Saint Louis Catholic: Triumphalism of the Cross?

Saint Louis Catholic: Triumphalism of the Cross?: This Saturday is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross , which also commemorates the dedication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchr...

IN CRUCE SALUS

"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world."   Galatians 6:14



Traditionally, Catholics have had crucifixes placed  in a prominent place in their homes as a constant reminder of the great price through which our salvation was wrought. In historically Catholic areas of Europe wayside crucifixes were set up at the entrance to villages and towns and high atop mountains and hills often with the attached words: "A Cruce Salus" "In The Cross is Salvation"  Even through the unfortunate secularization of the past decades these reminders serve as guideposts pointing the way toward salvation and the cornerstone of western civilization. 

Fr John Hardon S.J. has as a definition of "A Cruce Salus":

Salvation comes from the Cross. No less than Christ redeemed the world by his cross, so are the faithful redeemed by patiently bearing their cross.

All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Our Lord has told us that there is no shortcut on the narrow road to perfection: 

"And he said to all: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. " Luke 9:23

We would do well to meditate on this feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross upon the acceptance of the crosses of our own daily lives. Each of us has a particular cross we are asked to bear. It could be a propensity or weakness toward alcoholism or drug abuse, a temptation, propensity or weakness toward disordered sexuality, a weakness or propensity toward gluttony, a temptation toward despair, depression and hopelessness, crippling physical or mental anguish or pain etc. The myriad effects of original sin are constantly at work within us. Our Lord calls us to embrace these crosses and to carry them after Him. Our natural inclination is to run from the cross but we cannot escape the cross as Thomas a Kempis says, "If you bear the cross willingly, it will bear you and lead you to your desired goal, where pain shall be no more; but it will not be in this life. If you bear the cross unwillingly, you make it a burden, and load yourself more heavily; but you must needs bear it. If you cast away one cross, you will certainly find another, and perhaps a heavier."  The words taken from "Every man's way of the Cross" for the second station of the cross have always impressed upon me that the cross is everywhere....

Most willingly Jesus accepts and patiently bears His Cross for my sake. Will I refuse to bear my cross for His sake? No, my loving Redeemer, I will no longer seek to evade my cross, but with the Help of Thy Grace I will bear it with Christian patience and resignation and follow Thee always....My Jesus, Lord, I take my daily cross. I welcome the monotony that often marks the day, discomforts of all kinds, the summer's heat, the winter's cold, my disappointments, tensions, setbacks, cares. Remind me often that in carrying my cross, I carry yours with you. And though I bear a sliver only of your cross, you carry all of mine, except for a sliver, in return.

“Rehabilitation” of Liberation Theology?

Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, O.P. who fosters class struggle as a “necessary and inescapable means” to a classless society.

Read more at the Tradition, Family and Property link below:

“Rehabilitation” of Liberation Theology?

Father Laguerie elected Superior General of the Institute of the Good Shepherd.

FROM THE BRAZILIAN BLOG 'FRATRES IN UNUM'

Father Laguerie elected Superior General of the Institute of the Good Shepherd.

It was announced today, the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, the confirmation by the Commission Ecclesia Dei, the reelection of Father Philippe Laguerie as superior of the Institute of the Good Shepherd.

The reelection of Laguerie occurs while the institute goes through a troubled situation, after the annulment of the previous vote that elected the current rector of the seminary of Saint Vincent, Father Roch Perrel as new superior.

Perrel represented a ward at the institute contrary to recent proposals of Rome, which are: change of rite "exclusive" to "own", which at least formally means, its members would celebrate according to the Missal of Paul VI, and the adoption of Magisterium "integral" in the life of the seminary, including the use of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the recent teaching, while that would be necessary to leave behind the famous "constructive criticism" to the conciliar texts. Such points desirable by the Holy See were expressed in the letter of Monsignor Guido Pozzo at the end of the apostolic visitation held at the institute , we disclose exclusively. It is noteworthy that what today is unwanted the Holy See approved by herself, in 2006, with the erection of the IBP.

Several maneuvers were made by the superior acting institute, Abbot Emeritus of Fontgombault, Dom Antoine Forgeot, which led to the restoration of the chapter, with several changes in the framework of voters, and that culminated in the re-election of the candidate supposedly open to the goals of the Ecclesia Dei .

Laguerie had been publicly questioned several times by more than one member of the institute, for its alleged openness to Roman requests, who, they said, would undermine the identity and the "charism" of IBP.

It is possible that the election, because these maneuvers, is canonically questioned by the competent bodies.

THE MOST HOLY NAME OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

O amor mei nomen matris Dei -St. Anselm (Translation) "Oh name of the mother of God, thou art my love."

THE MOST HOLY NAME OF THE 
BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

FEAST DAY:  SEPTEMBER 12TH

The honored name of the Virgin Mary, which is said to mean "star of the sea," is most fitting for the Virgin Mother. She may well be compared to a star; for, as a star beams forth its rays without any diminution of its own luster, so too the Virgin gave birth to a Son with no loss to her virginity. The departing rays do not lessen the star's brightness, nor Mary's Son her inviolate maidenhood. She is, therefore, that noble star risen from Jacob and raised by nature above this great and wide sea. She shines with merits, she enlightens with her example. You, all you who are cast about upon the sea of temporalities in storms and tempests more than you walk on solid land, do not turn your eyes away from the brightness of this star. Think of Mary, call upon Mary, so that you may experience for yourself how fittingly it was said, "And the Virgin's name was Mary." -- Pope Innocent XI ordered the feast of this most holy name, which had already been honored with a special rite in some parts of the Christian world, to be celebrated each year by the universal Church as a perpetual memorial of the great blessing of that signal victory won at Vienna in Austria over the cruel Turkish tyrant who had been grinding down the Christian people in 1683.

(From Matins of the feast of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

I STAND IN SUPPORT OF FATHER RAY BLAKE

PLEASE OF YOUR CHARITY PRAY FOR FATHER RAY BLAKE WHO HAS BEEN UNSCRUPULOUSLY MALIGNED BY A 'JOURNALIST'.

SO WHO ARE THESE TRIUMPHALISTS THE HOLY FATHER IS REFERRING TO?

FROM THE 'CREATIVE MINORITY' BLOG

WHO DID THE POPE JUST ATTACK?

Truth is, I am not really sure. Did he mean me?

(Vatican Radio) Christians are called to proclaim Jesus without fear , without shame and without triumphalism . Those were the words of Pope Francis at Mass this Tuesday morning at the Casa Santa Marta. The Pope also stressed the risk of becoming a Christian without the Resurrection and reiterated that Christ is always at the center of our life and hope. Lydia O’Kane reports.

“Jesus is the Winner who has won over sin and death.” Those were the words of Pope Francis on Tuesday morning during his Homily at morning Mass. He was referring to the Letter of St. Paul to the Colossians in which the Saint recommends we walk with Jesus " because he has won, and we walk with him in his victory “firm in the faith."

This is the key point, the Pope stressed: "Jesus is risen .

"But, the Holy Father continued, it is not always easy to understand . The Pope then recalled that when St. Paul spoke to the Greeks in Athens he was listened to with interest up to when he spoke of the resurrection. "This makes us afraid , it best to leave it as is." Pope Francis said.

Continuing his Homily the Pope recalled the Apostles, who closed themselves up in the Upper Room for fear of the Jews, even Mary Magdalene is weeping because they have taken away the Lord's Body . " …they are afraid to think about the Resurrection." The Pope noted that “there are also the Christians who are embarrassed. They are embarrassed to "confess that Christ is risen.

Finally, said Pope Francis there is the group of Christians who "in their hearts do not believe in the Risen Lord and want to make theirs a more majestic resurrection than that of the real one . These, he said are the “triumphalist” Christians.

"They do not know the meaning of the word ' triumph ' the Pope continued, so they just say “triumphalism”, because they have such an inferiority complex and want to do this ...

When we look at these Christians , with their many triumphalist attitudes , in their lives, in their speeches and in their pastoral theology, liturgy, so many things, it is because they do not believe deep down in the Risen One. He is the Winner, the Risen One. He won.

"This, the Holy Father added, is the message that Paul gives to us " Christ "is everything," he is totality and hope , "because he is the Bridegroom , the Winner " .

Again, I admit that I don't really understand to whom the Pope refers.

I know that that in the past, progressives have used the term 'triumphalist' as a derogatory term for traditionalists. If this is the Pope's intent, I am just as confused as alarmed.

First let me say, I am not a fan of this style of speaking. The use of shortcut terms with a history of derogatory use does not seem fitting for use by the Holy Father. Additionally, the true target of his critique is obscured by its use. I have been reading around to try and see if anyone had more insight than I, but it seems that the confusion is general.

"They do not know the meaning of the word ' triumph ' the Pope continued, so they just say “triumphalism”

I suppose if this were true, that certain Christians repeatedly used the word triumphalism as their banner, this general confusion woudl not exist.

When we look at these Christians , with their many triumphalist attitudes , in their lives, in their speeches and in their pastoral theology, liturgy, so many things, it is because they do not believe deep down in the Risen One. He is the Winner, the Risen One. He won. 

Reading these specific words, I think they could easily apply to progressives within the Church who think that the simple message of Christ's birth, death, and resurrection and the redemption offered to us is insufficient. They believe that more is needed, that it is their human creativity that is needed to seal the deal. This attitude is reflected in their pastoral theology and constantly reinvented liturgy.

Alas, I doubt that this was the Pope's intended target.

If his real target is traditionalists, I think it would be better if he just said so. If traditionalists are the target, as many suspect, then I don't think that the critique hits its mark. For sure, there may be some few on the fringes that think every action of the Church infallible and put the 'triumph' of the Church ahead of the 'triumph' of the Resurrection, but I do not see this is not mainstream traditionalist thought. If aimed at a fringe subset of a subset, the critique hardly seems worth it and might serve to unfairly label many.

I am particularly alarmed by the Pope's reference to 'triumphalist' liturgies. Are we to suppose that anyone attached to the Extraordinary form should now be suspected of 'triumphalist' tendencies.

All in all, I do not see these comments as clear and their murkiness serves only to muddy.

PAPA FRANCESCO TO RECEIVE GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ

FROM THE BRAZILIAN BLOG 'FRATRES IN UNUM' :

Good evening to you.

Pope Francisco will receive Gustavo Gutierrez in audience soon. it's what was announced yesterday in Mantua (that saint Giuseppe Sarto (Pius X), its former bishop, does not send fire from heaven), Bishop Gerhard Müller , co-author of a boring and unsuccessful book with Gutiérrez in 2004 reheated last week by the Osservatore Romano. Müller was received last Friday by the Holy Father, some imagined that he could have been called to receive an earful for the attempted rehabilitation of Liberation Theology. With the information that will be received by Francisco Gutierrez, this hypothesis seems unlikely.

Ah, yes. Müller also stated that Archbishop Oscar Romero will be beatified soon.

Good evening to you, good for us recess.

The Inconvenient Memoirs of Cardinal Biffi

I hope that this book will one day soon this book will be published in English. Below you will find a quote from the book regarding the post conciliar malaise:




"In order to bring a bit of clarity to the confusion that afflicts Christianity in our time, one must first distinguish very carefully between the conciliar event and the ecclesial climate that followed. They are two different phenomena, and require distinct treatment.


Paul VI sincerely believed in Vatican Council II, and in its positive relevance for Christianity as a whole. He was one of its decisive protagonists, attentively following its work and discussions on a daily basis, helping it to overcome the recurrent difficulties in its path.

He expected that, by virtue of the joint effort of all the bishops together with the successor of Peter, a blessed age of increased vitality and of exceptional fecundity must immediately benefit and gladden the Church.


Instead, the "postcouncil," in many of its manifestations, concerned and disappointed him. So he revealed his distress with admirable candor; and the impassioned lucidity of his expressions struck all believers, or at least those whose vision had not been clouded over by ideology.


On June 29, 1972, on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, speaking off the cuff, he went to the point of saying that he had "the sensation that through some fissure, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God. There is doubt, uncertainty, trouble, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation. The Church is not trusted . . . It was believed that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for the history of the Church. What has come instead is a day of clouds, of darkness, of seeking, of uncertainty . . . We believe that something preternatural (the devil) has come into the world to disturb, to suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council and to prevent the Church from bursting into a hymn of joy for having regained full awareness of itself." These are painful and severe words that deserve painstaking reflection.


How could it have happened that from the legitimate pronouncements and texts of Vatican II, a season followed that was so different and distant?


The question is complex, and the reasons are multiform; but without a doubt one influence was a process (so to speak) of aberrant "distillation," which from the authentic and binding conciliar "reality" extracted a completely heterogeneous mentality and linguistic form. This is a phenomenon that pops up here and there in the "postcouncil," and continues to advance itself more or less explicitly.


We can, in order to make ourselves understood, hazard to illustrate the schematic procedure of this curious "distillation."

The first phase lies in a discriminatory approach to the conciliar pronouncements, which distinguishes the accepted and usable texts from the inopportune or at least unusable ones, to be passed over in silence.


In the second phase what is acknowledged as the valuable teaching of the Council is not what it really formulated, but what the holy assembly would have produced if it had not been hampered by the presence of many backward fathers insensitive to the breath of the Spirit.


With the third phase, there is the insinuation that the true doctrine of the Council is not that which is canonically formulated and approved, but what would have been formulated and approved if the fathers had been more enlightened, more consistent, more courageous.

With such a theological and historical methodology – never expressed in such a clear fashion, but no less relentless for this reason – it is easy to imagine the results: what is adopted and exalted in an almost obsessive manner is not the Council that in fact was celebrated, but (so to speak) a "virtual Council"; a Council that has a place not in the history of the Church, but in the history of ecclesiastical imagination. Anyone who dares to dissent, however timidly, is branded with the infamous mark of "preconciliar," when he is not in fact numbered among the traditionalist rebels, or the despised fundamentalists.

And because the "counterfeit distillates" of the Council include the principle that by now there is no error that can be condemned in Catholicism, except for sinning against the primary duty of understanding and dialogue, it becomes difficult today for theologians and pastors to have the courage to denounce vigorously and tenaciously the toxins that are progressively poisoning the innocent people of God."

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1345582?eng=y

BIRTHDAY OF OUR LADY

FROM KANKAKEE TRADITIONAL LATIN MASS BLOG

Reposting for the Birthday of Our Lady

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Fiat

From The life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by Msgr. R. Gentilucci

It is a common opinion that Mary was born the eighth day of the month of September, which corresponds to the beginning of the month Tisri, that is to say, the first day of the civil year of the Jews, just when the smoke of the holocaust was rising to heaven in expiation for the sins of the people.  And in this agree perfectly the Greek and Latin churches,…*Holding for certain that this “little pillar of smoke,” as Ezechiel calls it, or this “light cloud,” as Elias calls it, came to the light, in the year 3987 of the creation of the world, we shall here give some pious opinions touching this happy birth, relying upon what some of the Fathers, Greek as well as Latin, tell us.

Mary was born in autumn, when nature, more than in any other season, is wont to repay the toil of the husbandmen by giving them the ripened clusters.  “Rejoice, O earth,” says St. John Damascenus, “because from the womb of Anne, as from a fertile vine, has sprung a sweet ripe cluster.  To the harvesting of this vineyard all are invited, none is excluded, it is the joy of all.”  Mary too is born in the autumn,…because it was proper that the new Eve, the mother of the Redeemer, should change tears into joy, at the same time in the year as the first Eve had changed joy into tears.

As the beatitudes are eight in number, this eighth day of the month when she was…born, was admirably chosen, since by her was the whole world to know all beatitude, and since by her, as mother of the Redeemer, were all the elect to be ushered into the glory of heaven, there to enjoy supreme felicity.  She was born, as Luchesino remarks, on the Sabbath, the day when God rested, to show that the human race, at the glorious birth of the Virgin, was to enjoy a real repose.  Hence Saturday is a kind of festival especially consecrated to devotion to our august Lady.

As to the hour of that fortunate day which beheld the birth of Mary, St. Peter Damian believes that it was at daybreak.  Others add, that the sun that day shone with a twofold light, and that on the night preceding her birth, the moon shone with an extraordinary brilliancy, almost like that of the sun, and that for some time, far from showing usual spots, a refulgent star sparkled upon her disc.

St. John Damascenus cries joyfully:  “Yes, by Mary’s birth the human race has been restored, by it the sadness caused by Eve is changed into a perfect joy.”  St. Bernardine of Sienna,…observes joyfully, “that heaven made earth an inestimable present,” and the Abbot Rupert says:  “The nativity of the Virgin is the end of sorrow and the beginning of joy.”

+++++++++++++

*The menology of St. Basil places the birth of the Blessed Virgin on the 8th of September.  This date is also given in the menology translated into Latin by Cardinal Sorlet, and published by Henry Canisius in his Thesaurus.  The same thing is said in the edict of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, which fixes the days for the various festivals.  In the Nomocanon of Photius (In Scholiiad ut VII.,) we read:  “Natalis itaque dies purissimae Dominae ac Dei Genitricis, qui est octavus Septembris, feriatus est.”  We find the same day set down in many other Greek authors, as well as in the Latin.