Items of Interest: Week of Dominica III Adventus

Please: Don’t Respect My Beliefs
by Marc (Bad Catholic). «Respect for other beliefs, tolerance of other religions, acceptance of other cultures — these doctrines are usually sugar-sweet forms of violence. This seems to me the only adequate explanation as to why our age is simultaneously respectful and racist; liberal and segregated; proud of diversity and incapable of actually enjoying diverse company outside of mandatorily diverse institutions — a schizophrenic personality that imagines itself open to the Other in all her differences while fearing, more than most things, any actual contact with the Other.»

The Synod’s Final Report is Out in English, and It’s Remarkably Strong
by Glenn Stanton (National Catholic Register). «The world was gleefully told by the enlightened—again and again and again—that it looked as if the Church was finally going to join the modern age by surrendering to the self-evident verities of the sexual revolution. Giddy at the prospects of Pope Francis’ supposed reforming spirit, the gay community’s leading magazine canonized the Holy Father as their “Person of the Year” before the Synod even started. While this chatter of reformation made the heterodox hopeful, it made the orthodox anxious. But all that is over now and there’s a very good reason that you’ve not been blasted with the news of the synod’s conclusions. It not only dashed the hopes of those who hoped the Church would jettison its historic and biblical teaching on sexual ethics, it blew them to hell.»

Abortion, Murder, and the Law
by Christopher Kaczor (The Catholic Thing). «Like laws against illegal drugs, the law should focus on the drug dealers who profit from endangering others rather than on drug users who often suffer from their use. Similarly, laws against abortion should focus on abortionists who profit from killing, rather than women who often suffer from abortions.»

The O Antiphons in Middle English: ‹To þe we clepe with alle owre hert and brethe›
by A Clerk of Oxford. «In medieval England, 16th December was the first day of the O Antiphons. (In other parts of the church they began on 17th December, but they lasted eight days, rather than seven, in English tradition.) Every day between now and Christmas Eve, at Vespers, in the early dusk of a midwinter evening, the antiphon would be one of these ancient songs of longing and desire, which address Christ by a series of allusive titles drawn from scriptural tradition and appeal to him: Come. So memorable was the beginning of these antiphons that it was marked on 16th December in calendars like the one above, almost as if it were a saint's day - not an honour often accorded to liturgical antiphons.»