The continuation of the revolution.
“Dissent is revolution!” - Warren Beatty’s character, John Reed from the film, “Reds”
[Photo credit: "Gay" seniors at St. Joan of Arc, dissenting from Church teaching at a secular prayer service held outside the church on June 25, 2008. Photo and story by Ray Marshall.]
Fasting, preparation, reception, and thanksgiving.
The photo shows Carthusian monk-priests making their thanksgiving after Communion. Theirs is an ancient tradition that emulates St. John leaning back upon Jesus’ chest at the last supper, although this position is anything but comfortable, as I found out when I was with the Carthusians. Nevertheless, it illustrates the beauty of taking time to make a prayerful thanksgiving after Communion. St. Teresa of Avila recommended fifteen minutes of thanksgiving would be appropriate for her nuns, and encouraged it as a proper exercise by which to learn mental prayer. Of course, for most busy people, such a lengthy thanksgiving is not practicable, although a few minutes of deep recollection might be. (I’m not telling anyone how to pray here, just merely suggesting a wonderful practice.)
Times are changing however.
A commenter or two have suggested that certain dissident attitudes, or practices, or even the state of mortal sin, while being an impediment to the worthy reception of Communion, if observed, would mean there would be fewer people receiving Holy Communion. I responded that would not be a bad thing at all.
Penance.
Growing up, frequent, even daily Communion was encouraged and practiced, but the rules were clear, one must be in the state of grace to receive. Hence the lines for confession on Saturdays were very long, and even in small parishes, at least 2 priests were available to hear them. People understood the necessary dispositions for receiving Communion. On Sundays, less than half the congregation approached the Communion rail. You see, the people attended Mass, but they were not obligated to receive Communion.
Fasting.
Preparation also included a lengthy Eucharistic fast. Pius XII lessened the fast from midnight to whenever one was able to receive that day, to 3 hours before Mass. Since Paul VI, we are required to fast only one hour before the reception of the sacrament. Today Fr. Z has a post asking what people think of restoring the 3 hour fast. (Don’t get upset, he is just “asking”.) I personally think it is a good idea - but it isn’t my call - although privately, I’m free to fast as long as I want. I’m also free to not approach the sacrament if I feel I am not properly disposed. (I think it is chiefly self-love and undue regard for human respect that causes people to feel ashamed if they remain in their pew while everyone else approaches the sacrament.)
Kneeling.
News today is that the Holy Father will distribute Communion on the tongue and to those people who kneel. I personally prefer that. These matters have been under much discussion for years in this country - at one point a California bishop said it was a sin to kneel. Crazy people, huh? Thank God for Pope Benedict.
Who knew homosexuals objected to the word “lifestyle”?
I found it out on a blog - here is the deal:
“For a start, I know of no LGBT individual who talks about celebrating their “lifestyle.” The gift of their sexuality, maybe. Their orientation. Their relational capacity. But not their “lifestyle.”
As LGBT persons, we’re well aware that “lifestyle,” as Paula Ruddy points out, has become a “pejorative word used to denigrate gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender persons. It’s a propaganda word, meant to segregate a group by its sexual practices and to exclude them from social acceptance.” - Wild Reed
.
Then I read this BRILLIANT piece in an email I received:
. It is with some bemusement that I find a gay activist chastising a Church official for using the term “lifestyle” for a package of immoral attitudes, actions, and relationships which the Church opposes.
The term arose with psychologist Alfred Adler (1870-1937), who used “style of life” to include factors external to one’s “personality”: “The style of life of a tree is the individuality of a tree expressing itself and molding itself in an environment. We recognize a style when we see it against a background of an environment different from what we expect, for then we realize that every tree has a life pattern and is not merely a mechanical reaction to the environment” (source).
Interestingly, he opposed Freud’s mechanistic-deterministic theory and proposed to that personal motivation (free will) toward a goal was at the center of each life style, although apparently he understood most of these future-states to convenient fictions rather than certain realities.
Back to the etymology, the term “lifestyle” broadened in 1961 to mean “the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture” (Merriam-Webster). I suspect that it came into vogue especially in reference to the “hippie lifestyle”. And hippies certainly used the term freely (pardon the pun), precisely because it was opposed to a state of life (established institutions bad!) and vocation (I’m free to be me!).- Mr. GS (H/T Ray)
Isn’t that interesting? I actually know the man who wrote the email section of this post with the etymology of the word ’lifestyle’ - the man is so brilliant I could weep. (Although why did he feel it necessary to denigrate ‘hippies’? LOL!)
[Photo credit: "Breeder Talk" - Some Have Hats.]
And the Militia of Mary Immaculate.
I dreamed of St. Maximilian this morning shortly before I was fully awake. The images played out in the dream recalled how, as a seminarian studying in Rome, the saint witnessed numerous anti-Catholic groups protesting outside of the Vatican, hurling insults against the Pope and blasphemies against Our Lord. The sight moved Kolbe to found the Militia of Mary Immaculate, and the insignia the Militia adopted was the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception. Providentially, the Militia was founded on 16 October 1917, just 3 days following the final apparition and the great miracle at Fatima.
St. Maximilian added to the prayer Our Lady instructed to be placed on the Miraculous Medal, and it goes like this:
“O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee, and for those who do not have recourse to thee, especially the enemies of the Church and those recommended to you. Amen” - Source
“Thou alone, Mary, hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world.”
When I was in grade school, I was enrolled in the Militia and became a knight of the Immaculata. Kolbe impressed me because of his great purity and devotion to the Immaculate Conception. Later as a novice in the monastery, to help me discern if I should remain with the Trappists or move on, the Novice Master made the unusual decision to send me to stay a few weeks with the Conventual Franciscans who operated the Marytown in the U.S. - at that time it was located in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I also spent a summer there working before entering the monastery. At any rate, this is my connection to that particular apostolate.
It seems to me in this country the enemies of the Church are perhaps more virulent than in Kolbe’s day, witness the so-called gay pride parades and celebrations, as well as dissident prayer services, which take place on or near Catholic properties; in my town, across the country, in Rome, and even in Jerusalem. The Pope and the bishops are represented as hate-filled criminals for affirming Catholic teaching regarding faith and morals, especially as it concerns the sin of homosexual behavior. Now, even more than ever, we need to have recourse to the Immaculata; “Thou alone, Mary, hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world.”
A comment on “gay pride”.(Taken from PP X’s encyclical against Modernism.)
Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all but fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy. - Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis
[Of course the Holy Father was addressing the Modernist heresy in this encyclical, though I found much of what he said could just as well be addressed to those who promote the errors of the homosexual lifestyle.]
Links:
Gay stuff is in the news.
On most Catholic daily-news sites, nearly every day there is a new report regarding some aspect of the ongoing conflict homosexuals wage in their efforts to undermine the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. So when I write about this stuff, first of all, it is nothing new for me. Secondly, it isn’t as if I’m making things, or initiating controversy - the stuff is out there - the assault by gay activists is out there and I comment on it. I counter with authentic Catholic teaching. Why? I explained myself nearly 2 years ago when I cited the following from Pope Benedict XVI:
“In his most powerful statements to date on issues involving sexual morality, Pope Benedict XVI said homosexuals end up destroying themselves so the Church has a duty to speak out on moral issues that affect the very spiritual and physical lives of man.
In seeking to emancipate himself from his body (from the ‘biological sphere’), [man] ends up by destroying himself,” the pope told cardinals, archbishops, bishops and members of the Roman Curia last week in a traditional meeting overlooked by most of the world’s press. “Against those who say that ‘the Church should not involve herself in these matters,’ we can only respond: does man not concern us too? The church and believers must raise their voices to defend man, the creature who, in the inseparable unity of body and spirit, is the image of God.” - World Net Daily
The Holy Father said, “the Church and believers must raise their voices…” Contrary to one man’s opinion, I am not interpreting what the Holy Father or the Magisterium declares - but I do repeat the teaching in my posts. I do so for several reasons, one purpose amongst these is in support for people such as Mark, a commenter on the post I wrote in response to the Holy Father’s quote above. This is what Mark had to say in 2006:
Who may receive?
On June 23 the Holy Father stated that only the pure of heart (those free from mortal sin) could receive Communion. The Holy Father made the statement a day after the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Burlusconi asked a bishop in Sardinia as to when the Church would change the rules to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive the sacrament. The bishop jokingly responded that it would take a higher power than he (the bishop) to change the rules.
The Holy Father’s statement was contained in a message to the Quebec Eucharistic Congress and did not mention the Prime Minister nor the issue of divorce. The following is that section of the Holy Father’s message:
“We have to do everything that is in our power to receive (communion) with a pure heart, searching without end, through the sacrament of forgiveness, the purity that sin has stained,” Pope Benedict said in his message.
“On the other hand, those who cannot take communion because of their situation will find, nevertheless, in the desire to participate in the Eucharist, strength and effect of salvation.” - Source
“Catholic teaching says that Catholics cannot ignore Jesus’ teaching that the faithful may not divorce and remarry. The Church teaches that for the good of their souls, believers should not present themselves for Communion, when they have departed from the teachings of Jesus.” - CNA
[Now I'm just wondering out loud here, mind you I have no authority to speak for the Church, but would this apply to every teaching of the Church regarding faith and morals? Such as the teaching on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and so on?]
Link:
Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist.
In the novitiate, we became friends with the novices of another Trappist monastery in France. For the Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist, our Father Master asked me to do a drawing and write a letter to our brothers. So I did an icon drawing of the Baptist, with a mounted paper icon for them to hang in the novitiate, and my letter was simply, “What did you go out to the desert to see?” [Luke 7:24] I expected the novices would just sign their names and we would send it off.
Fr. Richard looked at it, then looked at me quizzically, blurting out, “Aren’t you going to write more?”
And I replied, “Isn’t that enough for monks?”
Father answered, shaking his head; “Oh br. Christian! We are not Carmelites! Each of the novices shall write their own messages then! Sheesh!”
I guess you had to be there. Merry St. John’s-mass!
And being mindful of little things.
As I was leaving the house yesterday afternoon to go to adoration, I almost stepped upon a dead sparrow. I assumed he probably died protecting his nest in the bird box hanging in the tree branch above. My discovery seemed especially providential in as much as Sunday’s Gospel included this verse from Matthew:
“Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.” (Some translations offer, “consent“.) - Matthew 10:29
This seems pretty clear to me:
“To be in the state of grace you must embrace what the Church embraces, you have to embrace the faith of the Church, and you’re not free to receive the Eucharist if you don’t embrace the faith of the Church. This is St. Paul, this is St. Justin, this is the whole history of the Church.” - One must believe what the Church teaches to receive Holy Communion
[I expect this includes every teaching of the Church; such as the teaching on divorce and remarriage outside the Church, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and so on.]
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