Homesick No More

I’m done. Done done done making excuses for Marian devotion. Other than a small handful of instances of outright, self-proclaimed heresy or syncretism, devotion to Our Lady leads only to devotion to Our Lord.

The pet peeve in question is when Orthodox in particular try to claim, in ecumenical dialog, that unlike the Catholics, they have Marian devotion in perspective. That those Catholics, off the rails as we all know they are, have just taken Marian devotion to ends the early Church never did.

Have those Orthodox ever read, much less sung, their own Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos? It contains such beautiful lines as:

I don’t have any problem with any of these, all these titles and accolades are due to the Theotokos because and only because she bore our Lord, but I do have a problem with the people who wrote these things accusing Catholics of overwrought devotion to Our Lady.

Give me a break.

I should’ve started drinking these two years ago when the O.C. told me to, but we’re trying to make up for lost time here.

I’m sure everyone else is drinking them, they’re so hot right now, but in case you’re not, here’s how to make the perfect summer cocktail

Ingredients:

1/2 Lime

4 oz. light rum

2 oz. simple syrup

12 mint leaves

Club soda

Cut the 1/2 of a lime into 4 chunks. Put the chunks in the bottom of a pint glass with the mint leaves.

Next you have to “muddle” the mint and limes. Essentially this is crushing them up together. This juices the lime and releases the oil from the mint leaves. There’s a tool called a muddler that’s a long handled thing with a blunt bottom. If you have a pestel and mortar, the pestel will do (if it’s long enough). If not, I’m told the skinny end of a wooden spoon works ok as well. Don’t muddle too hard or too long or you’ll start getting bitter flavor out of your mint.

Once you’ve muddled, add the rum and the simple syrup* and fill the glass with ice. Shake vigorously. Fill the glass almost to the top with club soda. Be refreshed.

*Simple syrup is really easy to make. Just boil a cup of water, add a cup of sugar, let it boil for a couple minutes, let it cool. That’s it.

If you started saying the Novus Ordo Missae the right direction, a whole host of my problems with it would just disappear. I’m just saying.

Possibly. This is unbelievable. The entire plays and poems of Shakespeare in 38 hardback volumes for $60 including shipping. Everyone should do it. Right now. Go. Do it.

Thanks to Remy for the tip!

Went to South Dakota last week to do a Face the Truth Tour which was great fun. Stopped Mt. Rushmore cause you have to if you go to South Dakota, right? Kind of underwhelming, truth be told, but neat to see. If you go, put the quarter in the binoculars for a closer look. The detail is much more impressive than the display itself. I’ll try to post more about the trip later. For now, enjoy the Pro-Life Action League Players’ take on an old favorite:

So the Scriptures tell us that the Saints will rule in Heaven with Jesus, right?

Has anyone, I’m looking at Catholics here but open to input from all sectors, thought of this idea in relation to the Catholic understanding of the Communion of Saints? Is part of this ruling the intercessory role that the Saints fill for us on earth?

I mean, how does Christ rule? Christ’s reign, from what Sacred Scripture tells us, consists largely of intercession and standing continually before the Father as a Lamb Slain. That being the case, what would we expect the ruling-with-Christ that the Saints have been promised to look like other than an imitation of His own style of ruling?

Makes a bit more sense of the whole Patron Saint idea in my mind. Thoughts?

One of the biggest draws to Catholicism for me was the ability the Catholic Church has to actually and authoritatively decide doctrinal questions.

There has been dispute about the meaning of Sacred Scripture and the Deposit of Faith likely since they were first given to us. The Catholic Church teaches that, just like when the first Bishops of the Church gathered at the Council of Jerusalem and argued out a dispute and promulgated their decision as inspired by the Holy Spirit, so all other Ecumenical Councils of the Church are under the same protection of the Holy Spirit from error.

Thus, when there are disputes, we have faith that an answer actually can be reached. No agreeing to disagree, we can know the actual truth by the gift of the Holy Spirit (whom Jesus promised would lead the Church into all truth).

So how can ecclesial communities without recourse to the Magesterium of the Catholic Church come to such determinations? Well, they can’t with infallible authority, but the answer I’ve most often heard from protestants is something like the following quote from Anglican of note John Stott:

“Whenever equally biblical Christians, who are equally anxious to understand the teaching of Scripture and to submit to its authority, reach different conclusions, we should deduce that evidently Scripture is not crystal clear in this matter, and therefore we can afford to give one another liberty.”

It’s pretty much a rehashing of the old “In essentials, unity, in non-essentials, liberty, in all things, unity” idea most evangelicals are familiar with. Here’s my question, with the rising tide of reformed folk, mostly FV, but some of these “evangelical catholic” or “reformed catholic” types, taking a much higher view of things like Christ’s presence in the Eucharist it seems there is a difficult situation.

If you believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ (though not in the way Catholics understand it) using Calvin’s construction about Jesus’ body and blood being united to the elements by the Holy Spirit or something like it, and your baptist friend adamantly denies this, saying that the Eucharist is a memorial and nothing more, according to this construction of how to deal with competing interpretations of Scripture, you have two choices:

1. Either you or your baptist friend are not “equally anxious to understand the teaching of Scripture and to submit to its authority”,
   or
2. Scripture is not crystal clear in this matter, and therefore we can afford to give one another liberty

Seems like something as important as the Eucharist can’t possibly be something like, say, whether or not one chooses to drink alcohol or not, a matter of conscience and Christian liberty. Please God don’t let it be that!

But let’s put an even finer point on it, it would not be hard at all these days to find a Christian who in almost every respect believes just as a reformed Christian would, but would say that it’s just fine for homosexuals to remain in a loving, committed, monogamous homosexual relationship. He would claim to be “anxious to understand the teaching of Scripture and to submit to its authority” just like you. You’re just coming to different conclusions. What gives you the authority to call him the heretic?

Again, you either have to claim that he’s disingenuous in his desire to understand and submit to Sacred Scripture, or say this is a non-essential in which you must extend liberty.

The only third way I can see is to say that he’s just not as smart as you and if he was he’d see it the way you do. But, of course, he could claim that you’re just not as enlightened as him and if you were you’d see it his way, and the whole line of argument seems to violate the “in all things charity” part of the axiom.

So what’s the good word on the Good Word? How do you find actual truth in disagreements? Is it possible? If not, do you feel like that’s a problem?

Dismantling the old blog, this was the only post I felt like was worth saving:

Thursday, September 01, 2005
Jesus Was Here

When the Romans invaded Jerusalem in 70 A.D., it was the final nail in the coffin of the Old Covenant. It was the first kingly act of Jesus as King of Kings. It was the final judgement on the Jews for their unfaithfulness to Jehovah. At the end of the seige of Jerusalem, when the Jews were finally broken and out of food, the Romans began to crucify the Jews en masse outside the city walls. So many crosses, to hear the historians tell it, that there was no more room for crosses and no trees left to make them anyway.

So maybe everyone realized this before, but that means that at this crossroads of history, Jerusalem was surrounded with crosses. The New Covenant was born at the death and ressurection of Christ. Three crosses outside Jerusalem. Now Christ comes back to judge Jerusalem with a rod of iron. Now there are a thousand crosses.

What are Christians but cross-bearers? Put-to-death-and-raised-again-ones. Giving-your-life-for-others-ones. First there were three who gave their lives to each other, three who died to themselves, three who took up their crosses. Now there are thousands.

It was forty years, some say to the week, from Christ’s crucifixion to the destruction of Jerusalem. Forty years is a long time. Forty years to test the faith of the Jews in the desert, to weed out the unfaithful. Forty days to purify Jonah in the belly of the whale. Forty days to test Jesus in the wilderness. Forty years to test the gospel. Forty years to purify the cross-bearers. Forty years to see if the first cross was in vain. But the Word of God never goes out and comes back void. Crosses multiplied. Cross bearers multiplied. The gospel was utterly vindicated in 70 A.D.

God’s unfaithful people were put to death on the symbol of His love. The Romans, unbeknownst to them, littered the landscape with the symbol that would overthrow their empire. Jesus left the graffitti of a thousand crosses on the walls of His city. Who can doubt that this was the work of the new king? He may as well have done that trick where He writes on the wall with the disembodied hand again. “Jesus was here”

UPDATE: Apparently this chick is claiming that it was not a hoax and Yale is only claiming that to distance themselves from the press backlash. Yale, on the other hand, claims that it is performance art and that her denial is part of the performance. In fact, she told them that she would deny it. Go flippin’ figure.

So this turned out to be a big tasteless hoax. Girl at Yale claims her senior art project is this: she artificially inseminates herself and then proceeds to cause herself to miscarry (read: abort) many times, records the process on video and keeps all the blood and detritus, then makes an “art exhibit” with the video and blood and whatnot.

I still believe my post on my work blog stands, hoax or not.

An honest question for my protestant brothers:

There’s been a lot of talk on a certain set of blogs lately about the Calvinist view of the Eucharistic presence of Christ. I find it very interesting, largely because the way Calvin talks about Jesus in the Eucharist is not entirely un-Catholic. He seems very eager to have more than a spiritual presence, but still a sort of uniting of the bread and wine with Jesus rather than the elements becoming Jesus.

So, there’s a difference, though possibly not insurmountable. Of course, from a Catholic perspective, this is all moot since protestants don’t have priests. For the Catholic, it is absolutely required to have a priest to have the Eucharist. So we can talk all day about what who thinks the Eucharist is and how Christ is present but, as far as the Church is concerned, protestants are not actually celebrating the Eucharist.

My question is this, if three protestants are at home together with a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread and decide to celebrate the Eucharist, use the proper formulae of consecration, whatever you assume needs to be in order is in order, can they do it? Is it the Eucharist? Is a minister required or merely nice to have? If so, who defines what a minister is?

I hope I’m clear that I have no intention of backing protestants into a corner or eliciting a particular reaction. I realize the discussion on Evangelical Catholicity and suchlike is not really a discussion between Catholics and protestants, but until we resolve the difference we have about who can confect the sacrament, any talk between protestants and Catholics about the nature of Christ’s presence in the sacrament seems a bit vapid.