The Immaculate Conception

According to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Mary, the Mother of God, was free from the instant of her conception from the taint of original sin on account of the merits of Jesus Christ, Who was to suffer and die on the cross.  Bl. Pius IX defined this dogma in 1854, citing Scripture and Tradition.  Four years later, the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes and identified herself as the Immaculate Conception -- a term the uneducated country girl did not understand.  The Mother of God had never before so identified herself: Queen of Heaven though she is, she waited until her Son's Vicar on earth stamped that title with his authority.

I look back on the blog and find a fair number of posts about the Immaculate Conception.  Here are the choicest:

Excerpts from Ineffabilis Deus, in which Bl. Pius IX defines the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Mary's assigned role in the work of our redemption required the unparalleled grace of the Immaculate Conception.

The popular song "Mary, Did You Know" should be rejected by Catholics as a flat denial of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit: those who reject the Immaculate Conception are hopelessly mistaken about God Himself.

The beauty of Mary in the wonder of her Immaculate Conception.

Queen conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Remember Pearl Harbor

One of the best museum exhibits I have ever seen was held at the Reagan Library during the early to mid '90s.  Entitled "World War II: In Their Own Words," the exhibit took you from the last days of peace at Pearl Harbor through to the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and featured artifacts from every noteworthy event of the war.  In accordance with the theme, the exhibit also featured written documents, letters, diaries, and memoirs from every person of note on both sides, and from soldiers who recorded the events in journals as they happened. The Pearl Harbor section of the exhibit featured Franklin Roosevelt's pince-nez, and the typescript of his Day of Infamy speech with his penciled corrections.  One of the most poignant and gripping items in the whole exhibit was a Navy pharmacist's mate's white tunic, covered in blood stains from helping with the wounded after the attack.  It was quite a small tunic; the man wearing it had to have been very young.

Now, almost three quarters of a century after that fateful day, the United States is again in peril, only this time, from within.  Very few Pearl Harbor veterans have lived to see the 72nd anniversary of the date that would live in infamy.  I wonder how many of them are happy about the path taken by the country they suffered for so long ago.

December 5, 1933: A Toast to a Well-Deserved Failure

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.

It can't stop what it's meant to stop.

We like it.

It's left a trail of graft and slime,

It's filled our land with vice and crime,

It don't prohibit worth a dime.

Nevertheless, we're for it.

Franklin P. Adams

It has just been brought to my attention that it was 80 years ago today that the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- Prohibition -- was repealed.  Now it isn't every day that an injustice gets remedied in our corrupt world, so when one is, that is a moment to celebrate and commemorate.

Yes, Prohibition was an injustice.  It was an unjust burden on individual liberty to outlaw drinking for all, even in moderation, because of the relative few who abused drink.  Deliberate drunkenness is a serious sin, because it deprives us of our capacity to reason; but there is nothing, however legitimate, that can't be abused.  Liberty itself can be abused, and is, every minute of every day; but that would not justify locking everybody up on the off-chance.  Besides, despite the religious justifications advanced for Prohibition, the absolute prohibition of alcohol is contrary to Scripture.  Our Lord Himself turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana: not grape juice, but actual wine, with alcohol and everything.  (Question: at the time of Christ, was there such a thing as non-fermenting grape juice?)  He also drank wine Himself -- for which the Pharisees criticized him (Matthew 11:19).  And St. Paul advises his brother bishop, Timothy, to take wine for his health (1 Timothy 5:23).  

Prohibition was an outstanding example of America's curious ideas about morality.  In his essay "On American Morals," G.K. Chesterton reflects on an article by an American writer calling for the abolition of what she called "righteousness," on the grounds that "righteousness" was incompatible with reality.  He sums up the American attitude:

The standard of abstract right and wrong apparently is this. That a girl by smoking a cigarette makes herself one of the company of the fiends of hell. That such an action is much the same as that of a sexual vampire. That a young man who continues to drink fermented liquor must necessarily be "evil" and must deny the very existence of any difference between right and wrong. That is the "standard of abstract right and wrong" that is apparently taught in the American home. And it is perfectly obvious, on the face of it, that it is not a standard of abstract right or wrong at all. That is exactly what it is not. That is the very last thing any clear-headed person would call it. It is not a standard; it is not abstract; it has not the vaguest notion of what is meant by right and wrong. It is a chaos of social and sentimental accidents and associations, some of them snobbish, all of them provincial, but, above all, nearly all of them concrete and connected with a materialistic prejudice against particular materials. To have a horror of tobacco is not to have an abstract standard of right; but exactly the opposite. It is to have no standard of right whatever; and to make certain local likes and dislikes as a substitute. We need not be very surprised if the young man repudiates these meaningless vetoes as soon as he can; but if he thinks he is repudiating morality, he must be almost as muddle-headed as his father. And yet the writer in question calmly proposes that we should abolish all ideas of right and wrong, and abandon the whole human conception of a standard of abstract justice, because a boy in Boston cannot be induced to think that a nice girl is a devil when she smokes a cigarette.

This muddled thinking persists to this day.  There are still many who look upon even the moderate use of alcohol and tobacco as vices, in a country that countenances, among other things, promiscuity, sexual deviancy, abortion and euthanasia.  Indeed, it is practically a vice to regard a vice as a vice.  We really do not have a standard of right or wrong.  William F. Buckley, Jr. once commented: "You can take the most disorderly, self-indulgent twenty-one-year-old sailing; he may smoke pot in his cabin while fornicating, but he will not throw the trash overboard.  How come?"  It is a species of the "formless fanaticism" that Chesterton called the great danger of the American temperament.

The failure of Prohibition is attributed, at least by some, to the shortcomings of law enforcement; by others, to the shortcomings of men in general; but the fact is, despite its noble intentions, Prohibition deserved to fail.  Tonight, before I go to bed, I will pull a cork and drink a toast to the correction of this extravagant societal over-correction.

“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,

There’s always laughter and good red wine.

At least I’ve always found it so.

Benedicamus Domino!”

― Hilaire Belloc

Things I Am Thankful For, In No Particular Order

Squanto, Thanksgiving icon: Catholic.  FYI.

I am thankful for the ankle sprain I suffered in January.  There are few physical torments to compare with an ankle sprain, and I have suffered more than my share of ankle sprains; but this one saved me from a bad situation.  This is not to say that I want to sprain my ankle again, ever.

I am thankful for all the times I have not gotten my own way.  Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that disappointment is very often a sign of divine protection?  When you are attracted to someone of the opposite sex, say, and that person is not free to marry, or finds you repulsive, or suddenly disappears on you, that is God's protection.  When you don't get a job you really want, or even think you really need, that is God's protection, even though it looks like a catastrophe.  Thwarted plans are God's protection.  There is no greater disaster than eternal damnation, and so any disappointment, however terrible, is worth it if it saves us from that final and irreparable failure -- and that, really, is the ultimate purpose of these disappointments.  How many miseries I have been spared, and how many occasions of great sin I have been prevented from falling into, because of the times I was not allowed to have my own way!  Think of Michael Jackson.  There was a man who always had his own way, by means of his vast wealth, and it was his ruin.

Which reminds me that I am thankful not to have been a woman of great means up to now.  How I might have ruined myself with huge amounts of filthy lucre, especially in my younger days, I do not care to think.

I am thankful for all the difficult people I have to deal with at work.  They teach me patience and forbearance.

I am thankful for all the talents and personal qualities I wish I had, but don't -- see thankfulness for the times I didn't get my own way, above.

I am thankful for all the trials and tribulations and sufferings I have endured.  There is more merit in five minutes of suffering than in 20 years of pleasure.

Under that same category, I am thankful to be living in dangerous and uncertain times.  I do not want to live in such times: I would much rather live in a time of peace (i.e., order and justice) and stability.  But that is not the time I have been given to live in.  God wants me to live in these times; He is in charge; and He has His reasons.

What is your list of things you are thankful for?  It should include even the things you don't want to be thankful for.  The time will come when those will prove to be worth the most.

Terrible Is This Place

Bernini's baldocchino at St. Peter's Basilica.
Photo by Ricardo Andre Frantz.

Last Sunday, before Mass, I happened to open my 1962 Missal up to the Common of Saints, and my eye fell on these lines: 

Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est et porta coeli: et vocabitur aula Dei.

Terrible is this place: it is the House of God, and the gate of Heaven; and it shall be called the Court of God.

That is the antiphon from the Introit of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church in the Extraordinary Form.  "Terrible" here is used in its older sense of "awe-inspiring."  I looked around the cathedral and thought of those words ringing inside that space at its dedication 92 Easter Sundays ago.  I must confess that it increased my anger and sorrow at the thought of the mutilation of that beautiful cathedral in 1979, and indeed the similar desecration of many other old churches, brutally inflicted against the will of the laity who built them, and in accordance with notions falsely attributed to the Second Vatican Council.

The Collect of this Mass:

Deus, qui invisibiliter omnia contines, et tamen pro salute generis humani signa tuae potentiae visibiliter ostendis: templum hoc potentia tuae inhabitationis illustra, et concede; ut omnes, qui huc deprecaturi conveniunt, ex quacumque tribulatione ad te clamaverint, consolationis tuae beneficia consequantur.  

O God, Who, though unseen, upholdest all things, and yet for the salvation of mankind dost visibly show signs of Thy power: give glory to this temple by the might of Thy indwelling, and grant that all who in their deep distress shall come and call upon Thee here, may receive Thy goodly comfort.

Imagine a bishop chanting this stirring prayer in a tiny church in a poor, humble town -- a tiny church that is no less the House of God and Gate of Heaven than a cathedral.  Indeed, how much more the Mighty Indwelling must uphold it in its littleness.  The Gradual:

Locus iste a Deo factus est, inaestimabile sacramentum, irreprehensibilis est.  Deus, cui adstat Angelorum chorus, exaudi preces servorum tuorum.

This place was made by God, a priceless mystery, it is without reproof.  O God, before Whom stands the choir of angels, give ear to the prayers of Thy servants.

The Lesson of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church is from Chapter 21 of the Apocalypse, the vision of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven; and the Gospel is the story of Zacheus from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus declares that "this day is salvation come to this house."

I don't know how the dedication of a church goes according to the Mass of Paul VI, but I can see here one of the many reasons Pope Benedict XVI took the Traditional Mass out of mothballs.  We have gotten so casual and careless anymore about where we are when we are in church: we talk, we laugh, we dress like slobs, we let kids roughhouse in front of the tabernacle.  Priests and deacons behave in church as though they are merely at work and not inside a sacred space.  Of course, it doesn't help that many new churches are sterile and ugly, and do not appear to be in any way connected with religion.

Every new Latin Rite church should be dedicated according to the Extraordinary Form, and every Catholic should meditate on these propers, so that we can be reminded of just where we really are every Sunday, and how we ought to act there.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

Once again, Sunday Mass featured a visiting priest who evidently thinks it's All About Him. Today's narcissism took the form of constantly interrupting the Mass -- even the Canon -- in order to insert commentaries.  Can somebody point out where in the Missal it says to do that?  Must the priest's private views, which I did not come to church to hear, constantly intrude on the Mass, which I did come to hear?  Why can't we just have -- the Mass?  

The incessant attention-seeking from today's celebrant put me in mind of a religious sister I heard speaking once, a high-ranking official in the diocese at the time, who was publicly lamenting the fact that the Church contumaciously refuses to ordain women (read: her) as priests.  It pained her so much, she said, that she could only do so much before people had to turn away from her and seek out a priest.  In other words, she wanted to be a priestess because she wanted (a) power, and (b) to be the center of attention.  This distorted view of the priesthood is wholly foreign to the mindset of a man with a legitimate vocation, who understand himself to be called to a life of service and self-sacrifice.

Then I thought: after decades of attending Holy Mass under the guise of a fourth-rate vaudeville act, can the wymynpriest crowd really be blamed for thinking the priesthood is the key to satisfying their cravings for the spotlight?  Have not priests themselves fostered this gross misconception; and is this not due in large part to what has been done to the liturgy?  Turn the priest toward the congregation and hook him up to a microphone, and of course he will think he's supposed to play to the crowd, and begin acting accordingly.  Next thing you know, Holy Mass is transformed from the highest act of worship to a show that the priest feels the need constantly to try to steal.  And just to make sure of an adoring crowd, the people in the pews are strictly regimented, while he gets away with doing whatever he wants, whatever the Missal may say -- a phenomenon we have reflected on in this space before.  Was the women's ordination movement as noisy and pestiferous before the changes to the Mass and the ensuing abuses as it is now?

The abuses in the liturgy that are now so widespread are themselves a symptom of deeper problems in the Church; but they are the proximate cause of doctrinal derailments, which foster chaos and moral impotence that ripple out into the world at large.  No wonder it is said that to save the liturgy is to save the world.

A Coup d'Etat Is Under Way

Pay close attention to Rep. Tom McClintock (R.-CA) as he appears on the floor of the House of Representatives on October 14th and explains how that walking, talking constitutional crisis, Barack Hussein Obama, is usurping Congress' borrowing powers under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and threatening to precipitate a default on sovereign debt in violation of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This is nothing short of a coup d'etat, and a brazen violation of Obama's oath of office, such as the most lawless of his predecessors never dreamed of.  The man needs to be impeached.

Why We Can't "Just Let Obamacare Implode"

1. Because Obamacare is unconstitutional, and, indeed, anti-constitutional.  It purports to compel individuals to enter into binding contracts against their will -- an unprecedented overreach that takes the federal government far, far beyond its enumerated powers.  This is not changed by the fact that Obamacare bears the imprimatur of the Supreme Court -- from which has emanated, among other things, Dred Scott v. Sanford (blacks cannot be citizens); Plessy v. Ferguson (upholding racial segregation); Korematsu v. United States (upholding FDR's executive order interning Japanese Americans during World War II); and Roe v. Wade (legalizing abortion).  Besides, the Court's 5-4 decision in National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sebelius hardly constitutes a solid consensus among the justices, as liberals are fond of pointing out any time the Court comes out with a 5-4 decision they don't like.

2. Because Obamacare was hurriedly rammed, Politburo-style, through Congress and onto the President's desk, purposely in order to avoid deliberation and to prevent the American people from finding out all the gory details before it was too late.  This process is utterly un-American and at variance with the open, above-board legislative process that is supposed to foster the health of a constitutional republic.

3. Because Obamacare is pure socialism, and as such is a frontal assault on liberty, limited government, subsidiarity, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of commerce, private property rights -- in short, every principle upon which this nation was founded.  For those who are Catholic, it is worth noting that a line of Popes stretching back to Bl. Pius IX has condemned socialism: you can't be a faithful Catholic and a socialist.

4. Because Obamacare is going to be enforced by the IRS.  This alone should be sufficient reason to oppose it.

5. Because Obamacare is already hurting flesh-and-blood Americans.  Employers are already laying people off and/or shortening their hours in order to escape the costly burden of falling within Obamacare's ambit.  Obamacare's prohibitive costs are also inducing insurance carriers to discontinue certain policies or pull out of certain markets altogether, leaving many customers with private insurance high and dry.  This is contrary to Obama's explicit promise that people would be "allowed" to keep their coverage -- as if, by the way, the Founding Fathers ever intended that the people be "allowed" to engage in free enterprise and enter into contracts at the gracious sufferance of an imperial Chief Executive.

6. Because anybody with any political clout with this regime -- including Congress and other ruling elites in Washington -- is seeking exemptions from Obamacare -- and getting them.  If Obamacare is not a train wreck, why are the feds themselves stepping out if its way?  And, while we're on the subject, who told Obama that he had the constitutional authority to make unilateral alterations to a federal statute, however devious and disgraceful the process by which it was rammed through the legislative process?

7. Because when was the last time failure doomed a government program to extinction?  How many of LBJ's "Great Society" programs have been abolished after half a century and trillions spent on the "war on poverty"?  Have we driven a stake through the heart of all of FDR's "New Deal" programs eighty years later?  When it comes to the federal government, failure is an almost certain guarantee of immortality.

No, we cannot simply sit back and let Obamacare run its course.  Obamacare is a legal, moral and economic evil that must be stopped.  We must make the effort to stop it even if (which I do not believe) it were true that we could not hope to succeed in doing so, because that is the right thing to do.  If Obamacare is allowed to "implode" and "collapse under its own weight," it will certainly take the country with it.

For generations, people who long for freedom have fled to the United States.  When we have allowed the United States to be destroyed, where will we flee?

God Never Messes with Our Heads

Our Lady of Fatima pilgrim statue in Boise, 2007.
Photo by Jim Nourse.

When one breaks weeks of silence, one casts about for the best subject with which to do it.  One runs one's mind over affairs both temporal and spiritual, from the government shutdown to the Pope's Big Interviews that have caused such a ruckus.  Today the big news item in the Catholic world was the Holy Father's consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on this, the 96th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, witnessed by tens of thousands of believers and non-believers over a large area of Portugal.  To my way of thinking, this is only the third really comforting thing Pope Francis -- whom I believe can rightly be described as the Pope of our punishment -- has done so far in his reign, the first being the worldwide hour of Eucharistic adoration in June, and the second being the day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria last month.  All of his talk about Mary and about the reality of hell and the devil is good, but not surprising, since, the Pope, no matter who he is, cannot do otherwise than reaffirm authentic Catholic doctrine.

Which brings me to one theme that has underlain my thoughts in recent days: God does not mess with our heads.

In a world saturated in the despairing infidelity of modernism, in which being manipulated by government, media, Madison Avenue, each other, and even ourselves is a daily way of life for nearly all of us, it pays to remind ourselves of this.  God is Truth and Justice, and can no more deceive than He can be deceived.  The beauty and order of creation, from galactic superclusters to the inner workings of the subatomic, testify to the existence of a Creator Who is all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful and all-good.  The laws of nature communicate truths about how creatures function and interact, and we try to traduce these laws at our peril.  The very best and highest authority that any proposition can have is that God revealed it.  On that basis alone, it would deserve to be believed and not doubted, even if we do not like it or cannot understand it.  

So how can we know that a proposition comes from God?  We can know it if it has the backing of the Church founded by Jesus Christ, endowed with His authority, under the headship of His Vicar, the Pope.  He gave us a clearly visible and recognizable institution to teach us all that we need to know in order to save our souls, and He has guaranteed it against error in matters of faith and morals.  No matter who the Pope is, no matter how many disconcerting things he may do -- even if he is an unabashed public sinner like Alexander Borgia, or hopelessly incompetent as an administrator, like St. Celestine V -- the Pope could not change even the tiniest particle of doctrine, even if he had all the armies that have ever existed at his back.  When it comes to the most critical business of our lives -- our eternal salvation -- God does not leave us to puzzle things out for ourselves, or pull a bait-and-switch on us.  His justice demands this.  Since He does not leave us without a lamp for our steps, He also does not leave us with any excuses for persisting in darkness.  God does not mess with our heads.

God will not mess with our heads even after we are dead.  Contrary to popular depictions of the afterlife in movies and books, there will be no confused period of wandering disembodied on the earth, no haunting by human spirits of houses or old battlefields, no mistaking hell for heaven, or heaven for hell.  In the very place where we die, we will be judged.  By the time others have figured out that we are dead, we will have already been completely undeceived about ourselves and about God, and about where we deserve to spend eternity -- and we will have already gone there.  At the end of time, all flesh will be confronted with all truth, and all obscurity and confusion will disappear.  We need not allow ourselves to be deceived by charlatans claiming to be the Second Coming.  They aren't.  The real Second Coming will leave us in no possible or impossible doubt as to its authenticity.  Some things really are that simple and straightforward.  God does not mess with our heads.

Since God does not mess with our heads, we can and should allow ourselves to derive consolation from both our Faith and its wholesome outward expressions that, in this modernist age, have been derided from within and without the Church as childish superstition.  We have allowed ourselves to become inured to believing bad news over good, but the Gospel really is good news, and is really true -- more true than anything that bears the stamp of the world, however plausible.  Beauty really is truth, and truth really is beauty: we need not be prisoners of the lie we have been conditioned to believe, that only the gray, the banal, the flat-footed and the pedestrian are real.  The forces of evil may seem to have the upper hand in our age, and in many places, but the truth is that they have already lost, and their time is short.   Jesus really is the Son of God, and really did die on the Cross to save us, and really did rise from the tomb and ascend into heaven.  He really did give us His Immaculate Mother to be our mother.  That is why we can expect good to come of the Holy Father once again consecrating the world to her Immaculate Heart.

We may deceive ourselves and each other.  We may play psychological games, and manipulate, and create frenzy and precipitate crises, one after the other, in order to control others.  The devil may also do this to us in order to lure us into hell.  But God never does any of these things.  If we find ourselves caught in these webs, God is not behind that.  Perversity and sadism are not attributes of God.  God never messes with our heads.

Autumnal Equinox

Today was the first day of Autumn.  Today we have equal periods of light and darkness -- hence the term "equinox" -- and after today, the periods of darkness will exceed in length the periods of light.

It is unfortunate that, based on no discernable mandate from the Second Vatican Council, the post-conciliar Church tried to throw out the Ember Days, penitential days that mark the changing seasons.  The purpose of the Ember Days is to thank God for His bounty in nature, and to remind us to use His gifts in moderation and assist those in need.  As I have pointed out in this space, the changes of season are freighted with spiritual significance.  The vernal equinox coincides with the Feast of the Annunciation, the beginning of the end of the winter of Satan's reign.  It also coincides with Easter, which marks the decisive defeat of Hell, and takes place on the first Sunday on or after the first full moon on or after the equinox.  The summer solstice, when the days begin to shorten, coincides with the Nativity of John the Baptist, who said that he must decrease while the Savior increased.  The winter solstice coincides with Christmas, when the Light of the World enters the world and the days begin to lengthen.   

There is no precise correspondence between the autumnal equinox and any major feast; but since the autumnal equinox does coincide with the time of harvest, my own personal speculations lead me to connect it with the harvest of souls that will take place at the End of Time.  Our business in life is to strive to come out on the right side of that harvest: to be  in with the wheat that is gathered into the barn, and not with the tares that are bundled up and go to be burned.