Redeem the Time

Go read this blog now.

And listen to the Pope’s Latinist, here (scroll down here for a recent recording). The recordings sound as if Triumph the comic dog entered a Monty Python skit, if Triumph lived a saint-like existence and was a brilliant expositor of Latin, and if Monty Python skits were performed on Vatican Radio. Go listen; I promise Father Reginald Foster will amuse and enlighten!

Read more about the Pope’s Latinist here. The existence of such men gladdens the heart and brightens the soul.

The Catholic Church in America is asleep.

The real question is whether or not its sons and daughters can rouse it from its slumber.

I can provide you with some of my primary texts, however.

I.

I would talk about the usual lukewarm droning of liberal Catholics—as well as the nay saying grumbling of conservative Catholics—all in the context of today’s so-called “social issues.”

Abraham Lincoln, American President, who was assassinated:

In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments.
***
If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality – its universality; if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension – its enlargement. All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.

Elijah, the prophet, who was taken up into heaven:

Elijah appealed to all the people and said, “How long will you straddle the issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.” The people, however, did not answer him.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified:

Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.

Notice a pattern? These are words signifying wisdom.

II.

But we are not great men—our voices are dry and cracked and we are hollow. What can be expected from us? What shall each and every one of us say about ourselves? Why should we bear blame for the sins of others? What duty do we have to the city of man?

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified:

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

Well, OK, but we don’t want to be persecuted needlessly, do we? Shouldn’t we remain “prudent” according to the ways of the world, perhaps working in comfortable obscurity and avoiding giving serious offense to others—the better to keep our saltiness; the better to ensure our light remains aflame? Don’t we need to keep ourselves safe? And what about “throwing pearls before swine”?

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified:

A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!

So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

III.

Any fear or hesitation we have in present times is pathetic in comparison with what those who have gone before us have faced. We are soft and weak with freedom and resources that we waste even as we blame our faults on this same liberty and prosperity. Yet we are still called by the rousing words of the Apostle to be more than any Ceasar was or ever could be—to be unified with God; to fully possess and reflect His image; and to lead others to the same—no matter what is going on around us. Many act as if hope isn’t a virtue “in such evil times,” counseling irresponsible retreat or the solace of the lukewarm.

St. Paul, the Apostle, who was martyred:

…in all these things [tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword; being killed all the day long, being regarded as sheep to be slaughtered] we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

On that basis, we are always called to salt and to shine. The title of this blog is taken from the words of St. Paul the Apostle as they are translated in the King James version of the scriptures. St. Paul repeats the phrase in two passages that could give the sermon a fitting end. The times are always evil—and we are always called to redeem them. We can only do this to the extent we become wise.

St. Paul, the Apostle, who was martyred:

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
***
Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.

Are there always new schools springing up like these, or is something happening here?

Southern Catholic College

Ave Maria University

University of Sacramento

John Paul the Great Catholic University

Living Water Arts College

Transfiguration College and blog.

I’m know I’m missing a bunch of others (feel free to name them off in the comments), but these are the newest ones I know of.

Father C. John McCloskey, III, STD, is one of the good guys you should know about. He has a website here. If you missed it last month, be sure to check out his “State of the US Catholic Church at the Beginning of 2006:”

We can now examine the state of what was the pride and joy of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church in America: the educational system that extended from grammar school through hundreds (yes, hundreds) of Catholic colleges and universities. In the history of the Church, there had never been such an extensive and (at least in appearance) fundamentally sound educational system. Elementary education was taken care of by the parish, following the pioneering work of St. John Neumann. Parishes also directed many high schools, but many others were founded by armies of men and women religious. Most of these high schools were single-sex, while some were co-institutional (admitting both boys and girls in the same building but educating them separately). . . All that has virtually disappeared.

Almost half the Catholic schools open in 1965 have closed; 4.5 million students attended Catholic schools in the mid-1960s, while today there are about half that many students. Even more troubling is the religious education offered in those remaining schools . . .

UPDATE:
You must read Father Schall on Christmas here:

Shopkeepers did not invent Christmas. Neither did the theologians.

What we most associate Christmas with is a gift. A gift is not something we can demand, not something that is due to us. Ultimately, the structure of the universe is first to be understood as a gift. Who made Christmas? “The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.” It has never been put more succinctly. We can choose other explanations and no doubt we do. All gifts must be freely received by those to whom they are freely given. This is the principle upon which the universe is constructed.

You’d be a fool not to read and enjoy this recent interview with one of the good Jesuits, who happens to be an old and wise man. A sample:
Read the rest of this entry »

Joey posts satirical reviews of the movie Brokeback Mountain, a story about homosexual cowboys, here. My favorite line from Joey’s post is: “It’s not so much a gay cowboy love story as a gay cowboy love story with gay characters who just happen to be gay.”

On the other hand, I imagine that the following warm remarks are likely typical of the glowing reception the movie is getting in the MSM these days:

Director Ang Lee tells the story with a sure sense of time and place, and presents the narrative in a way that is more palatable than would have been thought possible. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana’s screenplay uses virtually every scrap of information in Proulx’s story, which won a National Magazine Award, and expands it while remaining utterly true to the source.

The performances are superb. Australian Ledger may be the one to beat at Oscar time, as his repressed manly stoicism masking great vulnerability is heartbreaking, and his Western accent sounds wonderfully authentic. Gyllenhaal is no less accomplished as the more demonstrative of the pair. . .

I don’t know if everyone in the liberal press likes the movie this much, but certainly the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops does, because the above lines are from the review on their website.

What’s that you say? Calm down with all your value judgements—the reviewer makes the position of the Church clear:

As the Catholic Church makes a distinction between homosexual orientation and activity, Ennis and Jack’s continuing physical relationship is morally problematic.

The adulterous nature of their affair is another hot-button issue. But the pain Jack and Ennis cause their families is not whitewashed. (The women are played with tremendous sympathy, not as shrill harridans.) It’s the emotional honesty of the story overall, and the portrayal of an unresolved relationship — which, by the way, ends in tragedy — that seems paramount…While the actions taken by Ennis and Jack cannot be endorsed, the universal themes of love and loss ring true.

Yes, yes, we’ve all heard this before…[insert movie title here] glamorizes immorality but “it’s so well done,” it simply “shows what’s really happening,” or (my personal favorite) “yeah but it also shows the consequences” and all the other phrases of refuge for scoundrels and immature art critics. It shouldn’t be any suprise that the Conference of Bishops is spineless about movies as well as most other things. Maybe this post’s title is imprudent, but sadly these are the sorts of comments that simply show what’s really happening in the mind of many a Catholic these days.

Story brought to you via Cosmos, Liturgy, Sex via The Curt Jester via Mark Shea
via Jimmy Akin. (Talk about the “long tail” blogging effect…)

The doctor’s wife emails an UPDATE:

I wish I could comment on your dang blog, but, alas, this e-mail will have to do…

I suppose you were unaware of the USCCB orginal rating, and change of rating thanks to a small CANADIAN news service. So, thank you lifesitenews.com, and here is the link you should look at…

I have seen this story, and lifesite news is one of my favorite sources of info on the web. They do an awesome job and I hope they grow and prosper!

UPDATE II
Mrs. Bear emails to point to this interesting site, which has a much more interesting (and better written) review of the movie than the USCCB’s website does. Go read it now:

In the end, in its easygoing, nonpolemical way, Brokeback Mountain is nothing less than a critique not just of heterosexism but of masculinity itself, and thereby of human nature as male and female. It’s a jaundiced portrait of maleness in crisis — a crisis extending not only to the sexual identities of the two central characters, but also to the validity of manhood as exemplified by every other male character in the film. It may be the most profoundly anti-western western ever made, not only post-modern and post-heroic, but post-Christian and post-human.

Plato’s stepchild has a series of pictures relating to certain kinds of liturgical music (see here, here, and here). The stepchild has his critics—see here.

UPDATE:
The Shulamite speaks on the matter here. Among other points:

Modern liturgical music is unfit to be played in any context- since it is intrinsically unable to highlight any emotional state. A sign of this is that modern liturgical music is not used in any movie scene as a compliment to the action- even when the action is religious or uplifting, or expressing intimacy with God. Imagine, just as the most favorable example, a movie scene that calls for a moment in which a man experiences the revelation of the love of God- like St. Peter weeping at the feet of the Blessed Mother in The Passion, or William Wallace praying in his prison cell “Give me the strength, Lord, to die with dignity”. Imagine the movie camera showing him choke on his tears. Then imagine that someone cues up the music “Here I am, Lord.”

CLANG.

Everyone recognizes that this would, at best, destroy the whole scene. There could never be a movie made about the Passion of Christ that used modern liturgical music: so why is it that we think that it should ever be used at the mass- and for that matter, when does it ever work? Is there a single movie scene anywhere that effectively uses modern liturgical music as a compliment to anything?

Sunday is all too often a day when many Catholics habitually ignore music that they wouldn’t put up with in any other area or time of their lives but during Holy Mass.

Plato’s Stepchild points us to this guy’s liverevolt against the music of our sacred platitudes.

Join today and be sure to check out the links:

Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas