There is no doubt, I think, in anyone’s mind that persecution from the World is simply something that Christians are going to have to deal with in every time and place until the end of this world. “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” was our Lord’s promise at the Last Supper, after all! As unpleasant and odious as this is, it is no intrinsic difficulty to Christian piety. Indeed, our Lord’s example and the cult of the martyrs give us aid, comfort, and guidance in coping with, contextualizing, and even — for the holy — loving persecution.

What I’m curious about is what persecution from within the Church does to piety. Can it be compared with standard extra-Ecclesiastical persecution? And how should we respond to it? Continue reading

Having just had such a scintillating discussion of the moral value of poverty, I thought it might be interesting to consider what position a Catholic ought to take on slavery. I expect our readers may be somewhat divided on the relevant moral questions, so I might as well put my cards on the table from the beginning. First of all, I think it’s perfectly clear that slavery as it existed in the American South before the Civil War is morally indefensible. But secondly, I think that slavery probably can be defended under some circumstances.
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This guy I know from college, a conservative Novus Ordo Catholic, occasionally forwards articles on religious and political matters to a list of friends and acquaintances. Usually, these emails deal with George Bush, geopolitics, what Catholics purportedly should think about military interventions in the Middle East, etc. This time, the subject of the email was “trading my bombastry for pedantry.” The content was just a forwarded article entitled “How (Catholic) Traditionalists and Modernists Are Alike” by Dr. Jeff Mirus. I recommend you read the article before you read my reply below. Continue reading

I’ve never really been confident that eating out on Sundays is a good thing to do. I’ve heard, however, from at least two F.S.S.P. priests that it’s all right. I think that the reasoning is supposed to be something like this: (1) people have to eat; (2) a tavern or other eatery does what people would normally do for themselves on Sundays in terms of providing the basic food stuffs; (3) and they can’t do it for themselves on some given occasion for whatever reason. If these are really the ideas behind the claim, I don’t have a problem with them, so much as with the frequency with which this “emergency” dining is needed. “Clara,” I say, “I’m about to die of hunger, please pull over the car – ah, look! there’s a Texas Roadhouse!” Then after the Texas Roadhouse has done good business by us, Franciscus has an emergency hunger attack and we pull off the highway a couple miles down the road for Krispy Kreme. Sundays are feast days after all!

We routinely spend four hours in the car on Sundays, and I’m the last person who would want to part from the Roadhouse, Don Pablo’s, and Krispy Kreme. But even we know that we don’t absolutely need these places; we could, for example, make sandwiches and bring them with us; and in the olden days, when there wasn’t a plethora of national chains to cater to our needs 24-7, this is probably what we would have done. Or, better yet, we would have eaten with one of the families in the parish.

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It was my junior year in public high school when Y2K swept by, banishing, in particular, the fevered talk of technological doom so peculiar to those days. I was a teenager then, and smirking came more easily than it does now. I must admit, however, that despite my contempt for popular currents of opinion, I used to wish that just one of the disasters might come true. Anything to bring real life one step closer to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, ya know…

Anyways, it was not long after these secret hopes fizzled that I espied a book left out for free on a table in our town library. The title, in serious red, white, and black, was “Spiritual Survival During the Y2K Crisis.” Thinking on what a nugget of cultural history I had found, I pocketed the book, and I’ve kept it ever since. Much cheer has it brought me, when I dredge it out, and read things like this:
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Many remember and adore Padre Pio for being a hardliner. Traditionalists tout Padre Pio’s seeming frustration with Vatican II (“For pity’s sake, end the Council quickly.”). Anti-trads focus upon his humble obedience and claim that he prophesied Archbishop Lefebvre’s fate (“You will tear apart the community of faithful, oppose the will of your superiors, and even go against the orders of the pope himself…”).

Whatever St. Pio’s actual thoughts on Vatican II, his harsh attitude towards unrelenting sinners is refreshing in today’s moral climate. But rather than highlight his reputed sternness, I will share some tender stories epitomizing the alter Christus facet of his life. Padre Pio was unquestionably, another Christ.

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Apparently it’s been raging for quite some time, but I just heard about it: the controversy of the homosexual sheep. A researcher named Charles Roselli, from the Oregon Health and Science University, has been working to discover why about 8% of rams appear to be gay (that is, to prefer the company of other rams and to that of ewes.) Both PETA and a wide variety of gay/lesbian groups started a firestorm of criticism, and sent floods of hate mail to Roselli. Why are they so upset? They imagine, against Roselli’s protests, that he might be attempting to discover the cause of homosexuality so that homosexual human beings could be diagnosed and, possibly, changed.
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Lately, there have been a handful of North American Bishop appointments that look promising: Dallas, Texas’s new Bishop, Kevin Farrell, seems solid, as does Toronto’s new Archbishop, Thomas Collins (The latter made an impression at our parish by hopping a street car and showing up, unannounced, for dinner at the Toronto Oratory, with the intent of meeting the Fathers, particularly Fr. Robinson, the Oratory’s founder, whose books the new Archbishop knew and liked).

But in some ways these big Sees, though very important, are a poor guide to how a Benedictine Episcopate will look. After all, these lateral moves are taking well-established “talent” and just relocating it — we’re glad to see when the Pope puts a good guy in, but his options are rather limited. Not so when it comes to the appointment of Bishops in smaller Sees, where the new Bishop will often be making the move from the Priesthood to the Episcopate for the first time. It’s here that we may be able to glean the most about how much care the Pope’s team is taking with its appointments. If so, then the appointment of Mgr. Glen Provost as Bishop of Lake Charles, LA, should be received as very good news for us all!

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I recently finished reading (okay, listening to) a recently released book and I thought it might be worth writing up a review for the benefit of our readers. It isn’t a Catholic book really, but I can make up for that by writing a Catholic review of it. I’ve just discovered that it is also (cringe) a Starbucks book and (double cringe) an Oprah Winfrey selection. Sorry about that. I swear it’s not at all like me to be so trendy; I almost never read new books. This one, though, was purchased by my brother on the Audiobook account that we both share. Part of the fun of sharing an Audiobook account is being able to listen to some of the same books and then talk about them together, and since it was relatively short anyway I thought I’d give it a shot. The book is A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah. Beah was a soldier for the government of Sierra Leone between the years of ’93 and ’95. These are his memoirs of his experiences in his country’s civil war. He is currently 26 years old – around the same age as the members of the Cornell Society for a Good Time.
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One of the dearest of our Society’s friends, a perhaps future priest in the FSSP, was known among us as one who could, with remarkable reliability, tell true stories that were so incredible that one could not believe them. Iosephus, in particular, was prone to exclaim, “naw, that can’t be true,” upon the hearing of these tales. Such a story is that of Our Lady of the Smile, which title of our Lady this improbable young man inserted into one of the spontaneous Litanies to our Lady that he was wont to generate at the close of any recitation of the Rosary. This one, too, was disbelieved: but sure enough, Our Lady of the Smile does exist! It refers to the statue of our Lady that smiled on St. Therese when she was healed. There are even prayers composed to our Lady under this title. And so, vindication once again for our friend!