facilitates its exercise, which preserves and keeps forever the treasure of it. It is the Bread of Life, the Bread of the Eucharist! He who eats of it faithfully will never die; if he fall for a moment beneath the blows of sin, he will revive through the virtue of this Bread.

Oh Bread of Life, communicating to my weakness all the energy, all the virtues of the life of God Himself! Oh Aliment of Immortality, which fixes my perishable life upon the immutable rock of eternity! Oh Bread of Honor and of Glory, which raises me up from the abyss of nothingness and of the most profound abjection of sin, to give me access with the princes of the heavenly court to the table of the King of kings! Oh Bread of Peace, of Consolation, of Light and of Love, which gives to me a foretaste of the happiness which I shall attain if I allow myself faithfully to be led by Thy influence and Thy power! Be Thou loved, blessed, praised forever by grateful humanity!

REPARATION

Has the world given this cordial welcome to the gift of life? And how do we ourselves receive it? Does it produce in us these fruits of a holy and divine life?

Alas! Some, and they are very numerous, do not allow themselves to believe or to understand these benevolent advances of the Saviour; they keep aloof from His table; they lead an animal life, full of accidents, a rational life mingled with sorrow and with faults; but they leave their soul in death; they close their ears through pride, they refuse the Bread of Purity, through perversity they repel the best gift of God, in which He gives Himself!

Others, more guilty perhaps, and at any rate more base, desire to unite the Divine Life with a guilty life, to eat at the table of God and at that of demons, receiving, without the faith which enlightens, without the love which purifies, the Living Bread into their soul dead from sin. They only receive from it a greater measure of the divine anger, which buries them still more lamentably in death!

And I? Do I have the life of God? Do my thoughts find in His thoughts their rule of faith? Is He my supreme love, loved only for Himself and regulating all my other loves? And if I do not live by the life of God, is it because I do not nourish myself sufficiently with the Bread of the Divine Life, or that I do not partake aright, not bringing the dispositions requisite for receiving it, and not corresponding faithfully enough with its vital influences?

It is a sorrowful subject for examination, which, however, must be frequently approached and thoroughly discussed, for it is a question of living by the Eucharist or dying spite of the Bread of Life.

PRAYER

Repeat to yourself the words of the ardent desires of those who listened to the promise of the marvellous Bread of Life: "Lord, give us always of this bread." The Divine Master has introduced them into the formula of the most excellent of all prayers, "Give us this day our daily bread." Then from pity for all languishing souls, for all the hungry, the sick, and the dead which surround you, deprived of the Bread of Life through their own fault or from ignorance, repeat to Jesus in union with His apostles:

"Lord, behold in the midst of this desert of life the crowd which has nothing to eat that can really nourish it. Have pity on it!"

PRACTICE

Practice assiduity in receiving the Bread of Life with diligent preparation and faithful correspondence to its divine influences.

The Jews, Jerusalem and the Early Church

Reading N° 3 in the History of the Catholic Church

by

Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

Our Lord, in His sermons and parables, repeatedly announced that the kingdom of God, rejected by the Jews, would be accepted by the Gentiles. But the Israelites, nonetheless, remained the chosen people, the nation "of the promise." It was at Jerusalem, in a group belonging to the Jewish race, that the Church had its cradle. The earliest disciples of Christ religiously followed most of the Jewish observances, and withdrew from them only gradually and with utmost respect. The Synagogue, after the defections of its children, was buried with honor.

How great had been the destinies of the children of Abraham and Jacob before God and man! The Lord, by His covenant with them, by the prophets He raised up in the midst of their nation, by the numerous wonders He performed for them during the ages, had done for them what He had done for no other people. On their part, scattered as they were throughout the nations, they had remained faithful to the two great doctrines which the Lord had entrusted to their safekeeping: belief in one God and the hope of a Messias. Athens might lay claim to the glory of unparalleled art; Rome, to that of incomparable political science; but Jerusalem was the center of the purest worship that had been offered to the Divinity.

Israel, a house divided against itself

The Roman domination, established in Judea in 63 B.C., did not result in depriving the Jewish people entirely of their independence. Under the rule of the Herods, the children of Israel had kept a partial autonomy, which enabled them to remain faithful to the religion revealed to their fathers, and to celebrate, in the Temple at Jerusalem, the great ceremonies handed down by their ancestors. Baleful domestic divisions, however, had imbroiled the nation. The party that was preponderant in numbers as well as in the prestige of its members, was always that of the Pharisees.^[1] Of these meticulous observers of the Law, some were hypocrites, like those on whom Christ heaped maledictions; others were pure and upright, like those who braved all human respect to follow Him. There were, besides, the pleasure-loving Sadducees and the ambitious Herodians, fond of an easy life, who gladly accepted the customs and practices of Greece and Rome.^[2] At the opposite extreme were the Essenes. These visionary fanatics haughtily looked down on the other sects and considered themselves as the sole heirs of the heavenly promises. They endeavored to realize a superhuman purity.^[3] The strictest of the Essenes made a point of not going to the Temple, for they held it to be stained by their degenerate fellow-Jews; but in this they were not followed by the body of the nation. For the people of Israel, the Temple remained the sacred place where the Jewish nation offered its traditional sacrifices, aware of its great supernatural mission. They were proud of this noble edifice; its rebuilding, begun by Herod the Great, was not completed until the year 64, by Agrippa II. When a son of Israel, standing at the top of Mount Olivet, surveyed the gigantic wall which made the Temple look like an enormous fortress, the whole series of intercommunicating terraces, and at the summit the sanctuary itself, and its roof, covered with gold plates, reflecting the sun,^[4] his national pride was exalted; a grim irritation stirred in his soul against the foreign usurper; the memory of the heroic Maccabees who, a century earlier, had won back the Temple and religious liberty in Palestine, enkindled in his breast both patriotism and religion.

The Temple complex at Jerusalem (model) prior to its destruction in A.D. 70

The faithful disciples who had been won from the ranks of the Jewish people by Christ's preaching and the prodigies of Pentecost, shared in these noble feelings. Following the example of their Divine Master,^[5] they regularly went up to the Temple and mingled in the crowd of the worshippers. "For them, the new religion was not the foe of the old, but its fruit. They rightly judged that the holy souls of both Testaments - the Old and the New - really formed one and the same Church about one and the same Messias, misunderstood by some, acclaimed by others, but the sole object of Israel's hopes. [...] To God, the Author of the Old Covenant, it pertained to signify to all, by permitting the destruction of the Temple and the nationality of Israel, that the legal end of Mosaism had come."^[6]

Footnotes

[1] Beurlier, Le Monde juif au temps de ]ésus-Christ, I, 44-47. Cf. Stapfer, Palestine in the Time of Christ, pp. 265-284; Dollinger, The Gentile and the Jew, II, 304 ff.

[2] Beurlier, op. cit., p. 43.

[3] Idem, p. 48.

[4] On the Temple at Jerusalem, see art. "Temple" in the Dict. de la Bible. Cf. Vogué, Le Temple de ]érusalem; Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité, IV, 205-211; Stapfer, op. cit., pp. 403-453.

[5] St. Thomas, Summa theol., III, q. 37; q. 40, 4, 0; q.47, 2 ad 1. 

[6] Le Camus, L'Œuvre des apôtres, I, 46.

***

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Ash Wednesday

by
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

My God, my God, have mercy on my sin,
For it is great; and if I should begin
To tell it all, the day would be too small
To tell it in.

My God, Thou wilt have mercy on my sin
For Thy Love's sake: yea, if I should begin
To tell This all, the day would be too small
To tell it in.