Saturday, November 21, 2015

Items of Interest: Week of Dominica XXV Post Pentecosten

The Plot to Kill Hitler and the Vindication of Pius XII
by Fr. George W. Rutler (Crisis Magazine). «The relative passivity of people in the West in the face of genocide of Christians by Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere is neither edifying nor encouraging. As for espionage, when representatives of Live Action, and the Center for Medical Progress more recently, filmed undercover interviews with Planned Parenthood functionaries, there were academics, even pro-life ones, who called these “sting operations” unethical for lying about the investigators’ identities. What would they say about Pius XII and his undercover agents? For that matter, what would those who absolutely oppose capital punishment with no mitigating circumstances say about the urgent appeal of Pius XII to hang those found guilty at Nuremburg? When a systematic moral calculus rooted in natural law gives way to the vagaries of sentiment, the antinomianism that results often becomes enmeshed in its own contradictions.»

Habetis Papam
By David Bentley Hart (First Things). «Far be it from me — not being a Roman Catholic — to tell Catholics what they should think of their pontiff. But, just as a brief amicus curiae (so to speak), I want to note that I feel a wholly unqualified admiration for Francis; and nothing he has done, said, or written since assuming office has had any effect on me but to deepen that esteem. I have to say also that I am utterly baffled by the anxiety, disappointment, or hostility he clearly inspires in certain American Catholics of a conservative bent (using “conservative” in its distinctly American acceptation). And frankly I find it no more inexplicable in its most extreme expressions—which at their worst verge on sheer ­hysteria—than in its mildest—an almost morbid oversensitivity to every faint hint of hidden meanings in every word, however innocuous, that escapes the pope’s lips or pen.»

Pope Halts Canonization Process in Move «Without Historical Precedent»
by Deacon Greg Kandra (Aleteia). «The Pope has halted the canonization process for Aloysius Stepinac, the Croation Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death in 1960. Pope John Paul II had beatified the fiercely anti-communist archbishop, who spent many years in prison and under house arrest in Communist Yugoslavia, in 1998. The archbishop’s actions during World War II, however, especially his ties to the Nazi-aligned, murderous Ustaše regime, have raised criticism not only from the Serbian Orthodox Church but also from other victim groups.»

The Apophatic Quality of Speaking About God
by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon (Preachers Institute). «It is always a good thing, surely, to examine the meanings of the words we speak, but when we speak about God critical reflection is downright imperative.»

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