Sunday, June 18, 2017
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Father George Rutler: Three in One and One in Three
The Feast of the Holy Trinity follows Pentecost
because it is only by the inspiration of the Third Person of
the Trinity, who leads into all truth, that the mystery of
the Trinity can be known. Human intelligence needs
God’s help to apprehend the inner reality of God.
Certainly, human reason can employ natural analysis to some
extent to describe God in terms of causality and motion and
goodness. Saint Anselm, who models the universality of
Christendom by being both an Italian and an Archbishop of
Canterbury, said that “God is that, than which nothing
greater can be conceived.”
A house is a house because it houses. But what
is in the house is known only by entering it. Since
creatures cannot enter the Creator, he makes himself known
by coming into his creation. “No one has seen God at
any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father, he has declared him” (John 1:18).
Had we invented the Trinitarian formula, it
would be only a notion instead of a fact. There are just
three choices: to acknowledge what God himself has declared,
to deny it completely, or to change it to what makes sense
without God’s help. That is why most heresies are
rooted in mistakes about the Three in One and One in
Three.
Unitarianism, for example, is based on a
Socinian heresy. Mormonism is an exotic version of the Arian
heresy. Islam has its roots in the Nestorian heresy. All
three reject the Incarnation and the Trinity but selectively
adopt other elements of Christianity. Like Hilaire Belloc in
modern times, Dante portrayed Mohammed not as a founder of a
religion but simply as a hugely persuasive heretic, albeit
persuading most of the time with a sword rather than
dialectic. These religions, however, are not categorically
Christian heresies since “Heresy is the obstinate
post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed
with divine and catholic faith . . .” (Catechism,
2089). Only someone who has been baptized can be an
actual heretic.
Cultures are shaped by cult: that is, the way
people live depends on what they worship or refuse to
worship. A culture that is hostile to the Holy Trinity spins
out of control. In 1919, William Butler Yeats looked on the
mess of his world after the Great
War:
Things fall apart;
the centre cannot
hold;
Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world . .
.
That is the chaotic decay of human
creatures ignorant of their Triune God. “The best lack
all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate
intensity.” But to worship the “Holy, Holy,
Holy” God as the center and source of reality is to
confound anarchy: “For in Him all things were created,
things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible . .
. He is before all things, and in him all things hold
together” (Colossians 1:16-17).
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).
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
President Reagan's Address on the Fortieth Anniversary of D-Day
Yesterday was the anniversary of President Reagan's death. Today is the seventy-third anniversary of D-Day. Honor both by watching this great speech.
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Profile: Pro-life Catholic Andrew Scheer Elected Canadian Conservative Leader
Andrew Scheer, newly elected leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (Getty images)
Scheer describes himself as pro-life and says he will allow backbench MPs to bring forward legislation on the issue
Andrew Scheer narrowly won the leadership with 51 per cent of the vote on the final ballot, defeating Maxime Bernier.
Earlier this month, he sent a message the Canadian March for Life, saying: “As someone who is pro-life, I thank each and every one of you for being here today at the seat of our government to make your views known.
“Where Justin Trudeau believes that in order to stand as a Liberal candidate you must be pro-choice, I am proud to be running for leader of the Conservative Party to become a prime minister under whom all conservatives would be welcome in my caucus.”
Read more at Catholic Herald >>
Monday, May 29, 2017
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Allen observed (near the end of a column mostly devoted to Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti) that during his May 27 visit to Genoa, the Pontiff would be hosted by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the outgoing president of the Italian episcopal conference, who was regarded as a close ally of Pope Benedict XVI. Allen reasoned that if the Pope “appears gracious and respectful, finding occasions to voice appreciation for Bagnasco’s contributions, then the take-away may be that Francis is not so much trying to reverse what came before but to round it out.” Whereas if the Pope ignored the cardinal, that “may accent the impression in some quarters that Francis is trying to ‘roll back’ the legacy of his predecessors.”
So what happened?
Here, the Vatican summaries provided by the Vatican press office, are the complimentary things the Pope said about Cardinal Bagnasco during his day in Genoa:
...
...
[crickets]
...
...
It wasn’t for lack of an opportunity. When Pope Francis visited the Ilva factory, a manager asked him a question, mentioning that “we are encouraged by our archbishop Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco,” and asking the Pontiff for “a word of closeness.” The Holy Father gave a 1,200-word reply. Not one of those words was “Bagnasco.”
If Allen’s test was valid, the results were crystal clear.