Father George Rutler: "Take Up Your Cross"

Fr. George W. Rutler

In the tumultuous eleventh century, seven monks including Saint Bruno formed the Carthusian order, dedicated to prayer for the serenity of souls, taking as their motto: “Stat crux dum volvitur orbis” — the Cross stands as the world spins.

September’s Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross would seem a curiosity, were it not that Christ used that most cruel machine of death to conquer death. Saint Peter was uncomprehending when his beloved Master said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Peter “took Jesus aside” and told him that this must never be, only to be admonished that he was thinking not like God but as a limited human being. When Jesus rose from the dead, he “took Peter aside” and told him that he would go where he did not expect. Not long afterwards, Peter hung on a cross in Rome. To the astonishment of men intent on stretching out their dreary lifespans as long as they could, Peter died gladly.

Mrs. Fanny Crosby wrote more than 8,000 hymns, including in 1894 “Keep Thou My Way.” One of its lines was “gladly the Cross I’ll bear.” Inevitably that led to choirboys calling it “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear.” Her story, though, was not a joke. She was blind all of her ninety-five years and was a student and teacher at the New York Institute for the Blind right here in our parish on Ninth Avenue and 34th Street. She told one of her fellow teachers, the future President Grover Cleveland: “If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow, I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.” Her small tombstone is engraved: “Aunt Fanny: She hath done what she could.”

Saint John Vianney said, “The worst cross is not to have a cross.” A current “televangelist” has made many millions of dollars preaching a “Prosperity Gospel” in an arena where the cross is absent. His wife summed up their Gospel: “When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God, really. You’re doing it for yourself because that’s what makes God happy.” These two newly rich people have now begun a cosmetics business, but Prosperity Theology itself is nothing more than cosmetic. At Holy Mass, the celebrant says: “Lift up your hearts,” not “Lift up your faces.”

Father Rutler’s book, He Spoke to Us – Discerning God's Will in People and Events, is now available in paperback through Ignatius Press.

Father Rutler’s book, The Stories of Hymns – The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns, is available through Sophia Institute Press (Paperback or eBook) and Amazon (Paperback or Kindle).

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A Message from The Queen Following the Floods Caused by Hurricane Harvey

 

I was deeply saddened to learn of the loss of life and the devastation following the recent terrible floods caused by Hurricane Harvey.

Prince Philip and I send our sincere condolences to the victims of this disaster, to those who have lost loved ones, and to those who have seen their homes and property destroyed. My thoughts and prayers are with those affected.

ELIZABETH R.

The Church Fathers - Gregorian Chant - Kyrie Eleison

A Protestant Pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Walsingham

Pope Leo XIII memorably stated that when England returns to Walsingham, Our Lady would return to England.

 
In the east of England lies its National Marian Shrine, Walsingham. From the Middle Ages it was a place of pilgrimage until Henry VIII suppressed the shrine. Forgotten for centuries, it was restored in the 20^th Century. Today, it is a place of pilgrimage for Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox Christians.

Walsingham boasts not one shrine but two – Catholic and Anglican. Despite ecumenical relations, each shrine, needless to say, attracts different pilgrims. It is the Anglican presence, however, which attracts the most vociferous opposition. A number come each year to protest. They must do so; after all, they are Protestants.

Each May sees the occasion for this: the annual Anglican pilgrimage. In years gone by, this act of piety attracted 15,000 souls. Today that number is less than a third. Nevertheless, since the early 1970s, the pilgrimage has also attracted a counter-demonstration. Around fifty people gather at the site of the village pump, having travelled from far and wide, some from East Anglia, others from Lancashire, as well as several from Ulster.

As the banners are unfurled, pleasantries are exchanged between those assembling. Some have been coming to demonstrate for decades. Most know each other; there is a sense of a common cause among this band, no doubt sharpened by the knowledge that they are heavily outnumbered. Their banners have Biblical tracts emblazoned upon them of the type that one would expect. Many of the protestors clutch large, black Bibles in their hands. Only the King James Version is in evidence, however. Whatever they may say about Tradition and Scripture, these Protestants have their own traditions too.

Read more at National Catholic Register >>

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Father Rutler: The Transfiguration of Our Lord

Father George W. Rutler

The Transfiguration of our Lord did not change him into another form of nature. After the event he was the same man taking the apostles down the mountain as he was when he took them up. As for us, said St. Thomas Aquinas: “Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.” Christ was already perfect, and the light that transfigured him was a portent of the power that can glorify human creatures.

This confounds the Gnostic mistake of treating nature as an evil construct, destructive of the human spirit that struggles to be free of it. That perennial heresy is now a fashion in the form of gender politics. “Transgender” is a misnomer. Gender pertains to grammar and not biology: for instance, in French a pen is feminine and a pencil is masculine, but the pen is not a woman and the pencil is not a man. A Gnostic agenda treats the body as though it were merely an irrelevant noun that can be changed to what it is not. This is mutilation and not transfiguration. Mutilations are “against the moral law” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2297). The Second Vatican Council rejected Gnostic dualism: “Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity…he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.” (CCC, n. 364) Imaginary redefinition of the self has widely become a political “right” and sane rejection of that is called “hate speech.” Where is George Orwell?

The Johns Hopkins psychiatrist, Dr. Paul McHugh explains that sex change is “biologically impossible” and “people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.” Confusing children about their identity comes “close to child abuse.”

Insinuating into the Armed Forces people with such psychological problems harms them and the national defense. It was done as a political act, and to repeal that is simply a nod to reality. Taxpayer dollars could pay the Pentagon at least $1.3 billion in the next ten years for “reassignment surgery.” Nearly four hundred medical conditions can disqualify people from military service, and identity confusion is a serious one. An illness, even a mental one, is not a sin, for an illness is a material disorder, while a sin is a moral disorder. The Greek word for sin, hamartia, means missing the bull’s eye on a target. It is a sin try to move the bull’s eye, pretending that one has not missed the mark, but nature has a way of staying constant.

Current headlines tell of huge military parades in China, naval displays in Russia, and missile launches in the rogue state of North Korea. They would very much like to see more Gnostic dreaming in our armed forces. But fantasy is not the strategy that wins peace among nations or peace of soul.

Father Rutler’s book, He Spoke to Us – Discerning God's Will in People and Events, is now available in paperback through Ignatius Press.

Father Rutler’s book, The Stories of Hymns – The History Behind 100 of Christianity’s Greatest Hymns, is available through Sophia Institute Press (Paperback or eBook) and Amazon (Paperback or Kindle).