Father Barron on a book I gotta read!

Father Robert Barron, the maestro of WordOnFire.org, gives us a book report on Peter Hitchens' The Rage Against God. (Hitchens, if you don't know, is the brother of the rabidly atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens. He's also a journalist and editorialist, and a high-church Anglican.)

 If anyone wants to buy themselves—or me (hint hint)—a copy, they can find it here at Amazon.com.

And, by the way, in the spirit of charity I want to offer prayers to both brothers on the revelation that "the Hitch" is dying of cancer. For Christopher, that he may finally embrace the truth he has denied so long, and for Peter that he may find comfort in his sorrow. I suggest the Divine Mercy Chaplet: For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

From the "Public display of ignorance" file ...

 A letter published in Guardian.co.uk:

We, the undersigned, share the view that Pope Ratzinger [This sort of gratuitous discourtesy merely puts the signers' immaturity on display] should not be given the honour of a state visit to this country. We believe that the pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country. [Mighty white of you.] However, as well as a religious leader, the pope is a head of state, and the state and organisation of which he is head has been responsible for:

• 
  
  Opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of AIDS. [Take note that papal opposition hasn’t stopped the distribution of condoms anywhere. The increase of large families and the spread of AIDS has been in countries where condoms have been widely distributed. In areas where the government has actively promoted chastity and fidelity, AIDS has diminished as a threat.]
• Promoting segregated education. [And this is a problem ... how? By not making Catholic schools non-sectarian?]
• Denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women. [Because the Pope is for the most fundamental human right—the right of life.]
• Opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people. [The only thing the Pope has openly opposed is same-sex marriage, which is an oxymoron. See the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s letter On the pastoral care of homosexual persons. It was written while Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger was the Prefect of the Congregation.]
• Failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation. [Okay, and where have you been the last eight or nine years? The Catholic Church has done a lot more to address the problem than most government-run school systems.]

Roamin' Catholic priests

Here is a really powerful funeral homily delivered by Fr. Bill Casey, who made the wonderful speech on superficial preaching I posted about back in March:

From the "I'm so misunderstood" files ....

Ali Agca, the Turkish assassin who shot John Paul II on May 13, 1981, claims it wasn't his intention to kill the Pope but to wound him. Oh, well, that's not so bad, is it?

Asshat.

After serving 19 years for the attack on JP2 in Italy, he was extradited to Turkey to serve a 10-year sentence for the killing of journalist Abdi Īpekçi. Having completed his sentence, he's now at liberty and is, in the grand tradition of Western justice, writing a book ....

A little light summer reading ...

 Homer’s Iliad.

No, I’m not trying to bolster my slender credentials as either an intellectual or a classicist. On my last trip back home to Omaha, I caught poetry. After committing two blatant acts of doggerel, I decided to go back to the basics. You have to start with the epic tradition—Iliad, Odyssey, Aenid, Beowulf—then move up through Chaucer, Dante, Chanson de Roland, Spenser, Shakespeare ….

Lot of catching up to do ….

The dumbing of American Catholicism

This speech by Fr. Robert Barron of Word On Fire.org makes a very telling criticism about Catholic catechesis of the last 40 years:

The unreason of despair

The atheist cries, “I will not content myself with a God who would permit for one tiniest part of a second the torment of a child!” And so he contents himself with a universe that is indifferent to the torment of millions of children and adults. He cannot lift a finger to save a child in this life; therefore he must consign her to eternal death, uncomforted and unavenged. He cannot envision a Plan that will give her suffering meaning; therefore he will make her suffering meaningless. He cannot give her justice in this life, so he will deny the possibility of justice in a Life hereafter. Because there can be no good Purpose to her suffering, there can be no purpose at all, save a jury-rigged, ephemeral, individually constructed “purpose” whose reality is dishonest as the grand Purpose he denies so forcefully. If this be not a philosophy of despair, then there is no such thing as despair.

The Lord's Prayer and obedience

This is an extract from Fr. Andrew Garcia, SJ, "Ignatian Obedience in the Light of The Spiritual Exercises", New Jesuit Review (2010, Vol. 1, No. 3):

Thus, the mission of the Son is to restore all things back to the Father. This is brought about by the fulfillment of the Father’s will, that is, to inaugurate the kingdom of heaven here on earth. And it is in the Son’s “inauguration” of the kingdom that he brings about our redemption. The mission to establish his kingdom on earth is only possible in an obedience to God’s will; the words of the Our Father sum this up succinctly, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” One thus realizes that in the “Our Father” the Son is describing nothing less than his mission here on earth [emphasis mine—TL]: it is he who praises and thanks the Father (“hallowed be thy name”); it is he who brings about the kingdom of heaven by perfectly carrying out the Father's will (“thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”); it is he who gives us our daily bread in the sacrament of Eucharist and asks for our forgiveness to the Father on the cross in the sacrament of confession (“give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses”); and it is he who prays for us, as he did for Peter, in our moment of trial and temptation by the evil one (cf. Lk 22:31-32 “and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one”). And in fulfilling his mission, we can all say with him and in him “Our Father, who art in heaven...”

What do men want from women?

In a recent post, The Crescat made this public plea:

I have been told repeatedly that men like domestic women, which I suspect is their not so subtle way of saying they don't think I am. Gentlemen, help me out here. I sincerely want to know what your personal definition of this term means to you.

How could I resist?

Oh, well ... so much for Doomsday ....

New York Man Spends Life Savings Ahead of May 21 Doomsday

A New York man spent his entire $140,000 life savings advertising his prediction that the world will end May 21, the New York Post reported Friday.

Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old Staten Island resident, said he spent at least that sum on 1,000 subway-car placards and ads on bus kiosks and subway cars.

They say, "Global Earthquake: The Greatest Ever! Judgment Day May 21, 2011."
In a self-published book, "The Doomsday Code," Fitzpatrick said the Bible offers "proof that cannot be dismissed."

"Judgment Day will surprise people. We will not be ready for it," Fitzpatrick said in an interview with the newspaper. "A giant earthquake will render the earth uninhabitable."

If you want to set an alarm clock, the quake will happen just before 6:00pm local time, he said.

"God's people will be resurrected. It is also the day that God stops saving anyone," he said.

Fitzpatrick hopes that he is one of the chosen ones, but he could not be really certain.

"There's just a little doubt," he said. "Most churches teach that if you just believe, you will be saved. It is not our choice. It is God's choice."

And so, one more idiot claims his timetable is Scripture-based, while ignoring passages that clearly say the time of the Second Coming is unknown, that the day of the Lord will come "like a thief in the night" (1 Thess 5:23; cf. Mt 24:36, 44, 25:13; Mk 13:35-37; Lk 12:46; 2 Pet 3:9-10; Rev 3:3). And he spent his life savings doing this.

I don't know whom we need saving from more ... our enemies or our friends.