Again HUGE news: Pope Francis explicitly endorses Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of continuity”

Posted on 23 November 2013 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

You will want to read this carefully and put it in your “IMPORTANT” file.

This is, again, HUGE news.

The 450th anniversary of the closing of the Council of Trent is coming up on 4 December.  We like to celebrate these great milestones in salvation history.  So, there are great doings in Trent, in the northern area of Italy which is part of the (also) German-speaking Tirol.  As is customary, Pope Francis will send a Cardinal as his personal representative.  Who better than His Eminence Walter Card. Brandmüller?

When the Pope sends a Cardinal off on one of these missions, he sends him a formal letter, charging him with his task and indicating something of his own hopes for the occasion.  The anniversary of the closing of the Council of Trent is no exception.

In his letter to Card. Brandmüller, Pope Francis explicitly cites Pope Benedict XVI pontificate-defining address in 2005 to the Roman Curia in which he spoke about the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture” (e.g., the Karl Rahner crowd and their descendants, still active today) and the “hermeneutic of reform”, or “hermeneutic of continuity”.

In this explicit reference Francis is aligning himself with Benedict and that key moment and concept underlying Benedict’s pontificate.

This comes in the wake of Francis writing to Archbishop Marchetto (refresh your memory HERE), a critic of one of the powerhouses of the ”hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”, the so-called “Bologna School” of interpretation of the Council.  Francis surely broke a lot of liberal hearts when he referred to Marchetto (who in this matter is completely aligned with Benedict) as one of the best interpreters of the Council that he knows.

The letter of Francis to Card. Brandmüller is available in the Latin original in the Bollettino.  Here is my rapid translation of the first part of the letter, which is the important part.  I scaled down some of the flowery stuff. The second part is the usual boilerplate and of less interest.

To our Venerable Brother
Walter Cardinal (of the Holy Roman Church) Brandmüller
Deacon of St. Julian of the Flemish

Since the 450th anniversary of the day on which the Council of Trent drew to its favorable end, it is fitting that the Church recall with readier and more attentive eagerness the most rich doctrine which came out of that Council held in the Tyrol. It is certainly not without good reason that the Church has for a long time given such great care to that Council’s decrees and canons which are to be recalled and heeded, seeing that, since extremely grave matters and questions sprang up in that period, the Council Fathers employed all their diligence so that the Catholic faith should come into clearer view and be better understood. Without a doubt as the Holy Spirit inspired and prompted them, it was the Fathers’ greatest concern not only that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be defended, but also that mankind be more brightly illuminated, in order that the saving work of the Lord could be diffused throughout the entire globe and the Gospel be spread through the whole world.

Harking closely to the same Spirit, Holy Church in this age renews and meditates on the most abundant doctrine of the Council of Trent. In fact, the “hermeneutic of renewal”[interpretatio renovationis] which Our Predecessor Benedict XVI explained in 2005 before the Roman Curia, refers in no way less to the Council of Trent than to the Vatican Council. To be sure, this mode of interpretation places under a brighter light a beautiful characteristic of the Church which is taught by the Lord Himself: “She is a ‘subject’ which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God” (Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to the Roman Curia offering them his Christmas greetings – 22 December 2005).

[...]

This is a significant letter.

First, it affirms that we can indeed, and rightly, Read Francis Through Benedict.

Second, it affirms that Francis is, and rightly, reading Francis Through Benedict.

Third, it strikes me that Pope Francis is making some course corrections.  He may have perceived that some in “the world” (e.g., liberals, the MSM) are not reading him accurately.  His experience with the “interview” by Scalfari ought to have made that evident.  In addition to liberal misperceptions and distorted interpretations, he has also been misjudged by many on the more conservative side of the spectrum.

As I have said all along, Pope Francis – like every Pope – has to learn how to be Pope.  He had less of an advantage coming to the See of Peter because he had not been in or around the Roman Curia.  But he is adjusting, learning, transforming.  Francis, as you can see everyday, is not static in his job.  He isn’t simply on cruise control.

Continue to pay close attention to Pope Francis, not just in sound-bites, but in the larger arcs of his talks and speeches and written documents.

This is not a bone thrown to conservatives.  This is the real deal.  This is Francis.

Of Good Taste and Things Beautiful (Baseball, Beer and the Latin Mass)

Nate Metzger POSTED: 11/22/13

REMNANT COLUMNIST
______________________

In a previous article, I argued briefly that, despite the common aesthetic problems of Novus Ordo worship-style, it was not in the best interest of traditionalists to focus on these deficiencies, but to instead focus on the problematic nature of the new prayers. Let me briefly say a bit more about this here.

I know a Catholic fellow who, while perfectly nice and polite, I can’t seem to understand. He is pleasant enough, to be sure. In fact, he is extremely generous and kind.

But he doesn’t drink alcohol and he doesn’t follow baseball. And for these reasons, I have a hard time relating to him.

Actually, he doesn’t follow any sports. Of course, as Catholics, we should be mostly concerned about his lack of interest in God’s favored sport. I fear—for I’m afraid to ask—that he doesn’t even really know the rules of the game, let alone know any of the players, current or past. I live in a city that has severe emotional attachments to their baseball organizations; but as baseball is God’s favorite game, this is one feature of New York that I find virtuous, even heroically so. That this colleague of mine does not participate in this city-wide neurosis, I find disturbing.

As to the other of my colleague’s peculiar features, I have it on good authority that he is neither recovering from prior addictions nor reacting to other traumas: he is simply averse to spirits of all sorts, and always has been. As for me, while details are between me and my confessor, I have no qualms in mentioning that I appreciate a good pint in a pub. Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, indeed. How one would not like this activity, I do not know.

So this acquaintance of mine: he baffles me. Now, not drinking alcohol for no other reason than personal preference, or worse yet, not loving baseball—these are signs of social disorders in and of themselves, to be sure. And where you find some disorders, you are bound to find others. For our purposes, I should mention one more peculiar quirk of this man. What I write next should not surprise any of the readers of this fine newspaper, given what I’ve written so far: this man, he also cares rather little for the old mass or traditional rubrics, and he rolls his eyes at those who agonize over these adiaphora. This colleague of mine is perfectly fine with versus populum and communion on (in?) the hand, he cared not at all that—for example--the recent beach party mass in Rio featured bikinied ‘ministers’ handing out hosts from plastic cups, and he does not cry in horror at Paul VI Audience Hall or worse yet, the wretched Domus Sanctae Marthae Chapel.

Moreover, as far I can tell, he seems content with the hellishly awful music that infects his Paul VI Mass. The music—dear God, the music—it seems to affect him negatively not at all. Yes, he is a strange fellow.

I am not expert enough in the Ways of Man to say if his frightening vision of the world is a product of barbaric habituation, some sort of devilish, self-induced beta-blocking, or a glitch in his DNA; but I’m quite convinced that there is a connection between his tee-totaling, his complete ignorance of and disinterest in God’s favored game, and his ambivalence towards liturgy. I haven’t done any sort of formal study, but I’d be willing to bet that a large survey of the American Catholic populace would reveal strong connections between a disinterest in baseball and a disinterest in good liturgy and good lager. This isn’t to say that the best place to find those who appreciate the Old Mass is the local pub on game night, but—no, maybe that is the best place to find such people. I don’t know: we should do a study (or just check the pub and see, and while we’re there…).

This is all to say that we can speak not just of conflicting visions of the good, but large divisions over the nature of the beautiful. And these divisions run deep. This makes sense, if one takes a rather old-fashioned view of taste as something that tracks, if ordered rightly, objectively beautiful things. Those who have the virtue of good taste, argued Aristotle, find (really) beautiful things beautiful. Such a philosophy seems, prima facie, terribly pretentious and elitist from our modern, egalitarian perspective (and that Aristotle would include this virtue in his ethical treatise, no less, makes us gasp!). But once we get over our indignation, most are resigned to admit that Aristotle is on to something here. Indeed, even the utilitarians are happy to say, along with John Stuart Mill, that there are higher pleasures to be pursued, simply because we are humans and not animals (I’ll leave it to the utilitarians to figure out how Mill’s concession concerning the insufficiency of the ‘satisfied pig’ doesn’t collapse utilitarianism entirely). No, it seems perfectly correct to speak of good taste and bad taste. And therefore it seems perfectly correct—as terrible as this might sound—to speak of the more refined tastes of those who prefer certain liturgical rubrics over others.

But here is where our problem begins. Because forget about bad liturgy for a second. Forget about communion in the hand, songs about gathering, liturgical dancing, and the barren wasteland of ‘ordinary time’. How, pray tell, do you get someone who does not like baseball to like it? I suppose you could answer: the same way that you get someone to enjoy a good glass of wine. You get them to acquire a taste for it.

Yes, acquisition and acclimation through habituation. That’s the name of the game, to be sure. Aristotle is right: proper habituation is everything. Assuming that poor taste is not a result of faulty physiology, I suppose we could get my colleague to like baseball by dragging him to Yankee Stadium, in the same way that we drag those at the bottom of Plato’s cave, kicking and screaming, to the light.

But just as Plato’s cave dwellers have been habituated to appreciate the shadows in their flickery darkness, and just as they fastly flee back to the safety of the darkness upon being dragged out by those in the know, my baseball and beer-hating colleague will most certainly be rather annoyed at my insistence that he must accompany me once again to the afternoon game. But drag him I must, one might argue.

And yes, the required tie-in to the Old Mass, can now be briefly made, and some point about how the Old Mass ‘takes some getting used to’, and how this also requires some acclimation by those not previously disposed to such worship style, can be written. Of course. So consider this here the requisite mentioning of this point.

Very good. But enough about that. It is more important to point out what a lousy state of affairs this is. For the answer to our problems—habituation—has revealed a troubling aspect of getting things right in the beauty game. However successful this acclimating program for our aesthetically-blind acquaintances might be, we should note more importantly how, from the beginning, we have recognized that there is simply no straightforward appeal to reason available.

One cannot simply offer a written argument for the beauty and grandeur of baseball, or Guinness, let alone the Traditional Latin Mass. Believe me, I’ve tried with my colleague regarding all three. It appears that it’s habituation or nothing. If you do not see the beauty of any of these things, the best I can do, given my fortunate access to this ‘inside information’, is to get you too to ‘try them’. I cannot present a PowerPoint presentation for their aesthetic superiority (I’ve also tried this), and expect anyone who isn’t already convinced, to be convinced.

So enough about baseball and beer. If you do not see the beauty of the Old Mass, of ad orientem, of the Latin language, of Gregorian chant—if you do not recognize the superiority of these forms of worship, then nothing that anyone saysabout these things will do any good. If someone has been poorly habituated, then, as Aristotle rightly said, they will see the ugly as beautiful, and the bad as good. Sadly, a distorted sense of taste cannot be corrected by the offering of a syllogism.

This isn’t to say that beauty isn’t rational. It’s entirely rational, and therefore knowable. Beauty supervenes on being, and being is intelligible. But not all knowledge is built on a priori, self-evident truths that can be found regardless of one’s lot in life, simply by transcending the confines of a wrongly encultured mind, and thinking upon things ‘purely’. To think this is possible—this is one of the many myths of the Enlightenment. Most certainly, there are deft philosophical arguments for why certain things are objectively beautiful and others are not (and many of these arguments are right). Moreover, as the work of Benedict XVI on liturgy attests, there are arguments that connect good theology with good liturgy and proper reverence and form. But Benedict does not proceed like Euclid, by building up a large set of necessary truths from initially posited self-evident principles. A traditionalist cannot build up a logically air-tight case for the insanity of communion in the hand. Likewise, I cannot make an argument for the stupidity of my colleague’s favorite hymn (you don’t want to know) in such a way that reveals that he is in fact offering a logical contradiction by disagreeing with me.

At the end of the day, after all arguments are made, and all theological and philosophical matters unpacked and explained, we still have to appeal to a proper vision of reality in order to make our arguments for the beautiful, and getting this proper vision takes some real work on the part of the poorly trained. If one’s eyes aren’t trained, then reading or arguing will only do so much good.

So what does this mean? It means, among other things, that if failure of a purely logical appeal to the beautiful is impossible, then we should not be surprised that so many in the world of the Novus Ordo simply can’t see what traditionalists see, and we should not be surprised, moreover, that Novus Ordo types get annoyed at traditionalists constantly pointing out to them their ridiculous music, their architectural disasters, and their irreverent forms of worship. Traditionalists cannot proceed by axioms, but neither can they hold up a CD of Luis de Victoria in one hand, pound their other hand on the table, and declare, “If you’d just LISTEN to this, you’d understand!” It’s not that easy.

This isn’t to say that we should cease trying to train those who are amenable to being trained. And drag we must our friends to the Old Mass. But in the meantime, we can appeal to aspects of the Old Mass that require no habituation or privileged vision to understand. There are features of the Old Mass that are superior to the New Mass, but that require no inside information to grasp.

The prayers. The content of the Old Mass. If there is any straightforward ‘empirical’ or strictly ‘scientific’ argument to be made, if there is any argument that does not transgress the so-called fact/value divide, if there is any appeal to the superiority of the Old Mass that does not threaten the sensibilities of those who actually like songs about gathering, it’s the prayers themselves.

We do not need to properly habituate or reorient anyone’s vision to see the problematic nature of the prayers of the New Mass. We simply need to do a quick compare and contrast. Whereas explicit references to Catholic dogma saturate the collects, secrets, and antiphons of the Old Mass, the same cannot be said of the prayers in the New Mass. When it comes to the content of the prayers, we do not need inside information to understand the problem. In fact, one does not even need to be Catholic to see the differences in the prayers. One simply has to know what Catholics teach regarding the Real Presence, the merits of the saints, propitiation, and the like. Thus, to focus on the worrying prayers of the New Mass is not to make an appeal to a properly formed vision, nor is it even to appeal to specifically Catholic sensibilities. It’s simply to appeal to facts about Catholic belief. Any Methodist could tell you, if (you found one and) had him quickly compare the prayers of any given Mass for any given day, that one Mass had more Catholic-rich content than the other.

For this reason, focusing on content is the safest strategy a traditionalist can take. There is no risk of offending anyone when we simply focus on the fact that these prayers do, and these prayers do not, reference particular Catholic dogmas. It is to simply focus on facts. Facts, as philosophers point out, do not offend. Only values do. Moreover, to point out faulty content is to focus on aspects of the New Mass that do not run the risk of attacking faulty character. To focus on content is not to criticize any one parishioner’s taste, and more importantly, it is not to criticize any one priest. After all, not only are priests overworked and underpaid, but they can’t help what they are given to work with. The prayers are what they are. It is not the fault of any priest or any parishioner, nor is it a mark of anyone’s poor taste, that the content of the New Mass is what it is. Most importantly, to focus on content is not to present yourself as superior in any way. In my case in particular, this is quite important, as such a self-presentation would be impossible.

I’ll probably never get my colleague to appreciate the joys of a good glass of wine by demanding, again and again, that he try it. I similarly have had no success convincing him of the joys of baseball. But I should be able to convince him of the superiority of the Old Mass, simply by appealing to his knowledge of Catholicism, and then showing him the differences in the content of the prayers of the two Masses. Who knows: perhaps when he sees the factual differences, he’ll start attending the Old Mass, and this will start a process that will properly habituate him, and rightly form his sense of taste. Before you know it, he’ll be joining me for a pint in the pub for the night’s game.

Advice for Preachers on Sin and Satan

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

by Regis Martin

“St. Peter Preaching” Masolino da Panicale in 1426-27.

I once knew a pastor whose homilies were so awful, so bone crushingly boring, that I’d swear he composed them in the time it took us to sit down after he’d finished reading the Gospel. In other words, three seconds flat.

But while they may have been a tad bit thin theologically, they were always reassuringly thick with orthodoxy. So I didn’t really mind missing the spiritual wheat germ so much, because I figured at least he’s not trying to poison me. For real toxicity, one would have to go elsewhere.

And, believe me, I have gone elsewhere; indeed, over the years, I have been regularly assaulted by some of the best hit and run homilists in the business. I’ll never forget a certain curate who preached one Sunday on sin, his point being that since we so rarely commit any, we should stop feeling guilty worrying about it.

“Haven’t you already opted fundamentally for God?” he asked. “Then why fuss over details? Details are for bookkeepers, not for Christians, who, loving Jesus and everyone else, are blessedly free to do what they will!”

How very soothing it all sounded at the time, his honeyed words exuding great dollops of sweetness and light. However, when the sermon concluded with a full-throated denunciation of rightwing homophobes, something snapped. For this congregant at least, the spell of the speech was broken.

Well that was all rather a long time ago, and while other upstarts have come along to vex and torment me, I haven’t noticed the levels of sin diminishing all that much. The stabbing sense of contradiction we experience between the ideals we profess and their frequent and all too shabby betrayal, will not, I’m afraid, simply go away as a result of improvements in diet or hygiene. Consider all those pious promises we’ve made just moments before the usual mockery of abject performance sets in. Sobering, isn’t it? Hypocrisy, as that old cynic Oscar Wilde used to say, is only the homage vice pays virtue. As T.S. Eliot remorselessly reminds us in “The Hollow Men,”


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow.

In other words, when preparing their homilies, priests and pastors mustn’t forget the long shadow cast by sin. Nor, while they’re at it, the devil himself, who was the first to live in love’s shadow, and has been wandering about the world ever since trying mightily to put out the lights. I mean, who else besides all those fallen and corrupt angels deserve the first word in a sermon on sin? “Our old subtle foe,” the poet John Donne calls him who, in the first of his Divine Meditations, “so tempteth me, / That not one hour I can myself sustain.” Only the grace of God, he tells us, “may wing me to prevent his art,” and by whose life and strength alone, “like adamant draw mine iron heart.”

Ah, but Satan, we are told, achieved his master-stroke sometime in the nineteenth century when he managed to persuade huge numbers of people to stop believing in him. Once that ruse got around—and, as always, educated opinion was sinfully eager to help it along—the devil was at liberty to do his worst. What then becomes of sin in a world more and more divested of belief in an Evil Intelligence bent on bedeviling us with its false attractions? It doesn’t just go poof, does it? Leaving us with the same intolerable burden of guilt and sorrow as before only now without anyone to blame. Rather an entire moral edifice commences to collapse once the scaffolding of sin (hence virtue) is removed. And certainly the Old Guy has returned the favor vouchsafed him by so many devil deniers of yore. Because the past one hundred years bear unmistakably the imprint of iniquities not of this world. Without doubt the bloodiest on record, we simply cannot attribute all the horrors and futilities of modernity to mere human agency. As Monsignor Ronald Knox once wryly put it: “It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.”

Any recovery of a sane and healthy sense of sin, therefore, crucially depends on getting people to believe once again in the devil. If the world and the flesh fell on his, and Adam’s, account, why ever not? “The devil is the number one enemy,” declared Pope Paul VI, “the source of all temptation … the sophistical perverter of man’s moral equipoise, the malicious seducer who knows how to penetrate us (through the senses, the imagination, desire, utopian logic or disordered social contacts) in order to spread error….”

And if papal testimony were not telling enough, particularly from the tragedy of one who felt in his final days “the very smoke of Satan” within the Temple of God, Holy Scripture emphasizes that “the whole world is under the power of the evil one,” who is not called “the prince of this world” for nothing. Think only of Our Lord’s ordeal in the desert: If the devil offered Christ all the kingdoms of earth in exchange for his submission, then surely it was because he was in a position to dispose of them.

There is a wonderful and chilling little story by Graham Greene called “The Hint of an Explanation,” in which a free-thinking baker by the name of Blacker attempts to corrupt a young altar boy with literally fiendish cunning. His greed baited with biscuits and toys, the boy is tempted to turn over to Blacker the holiest thing in the universe, the Host, for the profanation of which he has been promised a shiny new miniature train. Only at the last moment does the child, strangely moved by grace, recoil in horror at the prospect of so paltry an exchange.

Greene’s point, of course, which he renders with startling and vivid effect, is that evil and damnation do exist, that they are permanent human possibilities, behind which stand sinister, super-human beings bent on the total subjugation of the soul. Alas, poor Blacker provides the most debased testimony to their success.

How often it is youth, too, the purely innocent ones, that serve to inflame the powers of darkness—The Thing, Greene calls it—behind the mere human instrument intent on our ruin. Such terrible loss, too, when it actually appears to have won. In his haunting poem, “Germinal,” George William Russell writes how, “In ancient shadows and twilights / Where childhood had strayed / The world’s great sorrows were born / And its heroes were made. / In the lost boyhood of Judas / Christ was betrayed.”

So let the devil have his due, I say. But no more. If the first word is his, let all the rest belong to God, who in Christ broke his sham kingdom in two.






By Regis Martin

Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. He earned a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Martin is the author of a number of books, including, most recently, Still Point: Loss, Longing, and Our Search for God (2012). He resides in Steubenville, Ohio, with his wife and ten children.

A Dream Come True: 1965 Missal Online!

published 15 November 2013 by Jeff Ostrowski

Ugly artwork helps destroy Faith.

HE CHANGES MADE to the Roman Rite didn’t happen overnight. They were phased in from approximately 1965 to 1972. However, some craziness started pretty early, as you can see by looking at this fully approved “congregational” musical setting of the Our Father published in 1966.

The first major changes came when Inter Oecumeniciappeared in 1964. As a result, the 1965 Missale Romanum was published, a radical departure from the 1962 version. Only a few priestly prayers during Offertory and Canon were required to be said in Latin, and even those restrictions would be lifted a couple years later. You can download all 1,780 pages of the 1965 Missal in PDFform:

* * 1965 Missale Romanum: (Part 1) • (Part 2)



THE 1965 MISSAL includes 100% of the Latin (printed in tiny type) right next to the English, becauseInter Oecumenici stated in no uncertain terms:
“Missals to be used in the liturgy, however, shall contain besides the vernacular version the Latin text as well.”

If this principle had been kept, many egregious errors (which still persist 40 years later) could have been avoided. The next big change came on 4 May 1967, when Tres Abhinc Annos allowed the Roman Canon to be prayed in the vernacular. Many priests tore out the (Latin) pages in their 1965 Missals and replaced them with inserts like this one. Notice the Imprimatur dated 1 October 1967. They certainly didn’t waste any time, did they? Why such a big rush to modify a venerable Rite that had existed for 1500 years? The sentence in Tres Abhinc Annos doesn’t match what I’ve been told by many people alive in 1967:
“The rich yield [of the liturgical reforms] is becoming quite clear from the many reports of bishops, which attest to an increased, more aware, and intense participation of the faithful everywhere in the liturgy, especially in the holy sacrifice of the Mass.”

The “rush job” led to many ugly, ephemeral books. In my opinion, the 1965 Missal is difficult to understand in places since it lacks red text, unlike this 1966 Sacramentary (108MB). Numerous errors were also printed, like the following (from the 1965 Missal):



In 1969, Pope Paul VI would promulgate the Novus Ordo Missae, but several more years would elapse before the “complete” Novus Ordo Rite came into existence. The haphazard way in which the various parts (3-year Lectionary, Graduale Simplex, Ordo Cantus Missae, etc.) were introduced can be seen by Bugnini’s explanation.

In 1969, many priests ripped out the Roman Canon and replaced it with inserts like this, containing four (4) new Eucharistic Prayers. Those who look carefully will notice something very odd, which I cannot fully explain:



That’s right … it’s dated December of 1968. My understanding is that Paul VI would not promulgate the new Eucharistic Prayers until 3 April 1969, but perhaps a reader can correct me.



TO QUOTE VANESSA WILLIAMS, I have “saved the best for last.” The most interesting document I’ve found is this 1970 Ordo Missae (89MB). Turn to Appendix I, and you’ll discover many fascinating injunctions. I will not detail them here, but I will provide the following example (based on Liturgicae Instaurationes, §7):



It would be fascinating to learn if books similar to the above were produced in French, Italian, Spanish, German, etc.



UPDATE: Please note that the “Missale Romanum” is dated 1966. However, it’s an identical, exact reprint of the 1965 edition. Also, people have been asking about the “dream come true.” The “dream” was to have the 1965 Missal online.

1965 Missal, Annibale Bugnini Reform

The Psychological Power of Satan

How a belief in “pure evil” shapes people’s thinking


October 29, 2013

By Piercarlo Valdesolo




Some believe, some do notImage: Thinkstock

Justice Antonin Scalia and Keyser Sozeagree: the greatest trick the devil could ever pull is convincing the world he didn’t exist. Fortunately for them, the devil does not seem to be effectively executing this plan. Some 70 percent of Americans, according to a 2007 Gallup Poll, believe in his existence. This personification of evil has implications beyond the supernatural, influencing how we think about what it means for people to be “pure evil.” And as we prepare to playfully celebrate the wicked and depraved on Halloween night, it’s worth pausing to reflect on some of the psychological and behavioral consequences of these beliefs.

Evil has been defined as taking pleasure in the intentional inflicting of harm on innocent others, and ever since World War II social psychologists have been fascinated by the topic. Many of the formative thinkers in the field — Kurt Lewin, Stanley Milgram , Solomon Asch — were inspired by their experiences with, and observations of, what appeared to most people at the time to be the indisputable incarnation of pure evil. But what many saw as a clear demonstration of unredeemable and deep-seated malice, these researchers interpreted as more, in the words of Hannah Arendt, banal. From Milgram’s famous studies of obedience to Zimbardo’s prison study, psychologists have argued for the roots of evil actions in quite ordinary psychological causes. This grounding of evil in ordinary, as opposed to extraordinary, phenomena have led some to describe the notion of “pure evil” as a myth. A misguided understanding of human nature deriving both from specific socio-cultural traditions as well as a general tendency to understand others’ behavior as a product solely of their essence, their soul, as opposed to a more complicated combination of environmental and individual forces.

The issue of whether “pure evil” exists, however, is separate from what happens to our judgments and our behavior when we believe in its existence. It is this question to which several researchers have recently begun to turn. How can we measure people’s belief in pure evil (BPE) and what consequences does such a belief have on our responses to wrong-doers?

According to this research, one of the central features of BPE is evil’s perceived immutability. Evil people are born evil – they cannot change. Two judgments follow from this perspective: 1) evil people cannot be rehabilitated, and 2) the eradication of evil requires only the eradication of all the evil people. Following this logic, the researchers tested the hypothesis that there would be a relationship between BPE and the desire to aggress towards and punish wrong-doers.

Researchers have found support for this hypothesis across several papers containing multiple studies, and employing diverse methodologies. BPE predicts such effects as: harsher punishments for crimes (e.g. murder, assault, theft), stronger reported support for the death penalty, and decreased support for criminal rehabilitation. Follow-up studies corroborate these findings, showing that BPE also predicts the degree to which participants perceive the world to be dangerous and vile, the perceived need for preemptive military aggression to solve conflicts, and reported support for torture.

Dissenting theologian to teach Halton Catholic’s parents to be ‘faith leaders in the home’ Nov. 21st

BY PETER BAKLINSKI

Thu Nov 14, 2013 20:07 EST


OAKVILLE, Ontario, November 14, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic theologian known for opposing Church doctrine will teach parents how to become “faith leaders in the home” in an open event next week sponsored by the Halton Catholic District School board.

If Dr. Thomas Groome’s 2001 book “Education for Life: A Spiritual Vision for Every Teacher and Parent” resembles his upcoming presentation, parents can expect to hear the laicized priest slam papal authority, criticize Catholic tradition, and argue for “critical” Catholics following their consciences over Church teaching.

Boston College's Prof. Thomas Groome

Parents might also hear Groome preaching against the male priesthood as discriminatory, arguing that equality in the Church demands women priests.

Groome, Professor of Theology and Religious Education at Boston College, will speak at Holy Trinity Catholic Secondary School on Nov. 21.

The talk will take place only two weeks after HCDSB trustees allowed the controversial HPV vaccine in the schools despite strong oppositionfrom parents and moral theologians.

“Will There Be Faith? The Crucial Role of Parents in Catholic Education,” is the title of his talk.

Groome has been hailed as the guru of the post-1960s style of “experiential” catechetics. He has served as a member of the speaker’s bureau for Voice of the Faithful, a dissident group denounced by numerous bishops who have forbidden its meetings on Church property. His books have been banned in the Archdiocese of Sydney, under Cardinal George Pell.

On Papal authority, Groome argues that to exercise his magisterium the pope “as bishop of Rome, must teach in consultation and collegiality with the bishops of the world and represent the consensus faith of the whole Church, in fidelity to Scripture and Tradition.”

“The official magisterium should act as consensus builder, articulating positions that reflect the faith of the community over time, witnessing to its share faith as a guiding perspective for all,” he writes.

“The papacy is meant to be a witness to what is already the faith of Catholic people,” he adds.

Sacred Tradition for Groome must be treated with a "healthy skepticism" and a "critical consciousness”, "given how much untruth is in every statement of faith.”

“Scripture and Tradition are to be continually reinterpreted in light of changing circumstances and contemporary consciousness—and add in the note of freedom of conscience—then Catholicism has no place for fundamentalism or dogmatism in the authority it grants to tradition.”

“However as one describes the authority of tradition within Catholicism, it must always leave room for freedom of conscience”, he writes, adding that “conscience is always the last court of appeal!”

The most “pressing issue” the Church faces today is the “eradication of sexism and patriarchy.”

On this note, Groome praises “Feminist Liberation Theology” as a movement to “fight against sexism and misogyny and to forge the full freedom of women.”

“Feminist theology mounts a devastating criticism of the patriarchy of the Church and challenges the ways Jewish and Christian traditions have been interpreted to legitimatize the oppression of women and domination by men,” he writes.

Justice in the Church for Groome means women priests: “To be credibly catholic, the Catholic church must practice and be seen to practice (i.e., be a sacrament of) the full inclusion of women in every aspect of its mission and ministry.”

Groome’s principle critic, Eamonn Keane, believes that dissenting Catholic educators such as Groome should not be given a platform from which to spread their errors.

“Dissidents work within the Church's institutions undermining allegiance to the teaching of the magisterium. They relativise and corrupt the Church's doctrine and lead those in their charge into error, thereby rendering them less capable of teaching the faith to others and of imbuing the temporal order with the light of the Gospel,” he wrote in 2010.

Keane believes that local bishops should do “all in one's power to shield [Catholics] from the influence of dissenters.”

Contact:

Archbishop Pedro López Quintana, Apostolic Nuncio to Canada
724 Manor Avenue
Ottawa, ON KIM OE3
Phone: (613) 746-4914
Fax: (613) 746-4786
E-mail: apostolic.nunciature@rogers.com

Bishop Douglas Crosby, Diocese of Hamilton
700 King Street West
Hamilton, Ontario L8P 1C7
Phone: (905) 528-7988 x2222
Send email here.

Halton Catholic District School Board trustees contact info here.

Some Clear Alternatives to Catholic Boredom

November 14, 2013 | By Randy Hain | Reply

Photography © by Andy Coan

On a recent Saturday morning my 12 year old son said:  “Dad, I’m bored.  What are we going to do for fun today?”  Knowing my youngest son well, I translated this to mean that he was looking for something new and exciting and I was supposed to provide it.  This all too frequent discussion with my children has been the cause of considerable reflection of late.  As adults, do we also seek frequent engagement and entertainment?  Does this desire for fun and excitement ever spill over into how we view our Catholic faith?

I often hear complaints that the “Mass is boring”, “the priest is difficult to understand” or “the priest didn’t wow us with an exciting homily.”  Still more complaints (whining?) center on the lack of exciting music during Mass, the “inconvenience” of having to attend Mass weekly as well as all the Holy Days of obligation.  I also frequently hear this comment:  “I wish our parish was more like >>insert name of any Protestant church<< Church.  They have a lot of fun in their services and the music is awesome.”  The list of complaints is likely much longer, but I think you get the picture.

Are we suffering from spiritual A.D.D.?

Much has been written about the explosion of Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.) in the past few decades.  Many studies link kids’ overstimulation from video games as a big contributor to the problem.  Adults have the same challenges as we struggle with our own addictions to smart phones and information overload from computers, TV, etc.  Is this problem spilling over into our spiritual lives?  Do we go from parish to parish looking for some sort of “Catholic buzz” to keep us entertained?  Do we flirt with heresy by attending non-Catholic churches?  Are our brains, craving more and more stimulation, incapable of finding peace?  We need to tune out the “noise” to achieve the quiet and focus required in the Mass.

Spiritual Shepherd or Entertainer-in-Chief?

Do we ever take a moment to consider the challenging life of a Catholic priest?  In addition to being our spiritual shepherds, parish priests are the administrators of complex organizations often beset with unique problems ranging from people issues on the staff to budget shortfalls.  Their days are filled with saying Mass, presiding at weddings, funerals and baptisms, hearing Confessions, visiting the sick, prayer, study, meetings with parishioners and dozens of other duties we may not fully appreciate.  They are not our entertainment directors.  Before we complain about something these men of God did or didn’t do, we should reflect a little and say a prayer of thanksgiving for their life-long commitment to help us attain Heaven.  These good men need our prayers and our support every single day.  They do not need nor deserve much of the criticism that is sent their way.

The Eucharist

Do you ever notice that entering the church for Mass these days often resembles people finding their seats in a theater before a movie begins?  There is lots of noise and chit-chat all the way up to the beginning of Mass.  Where is the reverence?  The respect?  The humility?  Time spent preparing to enter into the Mysteries? We are about to receive Holy Communion, the body and blood, soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we sometimes treat this sacred time like a secular family reunion instead of a holy celebration.  Maybe one of the reasons people feel bored with the Mass is they have forgotten that the center of the Mass is Jesus Christ in the Eucharistic sacrifice.  “The faithful are to hold the Eucharist in highest honor, taking part in the celebration of the Most August Sacrifice, receiving the sacrament devoutly and frequently, and worshiping it with supreme adoration; pastors, clarifying the doctrine on this sacrament, are to instruct the faithful thoroughly about this obligation.” – (Code of Canon Law #898)

A little self-awareness and a desire to change

If anything you have read so far sounds familiar and hits too close to home, there may be a problem and change is needed.  Too often we don’t know how we are behaving and coming across to others unless we hear it from a friend.  More importantly, if we are in the “complainer camp”, can we change course?  A thorough and honest examination of conscience provides an excellent way to identify our sinful behavior before having those sins forgiven by a priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  With more self-awareness and a contrite heart, it is only logical that we can now focus on what is really important about the Mass and better understand the critical role the Church plays in our lives.

We can’t be bored if we are sincerely seeking Him

Boredom is a side effect of our fast-paced, materialistic culture.  We feel bored because we are constantly being over-stimulated and sold on the idea that we can have it all now and that something better is always around the corner.  As rational human beings, we must realize that this is neither true nor sustainable.  If we are sincerely seeking Christ, we will find Him through the Church He founded.

The world offers celebrities to idolize…the Church offers Saints to follow.

The world offers noise…the Church offers Peace.

The world offers false dreams…the Church offers the Truth.

The world offers and celebrates vice…the Church offers a life of Virtue.

The world offers earthly pleasures…the Church offers eternal Heaven.

Fixing Catholic Boredom in Six Easy Steps

Every issue I have posed in this article has been an ongoing challenge for me and countless other people I know.  We must realize this is not healthy behavior.  How do we change?  To sum up, here are the key points you have read, summarized into “Six Steps to Cure Catholic Boredom”:

1. We have to turn off at least some of the noise.  Our spiritual A.D.D. is fed by our addiction to too much input from various sources.  Don’t listen to the radio in the car.  Eliminate most, if not all, TV time.  Read more books.  Get outside more often.  Find time for quiet reflection and prayer every day.
2. Show more respect for our priests and quit looking to them for entertainment.  They are not here to make Mass “exciting.”  We are at Mass to offer worship and receive the Eucharist; not to hear an emotional homily or loud music.
3. Remember the Mass is about the Eucharist.  Have we prayed to be worthy to receive Jesus?  Have we thanked God for this gift?  Have we prayed to let others see Christ in us?  Reverence… gratitude… humility… worship… these are the key words to remember about the Mass.
4. Go to Reconciliation as often as possible.  Do a thorough and honest examination of conscience.  Where have we fallen short?  Confess these sins to a priest and be forgiven.  We will be less critical and eliminate boredom if we are acutely aware of our thinking and behaviors that lead to these avoidable sins.
5. Get involved and make a difference.  Sitting on the outside and complaining is boring.  Why not join a parish ministry and contribute our time and talent in a more productive way?
6. Quit trying to please both the world and God. “You cannot please both God and the world at the same time.  They are utterly opposed to each other in their thoughts, their desires, and their actions.” -Saint John Vianney

Feeling bored about our Catholic faith is subtle and dangerous – it sort of creeps up on you.  When we are bored we tend to be critical and seek more excitement.  This is the wrong path.  The world offers us false gods and tries to paint a negative picture of Catholicism that is an illusion.  We have to fight through these lies.  Perceived boredom may lead some to leave the Church for other faiths.  They are drawn to the excitement and buzz, but will learn in time that they had everything they needed in the Church Jesus founded.  Let’s reflect on how we feel right now about the Mass, priests, Church, etc.  If we feel bored or critical, let’s follow a sound road map to bring us back from this dangerous territory.  We have so much to be thankful for as Catholics if we will only take the time to appreciate it.  The choice is ours and I humbly pray that we will make the right one.

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Randy Hain, Senior Editor and co-founder of The Integrated Catholic Life™, is the author of The Catholic Briefcase: Tools for Integrating Faith and Work which was released by Liguori Publications.  The Catholic Briefcase was voted the Best Catholic Book of 2011 in the About.com Catholicism Reader’s Choice Awards.

Randy Hain’s exciting new book, Along the Way: Lessons for an Authentic Journey of Faith was  released by Liguori Publications in November, 2012.   Along the Way was voted Runner-Up in the About.com Catholicism Reader’s Choice Awards for Best Catholic Book of 2012.  His third book, Something More: A Professional’s Pursuit of a Meaningful Life, was released in February, 2013.  All of Randy Hain’s books can also be purchased at your local Catholic bookstore, Amazon or www.liguori.org.

Looking for a Catholic Speaker?  Check out Randy’s speaker’s page and the rest of the ICL Speaker’s Bureau.

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Thoughts on the Traditional Latin Requiem Mass – Not Really as Dark or Dreadful As Many Say

By: Msgr. Charles Pope



Perhaps as a concluding post on funeral masses, this is my third post on the subject this week (omni trinum perfectum – all things are perfect in three), I would like to re-post an article I wrote over a year ago.

Many of the comments these past days mentioned the Traditional Latin Requiem Mass, which I have been privileged to celebrate many times in my 25 years. It is a beautiful and gentle liturgy, so consoling and yet also sober and mindful that someone has died and that we ought to pray.

And while I do not say that everyone must like this form, I also think the Requiem Mass has been unfairly panned, especially by some (not all) older clergy. What follows is my answer to those critiques in hopes of establishing greater understanding and mutual respect:

_______________



When I was in seminary back in the mid 1980s I was informed by some of my Seminary teachers, that the old funeral masses were a very dark affair. Black vestments and somber prayers all focused on judgment were supposedly an “extreme” that had to give way. Never mind that the new Mass permitted black or purple vestments, the point was that we were not to use black vestments and were to wholly avoid any “negative” themes like judgment, purgatory or (the absolutely forbidden) hell.

Discussions about funeral masses were common in my seminary years since the revised rite of funerals was coming out at that time and, just like the new translation we have recently inaugurated, there were many vigorous discussion about the funeral rite of 1970 and how the one coming out in 1987 (in think) was either an improvement or a “step backward.”

By the time I was ordained in the late 1980s it was once again permitted to offer the traditional Latin Mass, and though some argued that this didn’t include funerals, we routinely celebrated them here in DC as early as 1987. I have been privileged to celebrate at couple of these traditional Latin funeral masses per year, by request all 24+ years of my priestly life. (The photo at upper right is me celebrating one last November in one of our Maryland Parishes).

And I must say, find these funerals (called Requiem Masses) anything but dark. Let me explain.


To begin, though, early in my priesthood I had little of no memory of the older funeral rites. I was, in those days before the current motu proprio, one of the few priests permitted by the diocese to celebrate the TLM. Thus, as I began my study of the old Requiem Mass when requested to do one in 1989 and I expected, based on my training to find and read dreary and depressing prayers.

I noted first that the “dreaded and dark affair,” described so by some, was called a “Requiem Mass.”Hmm…. in other words, a “Mass of Rest.” That doesn’t shout of foreboding things, seems rather peaceful actually, and far more comforting that the more usual modern word, “funeral.” Indeed the opening words of the dreaded Requiem Mass read (translated) Rest Eternal grant unto them O Lord and may perpetual light shine on them. Hmm… I thought, we’re not off to such a terrible start.

Greeting the Body at the door of the Church, though less baptismal in focus, contains these beautiful wishes:

Come to his assistance, ye Saints of God, come forth to meet him, ye Angels of the Lord….receiving his soul, offer it in the sight of the Most High…..May Christ receive thee who has called thee….and may the Angels lead thee into Abraham’s bosom.

The opening prayer too, appeals to God’s mercy, though (heaven forfend), it does mention Hell:

O God, whose property is ever to have mercy and to spare, we humbly entreat Thee on behalf of the soul of Thy servant whom Thou hast bidden to pass out of this world: that Thou wouldst not deliver him into the hands of the enemy nor forget him for ever, but command him to be taken up by the holy Angels, and to be borne to our home in paradise, that as he had put his faith and hope in Thee he may not undergo the pains of hell but may possess everlasting joys.

As we have well discussed here, to many modern ears the very mention of Hell is “dark,” but the whole prayer is premised on God to whom it is proper to show mercy and to spare. Hence it is a prayer uttered in confident expectation that through grace and mercy we stand a chance. And, as for that little mention of “Hell,”….isn’t that….like….in the Bible or something? (Well again we have well discussed here that Hell is both biblical and reasonable).

So, in my study I still had not found where we had gone to dark, negative places, as I had been taught to expect.

The readings also surprised me. The Epistle is from First Thessalonians 4: Brethren, we would not have you ignorant concerning those who sleep, lest you be like the others who have no hope. Then comes the great teaching on the day of resurrection and the conclusion: Therefore console One another with these words. The Gospel too is of Jesus’ dialogue with Martha in John 11: Your brother will rise…I AM the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Beautiful and consoling, really.

There is of course the Dies Irae in between these two readings. I recall an older priest many years ago when the subject came up proclaiming exultantly: “Thank God we got rid of that dreadful thing.” It does truly begin on an ominous note: Day of wrath and doom impending, heaven an earth in ashes ending….Oh what fear man’s bosom rendenth, when from heaven the judge decendeth, on whose sentence all dependeth. True, these are dark lines, but they are biblical lines, almost direct quotes. Yet the same Dies Irae contains some of the most hopeful and tender lines in all Christian writing:

Faint and weary thou hast sought me:
On the cross of suffering bought me:
Shall such grace be vainly bought me?

Through the sinful Mary shriven,
Through the dying thief forgiven,
Thou to me a hope has given.

Loving Jesus Lord most blest,
Grant to them eternal rest.
Amen.

The darker lines thus highlight the lightsome ones. So even the Dies Irae is not all that bad. It is a well balanced description of our sinful condition, and of God’s mercy accessed through repentance. I have written more of the Dies Irae here: Sing the Dies Irae at my Funeral

I obviously cannot reproduce the whole Requiem Mass here but consider just a few other highlights of the hopeful and gentle themes that are struck in the prayers
From the Preface: …through Christ our Lord, in whom the hope of blessed resurrection has shone on us, so that those who are saddened by the certainty of dying may be consoled by the promise of a future deathless life. For to thy faithful people, Oh Lord, life is changed, not taken away, and when the home of this earthly sojourn is dissolved, an eternal dwelling place is being prepared in the heavens.
From the Communion verse: May light eternal shine on them O Lord, with your saints forever. For you are kind. (Quia pius es)

Finally, if there is any “darkness” at all in the old Requiem Mass, it is more likely due to the fact that we have departed a great degree in modern times from the notion that, after we die, we are certainly judged. And this judgement is a moment of honesty before God. Surely all of us will need much in the way of grace and mercy. The prayers of the older Requiem give honest acknowledgment of that, but draw heavily on Biblical themes. In the end, these prayerful reflections are always couched on the fact that God is rich in mercy. One of the final prayers, at the commendation of the soul shows this balance. Standing before the casket the priest says:
Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for, save Thou grant him forgiveness of all his sins, no man shall be justified in Thy sight. Wherefore suffer not, we beseech Thee, the sentence Thou pronounce in judgment upon one whom the faithful prayer of Christian people commends to Thee, to be a doom which shall crush him utterly. Rather sustain him by Thy gracious favor, that he may escape Thine avenging justice who, in his lifetime, was signed with the seal of the holy Trinity. Who livest and reignest world without end. Amen.

Disclaimers – Most of you know that I love the Traditional Latin Mass, especially in its sung forms. However, I also like the Ordinary Form of the Mass and it is the way I celebrate 99% of my masses.

The New Funeral Mass is not intrinsically flawed. If there are imbalances in modern funerals it is not wholly the fault of the liturgy. Rather, the imbalance of our culture and the clergy’s emphases seem more at work. (As we discussed these past two days).

For the record, black vestments can still be worn in the newer rites, as well as purple. There is nothing to prevent the clergy from preaching clearly on judgement and purgation, as well Heaven. I surely do (as we discussed yesterday), and also issue a pretty sober “come to Jesus” talk in the sermon, since so many who are at funerals are not practicing their faith.

Thus, balance can be had in the newer rites. This post is simply meant to express that a pronouncement of the Requiem Mass as dark and somber, which I was regularly subjected to in my training, is simplistic.

The reality I have come to experience in over 24 years of celebrating Requiem Masses is that they are both gentle and hopeful, sober about judgement but well steeped in mercy and confidence in God’s loving kindness.

A Funeral Sermon designed to teach on the Last Things, and inspire prayer

By: Msgr. Charles Pope



On yesterday’s blog post, I discussed some of the more common problems that arise with funerals these days. That blog post provides the kind of background to the homily I present here. In this homily, I try to teach on what I think are important and central themes that need emphasis in Christian funerals today.

The homily is broken into three parts:

1. The Praise of the divine goodness of our God. For at every liturgy, funerals included, the first and primary work is the praise and worship of Almighty God, who has been good to us, and through faith has saved us. Here too, it is appropriate for us to render praise and thanks for the gifts that the deceased had from God, and to properly acknowledge with respect, some aspects of their life
2. Prayers for the deceased. For too often, on account of Universalism, a notion that all are saved in quite instantly, such that that prayers for the deceased, and for all the dead, are often neglected, and the dead are inappropriately promoted to Heaven instantly.
3. Preparation for death – for many today are not properly preparing for death and do not live as though they must one day render an account to God and are destined to be judged under the law of freedom.

No homily I have ever preached is perfect. And thus, neither is this one. It is merely my own poor attempt to teach more fully on many truths regarding death, judgment, heaven and hell, that are too often neglected in funeral masses today. Having been asked to record and present a funeral sermon of mine in writing, I herewith try to fulfill the request.

The sermon presented here is a sermon I preached for James Cade and I both recorded it and have it in writing here, verbatim from the preached homily. I share it with you by permission of the family.

I am not known for short sermons, and this sermon is no exception. Nevertheless, if you have the patience to listen, or read here it is.

The audio recording of the sermon which runs approximately 20 minutes is available below in the video box.



Introduction - So, Joan, Robert, and Joseph, and all of us who are here, for our brother James (Cade): I first of all share with you condolences at his passing. I know he had a battle with cancer. I know how he fought to live, he certainly wanted to see his son’s (Joseph’s) wedding, and thanks be to God, that took place. And I know all that Robert was saying to me about he great love for all of you, unto the very end…. and the kiss goodbye. A beautiful sign of his love for you (Joan) and his family.

I. Praise of Divine Goodness - We come to gather in this church today, and the first thing I hope you came to do is that you came to praise the Lord, and that you’ve come to worship God. I think sometimes when we come to a funeral, our first instinct is to think, well I’ve come to pay my respect (to James), I’ve come to honor and support the family. And that’s all good, beautiful. But our first instinct in walking into God’s House, is always to give worship, (ascribe) glory, praise, and thanksgiving to God, who is the giver of every good and perfect gift.

And there’s a lot to be grateful for, yes, even at a funeral. All of you have in your mind some things that James Cade was to you, gifts that gave to you, words of encouragement, support, the gift of life…Whatever it might be, you all have memories, and you’re grateful! But remember, as Scripture says, Every good and perfect gift, comes from above, comes from the Father of Lights, in whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (James 1:17)

I certainly know, and here we are on Veterans Day, that this country owes a debt of gratitude to our brother, who served for over twenty years in the Armed forces, in the United States Air Force. You know…We often need to remember that those who serve in the military….are peacemakers. Scripture says, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God (Matt 5:9). Because, you see, they put their life on the line to make those who would disturb the peace or those who would rob us of justice, think twice. And as such, they preserve the peace in this way. Scripture also says, Greater love hath no one than he would lay down his life for his friends. (Jn 15:13) And all those who serve in the military, including our brother James, put their life on the line so that you and I can live in greater security, freedom and peace. And we all know that our military doesn’t just protect this country, they go all over the world (and I know, not without some controversy), but they go there, they obey their orders and take care of the people in each region.

And so all of us bring blessings and memories of James, all that he was to us, all he was to this country, to his community, to his life of service, overseas, as well as here, his love for God, his love for family, over forty years of faithful marriage. Oh, what a witness that is today…such an important witness!

So, I say all this to you, that I know we all bring with us many great memories, many thoughts of gratitude for our brother, and all that he was, and is for us,.

But I also hope you will remember that, whatever James had to offer, he got it from God. So we are here today to say, “Thank you Lord. We worship you, we praise you, and we thank you. You are the giver of every good and perfect gift. It all comes from you! So everything our brother James was, it came from you. Thank you Father, we love you, we worship you, we praise you through your Son Jesus.

We thank you Jesus for dying for our brother. For the greatest truth I have to say to you all today about our brother James is no good work of his, but simply this, that Jesus Christ loves our brother, died for our him, went to heaven to prepare a place for him. As he said (I the gospel today) to Martha, regarding her brother, now he says to us, Your brother will rise…I am the Resurrection and the Life, and whoever believes in me (and our brother James believed in him) will rise!”

And so, we’ve come today to praise the Lord.

And I want to say this, Even our brother’s sufferings at the end of his life, are something worth praising and thanking God for; and (also) whatever sufferings you’re enduring. You know, scripture says, in the Second Letter to the Corinthians in the fourth Chapter, St Paul says this: Therefore, we not discouraged. Although our outer self (our body) is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed, day-by-day. For this momentary affliction is producing fro us a weight of glory beyond all compare. (2 Cor 4:16-17) So that even at the end of his life as James suffered with cancer and the effects of surgery, I tell you brothers and sisters, even then, it was a gift in a strange package!

Scripture says, in Romans 8:28, All things work together for good, to them that love and trust the Lord and are called according to his purposes. Notice it says, ALL things, not just the good things…but even the difficult and the painful things work for our glory, if we give them to God, as our brother did. I say this to you again, whatever sufferings he endured, they produced glory. Again, St. Paul says,This momentary afflicting is producing a weight of glory beyond compare.

And so, if you brought any suffering into this Church, be it the sorrow of this day or whatever other sufferings are going on in your life right now…you know, the devil wants you to be discouraged. You just tell the devil, “I’m encouraged! And I’m gonna praise the Lord anyhow! Because whatever I am going through, it is producing a glory for me beyond any comparison to the suffering I must endure. I am not discouraged, I’m encouraged. Because whatever I’m going through, its producing!”

So today, first I say, I hope and pray that you came to praise the Lord. Every good and perfect gift comes from Him! And we’ve come to praise him.

II. Prayers for the Deceased - I also hope, today, You came to pray for our bother, James. I think, a lot of times in Christian funerals we miss a step, at least in these modern days. Very often when we hear that some one has passed, we hear statements that they are now in heaven, or they’re in a better place…or other euphemisms. But, we need to be careful, and not miss a step.

The Bible does not teach that you die and go straight to heaven. Rather, it says there’s a little pit stop on the way. The book of Hebrews says, It is appointed to us to die once, and thereafter the judgment. (Hebrews 9:27) Likewise, St. Paul says, We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ and render an account for what we have done, whether good, or evil, and receive recompense or punishment for what we have done.” (2 Cor 5:10)

And so it is, then, all of us need to remember that when anyone dies, their first destination is the great judgment seat of Christ. And brothers and sisters, that is worth praying about! I’m just going to say to you, I’m not planning to die today, but if I do, would you please pray for me! Because I go to judgment. I go to render an account. And I am a believer, I love Jesus Christ, and I know he loves me, I know he died for me. But I need to go and have an honest conversation with the Lord. And I would ask you to pray for me. I know then that our brother James both wants and needs our prayers. As he himself has gone to that judgment seat.

But what is then the judgment in question for a believer? Does not the Lord say, as we just heard in the gospel, “If you believe I will raise you up on the last day” ? So what is the judgment in question?

I would say this, It is based on a promise the Lord made to our brother and to all of us, at our baptism. It is at the end of the 5th Chapter of Matthew’s gospel: And the Lord says this, You must be perfect as the Heavenly father is perfect. (Matt 5:48) Hmm…Anyone there yet?! Alright church, me neither!

Now I want to say, though it may sound like a threat, its not a threat. It’s a promise! The Lord says, “When I have fully accomplished my work in you, when my grace has had its full effect, you will be perfect. And not just humanly perfect. But with a Godly perfection!

The Lord St. Catherine of Siena, “Catherine, I you were ever to see a soul up here with me in glory and perfected, you’d fall down and worship, because you’d think you were looking at me.” Do you see? That’s our dignity. One day we shall share a perfection that is the perfection of God himself.

Now then, here is the judgment in question: If I were to die today I would go to the Lord and I would simply know that (perfection) isn’t done yet, there’s still a few things to accomplish. And so I would go, and I’m sure the Lord would show me some things that still needed to be completed. And so I think the judgment in question for our brother James is, “James, is my work in you accomplished?” St. Paul wrote to the Philippians and he said, May God who has begun a good work in you bring it to completion. (Phil 1:6)

So, I think the judgment in question at that great Judgment seat is, Is the Lord’s work in you complete? What remains undone? Now, says the Lord, I will bring it to completion. And how exactly the Lord does that, I can’t say. Does it happen quickly…does it take time? I don’t even know if there is time like we have it now after we die.

All I know is that we are commissioned by the Church, and by Sacred Scripture to pray for those who have died, to lift them up in prayer. We ought to pray for the dead, they go to the judgment seat. And there they have that conversation with Christ, and whatever is incomplete, must be completed, for Jesus who loves us will leave nothing incomplete. He will accomplish the promises he gave to our brother, and make him perfect. And we for our part, give him to Jesus and say “Jesus, we love our brother James, we love him. We entrust him now to your care.

And I think this too, that it isn’t just about our sins. You know, honestly, is there anyone here carrying stuff with us we know we can’t take to heaven? I’m not just talking about our sins, I’m talking about our heartaches, our hurts, some of those regrets we might carry with us. We can’t take those things to heaven, it wouldn’t be heaven! And so there is a beautiful line in the Book of Revelation that says of Jesus, regarding the death, that He will wipe every tear from their eyes. (cf Rev 21:4) And this is part of what we call in the Catholic tradition the process of purgation. The Lord wipes the tears form our eyes: any sorrows, any regrets, any rough edges of our personality, those effects of sin that still cling to us. The Lord takes good care of it all…he wipes the tears and purifies us with holy fire.

Now whatever James brought to the judgment seat, if he had any tears still in his eyes, that’s between him and Jesus. But we pray, and we say thank you Jesus, Thank you Lord. We give you back our brother, whom you gave to us. We give him back with love and prayers, we call upon your mercy and judgment and ask you to bring to completion anything that was incomplete. And we do this, knowing by faith that the Lord is rich in mercy. And so we have good hope and good confidence, as we make that prayer.

III. Preparation for Death - I want to say one final thing today. I asked you to make sure that you came to this Church to praise the Lord and pray for our brother. I am also going to ask you to pray for yourself. And to ask you, are you prepared?

Now please know that I do this at every funeral. I call it the “Come to Jesus” talk. Because I often meet people at funerals that I never meet anywhere else. Now I don’t know everyone’s walk and where they are in their walk.

But I just want to say this to you, it’s a very powerful truth, and our brother is teaching us even now, and the Lord is teaching us. And I’m not going to dress it up in any way. I ‘m just going to say it plain:

You are going to die….(yes) you are going to die. And you don’t get to say when. (Ah but you might say), I’m planning to live a good number of years preacher….I’ve got it all figured out. Listen! I can’t promise you the next beat of your heart! I did check with Father J. before Mass, he did say the roof is in good condition and it probably won’t crash in during the funeral. But, I can’t promise you anything. I can’t promise you that you’ll see this day out. Someone says, “I’ll take care of that tomorrow.” But, tomorrow is not promised.

And I’m just going to say that I hope and pray that every one of you here have given your life to Jesus. …that you’re repenting of your sins…that you’re serious about your preparation for your own death, and your appointment at the judgment seat of Christ.

And if you don’t need to hear what I am saying, I know you know fifty people who do. There are just too many people today who are not serious about their spiritual walk. They’re running around like life was some big game, they’re not thinking about their destiny to appear before the judgment seat. They are not praying, they are not reading Scripture, they are not growing in their faith, they are not getting to church on Sunday, any many of them are stubbornly locked in very serious and unrepented mortal sin. And they are not going to be ready! I pray that is not true of any one here, but if it is, I simply say, “Turn to Jesus…repent, give him your life.”

Pray every day. Some folks tell me its hard to pray….I don’t know how to pray! You know what you’re doing? You’re already praying! Don’t tell me, tell God. If that’s where you’ve got to begin with your prayer, tell him: “I don’t like to pray, I struggle to pray, prayer is boring” What ever you need to tell him. Prayer is not reading words somebody else wrote that you don’t mean. Prayer is talking to the Lord and telling him what’s going on in your life. Prayer is paying attention to God.

I hope you read Scripture every day and study the teachings of the Church. Brothers and sisters, there is too much stinking thinking out there for us to think that our minds will be anything but polluted if we don’t cleanse them every day with God’s word and the teachings of the Faith. Some folks say its hard to understand Scripture, “I can’t figure all that our preacher.” But there are so many helps available, “My Daily Bread,” “Magnificat” magazine. Some folks even get the Word sent to their cell phone each day with a commentary. You say, “I can’t figure all that out.” Well, then get a fifth grader to help you (set it up), but get with God’s word every day! We find time for everything else.

And I say to you, get to Church every Sunday. I hope you all have a church home, I hope every one of you is in God’s house on Sunday. God is worthy of our praise. For us not to praise him is an egregious lack of gratitude on our part. But also, we all need to come to God’s house so that we can be instructed, and then fed with the Body and the Blood of the Lord. Jesus says, If you don’t eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you (Jn 6:53). Some folks say, “Oh, I see the Mass on TV.” But you can’t get Holy Communion on TV. And you can’t get real fellowship. Find a parish, if you don’t have a church home, and get there, get to Mass. Receive Communion every Sunday. Be firm and clear about it. God puts it in the Ten Commandments saying, “Keep holy the Sabbath.” He knows we need it!

And I say to you, If you are aware of any serious or unrepented mortal sin in your life, I beg you, repent and call on the Lord’s mercy. Some folks tell me, “I’m in such a mess I don’t know how to get out of it.” OK, but go to the Lord and talk to him about it and say, “Help me Lord!” But please, do not go on calling “good,” or “no big deal” what God calls sin! The Lord says, No one who calls on me will I ever reject. (Jn 6:37)

But too many people today say, “I will not be told what to do. I will not be told what is right and wrong.” The one thing God can’t really save us from is that kind of pride…because we don’t want to be forgiven. And so again I say to you, (and I hope no one here needs to hear what I said, but then tell some who does), but I say to you, be urgent about it.

You know, no one loves you more than Jesus Christ, and yet no one warned about judgment and Hell more than Jesus Christ. People are dismissive about judgment and hell today, “Oh Jesus would never do that.” But Jesus told us over and over again, that there is a judgment in question and its not so much about what he decides, it is about what we decide. He says this, Here is the judgment in question, that the Light has come into the world, but many prefer the darkness, because their deeds are sinful. (Jn 3:18). So there is a judgment coming, and the Lord warns in parable after parable, And I simply ask you to be ready.

I know many of you to be solid and strong in your faith. Thanks be to God for that, that’s his Grace. But if anyone here needs to hear it, please listen! As an ambassador for Christ I cry out, “Be reconciled with God!”

Summation - So today, we’ve come (and I’m not known for short sermons, sorry), but we’ve come today, first of all to praise the Lord. Thank you Lord, for our brother, James Cade, thank you for all he did, thank you for all he was and still is. Thank you Lord. We praise you. You’re the giver of every good and perfect gift.

And we also prayer for our brother and say, “receive him now, Lord, receive him into your mercy. And if there are any struggles or sins he brought with him to the judgment seat, Lord purify him, cleanse him of that, wipe every tear from his eyes. We give him to you Jesus and we know you’ll be good to him since he had faith in you.

And for ourselves, we say, time to get ready, I’m going to die and I don’t get to say when. Do I need to repent, do I need to pray, do I need to prepare more, do I need to be more serious? Please Lord, help me to get ready.

The greatest way to honor our brother is to imitate his example and get ready to meet Jesus. The very last food that our brother received was the Eucharist. We call this in the Catholic tradition, viaticum, meaning, I (the Lord) am with you on your way (via tecum). Our brother did not leave this world on his own. He went with his guardian angel, but Jesus led him with that viaticum, led with across the valley of the shadow of death with His rod and staff to give him courage. He (James) went with the prayers of Mary and all the saints, and the angels to lead him toward paradise. The Lord has had that honest conversation with him we call judgment.

And we simply say, Lord thank you, thank you for your love for our brother. Take good care of him now Lord. We pray for him, and we ourselves keep watch over our own souls. Amen.