Time for Martyrs

saturno tip Open Book

Courage Man has an important post, trying to work out the possibilities in the future:
I think the Church in Britain now, and thus the Church in the US sometime soon, really only has two options in the long run, though it should still do whatever it can do to kick the can down the road and delay The Day of Reckoning:(1) simply close up shop, with respect to any charitable work that requires cooperation with Caesar, on the grounds that Caesar is fundamentally corrupt. That would mean closing down basically all of the Church's charitable work. Running a hospital, for example, requires state licensing on practically every employee or procedure. Even a poor-relief center has licensing hoops to jump through (mostly pro-forma, but nevertheless). The Church in the US recently had the power to make Caesar back down with this threat. As when Cardinal O'Connor threatened to close all the New York Catholic hospitals rather than obey some proposed city regulation on contraception or abortion (the precise nature of which is evading my memory). The city promptly backed down, at least with respect to Catholic hospitals.or(2) refuse to obey Caesar and dare him to do his worst. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Church has hinted that it might do that and create "gay-rights martyrs." The pictures of nuns being arrested and Catholic schools being emptied would, one hopes, shame Caesar into backing down (maybe this is why the Church there may have won the minimum concessions that religious freedom requires). I don't wish martyrdom on anyone, even though jail time, not drawing-and-quartering at Tyburn Field, is the worst it could realistically be. And I don't see (1) as an acceptable end game either, as the Church's social work is both valuable to the common good and too integral to the Church's very self-understanding to be lightly tossed aside.

Close the schools as well?

saturno tip Hermeneutic of Continuity
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has published its sixth report: Legislative Scrutiny: Sexual Orientation Regulations. (pdf) If the recommendations of the Committee are accepted, it is difficult to see how Catholic schools could continue in Britain. Here are two key extracts from the report. The first makes it clear that Catholic schools will not be exempted in any way from the regulations:
65. We welcome the Government’s acceptance that the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation should apply to all schools in both the maintained and the independent sectors, without any exemption for particular types of school such as faith schools. In our view, it follows from the fact that protection against sexual orientation discrimination is rooted in recognition of the equal dignity of every individual that there should be no exemptions for faith schools.The second extract makes it clear what will be required:
67. We do not consider that the right to freedom of conscience and religion requires the school curriculum to be exempted from the scope of the sexual orientation regulations. In our view the Regulations prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination should clearly apply to the curriculum, so that homosexual pupils are not subjected to teaching, as part of the religious education or other curriculum, that their sexual orientation is sinful or morally wrong. Applying the Regulations to the curriculum would not prevent pupils from being taught as part of their religious education the fact that certain religions view homosexuality as sinful. In our view there is an important difference between this factual information being imparted in a descriptive way as part of a wide-ranging syllabus about different religions, and a curriculum which teaches a particular religion’s doctrinal beliefs as if they were objectively true. The latter is likely to lead to unjustifiable discrimination against homosexual pupils. We recommend that the Regulations for Great Britain make clear that the prohibition on discrimination applies to the curriculum and thereby avoid the considerable uncertainty to which the Northern Ireland Regulations have given rise on this question. We further recommend that the Government clarifies its understanding of the Northern Ireland Regulations on this matter.The wording has been deliberately muddied in order to present Catholic teaching in a crude manner. Our faith does not teach that "homosexuality" itself is necessarily sinful, it teaches that it is disordered. It is homosexual acts that are sinful.However, I hope that nobody is foolish enough to try to make a compromise based on that point. The people who framed this guidance will not accept our teaching that homosexuality is a disorder nor that homosexual acts are sinful. They have the bit between their teeth. Although the direction in which public policy has been moving is obvious enough, I am a little surprised at the pace it has now picked up.Make no mistake - this proposal will make it illegal for Catholic schools to teach that the Catholic faith is true.

Available In China?

Saturno tip to Mulier Fortis
Dominican Idaho identified the following site which can check whether your blog or website is blocked in China..... This Site along with Mulier Fortis is, unfortunately, not considered to be capable of corrupting the People's Republic!
Well, I knew this as there is often a reader from Beijing or Shanghai on the stats.
Check out your own site HERE.

Harmony and Persecution in China

Magister writes about the Celestial Kingdom wants more “Harmony,” and with the Church, too. It is the new approach of the Chinese government, against the failed plan to create a “patriotic” Church independent from Rome. An upcoming letter from Benedict XVI will consecrate the full return to unity of Catholics in China, and will propose an agreement with Beijing.

Asia News runs a piece on the continuing persecution, torture, imprisonment of the underground Church in Hebei.


There are 17 Bishops in prison or missing and 20 Priests in prison.

All ye Holy Martyrs of China Pray for them

Antichrist is a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist

Vatican, Mar. 1, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Excesses of ecumenism and a tendency to downplay the Cross of Christ reflect the spirit of the Antichrist, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi warned Pope Benedict XVI and the leaders of the Roman Curia.
In a meditation preached during the Lenten Retreat for Vatican leaders this week, the outspoken Italian cardinal cited the vision of the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev. “The Antichrist presents himself as a pacifist, ecologist, and ecumenist,” he said.
Cardinal Biffi decried the tendency of some Catholics to promote vague spiritual goals, rather than stressing the centrality of Christ’s Sacrifice. “Today,” he said, “we run the risk of having a Christianity that puts aside Jesus, the Cross, and the Resurrection.” He warned against the temptation to faith in Christ to “a mere set of values.”
Recalling Soloviev’s portrait of the Antichrist, the preacher said that the Antichrist waters down the truths of the faith, making concessions to satisfy every interest, and steadily gaining popularity. “The crowds follow him,” the cardinal said, “except for little groups of Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants.”
This lingering remnant, Cardinal Biffi said, levels the charge against the Antichrist: “You have given us everything except the one thing that we want: Jesus Christ.”
(The cardinal’s meditations are being preached during private sessions in the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the apostolic palace. But Vatican Radio provided a summary of his talk.)

Prayer and Posture

During Lent I have been trying to focus on physical penance a bit, not so much flogging oneself, but fasting and physical postures, as a part of prayer, it is one of the reasons I posted the pictures of the Carthusians (see below). Another of the reasons is that it is terrible unfashionable but is very much part of the tradition. I have never invited a group of children to kneel down and pray, althoght I get annoyed when people cross before the sanctuary without geneflecting.

We have been taught to make prayer merely cerebral, I think there is a touch of the Manichism creeping in somewhere, along with iconoclasm of modern Church design, echoed in the Catholic home bereft of iconography. I think this is one of the reason many priests celebrate Mass without bothering about the gestures.

Prostration, kneeling, standing are all biblical postures for prayer, sitting seems only for meditation.

I remember meeting an old Russian lady who told me that she always got distracted in verbal prayer, she could no longer remember the psalms and the hymns she learnt in her childhood, after the revolution, in Paris, so all she could do was her 25 genuflections, three times a day. I asked her why, and suggested it must be painful, she was in her 70s. It was painful she told me "... but it helps me to remember and share in the Good Lord's sufferings". I remember saying that I would have thought the last thing that God would want was for her to suffer more than she already did. She just smiled at me, and just said, "you will understand".

It is only now, I suspect, I begin to understand what she meant, as I myself find it increasing difficult to genuflect. She, I am sure, made up, as St Paul says, "in [her] own body whatever is lacking in the sufferings of Christ" . It wasn't so much God wanting her to suffer, but she who loved Him wanting to share in his Passion, even if it meant a little physical discomfort, what old Irish lady's also knew when they spoke of "offering it up".

I fell asleep in the Church the other day, I had wrapped myself up in a cassock, confessional cloak and even a hat, the heating goes off after Mass. I woke really because of the cold, I really was stiff and shivering. I suspect that throughout most of history that would have been the state in which most religious celebrated the Divine Office. Think of the lack of heating in those huge monastic Churches, waking up halfway through the night, being hungry most of the time because fasting took up half the year, look at the pictures medieval Cistercians and Carthusians.

Are these two ideas connected? Yes, because they are about uniting ourselves, in our flesh, to Christ. "Raising one's heart and mind to God", is a good definition of prayer but it seems to fail any identification with the idea of God coming down to us in a human body and suffering, and even dying, in his flesh for us. "Penitential prayer" is the recognition of God's descent, even to accepting death and uniting Himself to human suffering, pain and penance.

Arinze on Liturgy

The New Liturgical Movement has an interview with the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Francis Cardinal Arinze.

There are perhaps a few hints here of the contents of the Exhortation on the 2005 Synod on the Eucharist.

When I raise ongoing concerns such as continued lack of reverence at Mass, and cite as examples Holy Communion in the hand and standing up, and ubiquitous banal hymns, his own reservations about these practices are obvious. Certain bishops, he says, “pushed and pushed and pushed” for Communion in the hand to be accepted practice for past 40 years, in effect forcing Rome to ratify it. Now, he says, “we have problems”, and he speaks with visible anger about the dropping of particles of the Sacred Host on the ground, tourists putting the Host in a photo album as a souvenir of their trip to Rome, and desecration of the Host through black magic.

On Church music, he blames the “banalising” and “secularising” of hymns on both priests and laity. “There’s a type of music suitable for the parish hall, for a picnic, for dancing, for enjoyment,” he says, “but there’s another music suitable for prayer and adoration.”

On whether priests should celebrate Mass facing the congregation or facing East as they did before the Second Vatican Council, he sees arguments for both positions, although his preferences are clear. “The Mass is not a mutual entertainment gathering between the priest and the people – you admire me and I admire you,” he explains. “The priest is not a reverend showman.”

Still, Cardinal Arinze is not prepared to make changes, believing it unwise “to order the people of God around again and tell them to shift around the altar again”. “If you were in my shoes would you go so far?” he asks.

Indeed, he quickly dismisses the mere suggestion that wielding a little more authority would help. “You do not create reverence by decree from the Vatican,” he says with an enormous smile. “It’s not a work that one person alone can do. Reverence is based on faith.”