Vivificat!

Bishop of Pittsburgh takes firm stand against the Obama Administration

2012-01-27T10:43:00.005-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you. I wish to share with you this essay by the Bishop of Pittsburgh, PA, H.E. David A. Zubik. It brought tears to my eyes when I read it. I applaud this courageous bishop for taking such a strong stance in the face of tyranny.

‘To Hell With You’
By Bishop David A. Zubik

It is really hard to believe that it happened. It comes like a slap in the face. The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, “To Hell with you!” There is no other way to put it.

In early August, the Department for Health and Human Services in the Obama administration released guidelines as part of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The guidelines mandated that by Summer 2012 all individual and group health insurance plans, including self-insured plans, cover all FDA-approved contraception, sterilization procedures and pharmaceuticals that even result in abortion.

A million things are wrong with this: equating pregnancy with disease; mandating that every employer pay for contraception procedures including alleged contraceptives that are actually abortion-inducing drugs; forcing American citizens to chose between violating their consciences or providing health care services; mandating such coverage on every individual woman without allowing her to even choose not to have it; forcing every person to pay for that coverage no matter the dictates of their conscience.

Let’s be blunt. This whole process of mandating these guidelines undermines the democratic process itself. In this instance, the mandate declares pregnancy a disease, forces a culture of contraception and abortion on society, all while completely bypassing the legislative process.

This is government by fiat that attacks the rights of everyone – not only Catholics; not only people of all religion. At no other time in memory or history has there been such a governmental intrusion on freedom not only with regard to religion, but even across-the-board with all citizens. It forces every employer to subsidize an ideology or pay a penalty while searching for alternatives to health care coverage. It undermines the whole concept and hope for health care reform by inextricably linking it to the zealotry of pro-abortion bureaucrats.

For our Church this mandate would apply in virtually every instance where the Catholic Church serves as an employer. The mandate would require the Catholic Church as an employer to violate its fundamental beliefs concerning human life and human dignity by forcing Catholic entities to provide contraceptive, sterilization coverage and even pharmaceuticals that result in abortion.

There was a so-called “religious exemption” to the mandate, but it was so narrowly drawn that, as critics charged, Jesus Christ and his Apostles would not fit the exemption. The so-called exemption would only apply to the vast array of Catholic institutions where the following applied:

•Only Catholics are employed;
•The primary purpose of the institution or service provided is the direct instruction in Catholic belief;
•The only persons served by the institution are those that share Catholic religious tenets. (Try to fit this in with our local Catholic Charities that serve 80,000 every year without discrimination according to faith. It would be impossible!)

Practically speaking under the proposed mandate there would be no “religious exemption” for Catholic hospitals universities, colleges, nursing homes and numerous Catholic social service agencies such as Catholic Charities. It could easily be determined that the “religious exemption” would not apply as well to Catholic high schools, elementary schools and Catholic parishes since many employ non-Catholics and serve both students and, through social outreach, many who do not share Catholic religious beliefs. Such a narrow “religious exemption” is simply unprecedented in federal law.

Last September I asked you to protest those guidelines to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services, and contact your political leadership in the federal government. I asked that you request that this flawed mandate be withdrawn because of its unprecedented interference in the religious liberty and freedom of conscience of the Catholic community, and our basic democratic process.

You did. And you were joined by Catholics throughout the country (and many others as well) who raised their voices against the mandate, raised their voices against a meaningless religious exemption.

On January 20, 2012, the Obama administration answered you and me. The response was very simple: “To Hell with You.”

Kathleen Sebelius announced that the mandate would not be withdrawn and the religious exemption would not be expanded. Instead, she stated that nonprofit groups – which include the Catholic Church – will get a year “to adapt to this new rule.” She simply dismissed Catholic concerns as standing in the way of allegedly respecting the health concerns and choices of women.

Could Catholics be insulted any more, suggesting that we have no concern for women’s health issues? The Catholic Church and the Catholic people have erected health care facilities that are recognized worldwide for their compassionate care for everyone regardless of their creed, their economic circumstances and, most certainly, their gender. In so many parts of the globe – the United States included – the Church is health care.

Kathleen Sebelius and through her, the Obama administration, have said “To Hell with You” to the Catholic faithful of the United States.

•To Hell with your religious beliefs,
•To Hell with your religious liberty,
•To Hell with your freedom of conscience.

We’ll give you a year, they are saying, and then you have to knuckle under. As Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops responded, “in effect, the president is saying that we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

As I wrote to you last September, with this mandate the democratic process is being ignored while we are being ordered to ignore our religious beliefs. And we are being told not only to violate our beliefs, but to pay directly for that violation; to subsidize the imposition of a contraceptive and abortion culture on every person in the United States.

It is time to go back to work. They have given us a year to adapt to this rule. We can’t! We simply cannot!

Write to the president.

Write to Secretary Sebelius.

Write to our Senators.

Write to those in Congress.

Use the PA Catholic Advocacy Network to send an email message, too.

I have included the addresses in a box accompanying this article. Here’s what you can write:

"Dear (Representative):

“In early August, the Department for Health and Human Services released guidelines that would force Catholic institutions to subsidize through their health care plans contraception, sterilization procedures and pharmaceuticals that even result in abortion.

“It was announced on January 20thby Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services, that this mandate is affirmed and that non-profit institutions, including the Catholic Church, have one year to adapt to the mandate.

“This is a direct threat to the religious liberty of Catholics, freedom of conscience and the social service ministry of the Catholic Church. The so-called ‘religious exemption’ in the mandate is no exemption at all as it would require any Catholic institution (that serves non-Catholics or employs non-Catholics) to violate Catholic belief, discontinue to provide health care, or close its doors.

“I ask that you do all possible to rescind the ‘Preventive Service Mandate’ as an unprecedented federal interference in the right of Catholics to serve their community without violating their fundamental moral beliefs.”

This mandate can be changed by Congressional pressure. The only way that action will happen is if you and I take action.

Let them know that you and I will not allow ourselves to be pushed around (or worse yet) be dismissed because of our Catholic faith.

Let them know that you and I will not allow our religious freedom to be compromised.

Let them know that you and I will not allow our religious liberty to be rescinded.

Nobody, not even the president of the United States or anyone who represents him, has the right to say to you and to me as U.S. citizens, as Catholics, or as both: “To Hell with You.”

The president and our elected leaders need to hear from you and me and to listen to us NOW.

And if NOT now, HOW can we get the president to listen to us???

Video: Iranian documentary fans the flames of regime's fanatic messianism

2012-01-27T02:53:00.004-05:00

Brethren: Peace and Good to you in Christ Our Lord.

In March 2011, the Iranian regime produced this propaganda documentary which I found very interesting. It is about 30 minutes long. The captions appear to have been added by Reza Kahlili, an Iranian dissident now residing in the U.S.

Commentary. First, let me address the form. The sensationalistic tone of the video reminded me of The World Today broadcasts by the ~~late~~ Protestant minister Jack Van Impe - who by the way, ~~was~~ is friendly to the Catholic Church. I do appreciate the friendship and he ~~did~~ takes a lot of flak for it from the anti-Romish crowd in American Protestantism, but still I find these attempts at rousing the masses for action too close to demagoguery, at least where Christians are concerned. Evidently, officials of the Iranian version of Shi'ism have no such qualms. To them is only natural due to their long history of playing the underdog in the Islamic world.

Now to substance. Are they serious? Yes, they are. This how the Iranian officialdom sees itself and their national destiny in the world. I find these attempts at influencing their population through inflammatory propaganda as even more disturbing than those of Goebbels in Nazi Germany and almost as evil as those seen in North Korea, where the personality cult of its leader ranks as a religion unto itself.

I find this Iranian propaganda video disturbing and reprehensible precisely because it glorifies a decisive, bloody war against non-Islamic countries in the name of "God" and of just religion.

Much can be said about fallen man's natural inclination to bend faith in the service of death and suffering and we have not been immune to that infection ourselves, as history shows. But we still haven't learned our lessons.

That Islam (in both its Sunni and Shi'a versions) is a false religion is without question for Christians. I'm sure that they think the same about us - and about each other. That we don't have to kill each other due to the difference is a lesson that we Christians have learned because the Gospel, and the Lord's Gospel, compels us to it. There's no such safeguard in Islam and its abscense is acute and strident in Iran's official Shi'a interpretation.

Watch the video and let us pray for the conversion of the Iranian people to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I also pray, and I'm not afraid to say it, for the bloodless fall of the Iranian regime and a new dawn of peace, justice, and tolerance in that troubled country.

How did God test the angels?

2012-01-25T13:09:00.003-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus our Lord and Savior.

I’m about to tackle the issue of the testing of the angels by God mentioned by Fr. Fortea a few posts ago, and to search for Scriptural clues about it, and reflect on the consequences of the failure by some of the angels to rise to the test.

Why does God test his creatures?

Speaking about this test is difficult because the Scriptural data is sparse and can only be surmised by what’s explicitly stated in Scripture by secondary reasoning.

We know from Scripture that God tests his rational creatures:

God tested Adam and Eve (Genesis 3)

He tested Abraham (Genesis 22)

And he also tested Job.

Fr. Jack Peterson, of the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia (USA) said it well in this piece he wrote on The Catholic Herald:

The truth is that God is not afraid to test our faith and our love for Him. It is important to realize that the test flows from His love for us. God tests our faith sometimes for our good and the good of others. The test makes our faith real and personal. Love is not truly love until it has been tested in fire. Faith is not really faith until it has been tested as well. The test purifies our faith of selfishness and pride; it deepens our radical trust in His goodness and divine providence. The test prepares us for other crosses that we will face down the road in our roles as believer, parent, priest/consecrated or lay leader…

…St. Paul, who knew a thing or two about being tested, teaches us something that is very comforting about God’s work in our lives. St. Paul reminds us that God never tests us beyond our ability. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul states: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13). Sometimes it is only by God’s grace that we can endure certain trials and crosses. Sometimes it seems like we can’t hang on any more, especially if we rely only on our own powers, and we are tempted to give up. We should take courage in the knowledge that God will always provide. He will always offer us the grace needed to “endure it.”

It follows also that the Lord will never test us for our perdition in mind, but to strengthen our faith. Via the analogy of faith we can provisionally state the following:

Human beings are rational creatures bearing God’s image,

therefore God tested them;

Angels are also rational creatures bearing God’s image,

therefore God tested them too.

The failure of the test entails a failure of both human and angelic character, as both the man and the angels who sinned responded to the test with a reaffirmation of their own autonomous wills over and against the holiness of God. At that moment, sin entered both the human and angelic nature, as explained by Fr. Fortea before.

The nature of the test given to the angels

The Church, in her official teaching, has been very circumspect about the nature of the test of the angels. Let us start with the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I highlighted the portion of interest:

II. THE FALL OF THE ANGELS

391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.²⁶⁶ Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil".²⁶⁷ The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing."²⁶⁸

392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels.²⁶⁹ This "fall" consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God."²⁷⁰ The devil "has sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies".²⁷¹

393 It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death."²⁷²

394 Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls "a murderer from the beginning", who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father.²⁷³ "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil."²⁷⁴ In its consequences the gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God.

395 The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God's reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature - to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but "we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him."²⁷⁵

Following official Church teaching, Fr. Fortea himself does not speculate about the nature of the test itself, limiting himself to explain the fact and the need of the angels’ primeval test, without speaking about what the test may have been.

Nevertheless, other recognized theologians have indeed attempted to reach some likely conclusion by analogical reasoning. These theologians were the Scottish Franciscan Blessed John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) and the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548-1617). The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes the teachings of these theologians regarding the nature of the angelic test, some of which I highlighted because I thought specially relevant to our discussion:

Although nothing definite can be known as to the precise nature of the probation of the angels and the manner in which many of them fell, many theologians have conjectured, with some show of probability, that the mystery of the Divine Incarnation was revealed to them, that they saw that a nature lower than their own was to be hypostatically united to the Person of God the Son, and that all the hierarchy of heaven must bow in adoration before the majesty of the Incarnate Word; and this, it is supposed, was the occasion of the pride of Lucifer (cf. Suarez, De Angelis, lib. VII, xiii). As might be expected, the advocates of this view seek support in certain passages of Scripture, notably in the words of the Psalmist as they are cited in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "And again, when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith: And let all the angels of God adore Him" (Hebrews 1:6; Psalm 96:7). And if the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse may be taken to refer, at least in a secondary sense, to the original fall of the angels, it may seem somewhat significant that it opens with the vision of the Woman and her Child. But this interpretation is by no means certain, for the text in Hebrews 1, may be referred to the second coming of Christ, and much the same may be said of the passage in the Apocalypse.

It would seem that this account of the trial of the angels is more in accordance with what is known as the Scotist doctrine on the motives of the Incarnation than with the Thomist view, that the Incarnation was occasioned by the sin of our first parents. For since the sin itself was committed at the instigation of Satan, it presupposes the fall of the angels. How, then, could Satan's probation consist in the fore-knowledge of that which would, ex hypothesi, only come to pass in the event of his fall? In the same way it would seem that the aforesaid theory is incompatible with another opinion held by some old theologians, to wit, that men were created to fill up the gaps in the ranks of the angels. For this again supposes that if no angels had sinned no men would have been made, and in consequence there would have been no union of the Divine Person with a nature lower than the angels.

As might be expected from the attention they had bestowed on the question of the intellectual powers of the angels, the medieval theologians had much to say on the time of their probation. The angelic mind was conceived of as acting instantaneously, not, like the mind of man, passing by discursive reasoning from premises to conclusions. It was pure intelligence as distinguished from reason. Hence it would seem that there was no need of any extended trial. And in fact we find St. Thomas and Scotus discussing the question whether the whole course might not have been accomplished in the first instant in which the angels were created. The Angelic Doctor argues that the Fall could not have taken place in the first instant. And it certainly seems that if the creature came into being in the very act of sinning the sin itself might be said to come from the Creator. But this argument, together with many others, is answered with his accustomed acuteness by Scotus, who maintains the abstract possibility of sin in the first instant. But whether possible or not, it is agreed that this is not what actually happened. For the authority of the passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel, which were generally accepted as referring to the fall of Lucifer, might well suffice to show that for at least one instant he had existed in a state of innocence and brightness. To modern readers the notion that the sin was committed in the second instant of creation may seem scarcely less incredible than the possibility of a fall in the very first. But this may be partly due to the fact that we are really thinking of human modes of knowledge, and fail to take into account the Scholastic conception of angelic cognition. For a being who was capable of seeing many things at once, a single instant might be equivalent to the longer period needed by slowly-moving mortals.

This dispute, as to the time taken by the probation and fall of Satan, has a purely speculative interest. But the corresponding question as to the rapidity of the sentence and punishment is in some ways a more important matter. There can indeed be no doubt that Satan and his rebel angels were very speedily punished for their rebellion. This would seem to be sufficiently indicated in some of the texts which are understood to refer to the fall of the angels. It might be inferred, moreover, from the swiftness with which punishment followed on the offense in the case of our first parents, although man's mind moves more slowly than that of the angels, and he had more excuse in his own weakness and in the power of his tempter. It was partly for this reason, indeed, that man found mercy, whereas there was no redemption for the angels. For, as St. Peter says, "God spared not the angels that sinned" (2 Peter 2:4). This, it may be observed, is asserted universally, indicating that all who fell suffered punishment. For these and other reasons theologians very commonly teach that the doom and punishment followed in the next instant after the offense, and many go so far as to say there was no possibility of repentance. But here it will be well to bear in mind the distinction drawn between revealed doctrine, which comes with authority, and theological speculation, which to a great extent rests on reasoning. No one who is really familiar with the medieval masters, with their wide differences, their independence, their bold speculation, is likely to confuse the two together. But in these days there is some danger that we may lose sight of the distinction.

The author of the Encyclopedia’s article added this warning that is also relevant to our discussion, and which this your servant humbly acknowledges:

It is true that, when it fulfils certain definite conditions, the agreement of theologians may serve as a sure testimony to revealed doctrine, and some of their thoughts and even their very words have been adopted by the Church in her definitions of dogma. But at the same time these masters of theological thought freely put forward many more or less plausible opinions, which come to us with reasoning rather than authority, and must needs stand or fall with the arguments by which they are supported. In this way we may find that many of them may agree in holding that the angels who sinned had no possibility of repentance. But it may be that it is a matter of argument, that each one holds it for a reason of his own and denies the validity of the arguments adduced by others.

The sparse nature of the data in Scripture and Tradition may guide our reasons only so far, but even then we can profit from this “extended” kind of teaching extrapolated analogically from the data. We will see the final answers at the end of time. However, as we’ll see later, I believe that there are Scriptural “pointers” validating these provisional conclusions, as well as evidence drawn from the sad history of humanity. In the meantime let’s keep in mind our provisional conclusion:

The primeval test of the angels consisted in this: there were shown the eventual Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity and the angels who rebelled did so, in fact, because they objected to adore God hypostatically united in the person of a being lower than themselves.

This brings us to an unspoken consequence, that the Incarnation of the Word was to take place regardless of the possibility of the Fall of Man, as God’s ultimate, loving union with His creation. This is where the medieval stumbled in what we recognize today as temporal paradoxes and multiple futures, thanks to the advances in relativity and quantum mechanics. Another unspoken consequence seems to be that moral choice “create universes.” But we’ll talk about those speculations later because they primary conclusion we reach, and one that is echoed in Scripture (Colossians 1: 13-20) about Christ:

¹³Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love,

¹⁴In whom we have redemption through his blood, the remission of sins;

¹⁵Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

¹⁶For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and in him.

¹⁷And he is before all, and by him all things consist.

The Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception explain it better in this video, aptly titled the Test of the Angel. From them you will learn that the incarnation of God was the ultimate purpose of creation.

Evidence of secondary probative value

To this humble theologian, private revelations have a remote, relative, and secondary value. That’s because I’ve studied many private revelations, or the purported private revelations of some recognized mystics – like those of Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich, for instance – and these visions seem to me more like manifestations of a seer’s psyche and his of her understanding of a theological truth or problem, than a direct insight into the reality contemplated. Or, they may have been granted such direct insight but their concepts, words, and resulting story-telling fail to express the reality they contemplated and that’s why many times these narratives are reminiscent of the language of dreams. That’s why the Church warns us about the limits of private revelations.

Nevertheless, with the Church’s warning in mind we proceed with caution to this private revelation allegedly granted to Blessed María de Ágreda (1602-1665) and found in Volume One of The Mystical City of God, the Divine History and Life of the Virgin Mother of God. Whether one agrees that these were in fact special, private revelations or the intuitions of a gifted, highly contemplative mind, I believe her explanation of the nature of the test of the angels is of value and relevant to our discussion. According to Blessed María, the test of the angels was threefold in nature. The highlights are mine:

• For the first test, "they [the angels] received a more explicit intelligence of the being of God, one in substance, triune in person, and they were commanded to adore and reverence Him as their Creator and highest Lord, infinite in His essence and attributes." All obeyed the command, most with perfect charity and joy, but Lucifer obeyed because "the opposite seemed to him impossible," and his pride dimmed the original perfection of his nature. He owed his existence to someone infinitely greater than he. Even so, Lucifer passed the test. He obeyed.

• In the second test, God informed the angels that He would create beings lower than themselves, men with immortal spiritual souls infused into material bodies formed from the dust of the earth. "In order that they too should love, fear, and reverence God...the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was to become incarnate and assume their nature, raising it to the hypostatic union and to divine Personality." Then God commanded the angels to acknowledge the incarnate Word of God as both God and man, and to adore Him as God-man, infusing the angels with knowledge that it was both just and reasonable for man to be elevated above them in this way. Most angels were overjoyed that God's love could raise such lowly creatures to such an exalted status, and gratefully obeyed the command. - But Lucifer, in his pride, rebelled against this command. He argued that, since both angels and men were created beings, it should be an angel -- i.e., himself -- who became incarnate, angels being higher than men. It was beneath the "dignity" of God to so lower Himself by joining the Word of God to such an inferior part of His creation in this way. Lucifer disguised his pride by feigning concern for God's omnipotence. He was able to infect many other angels with this attitude, offering, as a temptation, to make angels masters over men and leading mankind to God.

• The third test cemented this rebellion among the angels. God revealed that His Son would become incarnate man by being born of a woman, just as all men are born of women. The angels were ordered to revere this woman as superior to them -- as "Queen and Mistress of all the creatures," angels and men -- for God was to be clothed with her flesh in her body, making her the Mother of God. Assembling the angels, Lucifer retorted, "Unjust are these commands and injury is done to my greatness; this human nature which Thou, Lord, lookest upon with so much love and which Thou favorest so highly, I will persecute and destroy. To this end I will direct all my power and all my aspirations. And this Woman, Mother of the Word, I will hurl from the position in which Thou has proposed to place her, and at my hands the plan, which Thou settest up, shall come to naught." (Source: Professor Terence Hughes, “The Primeval Struggle”, New Oxford Review (July-August 2009), pp. 42-45, as published in Mr. Phil Blosser’s blog, Musings of a Pertinacious Papist).

Note how Blessed María de Ágreda’s alleged vision captures the essence of Suarez’s argument expounded before. As the theologians noted, the fallen angels’ sin was ultimate one of pride a pretension to the effect that if God can become man, then an angel can become God. Yet not in the order of nature – for the even the angels were too intelligence to know the impossibility of becoming God – but indirectly by persuading the lower creation to render unto them the glory and power due to God alone, by “replacing” God in the hearts and minds of the lower created beings, that is, humans.

The war in heaven referred to in Revelation 9 and explained by Fr. Fortea in multiple phases may have consisted on an escalating debate, starting in argument and ending in rebellion about God’s eventual incarnation in the sub-angelic world, the test being one aimed at the angel’s spiritual self-identity, and the election to serve or not to serve God under those inferior circumstances. The consequences of the rebellion have been vast, multifaceted, and clearly evident in the human history.

I am to conclude here because this post is already too long. In a future post, I will discuss the consequences of the primeval rebellion and which Scripture data may support this view of the test of the angels and the failure of the fallen angels to pass the test.

Today we remember the Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle

2012-01-25T01:30:00.001-05:00

Acts 9: 1 - 22

1 But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest

2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

3 Now as he journeyed he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him.

4 And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"

5 And he said, "Who are you, Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting;

6 but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do."

7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one.

8 Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus.

9 And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.

10 Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Anani'as. The Lord said to him in a vision, "Anani'as." And he said, "Here I am, Lord."

11 And the Lord said to him, "Rise and go to the street called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for a man of Tarsus named Saul; for behold, he is praying,

12 and he has seen a man named Anani'as come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight."

13 But Anani'as answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to thy saints at Jerusalem;

14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call upon thy name."

15 But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel;

16 for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name."

17 So Anani'as departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him he said, "Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit."

18 And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized,

19 and took food and was strengthened. For several days he was with the disciples at Damascus.

20 And in the synagogues immediately he proclaimed Jesus, saying, "He is the Son of God."

21 And all who heard him were amazed, and said, "Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called on this name? And he has come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests."

22 But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.

Which Church Father am I?

2012-01-24T10:41:00.001-05:00

So, I took the quiz, and…

You’re St. Melito of Sardis!

You have a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins.

Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

Close enough.

Book Review: The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II--The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy by George Weigel

2012-01-24T06:28:00.001-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in the Name of Jesus and through the intercession of St. Francis de Sales whose feast day we celebrate today. He was the Apostle of “Ordinary Holiness”, of the call of living the Gospel of Jesus extraordinarily in our ordinary circumstances.

After reading George Weigel’s complement to, and completion of, his biography of Blessed Pope John Paul II, I must conclude the following: Pope John Paul II – Karol Wojtyła – was the “real article,” a true man of God, a mystic, and also masculine, virile and a saint. I will explain later why I use those adjectives.

Reading this book made me realize that “transitional figures,” men and women who stand on axial turning points of history, fascinate me. Jesus Christ aside, He who is the “axis of history” is one but that goes without saying. Before him, I’m fascinated by the Prophet Jeremiah, who stood at the end of the old Israelite religion and the threshold of Judaism. He knew what came before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans and could see, but dimly, what would come afterwards. Similarly, in the first five centuries of the Christian Era, St. Augustine of Hippo beheld the end of classical antiquity and the beginning of a new era, then dawning, which St. Augustine was to help shape. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln stood at the threshold of a civilizational shift marked by advances in technology, science, industry and even politics leading to a “second foundation” of the United States of America. Like Moses long before him, he led the people through a wilderness of war and misfortune and stood at the threshold of a promised land which he did not enter.

Pope John Paul II was such a transitional figure, leader, and man. He is a saint that does not conform to the general notion of “holiness”. From our childhood we’re led to believe that holiness is either a thing of the past, for people somehow “better” than us in our humanity, or something for the elderly, or women, or for sissy wimps. John Paul II demonstrated for all to see that holiness is the ordinary business of being Christian. To be holy is to reach the fullness of one’s manhood, or womanhood, as God has planned from the beginning. Holiness is not for sissies and wimps, but for every man and woman who dares to answer the call of God with a perfect “Yes, I will serve”. Serviam!

Another aspect of George Weigel’s work is how much the process of canonization has changed throughout the centuries. At the funeral mass of Blessed John Paul, cries of Santo Súbito! were heard among the crowd of participants. Centuries ago, canonization by general acclamation was an accepted method to induct a person into the canon or “list” of saints. However, since the dawn of modernity and in reaction to the tendency of human beings to turn saints into legends and mythical figures, the process has taken a judicial form, where every strength and weakness of the candidate is examined with rigor, and evidence for or against the candidate’s virtue is brought forward for testing, examination, and discernment. Historiography has replaced hagiography and criticism, credulity, and with that comes the duty to sift through the candidate’s life to ascertain his heroic virtues.

George Weigel did this job brilliantly. In the third part of this book, Metanoia, the author engages in a critical appraisal of the Blessed Pope, arguing how he lived the Christian virtues in a heroic degree, and on how the late Pope discharged his duties to govern and sanctified the Church of Christ. Weigel discusses the merits of every major criticism leveled against the late Pope, and unveils the real shortcomings of John Paul’s papacy. In doing so, I learned that judging the heroic virtues of someone’s life does not consist of chalking popularity votes cast by so-called “traditionalists” or “liberals” in the Church, but to the right thing, as God gave the candidate the light to see it, in every situation. Historiography proves that the candidate had weaknesses and may have made mistakes in judgment, but its impartial application also helps to rule out malice on the part of the candidate and may even highlight the candidate’s heroic virtues during difficult moments and situations.

Pope John Paul the Second, the Great, is already enrolled in the lists of saints of the Church in Rome and Cracow: that’s what being declared a “Blessed” means. After reading George Weigel’s The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II--The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, I am convinced that he will be canonized, his added to the rolls of saints of the Universal Church, and that eventually “St.” John Paul the Great will be presented as an example of holiness and transformation in Christ for all the faithful to emulate.

Is the Obama Administration threatening freedom of conscience and religion in the US?

2012-01-22T07:44:00.001-05:00

Yes, and catholics in the Administration serve as useful tools for persecution

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus’ Name.

Last week, something unprecedented happened: a Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church warned about the erosion of religious and conscience liberties in the United States of America. As far as I can tell, this is unprecedented in the history of our Republic. According to Zenit.org (highlights are mine):

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 19, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI today joined his voice to that of the US bishops and warned of "certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion."

The Pope spoke with a group of bishops from Washington, D.C., and surrounding areas today, telling them that one of the most memorable elements of his 2008 trip to the United States was "the opportunity it afforded me to reflect on America's historical experience of religious freedom, and specifically the relationship between religion and culture."

"At the heart of every culture, whether perceived or not, is a consensus about the nature of reality and the moral good, and thus about the conditions for human flourishing," he said. "In America, that consensus, as enshrined in your nation's founding documents, was grounded in a worldview shaped not only by faith but a commitment to certain ethical principles deriving from nature and nature's God. Today that consensus has eroded significantly in the face of powerful new cultural currents which are not only directly opposed to core moral teachings of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but increasingly hostile to Christianity as such."

The Holy Father said that the Church in the U.S. "is called, in season and out of season, to proclaim a Gospel which not only proposes unchanging moral truths but proposes them precisely as the key to human happiness and social prospering."

"To the extent that some current cultural trends contain elements that would curtail the proclamation of these truths, whether constricting it within the limits of a merely scientific rationality, or suppressing it in the name of political power or majority rule, they represent a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself and to the deepest truth about our being and ultimate vocation, our relationship to God."

The Pontiff referred to Blessed John Paul II's vision, saying that a culture that attempts to "suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth" "inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey [...] to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society."

Faith and reason

Benedict XVI said with the Church's long tradition of respect for the right relationship between faith and reason, it has a "critical role to play in countering cultural currents which, on the basis of an extreme individualism, seek to promote notions of freedom detached from moral truth."

"Our tradition does not speak from blind faith, but from a rational perspective which links our commitment to building an authentically just, humane and prosperous society to our ultimate assurance that the cosmos is possessed of an inner logic accessible to human reasoning," he clarified. "The Church's defense of a moral reasoning based on the natural law is grounded on her conviction that this law is not a threat to our freedom, but rather a 'language' which enables us to understand ourselves and the truth of our being, and so to shape a more just and humane world. She thus proposes her moral teaching as a message not of constraint but of liberation, and as the basis for building a secure future."

Benedict XVI explained, thus, that the Church's witness "is of its nature public: she seeks to convince by proposing rational arguments in the public square. The legitimate separation of Church and State cannot be taken to mean that the Church must be silent on certain issues, nor that the State may choose not to engage, or be engaged by, the voices of committed believers in determining the values which will shape the future of the nation."

Serious threats

The Bishop of Rome said it is "imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church's public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres."

"Of particular concern," he continued, "are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion."

The Pontiff noted concerns about the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices; and a tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.

"Here once more we see the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture and with the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church's participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society," he said. "The preparation of committed lay leaders and the presentation of a convincing articulation of the Christian vision of man and society remain a primary task of the Church in your country; as essential components of the new evangelization, these concerns must shape the vision and goals of catechetical programs at every level."

Catholic politicians

Benedict XVI lauded the bishops' "efforts to maintain contacts with Catholics involved in political life and to help them understand their personal responsibility to offer public witness to their faith, especially with regard to the great moral issues of our time: respect for God's gift of life, the protection of human dignity and the promotion of authentic human rights."

"Respect for the just autonomy of the secular sphere must also take into consideration the truth that there is no realm of worldly affairs which can be withdrawn from the Creator and his dominion," he reminded. "There can be no doubt that a more consistent witness on the part of America's Catholics to their deepest convictions would make a major contribution to the renewal of society as a whole."

New generation

The Holy Father stated that anyone who looks realistically at the issues he described will see "the genuine difficulties which the Church encounters at the present moment."

"Yet," he continued, "in faith we can take heart from the growing awareness of the need to preserve a civil order clearly rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as well as from the promise offered by a new generation of Catholics whose experience and convictions will have a decisive role in renewing the Church's presence and witness in American society. The hope which these 'signs of the times' give us is itself a reason to renew our efforts to mobilize the intellectual and moral resources of the entire Catholic community in the service of the evangelization of American culture and the building of the civilization of love."

Commentary. Brethren, wake up! Our rights to influence society in accordance to our consciences, formed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, has been under assault for quite a while. Our indifference, lethargy, and complacency has allowed the practice, proliferation, and acceptance in law and in culture of practices and ways of lives that are intrinsically evil and eroding of our society and the moral law which underpins it.

As the Holy Father states – echoing Catholic Social Teaching – it is incumbent on us lay Catholics to educate politicians and civil servants as to the limits the moral law imposes upon a truly democratic polity. We must be willing to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but Caesar doesn’t sit on our altars, he’s not owed what we only owe to God.

I find it shocking, but instructive, on how much things have changed in America, to the point that people of faith are now considered bigots and haters because we think that there’s a moral limit to what men and women can do with – and have done upon – their bodies; to the point that our tax dollars are earmarked to fund the immoral choices of others. And for this, the defenders of the Culture of Death call us to task.

Catholic-in-name-only (CINO) politicians have been the staple of our political landscape for decades, but what has been taking place in the first decade of this century and now in the beginning of the second decade has been shameless. I ‘m not only talking about CINOs like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, but by the people who helped put them in power, CINOs like Catholics for Obama, who went out of their way to spew their talking points on commboxes throughout Catholic blogs in the ‘Net, but now are either unable or unwilling to stand up to the Administration’s coercive, tyrannical measures.

Again, my brethren, it is time to wake the hell up and smell the bad coffee been brewed in the highest kitchens of power in our country. We need to stand up to power and say ENOUGH.

Remember the CINOs next time you cast your ballot.

Some Obstacles on the Way to Family Sanctity

2012-01-21T10:38:00.001-05:00

Fr. Nicolas Schwitzer

1. Dreaming of the ideal family

One danger is dreaming of the ideal family, and therefore, rejecting the real family. To love the family group is to love real, concrete, flesh and bone, persons. Whoever loves his/her dream family more than his/her family itself…..judges it, accuses it and condemns it. We Christians are idealists. Our ideals are especially high: a holy family is a challenge out of the ordinary. But we Christians are also realists. We know that growth is slow and that it demands from us much understanding, patience and confidence. Let us love our family just as it is. Let us love our relatives just as they are, with their values and limitations. And from that love – which is the basis for everything – let us build the future.

2. Inability to change

An element which can make difficult the development of a family is the inability to change. To be disposed to change, or not to be disposed to change, is something which can cause great friction in daily life. Growth always carries with itself the transformation of the person, of his/her mentality and of his/her life.

Sanctity does not exist without great changes. And change requires a combination of humility, bravery, strength and energy which can weaken with time. Carlos Valles, SJ, calls it mental arthritis or spiritual rheumatism. After 40, the motto can can very well be: “leave me in peace!” But for us who are Christians, that is, young in spirit, it should not be that way.

The great enemy for change is the desire for security. The usual ways are clear, secure, trustworthy. With them we know what awaits us and how to face things. New ways always include risk, and the human being always flees danger. Change is always going against. Nevertheless, if we aspire for sanctity, we must have faith, courage and the simplicity to change. Let us allow God to shows us new means and allow Him to take us down unknown paths.

To refuse to change is to harden, to become stagnant. To be disposed to change is to be disposed to live, to grow, to mature. Are we disposed to this?

3. To judge others

Another obstacle is our inclination to judge others. The differences among us, of mentality, of being, different criteria, lead us to criticize and judge easily.

And sense of judgment destroys all relationship. Jesus himself insisted: “Do not judge.” Not to judge is a Gospel commandment, it is a basic rule for human relationships and it is an inevitable precept for mental health. And, it is very difficult.

I cannot avoid that my eyes see what is obvious and what my mind declares in a spontaneous way that such conduct is bad. The sense of judgment that something is good or bad, would be best left up to God, the supreme Judge.

What I can do is express my opinion clearly about a concrete conduct, without expressing a moral judgment about it.

And what I have to learn is to limit my comments about the action, without judging the person. To condemn the sin and not the sinner is another great Christian principle. Furthermore, the person is classified, tagged, and condemned – without recourse to appeal.

Questions for reflection

1. Are we resistant to changes?

2. Do we judge others?

3. How do I act when facing the fault of a relative?

Prayers I frequently say in the Outremer

2012-01-19T04:52:00.003-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus' Name.

As you all probably now, I'm in active military duty in Afghanistan - which I call by the very evoking name, "the Outremer."

My prayer life has blossomed here in ways unexpected, and I want to share with you some of the prayers I pray here every day, consciously and sometimes, repeatedly:

1. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

2. Lord, please don't let me screw up today!

3. My Guardian Angel: please, with the Lord's permission, detach a cohort of angels for our protection here, confuse the wiles of the enemy and lead them to salvation. Thanks!

4. Father, grant to my family and to your servant full health of spirit, soul, and body, so that we could meet again on this earth and carry on the mission of your love. I ask this in Christ, Your Son, Amen.

5. Father, may your will be always done but if possible, take me back to family sooner rather than later!

6. Saint Anthony, it seems that I've lost my diaconal vocation or at the very least, it has been severely misplaced. Could you please find it for us with the Lord's permission? Thanks!

7. Father, please don't let me shed innocent blood and if at all possible, don't let me shed any blood at all! But if I must, give me the right intention and the right aim as you did with David, your servant. Amen.

8. Father, if you call me to your presence, forgive me my sins, as I forgive all who have sinned against me; may I die with the name of your Son, Jesus, in my lips and in my heart. May my death, in union with the sufferings and death of your Son, be for the redemption of the world, for peace, and a token of my future resurrection, Amen.

9. The Rosary.

10. St. Anthony's Chaplet.

11. The Chaplet of Saint Michael the Archangel

12. The Divine Mercy Chaplet

13. Morning and Evening Prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Pray for us, for those of us who are here, for our families, and for those who have given life or limb in the defense of our country! Thank you!

John Allen: Five myths about anti-Christian persecution

2012-01-18T02:41:00.003-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus' Name.

John Allen recently wrote an article questioning conventional wisdom regarding worldwide anti-Christian persecution. Here is how it starts:

In his annual address to diplomats Monday, Pope Benedict XVI highlighted religious freedom with emphasis on persecuted Christians around the world.

"In many countries, Christians are deprived of fundamental rights and sidelined from public life," he said. "In other countries, they endure violent attacks against their churches and their homes."

This week, a delegation of Catholic bishops from Europe and the States tried to shine a spotlight on one small chapter of this global story: the Gaza Strip, where 2,500 Christians live amid an overwhelmingly Muslim population of 1.5 million. They're caught in a vise formed by Islamic militancy on one side and an Israeli- and Egyptian-imposed blockade on the other.

English Bishop William Kenney told the Christians of Gaza, "You are not forgotten."

It's a lovely sentiment, and the bishops of the Holy Land Coordination, which includes Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas as the American representative, deserve credit for their efforts. One wonders, however, how much reality there is behind Kenney's claim.

French intellectual Régis Debray, a veteran leftist who fought alongside Che Guevara in Bolivia, has observed that anti-Christian persecution unfolds squarely in the political blind spot of the West -- the victims are usually "too Christian" to excite the left, "too foreign" to interest the right.

As a contribution towards erasing that blind spot, let's debunk five common myths about anti-Christian persecution.

Please, continue reading here.

Commentary. The only I wish to add is that we need to pray for all those who are persecuted and give thanks to the Lord for all those who die on account of his Name, "for the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church".

Video: Inside a Catholic Benedictine Monastery

2012-01-17T10:14:00.000-05:00

Thinking through “angel time” (the aeon) in an orderly fashion

2012-01-16T00:00:00.004-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to you in Jesus Christ!

In my recent blogpost titled, What is a demon?, Fr. Fortea spoke about the manner in which angels (and demons) experience time, calling it “the aeon”. Today I wanted to share with you his definition, but then I thought that we should first reflect about what is “time” for us before we jump into how angels may experience time, so that we could all relate to it via what St. Thomas Aquinas once called "the analogy of faith".

Bottom line up front: Created, rational beings gifted with intellect and wills (the angels and us), abstract "time" from their perceptions of distance and movement. We'll now see how.

Our definition of time may be as slippery as a flopping fish. Philosophers, theologians, and physicists have speculated about the nature of time since classical times. Even St. Augustine got into the act:

What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past time; and if nothing were coming, there would not be future time; and if nothing were, there would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when even the past now is not; and the future is not as yet? But should the present be always present, and should it not pass into time past, time truly it could not be, but eternity. If, then, time present -- if it be time -- only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be -- namely, so that we cannot truly say that time is, unless because it tends not to be? (Confessions, Book XI, Chapter XIV, 17).

I think I would not be exaggerating if I were to say that the state of the question has remained thus since St. Augustine’s time – no pun intended. Recently, Scientific American thought the matter of time worthy of a special collector’s edition of their magazine, a very interesting issue if I may say so. Nevertheless, I owe you to keep this matter simple, I want you understand the implications, because it has implications impacting on everyone’s quest for holiness, and not only to accomplish an intellectual exercise in understanding the angels (and demons).

Measuring man time

First, we human beings perceive time as function of change. We perceive time because we see changing things. At its most fundamental level, we may say that time is connected to something called entropy, which is the tendency inherent in all material things to decay. Let me give you an example.

Think of an egg. Take an egg still in its shell and look at it without touching it and without looking at a clock. Look it for a while. The egg doesn’t move, it does nothing, you’re bored. If you look at it persistently you will see it rot. Aha! That’s the first change. The interval between you first watching the egg until it rotted, until you perceived its first entropic change we call “time”, and you can measure that time by the movement (or change) in other things: the movement of the sun or the moon in the sky, the movement of the big hand on the clock on the wall, or the pages you torn off from your desk calendar.

Or perhaps you want to accelerate things and after a short while you grabbed the egg and smashed it on the floor, thereby producing another state predicted by the aforementioned concept of entropy: all things being equal, all material things will tend to a maximum state of disorder in time. Since you were inpatient, you accelerated time in a sense, by effecting maximum disorder on the egg. Now you have a mess.

We talk about “the arrow of time” which always seems to move forward, toward an undefined “future.” This perception arises also from entropy. Let’s do another experiment: don’t clean your egg-mess from the floor. Look at it intently and wait for it to reverse to its original state, for the egg to become whole again. If you don’t want to contemplate the egg mess, go to the nearest junkyard and observe the remnants of a vehicle, any vehicle, and wait for it to reverse its entropic decay and become a new car once again.

You know by experience that doesn’t happen. Entropy has a one way arrow and we human beings are convinced that the arrow of time and that entropy point the same; sometimes we equate both, but that’s inaccurate. It is our perception of time which derives from entropy and since it is a perception, it arises inside our minds. It is grounded on real-life events, but it occurs inside our conscious, self-reflecting minds. Neither the egg-mess on the floor nor the skeleton of a car in a junkyard care one hoot about what time it is or how long they’ve been in their sorry state because they lack conscious, self-reflecting minds like human beings and angels (and demons) do. Therefore, we can reach one first conclusion: time arises from our minds out from our perception of things changing. Inanimate objects don’t perceive time, we do.

Now, let’s talk about measuring time. It follows that we can use anything that changes as a clock, for we use things changing as a measure of time. Hypothetically, we could throw eggs against a wall at periodic intervals and call each smash “a minute.” Thing is, we would all have to agree as to how long such an interval with it and let’s face it, smashing eggs against a wall would be both impractical and a scandalous waste of resources. So, human beings started measuring time, first by looking at the position of the sun during daytime and decided to call the whole interval “a day.” Human beings also observed that the moon underwent phases and began to measure how long the moon took before becoming full again in her cycle and called that interval “a month.” Then human beings noticed that hunting and gathering could be extended during full moons because there was more light available. Later, when humans invented agriculture, they noticed they could plan their seeding and sowing according to the days and moons and a calendar was born. This takes us to our next conclusion: time measures are agreed upon by humans so that everyone can plan their lives and render their duties toward God and others in an orderly fashion. Time still continues to be the perception of things changing by our minds, but now culture intervenes, forcing an agreement as to how long a given interval of time is. We call these conventions.

But these are big expanses of time. How to divide the day so that we can conduct business fairly, giving to God, oneself, and fellowmen the rightful due? Day’s had to be divided into segments and then the movement of the sun – change, movement again – came to the rescue when the sundial was invented. That left the night without timekeeping, adding to its infamy as the symbol of the dominion of darkness.

We’re going to jump through several centuries of clock development to our times and the classical analog clock, you know, the one which is usually round and has numbers from 1 to 12, and three hands to mark “time.” We know that when the big handle on the clock moves from, say, 12 to 1, five minutes have passed and we know that five minutes are five minutes because we have received a convention forcing us to agree that’s so.

Now, there are two similarities between measuring time by marking the sun’s position in the sky and the position of a hand on that dial we call “a clock.” The similarities are: we measure time by noting both the movement of the sun in the sky by measuring how far it has moved from one position to the next. Likewise, a clock-hand moves through a dial and by convention, we’ve all agreed that when the big hand moves from 12 to 1, or from 1 to 2, that 5 minutes have passed; when the small hand moves from 12 to 1 we agree that 1 hour has passed. We have synchronized our clocks with the sun’s movement across the sky to divide the day – and night – into a 24 hour period which we, by convention, call “a day.”

Therefore, let us abstract a fundamental conclusion from all these moving things we use to measure time:

We measure time by abstracting it from the movement of things and the points they occupy in space at intervals agreed upon by long-standing convention.

That’s what time is for us, and the notion is so ingrained in us that its perception is a fundamental part of our psyche.

There’s another fundamental conclusion that we can infer if we thing a little bit harder:

All man-made measures of time are created and therefore, arbitrary and subjective.

Just imagine if the earth rotated a bit faster. The days would be shorter, but we would still call them “days.” Also, shorter days demand a moon orbiting closer to us – a consequence of the law of conservation of angular momentum – and a moon orbiting closer to us would mean a faster moon through the sky, but we would still call its phase changes “a month.” But it would be a shorter month, and we would adjust our calendars and clocks accordingly – shorter hours, shorter minutes – and internalize them in the same way until the perception would become as ingrained in our minds as the current measures of times are to us. The permutations of the speeds and changes in the sun, moon, earth system are infinite so any measure of time derived from any one of the infinite combinations possible are as a consequence, arbitrary.

Remember also: the earth in her rotation, the moon orbiting around us, the sun appearing to “rise” and “set” don’t care about what time it is, but we do. Again, that’s a function of rational, self-reflecting beings, humans in this instance who look for movement and change to measure time as a tool for planning. Being material things, the sun, the moon, the earth are too large for us to notice entropic changes, but for sure being made of matter, these celestial bodies are subject to entropy and to a future of decay and maximum disorder, like our egg.

Measuring angel time

Now that we have a notion of human time and how we have come up with our measurements of time, and our conventions, we can “extrapolate” into “angel time.” In fact we’re almost ready for our first argument based on a fundamental commonality between angels and humans: our contingent existence. We are both created beings, we both have a beginning; we both don’t have an end. God is the only uncreated being, without beginning or end, that’s an attribute that is His very Being, that’s why He’s God and no one else. Everything else He created.

Moving from those facts, we can reason:

Angels are created beings;

Humans are created beings;

Humans experience time;

Therefore, angels also experience time.

That doesn’t tell us anything about how angels experience time, only that they somehow do. For that, we need to reason thusly:

Angels experience time;

Human beings experience time;

Human beings measure their perceptions of time in the movement and change of things;

Therefore, angels measure their perceptions of time also in the movement and change of things.

We’re almost there, I promise! OK, we agree that for both angels and humans, change and movement are the tools we use to measure our respective perceptions of time. But we know that we use some things to measure our perceptions of time, we call them clocks, which are tools that combine movement and change to mark time. Which things angels use to perceive or mark time? We know that angels are pure spirits and immaterial, whereas we are enfleshed spirits. We “reason” because we obtain data from our senses and in an as yet undiscovered process in which our brains and souls interact to reason in steps and produce a series of thoughts that transform into an idea that then transform into a practical conclusion. But angels, being incorporeal by nature, don’t “reason”. Their intellects are free to appraise things as they are without the aid neurons. (You can read more about angels and demons) at Dr. Peter Kreeft’s website, or more in depth in his book, appropriately titled: Angels and Demons: What Do We Really Know about Them? to understand the full Church teaching on this fascinating subject). Now, on to our next reasoning steps:

Human beings are material beings,

Human beings measure time with material things;

Angels are immaterial beings,

Therefore, angels measure time with immaterial things!

Am I saying that angels carry immaterial pocket-watches in their robes to measure time? Ah, no. Because angels are immaterial, they lack bodies; since they don’t suffer entropy, they don’t measure time through the change and movement of things, like our very solid clocks. (They don’t need clothes either, therefore, they lack cloaks and pockets). Being disembodied beings gifted with intellects and wills, what is the one thing they have that can provide a reference for movement and change and therefore, time?

Their thoughts! Now, remember, they don’t reason in steps like we do. They perceive things through their intellectual senses and have a direct insight into the thing they see, understanding immediately what that is. They call things what they are because they see things as they are, unclouded by accidents (such as weight, shape, color, and through willful mislabeling, etc.). That’s why Gabriel called Mary kecharitomene, a noun, not an adjective, meaning “full of grace.” Gabriel called her the way he saw her, but I digress.

Insights pop into angelic minds all the time, following a rhythm of its own in each angel because, each angel, lacking accidents to distinguish him from other angels (again, color, weight, shape, size, etc.) , angels are distinguish by their intellectual individuality and their particular infusion of sanctifying grace. In theology we say that each angel is its own species. An angel species has one, and only one individual; the human species – because we distinguish each other by accidents – are many individuals. Awesome!

Now, the interval between each angelic “thought” or “insight” is the way that an individual angel measures his time. This is the aeon Fr. Fortea speaks about in the essay I shared with you before. We’re there! The change in the angelic mind consists in a thought that the angel forms in his intellect, that wasn’t there before, and that he can hold – or not – before his next insight. Each angel marches to his own clock!

Moreover, angels, since they are unencumbered by matter, can think billions of thoughts at each tic of their clock, and join the dots between the thoughts so-to-speak to make them intelligible to themselves, in a process that would seem “instant” to us. This is the first measure of angel time, the measure each angel has within himself.

But what about “movement”, what moves within the angel that also defines his perception of time? Well, angels being personal beings, they communicate. Who they communicate with? Well, with God of course, and with other angels. Let’s take the latter. A thought moves from Angel 1 to Angel 2. That’s the movement we’re looking for to make “angel time” similar to our time. But since each angel has its own internal “clock” – his own “speed” at which he thinks – angels have to agree with each other on a mutual standard clock at which to communicate, or they would sort of talk over each other. They agree at a speed that seems to us but “an instant” but not to them! It takes them time, angel time!

Want to make this even more awesome? Multiply this conversation by billions of angels and we can begin to picture the greatest and most awesome conversation in Creation! This is their song! Their symphony, their harmony, derives from this concert of insights and thoughts that mesh into a common tempo – which means “time” in Latin. This is the aeon, this is the vast “angel time”. It is a song! But, theirs is a song of what and for whom? A song of praise, sung to God, their Creator! And of whatever they choose to sing about. No wonder we talk about the choirs of angels!

Finally, how do they talk to God? God being God, He is eternal, inhabiting, indwelling every moment of angelic and human time in an eternal Present. God is the only being who is truly timeless throughout all space, the universe, the multiverse if you allow for its existence. All creation is present to God in one single instant of time, where there is neither before nor after, as St. Augustine intuited above. Well, angels talk to God the same way He does to us; He condescends, by meeting us, and elevating us to them by grace. Otherwise, the chasm between God and his creation would be unfathomable, unless He chooses to bridge it, and He has, directly to the angels and to us, in the fullness of time, in the Person of Jesus Christ!

Ultimate Consequences

In time, we would march by a different clock, where there would be no decay, no death, no pain, no entropy, and full participants of the immense heavenly choir. We will know the music, the melody, our unique harmony, and the tempo. We will join the eternal conversation, a conversation between humans, angels, and God. This, we call heaven, and we can experience it here in part through prayer, and through participation in the Sacraments, particularly, the Eucharist.

At the moment we enter the Liturgy in earth, the barriers between us and the liturgy in heaven dissolve: we enter that time in which we are present to God, to the angels, and to each other, the way God sees time, as one single moment. The Sacrifice of Christ in Calvary, His resurrection, his ascent and his parousia are present to us as gift in a single moment in which human time and God’s eternal present mesh.

It also follows that, as St. Augustine also observe, since we don’t know what the future will bring and the past is gone, the present moment is where we find God. When we pray, we pray in the present moment and if we are really attentive, we transcend human time and enter the Holy of Holies where the Triune reigns and Loves forever, and ever.

Amen.

Vivificat’s Top 10 in 2011

2012-01-15T07:10:00.001-05:00

Brethren, I greet you for the third time today.

I thought you would like to know the ten most visited pages in Vivificat during 2011:

1. Twelve Differences Between the Orthodox and the Catholic Churches
2. Peter Kreeft: Ten Uncommon Insights Into Evil from Lord of the Rings
3. Plenty of Good Reading for Lent at Your Fingertips
4. The Our Father in Hebrew and Aramaic
5. Abba’s Little Girl: Mel Gibson, Piercing The Hand That Loves Him
6. Hedge Prayer for Return of a Wayward Spouse
7. Father Al Kimel joins the Orthodox Church
8. So, you want to become a Doctor of the Church?
9. Catechism of the Catholic Church Now Available in EPUB Format
10. Let us pray for Fr. Tom Euteneuer

The Vivificat Daily Chronicle Revamped

2012-01-15T04:43:00.004-05:00

Brethren: Peace be with you!

I've revamped the news vehicle I created in Paper.li which I named The Vivificat Daily Chronicle. The publication is now solely in English and draws from over 100 Catholic news, blogging and Twitter sources, as well as from targeted stories from the major news agencies in the world. It updates twice a day and you can subscribe to it directly or through my Twitter feed.

I find this paper setup useful to scan what's hot in the Catholic news world at the time the paper software pulls the feeds, at approximately 6 AM and 6 PM US ET every day.

There's also a link to the Chronicle on the left sidebar.

New URL for the Catechism of the Catholic Church EPUB

2012-01-15T04:26:00.003-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus' name.

Annuntio vobis gaudim magnum: the EPUB versions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that for the glory of God I'd put together now have a permanent home at the following link in St. Peter's List:

http://www.stpeterslist.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/CCC-EPUB.zip.

Please, download the files from that address from now on.

About St. Peter's List: "St. Peter’s List proudly proclaims that The Catholic Life is the Good Life. From the beatific vision to robust trappist ales, SPL prepares daily lists that reflect the beauty and truth of the Catholic tradition. Holding the beloved Dumb Ox - St. Thomas Aquinas – as the community’s patron saint, SPL proudly draws from the Scholastic tradition and champions a faithful and intellectual articulation of the Catholic faith.

Most of all we seek to live the Good life, the Catholic life, and share that truth with others.

Long Live Pope Benedict XVI.
Vivat Papa."

Please, I invite you all to become a St. Peter's List "Lister" here.

We've been doing this for the longest time...

2012-01-14T01:38:00.003-05:00

Religious Leaders Join Together In Support Of Marriage, Religious Liberty

2012-01-13T12:49:00.001-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus’ Name. This, according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

WASHINGTON—Leaders of some of the largest religious communities in the United States have joined together in an open letter to all Americans to voice their shared concern for marriage and religious freedom.

The letter, titled “Marriage and Religious Freedom: Fundamental Goods That Stand or Fall Together,” was released January 12. It can be found at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/promotion-and-defense-of-marriage/ecumenical-and-interreligious-activities.cfm. Signatories include leaders from Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Lutheran, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities in the United States.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was one of the four signing Catholic bishops.

“Marriage and religious liberty are at a crisis point in the United States,” he said. “This letter is a sign of hope. Not only are tens of millions of believing citizens represented in the letter’s signatories, but the letter itself testifies to the growing and shared awareness of just how important marriage and religious freedom are to the well being of our country. The letter makes a compelling argument that needs to be heard by all of us, especially those in positions of authority: anyone truly concerned with religious freedom must also be a defender of marriage’s perennial definition.”

In the letter, the leaders counter a common claim that the principal threat to religious freedom is the possibility of ministers being forced to officiate same-sex “weddings.”

The leaders wrote: “We believe the most urgent peril is this: forcing or pressuring both individuals and religious organizations—throughout their operations, well beyond religious ceremonies—to treat same-sex sexual conduct as the moral equivalent of marital sexual conduct.There is no doubt that the many people and groups whose moral and religious convictions forbid same-sex sexual conduct will resist the compulsion of the law, and church-state conflicts will result.”

They added that “these conflicts bear serious consequences.”

“They will arise in a broad range of legal contexts, because altering the civil definition of ‘marriage’ does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once.By a single stroke, every law where rights depend on marital status—such as employment discrimination, employment benefits, adoption, education, healthcare, elder care, housing, property, and taxation—will change so that same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage. That requirement, in turn, will apply to religious people and groups in the ordinary course of their many private or public occupations and ministries—including running schools, hospitals, nursing homes and other housing facilities, providing adoption and counseling services, and many others,” they said.

The leaders warned that redefining marriage has consequences for the religious freedom of all Americans and urged civic leaders to defend marriage so as also to defend religious liberty.

“We especially urge those entrusted with the public good to support laws that uphold the time-honored definition of marriage, and so avoid threatening the religious freedom of countless institutions and citizens in this country,” the religious leaders said. “Marriage and religious freedom are both deeply woven into the fabric of this nation.”

The release of the letter comes days before the presidential proclamation for Religious Freedom Day (January 16) and a few weeks before World Marriage Day (February 12) and National Marriage Week USA (February 7-14). The letter follows a letter of shared commitment released December 6, 2010 (also available at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/promotion-and-defense-of-marriage/ecumenical-and-interreligious-activities.cfm).

Commentary. Needless to say, I support the letter fully, and applaud all and each one of its courageous signatories. It depends now on us, the Christi fideles laici, to defend our freedom and engage our representatives and our cultural institutions to defend our freedoms and to protect the sanctity of marriage.

To the reader who offered to host the CCC EPUB...

2012-01-12T02:28:00.001-05:00

I lost your e-mail communication! Could you please resend it? Thanks!

What is a Demon?

2012-01-11T12:46:00.001-05:00

Author: Fr. José Antonio Fortea | Source: Summa Daemoniaca: Tratado de Demonología y Manual de Exorcistas (Spanish Edition) | Translator: Teófilo de Jesús

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus’ Name.

For awhile now I’ve been meaning to share with you a translation of Question #1 of Fr. José Antonio Fortea’s work, Summa Demoniaca. Fr. Fortea’s work is a huge undertaking, a treatise on demonology and exorcism. In it he goes much more in depth into this issue that many other writers I know. I want to share this question with you because I wish to use it as a “jumping board” to other issues I want to discuss with you, such as the nature of evil, war, homicide, sexual abuse, and the like. Yep, I know, “heavy issues” that I can only speak about only if I build first an authoritative foundation and Fr. Fortea’s work - and as you will see later, one by Venerable Fr. John Hardon, S.J. - will provide such a foundation. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit assist us in this endeavor and strengthens us in order to provide answers to a world thirsty for the Truth. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

[Translatior’s note: Fr. Fortea recurs frequently to ellipses, expressions in which the subject of the sentence is not explicitly stated, but it is known and implied in the sentence. This works well in Spanish but in English it adds ambiguity and fog that may lead the reader to misunderstand. I’ve added those subjects in brackets to aid the translation. I’ve also added some questions for meditation and reflection at the end].

What is a Demon? (Question #1 of 182 in Fr. Fortea’s work)

A demon is a being of a spiritual nature condemned for eternity. He doesn’t have a body, nor does he possess matter of any subtle kind in his being, nor anything like matter at all. His existence is singularly spiritual. Spíritus in Latin means breath. Since they lack a body, demons do not feel the slightest inclination toward any sin committed with a body. Therefore, gluttony and lust are impossible in them. They can tempt men to sin in those matters but demons only understand those sins in a merely intellectual way, since they lack bodily senses. The sins of demons are, therefore, exclusively spiritual.

Demons were not created evil. They were offered a test at the time of their creation, the test they had to undergo prior to acquiring the vision of the Divine Essence. Before this test, they saw God but they didn’t see His Essence. Even the very verb “to see” is an approximation, for the angels’ vision is an intellectual vision.

Since many will find difficult to understand how angels could see or know God without seeing or knowing His Essence, [it could be said in the way of] a comparison that they saw God as a kind of light and heard Him as majestic, holy voice but his Countenance remained hidden from them. All things considered, although they could not penetrate His Essence, they knew that He was Holy, the Holy among Holies.

Before acquiring the beatific vision of His Divine Essence, God tested them. While undergoing the test, some obeyed and some disobeyed. Those whose disobedience became irreversible became demons. They themselves became what they are. No one made them that way.

There were phases in the angelic psychology before they turned into demons. These phases didn’t take place in our material time, but in the aeon. (What’s this aeon will be explained later in this work).

Since they took place in the aeon, these phases would seem to us human beings as having occurred almost instantaneously. However, what to us would seem so brief, to them it was a long time indeed. The transformation phases from angel to demon were as follows: First, they doubted; a doubt that disobeying the Divine Law was better than not. At the moment in which they voluntarily accepted the possibility that disobeying God was an option to consider, they sinned. In the beginning, accepting this doubt constituted a venial sin which little after little evolved toward grave sin. Yet in the beginning, none of them during this first phase were willing to move away from God, not even the devil. That happened later, when what they had chosen with their will began to settle into their intellects, despite the judgment of their own, very same intellects reminding them that such disobedience went against reason. But their wills kept moving away from God and as a consequence, their intellects began accepting as true the evil thing their wills had chosen. Their intellects continued to consolidate their error. The will to disobey continued to consolidate, becoming deeper in its determination; their intellects continued to seek more and more reasons to increasingly justify their stance. This process led them in the end into mortal sin which took place at a concrete moment, [in time, in the aeon] through an act of their will. In other words, each angel reached a moment in which he not only wanted to disobey, but also chose to have an existence outside the Divine Law. It was no longer that their love for God had grown cold, that theirs was not a minor disobedience to something predetermined that was hard for them to grasp, but that in their wills appeared the idea of a destiny apart from the Trinity, an autonomous destiny.

Those who persevered in this thought and decision commenced a process of justification of their decision. They began a process in which they tried to convince themselves that God wasn’t God; that God was but just another spirit. He might have been their Creator, but thought that He had flaws, errors. They started to caress the possibility already present in their intellects: the possibility of an existence apart from God and from his norms. This existence apart from God appeared to them as a freer existence. God’s norms, the obedience owed to Him and to His will, appeared progressively to them as something oppressing, too heavy [a burden]. They began seeing God as a tyrant to be faced-down in a quest to free themselves from Him. In this new phase of estrangement it’s not that they simply sought a destiny apart from God, but that God himself appeared to them as an obstacle in the path to that freedom. They thought that the beauty and felicity of the angelic world could have been greater and freer without an oppressor. Why is there a Spirit above all other spirits? Why is it that His will must be imposed over all others’? We are not children, we are not slaves, they must have thought. God was no longer an element that has been left behind, but was someone who had begun to turn into something evil to them. Thus, they began to hate Him. God’s calls to these angels to return to him were seen in turn as unacceptable intrusions. In this phase, their hatred toward God grew in some more than others.

It may be surprising than an angel may come to hate God. It needs to be understood that to them, God was no longer the Good, but the Obstacle, the Oppressor, the Chain of the Commandments. This hatred was born from the energies of the angelic wills who resisted the calls from God who sought after them as a father. To tell it in terms intelligible to us, their hatred was born as a logical reaction of a will who must cling to its decision of abandoning the father’s house. It’s like saying that someone who wishes to leave his father’s house, does so in the beginning simply because he wants to leave, but then the father calls after him repeatedly and the child ends up saying leave me alone. God called after them because He knew that the longer their wills were estranged from Him, the more they would cling to their estrangement.

Of course, many of the angels who had become estranged at first returned. This is the great struggle in the heavens spoken of in Revelation 12: 7-9:

Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.

How is it that angels can fight among themselves? Since they lack a material body, what kind of weapons can be used? An angel is a spirit, therefore the only combat they can engage in is of an intellectual kind. Their war was an intellectual war. The only weapons they could wield were intellectual arguments. God sent grace to each angel to return him to fidelity, or to keep him in it. The [good] angels gave arguments to the rebel ones to compel them to return to obedience. The rebel angels retorted with their reasons to justify their posture and to introduce rebellion among the faithful ones. In this angelic conversation involving thousands of millions of angels there were casualties on each side: there were rebel angels that returned to obedience and there were faithful angels that were convinced or seduced by the evil reasoning [expounded by the rebels].

Their transformation into demons was progressive. With the passage of time - since the aeon is a kind of time - some hated God more, some less. Some became more prideful, others not as much. Each rebel angel began deforming more and more, each one in a set of specific sins. In the same way, but in reverse, the faithful angels became progressively holier. Some angels became holier in one virtue and others holier in another. Each angel focused on one or another aspect of the Divinity. Each angel loved with a measure of love. That’s why within the ranks of the faithful angels there started to be many distinctions, according to the virtues that each angel practiced the most.

Each angel had its own nature given by God, but each angel sanctified himself in a measure proper to the grace God granted to him in a manner corresponding to the angel’s will. Again, this is true for the demons too, but in reverse. Each demon received his nature from God, but each one deformed himself according to his own estranged ways.

That’s why the battle stopped when each one ended up pigeon-holed in his own posture irreversibly. The moment came when only accidental changes registered in each spiritual being. For the demons, the moment came in which each one kept himself firm in his imprudence, jealousy, hatred, envy, pride, egolatry, etc.

The war came to an end. They could have continued arguing, talking, disputing, exhorting each other for thousands of years in human terms, but only accidental changes would have taken place. It was at that moment when the angels were admitted to the Divine Presence while demons were allowed to their estrangement, to their state of moral prostration that each one had elected for himself.

As one can see, it’s not that demons are sent to an enclosed place of fire and torture, instead, they are left as they are, abandoned to their freedom, to their will. They are not taken anywhere since there is no place to take them. [Since they lack material bodies] they occupy no space, therefore there is no place to which to take them. There are neither tools of torture, nor flames that could torment them, nor chains that can tie them. Nor did the faithful angels entered any place. They simply received the grace of the beatific vision. The heaven of the angels, and the demons’ hell, are states. Each angel carries his own heaven within himself no matter where he is. Each demon, wherever he is, carries within his spirit his own hell.

The point of no return is the moment in which an angel sees God’s essence.That’s because after seeing God nothing will change the angel’s mind; after seeing God, the angel will not choose to do anything that would minimally offend Him. The angel’s intellect understood that offending Him would be tantamount to choosing dung over a treasure. [For the angel], sin became impossible after this moment. Before entering heaven the angel understood who God was; he understood what God’s holiness supposed, his omnipotence, wisdom, love...After the angel was admitted to contemplate His Essence, he didn’t only understand it, but he then saw it. That is, the angel sees His holiness, love, wisdom, etc. Once the [angelic] spirit sees [God’s essence] he is filled with such love, such veneration, that he would never, under any condition, would want to separate himself from It. Hence, sin becomes impossible [for the angel].

The demon remains irremediably tied to his choice from the moment God decides not to insist any more. The moment in which God stops sending graces of repentance is that moment, since every grace of repentance can only be overcome by the demon’s reaffirmation of his hatred. There comes a point in which God sees that sending more graces the demon’s way serves only to reinforce the demon in his choice. There comes a point in which the God who is Love turns His back and allows his son to continue on his way, allowing the demon to pursue his life apart [from Him].

From one vantage point we could say that there isn’t a unique moment in which the angel transforms himself into a demon, since we’re dealing with a slow, gradual, evolutionary process. But from another vantage point we could say that there was a precise moment in which the angelic spirit had to choose between rejecting or not his Creator, no matter how long the previous (and succeeding) process had been.

It has been stated before that within this process it is possible to turn back, that’s the war in heaven spoken about in Rev. 12: 7-9. But there’s a point in the war in which the demons drew further and further away. There was no sense to keep insisting. The Creator respected the freedom of each.

The devil is depicted in pictures and sculptures as deformed and that’s an appropriate representation, since he is a deformed angelic spirit. He’s still an angel, it’s only his intellect and will which is deformed and nothing else. In everything else he’s still as angel as he was after being created. In definitive terms, the devil is an angel that has chosen his destiny far from God. He is an angel who wants to live free, without anything holding him down. The interior loneliness in which he will find himself world without end, the jealousy he feels when he understands that the faithful ones enjoy the vision of an Infinite Being, moves him to blame himself for his sin time and time again. He hates himself, he hates God, and he hates those who provided him with reasons to estrange himself from God.

Yet, not all demons suffer in the same way. During the war, some angels became more deformed than others. Those who deformed more, suffer more; those who deformed less, suffer less. Again, we must remember that their deformity lies in their intellect and will.

Their intelligence is deformed, darkened, for the proper reasons with which a given angel justified his departure, his liberation. The will imposed to the intellect its decision and the intellect saw itself impelled to justify that decision. The [angelic] intellect functioned as a justification mechanism, to argue what his will impelled him to accept. As we can see, this process has an extraordinary similarity to the process of debasement seen in human beings. We should not forget that we human beings are enfleshed spirits. If we set aside for a moment the sins proper to the body, the internal psychological process that leads a person to join the mafia, or become a guard in a concentration camp, or a terrorist, is substantially the same process [as with the angels who became demons].

That’s because a man’s sins are sins of his spirit, even when he commits them with his body.

A child has a childhood and so does the angel as soon as he was created, because he lacked experience. Human persons receive temptations from other people, so did the angels from their kind. Men can be led to sin by means of [purely] mental constructs such as the motherland, a family’s honor, and the well-being of a child. An angelic spirit also holds before him great intellectual constructs that, although different from those held by humans, supposes a complex correlation between the angelic world and the human world known to us.

We human beings are also spiritual beings although we are endowed with bodies, and we only have to look deep within us to understand how one can fall into sin, how one can debase oneself. When we do so, it is then when the sin of the angels become easier to understand, when it is not as remote from us as we may think.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

1. Fr. Fortea stated that there was a point in time in the process of estrangement when God stops granting graces of repentance. Fr. Fortea also stated that there is a “complex correlation” and similarities between the angelic world, and ours. Think about this: do we face a moment ourselves in which God stops granting graces of repentance and leaves us to our choices? What would that moment be?

2. Suppose that a human being dies having committed many venial sins, including intrinsically evil deeds which they committed without having full knowledge of the intrinsic evil of the deed, or which they were forced to commit, or were unable to fully and willingly acquiesce. They don’t deserve hell but they cannot enter the Beatific Vision immediately due to their ignorance and impurity, although they are redeemed by Christ. What would be the state of those souls after their particular judgment? Can they receive grace? If not, who can receive them for them? What would be their final outcome?

3. Remember this: demons are finite, angelic beings who debased and estranged themselves from God. They were created good and in time - a time called the aeon. They are not all-powerful nor can they act outside of God’s permission. They are fixated forever in their hatred of God - and as we shall see, humankind - and therefore abandoned to their ultimate choice forever. They carry hell within them. They have no power over those who are in God’s grace and if they do, it is because God allows it to harness some ultimate good.

In my next post, I will attempt to describe what’s this aeon time, quoting freely from Fr. Fortea’s explanation and comparing it to some philosophical notions of time that I’ve been reading of late in a special edition of Scientific American. I hope - truly truly hope that the discussion would be enlightening.

The nature and purpose of suffering according to Blessed John Paul the Great

2012-01-10T10:53:00.003-05:00

Brothers and sisters, Peace and Good to you in the name of Jesus. I've been reflecting a lot on the nature and purpose of human suffering and Bl. Pope John Paul the Great's encyclical letter Salvifici Doloris has been a great help to me in this regard. I want to share with you his conclusion:

These words about love, about actions of love, acts linked with human suffering, enable us once more to discover, at the basis of all human sufferings, the same redemptive suffering of Christ. Christ said: "You did it to me". He himself is the one who in each individual experiences love; he himself is the one who receives help, when this is given to every suffering person without exception. He himself is present in this suffering person, since his salvific suffering has been opened once and for all to every human suffering. And all those who suffer have been called once and for all to become sharers "in Christ's sufferings"(98), just as all have been called to "complete" with their own suffering "what is lacking in Christ's afflictions"(99). At one and the same time Christ has taught man to do good by his suffering and to do good to those who suffer. In this double aspect he has completely revealed the meaning of suffering.

This is the meaning of suffering, which is truly supernatural and at the same time human. It is supernatural because it is rooted in the divine mystery of the Redemption of the world, and it is likewise deeply human, because in it the person discovers himself, his own humanity, his own dignity, his own mission.

Commentary. I've found out in my conversations with many people, many of them devout Protestants - and some functionally Protestant Catholics - are convinced that suffering comes from the evil one, that it is to avoided or cured at all costs, and that it doesn't serve any corredemptive purpose. Their view is that human beings cannot co-merit with Christ for the salvation of the world.

This view is based upon a faulty understanding of Scripture clearly states:

Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church...(Colossians 1:24, Douay-Rheims).

In his eternal mercy, God the Father has grafted the suffering of his children into the sufferings of his son Jesus Christ, so that in Jesus' suffering, our suffering acquires an infinite value, becoming a full participation in Jesus' redemptive sacrifice.

No other way, no other religion, teaches that men and women can and do become sharers in Christ's divine nature to the point they share in his sufferings. Only Christianity and among the many Christianities, only the Catholic Church holds to the fullness of this teaching through all the consequences; consequences that we readily see in the lives (and deaths) of many saints and blesseds, including Blessed Pope John Paul the Great.

The Catholic Doctrine on the Holy Trinity

2012-01-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

Author: Venerable Fr. John Hardon, S.J. | Source: Fr. Hardon Archives

Blogger’s note: Since today we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord and that’s the first Trinitarian theophany or manifestation of God, I thought this article was apropos. Enjoy.

The mystery of the Holy Trinity is the most fundamental of our faith. On it everything else depends and from it everything else derives. Hence the Church’s constant concern to safeguard the revealed truth that God is One in nature and Three in Persons.

In order to do some justice to this sublime subject, we shall look only briefly at the heretical positions that at various periods of the Church’s history challenged the revealed Trinitarian faith. Our principal intention is to see in sequence the development of the doctrine, with emphasis on how the Church’s authority has contributed to the progress in understanding the plurality of persons in the one true God.

There is also great value in seeing some of the implications of the doctrine for our personal and social lives, since the mystery was most extensively revealed by Christ during the same discourse at the Last Supper when He taught us the “New Commandment” by which we are to love one another as He has been loving us.

Trinitarian Heresies

There is a certain logic in the adversative positions assumed by those who called into question one or another aspect of the Trinity. Not surprisingly the human mind has wrestled with what God revealed about Himself in His inner Trinitarian existence. And depending on the willingness to recognize its limitations, the intellect has been enlightened by what God says about His mysterious being.

Thus we have, on the one hand, such extensive treatises as St. Augustine’s De Trinitate that show how perfectly compatible is the mystery of the Triune God with the deepest reaches of human intelligence. Indeed, the better the Trinity is understood, the more the human mind expands its horizons and the better it understands the world that the Trinity has created.

At the same time, we have the spectacle of another phenomenon. Minds that are not fully docile to the faith have, in greater or less measure, resisted the unquestioning acceptance of the Trinity. From apostolic times to the present, they have struggled with themselves and in their misguided effort to “explain” the mystery have only rationalized their own ideas of what the mystery should be.

For the sake of convenience, we can capsulize the leading anti-Trinitarian teachings of Christian history. Although given here somewhat chronologically, they are all very current because one or another, or a combination of several, may be found in contemporary writings in nominally Christian sources. There is no such thing as an antiquated doctrinal error, as correspondingly there is no such thing as an entirely new heresy. Error has its own remarkable consistency.

Monarchianism

By the end of the first century, certain Judaizing Christians lapsed into a pre-Christian notion of God. According to them God is simply unipersonal. Such were the Corinthians and the Ebionites.

Within the next hundred years these theories were systemized into what has since become known as Monarchianism, i.e., monos = one + archein = to rule, which postulates only one person in God. In practice, however, Monarchianism affected certain positions regarding the nature and person of Christ; and these were the ones that finally had to be countered by the Church’s Magisterium.

If there is only one person in God, then the Son of God did not become man except as the embodiment of an adopted son of God. According to the Adoptionists, Christ was a mere man, though miraculously conceived of the Virgin Mary. At Christ’s baptism, He was endowed by the Father with extraordinary power and was then specially adopted by God as son. Among others, the best known Adoptionist was Paul of Samosata.

Another group of Monarchians took the view that Christ was divine. But then it was the Father who became incarnate, who suffered and died for the salvation of the world. Those favoring this idea were called Patripassionists, which literally means “Father-sufferers,” meaning that Christ was only symbolically the son of God, since it was the Father Himself who became man. On this hypothesis, of course, the Father, too, is only symbolically Father, since He does not have a natural Son.

The best known Patripassionist was Sabellius, who gave his name to a still popular Christological heresy, Sabellianism. According to Sabellius, there is in God only one hypostasis (person) but three prosopa, literally “masks” or “roles” that the unipersonal God assumes. These three roles correspond to the three modes or ways that God manifests Himself to the world. Hence another name for this theory is Modalism.

In the Modalist system, God manifests Himself, in the sense of reveals Himself, as the Father in creation, as the Son in redemption, and as the Holy Spirit in sanctification. There are not really three distinct persons in God but only three ways of considering God from the effects He has produced in the world.

Subordinationism

Unlike the foregoing, Subordinationism admits there are three persons in God but denies that the second and third persons are consubstantial with the Father. Therefore it denies their true divinity. There have been different forms of Subordinationism, and they are still very much alive, though not all easily recognizable as Trinitarian errors in which the mind tries to comprehend how one single infinitely perfect divine nature can be three distinct persons, each equally and completely God.

The Arians, named after the Alexandrian priest Arius, held that the Logos or Word of God does not exist from eternity. Consequently there could not have been a generation of the Son from the Father but only by the Father. The Son is a creature of the Father and to that extent a “son of God.” He came into existence from nothing, having been willed by the Father, although as “the first born of all creation,” the Son came into the world before anything else was created.

The Semi-Arians tried to avoid the extreme of saying that Christ was totally different from the Father by conceding that He was similar to or like the Father, hence the name Homoi-ousians, i.e., homoios = like = ousia = nature, by which they are technically called.

There was lastly the group of Macedonians, named after Bishop Macedonius (deposed in 360 AD), who extended the notion of subordination to the Holy Spirit, who was claimed not to be divine but a creature. They were willing to admit that the Holy Spirit was a ministering angel of God.

Tritheism

At the other extreme to saying there was only one person in God was the heresy that held (and holds) there are really three gods. Certain names stand out.

According to John Philoponus (565 AD), nature and person are to be identified, or, in his language ousia = hypostasis. There are then three persons in God who are three individuals of the Godhead, just as we would speak of three human beings and say there are three individuals of the species man. Thus instead of admitting a numerical unity of the divine nature among the three persons in God, this theory postulates only a specific unity, i.e., one species but not one numerical existence.

In the theory of Roscelin (1120 AD), a Nominalist, only the individual is real. So the three persons in God are actually three separate realities. St. Anselm wrote extensively against this error.

Gilbert of Poitiers (1154 AD) said there is a real difference between God and the Divinity. As a result there would be a quaternity, i.e., three persons and the Godhead.

Abbot Joachim of Fiore (1202 AD) claimed that there is only a collective unity of the three persons in God, to form the kind of community we have among human beings, i.e., a gathering of like-minded persons joined together by their freedom to work together on a common enterprise. Joachim of Fiore is also known in doctrinal history as the one who projected the idea of three stages in Christian history. Stage One was the Age of the Father, through Old Testament times; Stage Two was the Age of the Second Person, the Son, which lasted from the time of the Incarnation to the Middle Ages; Stage Three began about the time of Abbot Joachim and will continue to the end of the world, as the Age of the Holy Spirit.

Anton Guenther (1873) was deeply infected with Hegelian pantheism and proclaimed a new Trinity. Guenther said that the Absolute freely determined Itself three successive times in an evolutionary process of development as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. So the divine substance is trebled.

Post-Reformation Protestantism

The original Reformers affirmed the Trinity without qualification. Thus Luther and Calvin, and the sixteenth century confessions of Protestant faith uniformly attested to the Trinity of Persons in God. But the subjectivism of the Protestant principles paved the way to a gradual attrition of the faith, so that rationalism has made deep inroads into the denominations. The most common form of this rationalism takes the three persons in God as only three personifications of the divine attributes, e.g., divine power is personified by the Father, divine wisdom by the Son, and divine goodness by the Holy Spirit.

In this context, we may define rationalism as that system of thought that claims that the human mind cannot hold with certainty what it cannot understand. Since the Trinity cannot be fully understood, it cannot therefore be held to be certain.

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We observe today the Solemnity of Theophany or the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ

2012-01-09T01:23:00.001-05:00

Come, let us worship Christ, the beloved Son, in whom the Father is well pleased!

From today's Office of Readings: A sermon by St. Gregory Nazianzen

Christ is bathed in light; let us also be bathed in light. Christ is baptised; let us also go down with him, and rise with him.

John is baptising when Jesus draws near. Perhaps he comes to sanctify his baptiser; certainly he comes to bury sinful humanity in the waters. He comes to sanctify the Jordan for our sake and in readiness for us; he who is spirit and flesh comes to begin a new creation through the Spirit and water.

The Baptist protests; Jesus insists. Then John says: I ought to be baptised by you. He is the lamp in the presence of the sun, the voice in the presence of the Word, the friend in the presence of the Bridegroom, the greatest of all born of woman in the presence of the firstborn of all creation, the one who leapt in his mother’s womb in the presence of him who was adored in the womb, the forerunner and future forerunner in the presence of him who has already come and is to come again. I ought to be baptised by you: we should also add, “and for you”, for John is to be baptised in blood, washed clean like Peter, not only by the washing of his feet.

Jesus rises from the waters; the world rises with him. The heavens like Paradise with its flaming sword, closed by Adam for himself and his descendants, are rent open. The Spirit comes to him as to an equal, bearing witness to his Godhead. A voice bears witness to him from heaven, his place of origin. The Spirit descends in bodily form like the dove that so long ago announced the ending of the flood and so gives honour to the body that is one with God.

Today let us do honour to Christ’s baptism and celebrate this feast in holiness. Be cleansed entirely and continue to be cleansed. Nothing gives such pleasure to God as the conversion and salvation of men, for whom his every word and every revelation exist. He wants you to become a living force for all mankind, lights shining in the world. You are to be radiant lights as you stand beside Christ, the great light, bathed in the glory of him who is the light of heaven. You are to enjoy more and more the pure and dazzling light of the Trinity, as now you have received – though not in its fullness – a ray of its splendour, proceeding from the one God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.

Hymns of the Feast from the Greek Festal Menaion

Apolytikion: (First Tone)

Lord, when You were baptized in the Jordan, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest. For the voice of the Father gave witness to You, calling You Beloved; and the Spirit, in the form of a dove, confirmed the certainty of His words. Glory to You, Christ our God, who appeared and enlightened the world.

Kontakion: (Fourth Tone)

Today You appeared to the world, and Your light, O Lord, has left its mark upon us as in fuller understanding we sing to You: “You came, You were made manifest, the unapproachable light.”

From the Liturgy of the Hours: Morning Prayer Antiphons

Antiphon 1: The Soldier baptizes his King, the servant his Lord, John his Savior; the waters of Jordan tremble, a dove hovers as a sign of witness, and the voice of the Father is heard: This is my Son.

Antiphon 2: Springs of water were made holy as Christ revealed his glory to the world. Draw water from the fountain of the Savior, for Christ our God has hallowed all creation.

Antiphon 3: You burned away man's guilt by fore and the Holy Spirit. We give praise to you, Our God and Redeemer.

Gospel Canticle Antiphon: Christ is baptized, the world is made holy, he has taken away our sins. We shall be purified by water and the Holy Spirit.

Blessed John Paul the Great: Two Videos set to music

2012-01-07T02:53:00.002-05:00

What’s the Arabic term for “Chuztpah”? Answer: Obeidullah

2012-01-06T12:18:00.001-05:00

Brethren, Peace and Good be with you today this day of Jesus Christ’s first manifestation to the gentiles, or Epiphany.

I read this guest piece by Dean Obeidullah published in CNN, titled Santorum wants to impose 'Judeo-Christian Sharia'. At first I thought it was a serious piece but then, upon further inspection of the author’s vitae I realized that Obeidullah’s credentials as a student of comparative religion are, well, comical since his primary profession is being a comedian. Thus, he has the same authority as, say, Harry Bellafonte, to speak on serious issues.

I like humor as anyone, I am no sourpuss. However, Mr. Obeidullah’s joke is lost on me. To compare Catholic Social Doctrine – which candidate Santorum avows to honor, yet that’s up for debate also – to shari’a isn’t funny at all. In fact, it is over the top, as a simple reading of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church would demonstrate very quickly. For example, a lesson we learned from experience is that killing religious dissenters and malcontents by turning them to the state for punishment, including capital punishment, was inconsistent with the Gospel and judged harshly by the Gospel’s Lord. Whereas in shari’a, strictly applied, non-Muslims are to be kept in dhimmitude and Muslim who convert to another religion are to be killed, with the blessing of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate.

Anyone who holds a posture consistent with Catholic Social Doctrine holds a posture ultimately rational and humanistic, because it is based upon the truth about the human person, his nature, call, and end. I hope for the day where serious discussion could flow through that channel, and not through the unfunny caricatures put forth by Mr. Obeidullah. A serious conversation to be had, even with serious comedians with no chutzpah.

We celebrate today the Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ

2012-01-06T00:00:00.001-05:00

From today’s Office of Readings
From a sermon by Pope St Leo the Great

The Lord has made his salvation known to the whole world

The loving providence of God determined that in the last days he would aid the world, set on its course to destruction. He decreed that all nations should be saved in Christ.

A promise had been made to the holy patriarch Abraham in regard to these nations. He was to have a countless progeny, born not from his body but from the seed of faith. His descendants are therefore compared with the array of the stars. The father of all nations was to hope not in an earthly progeny but in a progeny from above.

Let the full number of the nations now take their place in the family of the patriarchs. Let the children of the promise now receive the blessing in the seed of Abraham, the blessing renounced by the children of his flesh. In the persons of the Magi let all people adore the Creator of the universe; let God be known, not in Judaea only, but in the whole world, so that his name may be great in all Israel.

Dear friends, now that we have received instruction in this revelation of God’s grace, let us celebrate with spiritual joy the day of our first harvesting, of the first calling of the Gentiles. Let us give thanks to the merciful God, who has made us worthy, in the words of the Apostle, to share the position of the saints in light, who has rescued us from the power of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son. As Isaiah prophesied: the people of the Gentiles, who sat in darkness, have seen a great light, and for those who dwelt in the region of the shadow of death a light has dawned. He spoke of them to the Lord: The Gentiles, who do not know you, will invoke you, and the peoples, who knew you not, will take refuge in you.

This is the day that Abraham saw, and rejoiced to see, when he knew that the sons born of his faith would be blessed in his seed, that is, in Christ. Believing that he would be the father of the nations, he looked into the future, giving glory to God, in full awareness that God is able to do what he has promised.

This is the day that David prophesied in the psalms, when he said: All the nations that you have brought into being will come and fall down in adoration in your presence, Lord, and glorify your name. Again, the Lord has made known his salvation; in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice.

This came to be fulfilled, as we know, from the time when the star beckoned the three wise men out of their distant country and led them to recognise and adore the King of heaven and earth. The obedience of the star calls us to imitate its humble service: to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all men to find Christ.

Dear friends, you must have the same zeal to be of help to one another; then, in the kingdom of God, to which faith and good works are the way, you will shine as children of the light: through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with God the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.

Source: Universalis.com