Very cool, I think, how the students at the Charterhouse School are known as “Carthusians” and the alumni as “Old Carthusians”. Amusing the silly word play of William Makepeace Thackeray in referring to his old school as the “Slaughterhouse” (e.g., in Vanity Fair). But another sad reminder in this school of the destruction wrought by the protestants at the time of their revolt, led in England by Henry VIII. I keep hoping that Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars will be released as an audio book. I’ve been given the impression that it’s an interesting read in light of the not altogether dissimilar happenings after the Second Oecumenical Council of the Vatican.

I certainly don’t have any illusions about the profound heights to which post-conciliar ecumenism can soar – one need only recall the Servant of God and now Venerable Karol Wojtyla kissing the Qu’ran (did the devil’s advocate mention that one?) – but this reciprocal candle lighting in New York City baffles me. I kinda sorta maybe see how Archbishop Dolan can stroll over to the local synagogue to light a candle in commemoration of an historical event in the life of Israel before the advent of Christ. But how does the rabbi return the visit by lighting one of those candles which anticipate the coming in the flesh of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? Shouldn’t Dolan have apprised him of this fact? Or if the rabbi allows himself to participate on the basis that he’s only helping the goyim commemorate a myth important to them, isn’t Dolan allowing our Faith to be misrepresented? I’d be interested to know the traditional stance of the Church vis-a-vis Hanukkah, but we certainly recognize the Maccabean martyrs. Or does Dolan know that this rabbi is secretly a Jew for Jesus? I guess it’s just another day in the life of coming to understand better the diverse faith communities among which we live.

It was not very long ago that I learned that Isabella of Castille, Queen of Spain, the Catholic, etc. is a Servant of God whose cause for canonization is open. It was, in fact, opened in Rome as recently as 1972. Can you imagine the furor that such a beatification would arouse? Iacobus and I were, accordingly, very happy to see the following from the recent interview with the new Prefect of the CDW, Cardinal CAÑIZARES LLOVERA:

Isabella was a woman of great faith, an exemplary wife, a queen with a unique apostolic zeal, a great Christian. She gave permission to Colombo to cross the ocean only on condition that his primary purpose was to evangelize the lands he might discover. I believe and hope that as soon as possible she rise to the honor of the altars. I confess that often as Archbishop of Granada, especially when I had some important problem to deal with, I would go to pray at the tomb of Isabella, which is there in the Cathedral, and I always felt I had been helped.

It was lovely to read Cardinal George’s remarks about Notre Dame’s decision to honor Barack Obama. Cardinal George both condemned Notre Dame’s decision and spoke slightingly of the USCCB, of which he’s currently the president. That’s a nice combination! I don’t suppose that he took himself to be disparaging the group, but he did remind us that in Catholic ecclesiology, there’s is no place for a so-called “conference of bishops”:

Cardinal George prefaced his remarks by noting that as USCCB president he does not have jurisdiction or authority over other bishops, but nonetheless has “some moral authority, without any kind of jurisdiction or any sort of real authority.”

How many ways can you say it? Continue reading

Since two of our authors participated in the program, from time to time we get emails from people looking for information about Fr. Reginald Foster’s summer Latin course in Rome. In this connection, I’m passing along an email from the Reggie listserve. Unfortunately, due to the slowness of Reggie’s recovery from various ailments, the course won’t take place this summer.

Romae in Italia vi Kal. Aprilis

Dear students and scholars interested in the Latin language and things,

As you can see the calendar has not favored our summer projects. A broken thigh followed by an infinity of complications both here and in the USA has totally impeded my recovery, so, in fact, I am many months late.

Some of my best friends and advisers have given me counsel to cancel the summer school this year. It is simply too late to calmly and intelligently organize the matter and the layout of summer school, which you know is extremely dear to me.
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Especially when I blog about things that I’m seeing in the Roman Breviary, I do wonder whether I haven’t written about them before – but no matter! If I have, I’ve forgotten, and I’ve certainly forgotten whether anyone has some insight to shed on the following remark of St. Ignatius of Antioch (via St. Jerome). In Book 1 of his commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jerome gives four reasons why it should have been the case that Mary was espoused when she conceived of the Holy Ghost. Jerome says that his fourth reason comes from Ignatius: “so that the birth might be hidden from the devil, who would think that Jesus had been born not of a virgin, but of a married woman.”
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Does it border on bad taste to write an absolutely hilarious article about that unfortunate Canadian who was cannabalized by another rider on the same bus? I kinda think it does, but Mark Steyn, as usual, makes all of the right points. Not for the first time, the people near the stabbing victim decided that it was better to high-tail it than to come to the dying man’s assistance. Contrast this with the actions of Liviu Lebrescu: “He was a 76-year old Holocaust survivor who was teaching a class at Virginia Tech one Monday morning in 2007 when gunshots were heard. He reacted immediately. He threw himself against the door and told his students to climb out the windows. He used his body as a barricade as long as he could, and was shot dead when the killer finally broke through.”

Which got me thinking: in this age of school shootings (they seem to be the plumpest of targets), is it prudent to take measures to be prepared in the event of such an incident? Of course, despite the sensation that these horrible events cause, they’re extremely rare; it would be like winning an awful lottery to find yourself at the center of one of them. But since Mark Steyn’s point is so often that individuals ought to take responsibility for themselves (and their helpless neighbors, as the occasion demands), is there anything that can reasonably be done to prepare for the unthinkable?
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I’m pleased to share with our readers an article which appears in the just mailed issue of The Remnant, an installment of Dr. John Rao’s regular column, A View From Rocco’s. His article concerns Pope Benedict XVI’s recent letter to the world’s bishops on the lifting of the decree of excommunication against the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X. You can find more of Dr. Rao’s writings here. The hyperlinks in the article are my own.

Habemus Papam!

“Es war einmal ein Kaiser”
(Joseph Roth, 1928)

Some years ago, Dr. Alice von Hildebrand told me an anecdote about her husband’s presence in the crowd in Rome at a canonization ceremony. I do not remember the saint concerned, but that really does not matter. The point of her story was that Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand was in the company of the great Church historian, Ludwig von Pastor, and that that very fine scholar displayed a face running with tears.
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I was frustrated today by the reaction of some Catholic commentators to the Holy Father’s remarks about the helpfulness of condoms in regard to AIDS. In particular, Damian Thompson was horrified by the idea that the Pope might really have said that condoms would exacerbate the problem of AIDS in Africa. Not that Mr. Thompson thinks that we should airdrop condoms into Africa. Rather, we should stick, he thinks, to the moral argument and not involve ourselves in pseudoscience. The pseudoscience, in this case, is that the AIDS virus can somehow jump through the rubber.

But the Pope was absolutely right to have said what he did: it is quite reasonable to think that condoms would exacerbate the problem. Now to make such a claim, as we saw from the world’s reaction yesterday, sends people into a frenzy. They appear to understand the Pope’s words in the following way. The Pope was claiming that if a given couple has sex with a correctly used condom they are more likely to pass the AIDS virus between them than if they had sex without a condom. Such a claim is, of course, patently absurd and it is ridiculous to think that the Pope had such a claim in mind.
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To honor St. Patrick I hope that it’s not too late to share this fine line which I found on the title page of the Irish Ecclesiastical Record:

Ut Christiani, ita et Romani sitis.

This is ex dictis Sancti Patricii, Book of Armagh, folio 9. “As you are Christians, so ought you also to be Romans.”

This is amazing; from the old old Roman Breviary: “Ajunt enim, íntegrum quotídie Psaltérium, una cum Cánticis et Hymnis ducentísque oratiónibus, consuevísse recitáre, tercénties per dies síngulos fléxis génibus Deum adoráre, ac in quálibet Hora diéi canónica cénties se crucis signo muníre.” “They say that it was his custom to repeat every day the whole Book of Psalms, together with canticles and hymns, and two hundred prayers; that he bent his knees to God in worship three hundred times every day, and that he made on himself the sign of the Cross an hundred times at each of the seven canonical hours.”