Excerpts Worth Repeating from "The Restoration of Christian Culture"

These are taken from the fantastic book: "The Restoration of Christian Culture" by John Senior.

"Catholic parents and teachers must read and re-read Cardinal Newman's long, balanced, incomparable essay on the whole subject, 'Catholic Literature in the English Tongue,' in his book, 'Idea of a University'" (27).

"The seminal ideas of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, [and] St. Thomas, only properly grow in an imaginative ground saturated with fables, fairy tales, stories, rhymes, romances, adventures - the thousand good books of Grimm, Andersen, Stevenson, Dickens, Scott, Dumas, and the rest. Western tradition, taking all that was the best of the Greco-Roman world into itself, has given us a culture in which the Faith properly grows; and since the conversion of Constantine that culture has become Christian. It is the seedbed of intelligence and will, the ground for all studies in the arts and sciences, including theology, without which they are inhumane and destructive" (25).

"Our Lord explains in the Parable of the Sower that the seed of His love will only grow in a certain soil - and that is the soil of Christian Culture, which is the work of music in the wide sense, including as well as tunes that are sung, art, literature, games, architecture - all so many instruments in the orchestra which plays day and night the music of lovers; and if it is disordered, then the love of Christ will not grow. It is an obvious fact that here in the United States now, the Devil has seized these instruments to play a danse macabre, a dance of death, especially through what we call the "media," the film, television, radio, record, book, magazine and newspaper industries. The restoration of culture, spiritually, morally, physically, demands the cultivation of the soil in which the love of Christ can grow, and that means we must, as they say, rethink priorities" (21).

"We must inscribe this first law of Christian economics on our hearts: the purpose of work is not profit but prayer, and the first law of Christian ethics: that we live for Him and not for ourselves" (17).

"The immediate purpose is simply to do the job to be done - for the butcher to cut the meat, for the baker to bake the bread, for the teacher to teach the multiplication tables. The proximate purpose is from Latin proximus, meaning "neighbour," exactly as in the phrase, love thy neighbour - diliges proximum tuum. The proximate end, perhaps surprisingly, is chiefly accomplished in prayer. And the final, or ultimate, purpose, the reason why we work and pray, is to know and love God as He is in Himself, so far as that is possible, in imitating His earthly life in Christ, the chief act of which was sacrifice. The immediate promixate, and final purposes of all our operations can be summed up in three words: work, prayer, sacrifice. These are the items on the Catholic Agenda." (54).

"Charity is not a human but a divine work accomplished through human work, with us as its voluntary instruments" (55).

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Review: Between Heaven and Mirth

I was recently asked to review a copy of the book "Between Heaven and Mirth" by James Martin.  I'm always happy to review books and if you have a copy for me to review and promote, please contact me.  I am particularly interested in reviewing books on Traditional Catholicism and the Liturgy.

For this particular book, I quickly noticed that the book suffers several serious problems and as I worked my way through the book, the problems did not cease.  Simply put, after reading this text, I am forced to call into account not only the theology of "Fr." Martin but his ability to serve as a Catholic priest.

As I opened my copy the first thing that I noticed was a picture of Martin Luther on the cover.  That's right, on the cover alongside Blessed Mother Teresa and other saints is the image of the well-known heretic whose false teachings are still causing untold numbers of souls to reject the truth and damn themselves.

But, I'm not here to judge the book by its cover, which may be the work of someone other than the author.  Let's start by looking at the introduction.  Close to the very opening of the book, Martin refers to the traditional practice in religious communities of public confession of sins by saying, "At the time young Jesuits in training were required to publicly confess their 'faults' to the men in their community..." (1).  Martin put "faults" in quotation marks as if he does not truly believe them to be faults - to be sins that infinitely displease the greatness and mercy of God!

He later says in the introduction that in the course of the book he will "draw on the wisdom of the Jesuit, Buddhist, and Islamic traditions..."  What wisdom?  There is no salvation outside of the Church.  There is no wisdom in these false religions.  You disobey the 1st Commandment and grievously sin by supporting or seemingly to condone in any way this false, pagan worship. These false worshipers must be converted to the One True Faith that alone saves.

So after this introduction, I was already on guard with this book.  I'll share my thoughts on the first chapter as well.  First on a logical note, when Martin says that humor is "an essential but neglected requirement of spirituality" (15), I was disappointed that he never supported his claim that it is "essential."  He gives too many examples of its neglect but fails to adequately show how it is "essential."

With references to Freud and numerous non-Catholic heretical worshipers, I can't seem to understand that this book was written by a man claiming to be a Catholic priest.  Are you a priest or a psychologist, Martin?  And, no they are not inclusive.

The only good part of the chapter was its incorporation of St. Thomas Aquinas' treatment of joy.  And, I might say, that is its only authentic Catholic part.

Chapter two, however, only made matters worse.  Martin begins the chapter by saying, "Let's take the New Testament as an example.  And let's look first at the protagonist of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth" (31).  Is that how you refer to God Incarnate, Martin!  You call our Blessed Redeemer a "protagonist" as if he was a fictional character in a novel!  This is blasphemous.

Later, as he writes of the evangelists, he describes them as if they were writing a novel and not divinely inspired.  He says, "The evangelists wanted to portray Jesus as an appealing figure..." (31).  Blasphemy!  The evangelists wrote that which God Himself desired to be written - they did not "portray" our Lord as one portrays a character!

And then he references Professor Levine of Vanderbuilt whose "book looks at the Jewish background of Jesus and the ways that the church has often missunderstood that particular aspect of his life."  Martin, learn to capitalize "he" and "him" when referring to the Divine Lord.  And, how dare you, a alledged priest of God, claim that the Church - which is perfect and holy - has erred in reference to our Lord's Jewish roots.  Go join the Jews, Martin.  You are not part of the Church's teachings so drop the title from your name and stop pretending.

What looked like a good topic for a book quickly turned sour.  I'll leave my analysis at this but know that such poor theology does not stop in chapter two. 

Unfortunately, I can not and do not recommend this book.

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Hymn to False God Sung at Assisi III

Inside the basilica of Saint Francis: a native African medicine man and pagan "priest" sang a hymn to the deity of Olokun, today October 27, 2011, during the Third Assisi Interreligious Conference of Prayer and Pilgrimage for World Peace.

http://gloria.tv/?media=209137

Please join me in making reparation for this offense against our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy house that was consecrated to His worship alone.  For more on the blasphemy in Assisi, see my post on the Scandal of Assisi III.

Now is a good time to read a good article from the Remnant on this topic:

Tomorrow the Pope will be in Assisi for another interreligious gathering of “believers” in that holy city to “pray for peace” to their assorted deities, spirits, demiurges or whatever.  The Vatican promises that the event “will show that anyone and everyone can and should be a pilgrim seeking truth.”

Earlier hopes that the Pope had cancelled his appearance at this ludicrous gathering were dashed by the announcement on October 19 that he will address the “believers” (and a few atheists) in the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels, “where there will be a moment of commemoration of earlier meetings and further reflection on the topic of the day.”

Few Catholics remember how utterly unthinkable such an event would have been to any Pope before Vatican II. It is easy to forget what the Church was like before the Council and the descent of the Great Nebulosity that has rendered obscure so much of what was once clear—necessitating something called the Hermeneutic of Continuity, which itself seems part of the Great Nebulosity. Memory returns, however, upon reading landmark encyclicals by pre-conciliar Popes.

The pre-conciliar encyclical most pertinent to the upcoming carnival of religions at Assisi—the third such farce since 1986—is Mortalium Animos (1928) by Pius XI.  Warning of the danger to the Faith posted by the Protestant-born “ecumenical movement,” the Pope expressed his stern disapproval of Protestants who “go so far as to wish the Pontiff Himself to preside over their motley, so to say, assemblies.” Among these people, the Pope observed, are many “who loudly preach fraternal communion in Christ Jesus, yet you will find none at all to whom it ever occurs to submit to and obey the Vicar of Jesus Christ either in His capacity as a teacher or as a governor.”

And this, mind you, is how the Pope characterized proposed gatherings limited to professing Christians of various denominations. Had Pius XI foreseen—in some vision or nightmare—that his proximate successors would routinely preside over, not only “motley assemblies” of Protestants, but pan-religious motley assemblies of everyone from Animists to Zoroastrians, he might well have required immediate medical attention to prevent his heart from stopping.

Today, still in the very midst of the Great Nebulosity, we traditional Catholics are expected to rejoice over the news that there will be no “prayer in common” by the members of the motley assembly, but rather that, as The New York Times (running an AP story) reports, “they will go to pray privately, separately in rooms of an Assisi convent.”

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