Holy Martyrs of Baghdad: a Lenten initiative

Below, please find the English text of a letter explaining a special Lenten initiative.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This Lenten season, please consider a private devotion in the form of (at least) one decade of the Rosary to be said each Friday, with the following intention: the official juridical recognition of the Holy Martyrs of Baghdad.

The suffering of Christians all across the Mideast region is very real, and truly terrible.

It is worthy, therefore, that we ask Almighty God to move His Church to recognize the victims of the Oct. 31st massacre in Baghdad's cathedral Church of Our Lady of Salvation, as true Christian martyrs, slain in hatred of the faith.

Please also consider, as part of this devotion, a prayer: for the conversion of all those who are now enemies of Christ and His Holy Church; that through their conversion, they obtain pardon; that by pardon, there be reconciliation, and in reconciliation, peace.

As this is a "grass roots" initiative, please help spread the word: especially by way of the new communications media, to prudent use of which our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has called us in the service of the Gospel.

Another New Year's Wish (being something of a reply to the HP)

When Whoopie Goldberg and Bill O'Reilly are our cultural standard-bearers; when the POTUS takes pandering to its apotheosis in positively Orwellian revision; when, to paraphrase Eric Voegelin, pneumopathological delusion trumps reality and realism (he means both metaphysical and the political) is insanity, then what hope is there for civilization?

Thankfully, WG and BO'R are not our cultural standard-bearers, and King Barack must stand for re-election.

Still, the problem you raise is, as you say, a "mighty" one. You will recall this entry of mine, in which I treat of Mosques and Men?

I object to the use of terms like "Islamist" and "Muslim extremist" on the grounds that they are ill-informed, chauvinistic, and (in the case of "extremist") dangerously misapplied (dangerous, that is - does it not go without saying? - to language). Words have no meaning if reading the Qur'an and taking what it has to say seriously makes one an extremist.

The Islamist is one who would see the absolute rule of Shari'a, and the disintegration of infidel political modes and orders. This is what Qur'an calls for explicitly. Anyone, who submits to its dictates as God's perfect revelation, which is to say, any Muslim, is bound to work toward precisely such ends. So, Islamist is a critically useless neologism.

Ave crux, spes unica!

A Tale of Two Doctors

Briefly, my consideration for the Nobel Committee is this: if Dr. Edwards' in vitro technique is medicine, then so were the experiments of Dr. Mengele.

Just sayin'.

LD

George Weigel Replies to Fr. Hans Kung (quanno ce vo', ce vo')

George Weigel has written an open letter to Fr. Hans Kung, in reply to Fr. Kung's unfortunate piece in the Irish Times, itself an open letter to the world's bishops.

Weigel's letter contains at least one error of fact, i.e. an erroneous identification of then Proff. Ratzinger and de Lubac as Council Fathers (they were periti, "theological experts" who acted as consultors to the Council Fathers), which unfortunately requires us to withold absolute and unqualified praise of Weigel's effort as a paragon of polemical elegance.

Even so, Weigel's essay is more than an excellent polemical exercise - it merits consideration as one of the finest contributions to its literary genre in recent memory.

It also happens to hit the nail on the head.

Money quotes:

"[Y]ou have lost the argument over the meaning and the proper hermeneutics of Vatican II. That explains why you relentlessly pursue your fifty-year quest for a liberal Protestant Catholicism, at precisely the moment when the liberal Protestant project is collapsing from its inherent theological incoherence."

"I understand odium theologicum as well as anyone, but I must, in all candor, tell you that you crossed a line that should not have been crossed in your recent article, when you wrote the following:

'There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005).'

"That, sir, is not true. I refuse to believe that you knew this to be false and wrote it anyway, for that would mean you had willfully condemned yourself as a liar. But on the assumption that you did not know this sentence to be a tissue of falsehoods, then you are so manifestly ignorant of how competencies over abuse cases were assigned in the Roman Curia prior to Ratzinger’s seizing control of the process and bringing it under CDF’s competence in 2001, then you have forfeited any claim to be taken seriously on this, or indeed any other matter involving the Roman Curia and the central governance of the Catholic Church."

As enticing, as polemical engagement is, and indeed precisely because of its ability to inebriate - even intoxicate - I do not generally advocate it. The Romans have an expression, however, reported in the title of this post: quanno ce vo', ce vo', which roughly translates, "Sometimes, you've just got to have at it."

This was one of those times, and Weigel has acquitted himself admirably.

Read the rest here.

LD

CNA: New Homeland Security Report says some Abortion Opponents a Threat to Security on par with White Supremacists

The CNA story may be found here.

There is, as usual, discussion underway at Fr. Zuhlsdorf's place.

If CNA's treatment of the report accurately and fairly represents the tone and structure of the report, then there is some cause for alarm.

Radical abortion opponents are not generally the moral equivalent of white supremacists, though some of the Homeland doc's langtuage, as reported, would tend toward such an equivalence.

That said, there may be something to the report's substantial claim.

Recent political developments, coupled with present economic circumstances may, in concert with other factors, contribute to radicalization and recruitment into several different kinds of potentially violent organizations with more or less clearly criminal modus operandi.

The grain of truth would make the fuzzy tendency toward false moral equivalency more, rather than less dangerous.

Catholic Bishops, please remember that if you exclude yourselves from the political process, as distasteful, unglamorous and emotionally unsatisfying as it often is, all the faithful will be deprived of a powerful tool in the effort to save innocent life.

Faithful, remember that we are under a Petrine disciplinary prohibition from engaging in violence against abortion providers and those who work for them.

I am pointing this out, not because I think the readership of this blog needs to hear it, but because we may all find ourselves in need of offering others this reminder.

In the meantime, let us all comport ourselves in such a way that they will say of us, "Surely these are the salvation of the Republic," and ask, "what is it that makes them so?"