Wow, did I just agree with Robert Gibbs?

Courage, man!

"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

-Winston Churchill

The case for objective morality

If you haven't yet read the Holy Father's Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, please do.

Making the rounds have been the pope's assessment of the future of Western civilization should the common interest of a consensus on fundamental morals be abandoned: "The future of the world is at stake."

More striking to me is this passage, pertinent news to a world steeped in moral relativism:

To the objective realm belong things that can be calculated and verified by experiment. Religion and morals fall outside the scope of these methods and are therefore considered to lie within the subjective realm. Here, it is said, there are in the final analysis no objective criteria. The ultimate instance that can decide here is therefore the subject alone, and precisely this is what the word “conscience” expresses: in this realm only the individual, with his intuitions and experiences, can decide. [Blessed Cardinal John Henry] Newman’s understanding of conscience is diametrically opposed to this. For him, “conscience” means man’s capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decision-making areas of his life – religion and morals – a truth, the truth. At the same time, conscience – man’s capacity to recognize truth – thereby imposes on him the obligation to set out along the path towards truth, to seek it and to submit to it wherever he finds it.

This reminds me that we are the guardians of truth, not the dictators of it. We do not have the authority to determine what is right and wrong by our own decisions. By our opinion we cannot make good into bad and bad into good, though the world still tries to. Truth must dictate our understanding of reality, and principle, not emotion, must guide our moral action.

On the sixth day of Christmas, Mike in CT said to you...

Like LarryD said elsewhere, one of the great things about being Catholic is that you can say "Merry Christmas" up to a week after December 25th, and you're still on time.

Hope you all have a wonderful and blessed feast of the birth of Our Lord. May His coming to us bring us all to the peace of His kingdom, if not in this world, then in the next.

Pax.

Clarifying the condom controversy

Sorry the blog lately has been more of a link service with the occasional "Hi, I'm here," but life with 5 is a little hectic. Anyhoo, I do want to point attention to this article from Joe Heschmeyer's blog citing the CDF statement clarifying the recent broohaha over misinterpreted statements that Pope Benedict made in a book interview. Those interested in understanding the truth ought to check it out.

Enjoy (what little is left of) the rest of Advent and have a blessed Christmas everybody!

NPR, your epidermis is showing.

The Anchoress hits NPR square on the jaw, with about a thousand links to back up the punch!

"Actually, that's perfect. I think we're done."

Alright, I promise a serious post soon, but funny this is, to be shared it must.

AIDS, condoms, and the pope

Since we're on controversial topics, let's add this one. Check out this video and commentary at Fr. Longenecker's blog about the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and what approach is ACTUALLY WORKING at stemming the tide.

"Precious Blood"

Last week I filled in an hour of adoration for a friend of the family away on vacation.

It was late, and of course, I was tired, and sometimes when I'm tired I have a hard time concentrating on prayer. I picked up the hymnal. It was a good one, no Bernadette Farrell or Dolores Dufner. This chapel is at a Franciscan Friary dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the friars there don't put up with any bull.

I was struck by this verse of "Precious Blood", the Italian hymn Viva, Viva Gesu, translated by Frederick William Faber, Cong. Orat. :

3. Oh, Sweetest Blood, that can implore
Pardon of God, and heav'n restore,
The heav'n which sin had lost,
While Abel's blood for vengeance pleads,
What Jesus shed still intercedes
For those who wrong him most.

No pandering, diversity praising, self-congratulations. No "Gather Us In" or "Sing a New Church" in this place.

No, we worship the God who paid the price of our sin. In paying any ransom, the cost must be something dear, something we want not to part with. Ransom has to hurt to be a ransom. But all of the universe is God's creation; by His word it exists, by His will it came to be, and if He willed it so (God forbid!), it would all cease to be. All of creation is external to God, and is not "of Him." Truly, and this is not a limit on God, but a recognition that He is necessary, and we are not, He had nothing with which to pay off a creature's debt except that which is truly His: His own Son, inseparable from and co-equal with Himself.

And in the flesh, Christ had nothing to give of Himself but the very lifeblood in his veins, which He shed willingly: "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again." (John 10:18) As Isaiah foretold of Him, "Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth." (Is 53:7)

All for us! "But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed." (Is 53:5) We sometimes get the erroneous impression that the Church is a social club of good-feeling people, or a wax museum of long-dead saints. But it is a hospital for sinners. People have been scandalized by the visible sins of Christians, many understandably so. Others think their own sins too grave to be brought out into the open. But both conclusions are nonetheless wrong. The only unforgiveable sin is our own choice to reject God's forgiveness; even in mercy, God does not force Himself upon us.

Our sins caused and necessitated the nails in Christ's hands and feet. But like the hymn says, His blood does not cry out for vengeance, as Abel's blood did. Christ's blood cries out for mercy. When we resist His mercy, Christ cries out the louder to plead for our forgiveness.

The sinner who sins out of spite, knowing the gravity of his actions, throwing his defiance into the face of God, is nonetheless loved by God, though he hurts Him most. It is not our place to reject them, (although we reject the sin) but to pray and encourage their repentance and mercy.

"Oh my God, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of your mercy."

Lincoln was not a Know-Nothing

President Lincoln, from a letter he wrote to his longtime friend Joshua Speed in 1855:

“I am not a Know Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for example, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

Fulton Sheen on the marks of the Church and the Mystical Body

Before I hand off the copy of "Servant of God" Fulton Sheen's Life of Christ to my nephew (who, by the way, is a fine young man, but I suspect is starting to buy into some of the Dan Brown-isms of the day), I thought I would share a few passages from the end:

Christ is living now! He is teaching now, governing now, sanctifying now--as He did in Judea and Galilee. His Mystical Body or the Church existed throughout the Roman Empire before a single one of the Gospels had been written. It was the New Testament that came out of the Church, not the Church which came out of the New Testament. This Body had the four distinctive marks of life; it had unity, because vivified by one Soul, one Spirit, the gift of Pentecost. As unity in doctrine and authority is the centripetal force which keeps the life of the Church one, catholicity is the centrifugal force which enables her to expand and absorb redeemed humanity without distinction of race or color. The third note of the Church is holiness, which means that it endures on condition that it keep itself healthy, pure, and free from the disease of heresy and schism. This holiness is not in each member but rather in the whole Church. And because the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, it can be the Divine instrument for the sanctification of souls. The sunlight is not polluted because its rays pass through a dirty window; neither do the sacraments lose their power to sanctify because the human instruments of those sacraments may be stained. Finally, there is the work of apostolicity. In biology, Omne vivum ex vivo or "All life comes from life." So too the Mystical Body of Christ is apostolic, because historically it took its roots in Christ and not from a man separated by centuries from Him. That is why the infant Church met to choose a successor of Judas who had to be a witness of the Resurrection and a companion of the Apostles.
...
Many think they would have believed in Him if they had lived in His day. But actually there would have been no great advantage. Those who do not see Him as Divine living in His Mystical Body today would not have seen Him as Divine living in His physical Body. If there are scandals in some cells of His Mystical Body, there were scandals too in His physical Body; both put forward a human appearance which in moments of weakness of Crucifixion require moral strength to see Divinity. In the Galilean days, it required faith supported by motives of credibility to believe in the Kingdom He came to establish or His Mystical Body through which He would sanctify men through His Spirit, after His Crucifixion. In these days, it requires faith supported by the same motives of credibility to believe in the Head, or the Invisible Christ, governing, teaching, and sanctifying through His visible head and His Body the Church. In each case a "lifting-up" was required. To redeem men, Our Lord told Nicodemus that He had to be "lifted up" on the Cross; to sanctify men in the Spirit, He had to be "lifted up" to heaven in the Ascension.

Non Nobis Network

I join with the guys at Creative Minority Report and the other members of the Non Nobis Network, giving thanks to God for HIS victory in stopping an anti-life, anti-freedom health care bill that would enslave Americans for years to come.

Non nobis, non nobis, Domine
Sed nomini tuo da gloriam.

Not to us, not to us, o Lord,
But to your name give glory.

My favorite version of the Non Nobis is recorded on John Flynn's song titled "Holy Is Our King," on the album Kissing the Heart of God, which can be purchased here.

One more thing the Brown win in MA means...

...people like David Marciniak have one less over-reaching incompetent statist nitwit to worry about in Washington.

"How-DEE! I'm just so proud to be here!"

Well, I haven't been mentioned in a poem before; except, of course, for that one about me and a motorcycle, but I never did like that one. Thanks to LarryD for the Christmas wishes!

Christmas wishes to all of you as well, though Christmas is half over (though not completely, as some would think). Being married to a starving church musician doesn't make for a quiet, simple holiday schedule, so we caught up on sleep and celebrated Christmas with some of our extended and adopted family on Saturday.

I know I haven't been here much, and I hope to chime in more soon. Work's been busy, I've been searching for and just was hired for a part-time tutoring job, we're trying to sell our home and buy another one with little money of our own, and we've had two feet of snow and a few family sicknesses thrown in just for fun! I know, that's supposed to be some sort of excuse for not blogging everyday? pssh, whatever!

God bless!

Just in case you think eugenics is cool...

go check out this article at Causa Nostrae Laetitiae.