Saturday, August 02, 2003

Today...
I am going to begin praying the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman novena, to prepare for the anniversary of the day when he went to his reward, August 11. All readers are welcome to join me, if they wish.
For Saturday
"And above them(ed. the saints) all--for who would concede that place of honour more anxiously than themselves?--stands the Virgin Mother of Christ, the sorrowful Mother of us all. Not less intimate because so high above us, not loved less personally because her munificence is so wide, she permeates the thought, the art, the poetry, the lives of Catholics with radiance as of a spring day, or of good news heard suddenly. Protestants have said that we deify her; that is not because we exaggerate the eminence of God's mother, but because they belittle the eminence of God. A creature miraculously preserved from sin by the indwelling power of the Holy Ghost--that is to them a Divine title, because that is all the claim their grudging theologies will concede, often enough, to our Lord himself. They refuse honour to the God-bearing Woman because their Christ is only a God-bearing Man. We, who know that God could (if He would) annihilate every existing creature without abating anything of His Blessedness or His Glory, are not afraid less the honour done to His creature of perfect Womanhood should prejudice the honour due to Him. Touchstone of Truth in the ages of controversy, Romance of the medieval world, she has not lost, with the rise of new devotions, any fragment of her ancient glory. Other lights may glow and dim as the centuries pass, she cannot suffer change; and when a Catholic ceases to honour her, he ceases to be a Catholic. "- Msgr. Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics
Does anybody know
what happened to ibidem ?
Yes, I have had days
that seemed to go like this little clip in a post by Bene Diction .
Massive, excellent new article on why the Church Fathers would think sola scriptura utterly bogus
over at Biblical Evidence for Catholicism .

Happy Blogoversary
to A Catholic Point of View !

The Feast of St. Eusebius of Vercelli
is today. There is informationon him here.

Friday, August 01, 2003

Over at Catholic and Enjoying It
Mark Shea has a link to a Phyllis McGinley poem. This gives me the perfect opportunity to post another poem by Phyllis McGinley....

"When Philip Neri walked abroad
Beside the Tiber, praising God
They say he was attended home
By half the younger set of Rome.

Knight, novice, scholar, boisterous boy,
They followed after him with joy,
To nurse his poor and break his bread,
And hear the funny things he said.

For Philip Neri (by his birth
A Florentine) believed in mirth,
And held that virtue took no harm
That went with laughter arm-in-arm.

Two books he read with most affection-
The Gospels and a joke collection;
And sang hosannas set to fiddles,
And fed the sick on soup and riddles.

So when the grave rebuke the merry,
Let them remember Philip Neri
(Fifteen-fifteen to ninety-five),
Who was the merriest man alive,
Then dying at eighty or a bit
Became a Saint by holy wit. "



The Feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori, Bishop, Founder, Doctor of the Church
is today. There is information on him here. Prayers for all the Redemptorists, Redemptoristines, and all others who have St. Alphonsus as their special patron, would be most appropriate.

Thursday, July 31, 2003

I agree ...
with Mark Shea.... This is evil. Splitting up or uprooting families who haven't done anything wrong because one of them belongs to the wrong racial group is disgusting, and, IMHO, plays into the hands of anti-Israeli propagandists.
What really gets me is the quote near the end ...
"Ezra turned aside charges that the law was racist, saying ``I agree that anyone who kills Jews just because they are Jewish is a racist. ' ''
Yes, Mr. Ezra. And anyone who rips apart or displaces a family just because one of them is an Arab is racist, too.



For Thursday
"He tore open the solid rock; He rose from the tomb; He ascended on high; He is far off from the earth; He is safe from profanation; and the soul and body, which He assumed, partake of course, as far as created nature allows, of the Sovereign Freedom and the Independence of Omnipotence. It is not so: He is indeed beyond the reach of suffering; but you anticipate, my Brethren, what I have yet to say. Is He then so enamoured of the prison, that He should purpose to revisit earth again, in order that, as far as possible, He may undergo it still? Does He set such a value on subjection to His creatures, that, before He goes away, on the very eve of His betrayal, He must actually make provision, after death, for perpetuating His captivity to the end of the world? My Brethren, the great truth is daily before our eyes: He has ordained the standing miracle of His Body and Blood under visible symbols, that He may secure thereby the standing mystery of Omnipotence in bonds.

He took bread, and blessed, and made it His Body; He took wine, and gave thanks, and made it His Blood; and He gave His priests the power to do what He had done. Henceforth, He is in the hands of sinners once more. Frail, ignorant, sinful man, by the sacerdotal power given to him, compels the presence of the Highest; he lays Him up in a small tabernacle; he dispenses Him to a sinful people. Those who are only just now cleansed from mortal sin, open their lips for Him; those who are soon to return to mortal sin, receive Him into their breasts; those who are polluted with vanity and selfishness and ambition and pride, presume to make Him their guest; the frivolous, the tepid, the worldly-minded, fear not to welcome Him. Alas! alas! even those who wish to be more in earnest, entertain Him with cold and wandering thoughts, and quench that Love which would inflame them with Its own fire, did they but open to It. Such are the best of us; and then for the worst? O my Brethren, what shall we say of sacrilege? of His reception into hearts polluted with mortal, unforsaken sin? of those further nameless profanations, which from time to time occur, when unbelief dares to present itself at the Holy Altar, and blasphemously gains possession of Him?

My Brethren, it is plain that, when we confess God as Omnipotent only, we have gained but a half-knowledge of Him: His is an Omnipotence which can at the same time swathe Itself in infirmity and can become the captive of Its own creatures. He has, if I may so speak, the incomprehensible power of even making Himself weak. "
- From "Omnipotence in Bonds", by Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.
The Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, Priest and Founder
is today. There is information on him here. Prayers for the Society of Jesus, that they may truly follow the example of their founder and their multiplicity of magnificent saints, would be most welcome. ( I am, alas, that it seems that in too many cases they are going in the wrong direction- but prayer is powerful ! )
St. Ignatius, was a friend of St. Philip Neri. St. Philip and his followers eagerly listened to the reports coming back from the early missionaries in India, and at one point thought he might be called to go to the East himself. However, he consulted a wise contemplative monk he knew, who advised "Rome is your India."
St. Philip did send various young men to St. Ignatius to try their vocations in the new order. St. Ignatius wryly remarked. " For the Society, Philip is like the church bell: he calls everyone else in, and stays outside himself ! "
They were canonized at the same ceremony in 1622, along with St. Francis Xavier, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Isidore the Farmer.

"Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
Corpus Christi, salve me.
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.
Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.
Passio Christi, conforta me.
O bone Iesu, exaudi me.
Intra tua vulnera absconde me.
Ne permittas me separari a te.
Ab hoste maligno defende me.
In hora mortis meae voca me.
Et iube me venire ad te,
ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te
in saecula saeculorum. Amen
."
- Attributed to St. Ignatius Loyola

Here is a somewhat free translation ...
"Soul of Christ, be my sanctification;
Body of Christ, be my salvation;
Blood of Christ, fill all my veins;
Water of Christ’s side, wash out my stains;
Passion of Christ, my comfort be;
O good Jesu, listen to me;
In thy wounds I fain would hide,
Ne’er to be parted from Thy side;
Guard me, should the foe assail me;
Call me when my life shall fail me;
Bid me come to Thee above,
With Thy saints to sing Thy love,
World without end. Amen."-
Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.


It is also the feast of Blessed John Colombini . The life of Blessed Colombini deeply moved St. Philip and was favorite reading for the first generation of Oratorians.

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

From The Idea of a University
by Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O.
" Right Reason, that is, Reason rightly exercised, leads the mind to the Catholic Faith, and plants it there, and teaches it in all its religious speculations to act under its guidance. But Reason, considered as a real agent in the world, and as an operative principle in man's nature, with an historical course and with definite results, is far from taking so straight and satisfactory a direction. It considers itself from first to last independent and supreme; it requires no external authority; it makes a religion for itself. Even though it accepts Catholicism, it does not go to sleep; it has an action and development of its own, as the passions have, or the moral sentiments, or the principle of self-interest. Divine grace, to use the language of Theology, does not by its presence supersede nature; nor is nature at once brought into simple concurrence and coalition with grace. Nature pursues its course, now coincident with that of grace, now parallel to it, now across, now divergent, now counter, in proportion to its own imperfection and to the attraction and influence which grace exerts over it. "
The Feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
is today. There is information on him here.
It is also the feast of Blessed Thomas Abel, Blessed Richard Featherstone, and Blessed Edward Powell . The last named is of particular interest to me since he, like a certain Oratorian Venerable, was a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.





Tuesday, July 29, 2003

From Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 2
by Venerable John Henry Newman. C.O.

" For it has been His gracious purpose to turn all that is ours from evil to good. Had He so pleased, He might have found, when we sinned, other beings to do Him service, casting us into hell; but He purposed to save and to change us. And in like manner all that belongs to us, our reason, our affections, our pursuits, our relations in life, He needs nothing put aside in His disciples, but all sanctified. "
The Feast of St. Martha
is today. There is information on her here.

Monday, July 28, 2003

One of St. Philip's favorite sayings..
Spernere mundum- spernere nullum-spernere seipsum-spernere sperni - "Think little of the world-think little of no one else-think little of one's self-think little of being thought little of" - Attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
July 28, 1851
was the day when the Venerable John Henry Newman delived the lecture "Logical Inconsistency of the Protestant View" , in the lecture series which was later gathered together and published as Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England. A particular passage in this lecture led to the ordeal of the Achilli Trial.
Oh, wonderful...
Islamic men are now using Western technology to make oppressive customs even easier to carry out.

Link courtesy of Catholic Light.

Forget Nigeria....
Mr. Shea has been given an in on the the scam of scams.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord
and let perpetual light shine upon him.....
Bob Hope dead at 100

Link courtesy of Dave Alexander.

Two interesting articles...
One at Catholic Educator's Resource Center..... Toward the Second Spring by Stratford Caldecott.
One at Catholic Exchange..... The Goddess Project by Donna Steichen.