Monday Musings

A few random thoughts and ponderings to start the week...

Today is the Eve of all Saint's Day (All Hallow's Eve = Halloween). But it is also the anniversary of a famous (or infamous) event in Protestant history. On this day nearly 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany, sparking the Protestant Revolt (a.k.a. Reformation). Here is a piece written in 1995 by Protestant theology professor Stanley Hauerwas on the theme of "Reformation Day," as this day is called. It is a refreshing re-evaluation of the Reformation that boarders on "Catholic" in its approach.

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Sometimes when you hear of someone else's tragedy it reminds you of how lucky you are, and how insignificant your own problems are. I had a moment like that today.

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When I started doing these Monday Musings posts, I needed some way to separate each independent thought. So I always put three crosses + between each of thought. The crosses are separated by eight spaces. The three crosses represent the Trinity but also faith, hope, and love. The eight spaces are to symbolize joy and celebration, as in an "octave" celebration on the Liturgical calendar.

Maybe by doing this I'm over-thinking things a bit, but I like to do things with a purpose, and it seemed a fitting element to added to this blog. For Catholics, symbolism is a very important part of our faith, and I like utilizing that idea whenever an opportunity arises.

This Week's Headlines

 As another week comes to an end, this is your chance to top off your glass with a final helping of news, current events, and just plain interesting stuff that may not have made into the mainstream media. A chance to linger for a few more moments before we close the door on the week. Below are some links to articles, blogs, and miscellaneous happenings that caught my eye over the past few days. Sample what you like - I'll serve up more next Friday...

Can we hope that all men be saved? - "In any case, we cannot trust the speculations of the modern theologians, we must trust in the promise of Christ. And he never promised that all would be saved, he only said that we will be saved if we continue to follow him."

Reformation Day – and What Led Me To Back to Catholicism - "Although I am forever indebted to my Evangelical brethren for instilling and nurturing in me a deep love of Scripture, it was that love that eventually led me to the Church that had the authority to distinguish Scripture from other things."

Mea Culpa - "The new Confiteo is a refreshing antidote to the victim-entitlement poison. I beat my breast and say, 'My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault' and as I do I take responsibility for myself in a most solemn threefold vow of acknowledgement."

Government Greed Needs an 'Occupation' Too - "Solutions can be found not in centralized power and burdensome regulation, which facilitate and reward government greed, but in framing sensible laws and reinvigorating a culture of virtue in business and government alike."

The New Vatican Document on Finance: Right Diagnosis, Deadly Cure - "The Vatican seems to be growing in intellectual sophistication over worldly affairs. Now it gets economic matters half right. Sadly, being half right on something this important can lead to permanent calamity." Also this piece, and others below...

On Going the Way of World Government - "If the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is trying to make the Catholic Church sound as if she’s living in a fantasy world or trying to portray Catholic social teaching as completely irrelevant to real world problems, I’d say, 'Mission accomplished.'"

Just How "Major" Was Monday's Finance Document? - "...the document does not represent the Church’s teaching authority or Magisterium—at least the document as a whole does not. (It does contain quotations from other documents which do carry magisterial authority, and those passages carry the same authority as they had in their original context.)"

The new “white paper” from the Pont. Council Justice and Peace. [Fr. Z's rant] "...thanks be to God this 'white paper' (I won’t dignify it with 'document') doesn’t form part of the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium."

Catholics, Finance, and the Perils of Conventional Wisdom - "For a church with a long tradition of thinking seriously about finance centuries before anyone had ever heard of John Maynard Keynes or Friedrich Hayek, we can surely do better."

The PCJP’s Vision of Polity: The Ideal vs. the Real - "This to me is the great failure of the document: It calls for an approach which is likely to be sensible only in an ideal world, and which is fraught with danger everywhere else."

Spare us from Vatican economic analysts - "...while economists are learning from the Vatican, perhaps the Vatican might learn a few lessons from economic analysts."

Profits Are For People - "The pursuit of profits forces producers to be attentive to the will of their customers, simply because the customer of, say, a supermarket can fire it on the spot by taking his business elsewhere."

Assisi Gives an Encore. But Revised and Corrected - "As a cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger did not participate in the encounter of Assisi in 1986. He never criticized it in public, but his absence was interpreted as a distancing of himself from the ambiguities that the initiative unquestionably produced, inside and outside of the Catholic Church."

Pepsi Shareholders Demand It Stop Using Aborted Fetal Cells - "As recently as May, Pepsi ignored concerns and criticism from dozens of pro-life groups and tens of thousands of pro-life people who voiced their opposition to PepsiCo contracting with biotech company Senomyx even after it was found to be testing their food additives using fetal cells from abortions."

Why It Matters that Kate Middleton Can Be Catholic Now  - "The change in the royal succession laws is good, in that it gets a blatantly anti-Catholic law off the books, and one that was causing heartburn as recently as 2007, with Blair's conversion.  But the sad reality is that this change is possible simply because religion of all sorts - Anglicanism, Catholicism, or theism in general - no longer seems to matter to the United Kingdom in the way that it once did."

The unintended consequences of socialist architecture - Opposition to post-war architecture tends to focus on aesthetic concerns... But its mostly deeply pernicious effect is surely the way in which it has affected people’s behaviour..."

Quote of the Week

"Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin Mary too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did. If anyone does not wish to have Mary Immaculate for his mother, he will not have Christ for his brother."

- St. Maximilian Kolbe

Monday Musings

A few random thoughts and ponderings to start the week...

I really do plan on writing more soon...but not this week. Kids are on fall break and I have some time off from work. I feel like being lazy, not writing.

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At our parish we've been trying some new musical settings for the new translation of the Mass. I must say, they are mediocre. Not that they are bad, per se, but they just sound like a re-hash of some of the same stuff we've heard before. Maybe some simple chant is all that's called for.

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I ordered a new Missal in preparation for the new translation. It is currently on back-order. When I receive it and get a chance to use it, I'll make a comment or two about the particular missal I bought. Different publication houses organize the contents differently. I didn't really look into the details of the missal I bought (I purchased it based on price and availability, so I know next-to-nothing about how the text is laid out); I'm anxious to see how I like using it.

This Week's Headlines

As another week comes to an end, this is your chance to top off your glass with a final helping of news, current events, and just plain interesting stuff that may not have made into the mainstream media. A chance to linger for a few more moments before we close the door on the week. Below are some links to articles, blogs, and miscellaneous happenings that caught my eye over the past few days. Sample what you like - I'll serve up more next Friday...

  
Heresy Gets Things Done - "Heresies have always been simpler and more persuasive than nuanced orthodox answers. Orthodoxy, like reality, is tediously complex when you try to account for all the details. Like math, it’s hard. Like surgery, it’s work..."

2012 is the “Year of Faith”…What Does It  Mean? - "According to Pope Benedict XVI, the 'Year of Faith' will officially begin on October 11, 2012 and will last until November 24, 2013."

Are the Gospels Myth? - "Christianity, more than any other religion, is rooted in history and makes strong—even shocking—claims about historical events, most notably that God became man and dwelt among us."

Does the Bible Prohibit Religious Images? - "Now, obviously, Protestants today aren't roving around destroying Catholic art. But iconoclasm has ongoing negative impacts."

 

Is Religion Relevant - "The problem with trendy vestments, and any other attempt to make the faith 'relevant' is that it is immediately out of date."

 

Are You a Nice Christian? - "Fact is, we don't know if they are or not, but we can see what they believe and how they behave and make some tentative judgements."

Pro-Lifers Urgently Need to Engage in the SEO War - [SEO = search engine optimization] "There needs to be a concerted effort in the pro-life movement to get our websites do better in online search results."

Evangelizing the Self-Satisfied Secularist - "It is not a very effective strategy for believers to tell the self-satisfied secularist that he is really unsatisfied, just not aware of it. It is far better to appeal to the unstable nature of human satisfaction, and the consequent human tendency to always yearn for more, even when we feel satisfied."

Rick Santorum: Disabled Children Have So Much to Teach Us - "As Santorum said this week, 'If it’s (the pro-life movement’s) not successful, we will lose the soul of the country.'"

John Paul II will soon be a saint  - "The second miracle attributed to the Blessed John Paul II, must be recognised by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on behalf of the deceased pope. The dossier of miracles attributed to Karol Wojtyla is constantly being updated with new testimonies."

Robert Downey, Jr. Asks Hollywood to Forgive Mel Gibson - "I would ask that you join me...in forgiving my friend his trespasses and offering him the same clean slate you have me, allowing him to continue his great and ongoing contribution to our collective art without shame."

Quote of the Week

"There is one God and one Christ, and one Church, and one chair founded on Peter by the word of the Lord. It is not possible to set up another altar or for there to be another priesthood besides that one altar and that one priesthood. Whoever has gathered elsewhere is scattering."

- St. Cyprian

Monday Musings

A few random thoughts and ponderings to start the week...

I've been a lazy blogger lately... I have no excuse. Hopefully, as the weather cools off and I spend more time inside, I'll have more time to write.

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I had a conversation recently about religion and politics. Someone suggested the faith should not be involved in people's political decision making because it violates the separation of church and state. There are many arguments against this fallacy, but during the course of our conversation I proposed the following:

There is no way to separate “faith” from political decision-making, because for most Americans there is no way to separate “faith” from “values/morality”. Our laws are by their very nature "moral" - through the power of "law" society imposes moral order. Since most people are religious or subscribe to some faith, it would be unfair to tell these religious people that they must make their value-decisions (when voting for a candidate or a ballot initiative, etc.) without utilizing their faith…you are telling people to jettison a part of who they are if they want to engage in politics. This has never been the case in American history…in fact I would argue that belief in a Creator is a foundational principle in this country.

Now certainly we cannot legislate *theology* or *doctrine*; we cannot establish a national *church*. I would submit to you that that what was meant by “separation of church and state” is that our government cannot dictate religious belief or require its citizens to subscribe to a particular faith. Specifically it means that the State (our government) is to remain separated from the Church (ecclesial bodies). And so we must consider that while “church and state” must remain separate, there can never be a separation of “faith and politics” nor did the Framers intend any such separation.