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Here is a cool video of Theology on Tap in San Francisco with the Archbishop himself meeting with the young people of his archdiocesis at a local pub. I must admit that the Theology and a Pub thing we have in Columbus is good buf if Bishop Campbell himself were to come, that would be impressive!

Theology on Tap with the Archbishop in SF

(From http://gashwingomes.blogspot.com/)

Santa Teresa de Jesús(1515-1582) 





	

Called Saint Theresa of
Avila in English, she is referred to Saint Theresa of Jesus

for
the name she took when she joined the Carmelite Order. 

Her
birth name was Teresa Cepeda y Ahumada and she was descendent of conversos,

Sephardic
Jews who converted to Christianity, especially after the pogroms of 1390.

Conversos
where by the main committed Christians; however,

authorities
suspected they were secretly instructed by the rabbis

of
the lingering Jewish Community. Such polemics were the main reason

for the establishment of the Spanish
Inquisition in the 1480’s and the eventual expulsion of the Jews in 1492.

Conversos
were usually faithful Catholics, as I have said,

but
even after the expulsion of the Jews they were discriminated

against
via the statues of limpieza de sangre- purity of blood,

which
made a distinction between Old and New Christians.

Barely
aware of their Jewish ancestry after a couple generations,

such
discrimination led to the a reinforcement of a semi-legendary Jewishness.

I
will comment more on this in a later post.
As for Santa Teresa, she was mainly
involved in reforming

the
Carmelite Religious Order,established the carmelitas descalzas

discalced
Carmelites- barefoot Carmelites,in which

she
faced much hardship and opposition.

She
would suffer headaches and had great struggles in her prayer life,

which
is a great comfort to us sinners who can barely

pray
seriously for five minutes.

Here is the prayer she kept in her breviary
throughout her life to keep her spirits up,and her mind in the right place. First is the English translation followed by the original Spanish.


May nothing shake you

(A poem she kept in her Breviary)

May nothing shake you

or frighten you.

All things pass away

yet God remains.

Patience can accomplish anything

Whoever has God, lacks nothing.

For God alone is enough.

Nada
te turbe

  (Letrilla que llevaba por
  registro en su breviario)

  Nada te turbe;
nada te espante;
todo se pasa;
Dios no se muda,
la pacïencia            
    
todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene,
nada le falta.
Solo Dios basta.

 

Here is an interesting quote from David Warren a Canadian journalist. While he is rather hardcore and I don’t agree with him on a number of issues, I still respect his ability to face the issues when many in the media are just plain oblivious:

Postmodern man — who votes, and swings the opinion
polls, in the constitutional democracies — is remarkably unable to cope with
the reality of evil in the world around him. He has an attention span too short
to assimilate even a sustained challenge from a single source, let alone
multiple challenges. He knows little history, and what he does know tends to be
seriously wrong. More deeply, he lacks tradition — the kind of wisdom that
could operate on his instincts, even when his rational mind were neither well-trained
nor well-informed. Yet he is also poorly informed about current events, and his
native ability to reason is vitiated by cheap and disintegrative “relativist”
ideas. He is personally a coward, and a voluptuary: he lives for the day, and
for pleasure, even in the absence of satisfaction or joy. His role models in
popular culture are all narcissists. He is the pure consumer of morally
poisonous entertainment. He lives selfishly; yet in his own loveless,
self-regarding world, he avoids thinking of his own death.

(From an article entitled Desolations, www.davidwarrenonline.com)

Here is a video from a Simpson’s episode. A video of the most vulgar and tasteless kind,
so it’s hilarious:
Protestant vs Catholic Heaven

    The Vatican II document Nostra Aetate, on the relationship between the Church and other religions originally only concerned the Jews, and the deep though turbulent relationship with the "elder brothers in the Faith". The document drawn up at the first session Decretum De Judaeis (Decree on the Jews) then was reduced to a 4 line commentary on Judaism in Nostra Aetate which went on to include Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Yet the closest of these religions in heart and mind is the Jewish. So then Anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews should be the Church’s concern. Since the attempted eradicated of this people was an essay in uprooting God from man, thus dehumanizing man, and destroying him. However, the Anti-Semitism of Traditionalist groups is the Old School Anti-Semitism and it is on the way out. The kind still to be reckoned with is the New School which is very popular now, but nontheless terrible as it is stupid. For "Whoever despises
or persecutes this people does injury to the Catholic Church." Since Christ was born a Jew to a Jewish mother, Mary and his step father the Jewish carpenter Joseph. Jesus’ teachings and mission all flow from the Jewish Scriptures we now know as the Old Testament, most specifically the Torah- the first five books and the Prophets. His teaching are not new, they are what the prophets taught. It’s who He is that changes everything. He is the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, He is the Son of God, God in the flesh.

    Decretum  De Judaeis
        The Church,
the Bride of Christ, acknowledges with a heart full of gratitude that
according to God’s mysterious saving decree, the beginnings of her
faith and election are already to be found in the Israel of patriarchs
and prophets. Thus she acknowledxges that all Christian believers –
Sons of Abraham by faith (cf. Gal 3:7) — are included in his call and,
likewise, that her salvation is prefigured in the deliverance of the
chosen people out of Egypt, as in a sacramental sign (Liturgy of the
Easter Vigil). And the Church, new creation in Christ as she is (cf.
Eph 2:15) can enver forget that she is the spiritual continuation of
that people with whom, in his mercy and gracious condescension, God
made the Old Covenant.

        The
Church in fact believes that Christ, who "is our peace," embraces Jews
and Gentiles with one and the same love and that he made the two one
(cf. Eph 2:14). She rejoinces that the union of these two "in one body"
(Eph 2:16) proclaims the whole world’s reconciliation in Christ. Even
though the great part of the Jewish people remained separated from
Christ, it would nevertheless be an injustice to call this people
accursed, since they are beloved for the sake of their fathers and the
promises made to them (cf. Rom 11:28). The Church loves this people.
From them spring Christ the Lord, who reigns in glory in heaven; from
them sprang the Virgin Mary, mother of all Christians, from them came
the apostles, the pillars and bulwarks of the Church (1 Tim 3:15).

        Furthermore,
the CHurch in fact believes in the union of the Jewsih people with
herself as an integral part of Christian hope. The Church awaits the
return of this people with unshaken faith and deep longing. At the time
of Christ’s coming only "a remnant chosen by grace" (Rom 11:5),
first-born of the Church accepted the (eternal) word. The Church
believes, however, with the Apostle that at the time chosen by God, the
fullness of the sons of Abraham according to the flesh will finally
achieve salvation (cf. Rom 11:12, 26). Their reception will be life
from the dead (cf. Rom 11:15).

        As the Church, like a mother,
condemns most severely injustices committed against innocent people
everywhere, so she raises her voice in loud protest against everything
done to the Jews, whether in the past or in our time. Whoever despise)s
or persecutes this people does injury to the Catholic Church.
(From http://gashwingomes.blogspot.com/)

    Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Yiddish writer from Poland came to the States in the 30’s following his older brother. However, soon the entire fabric of European Jewry was destroyed in the Shoah (the Jewish word for the Holocaust which means a draft coming from the Underworld Sheol. Or rather Hell made apparent on Earth) which was horrible not in so much that it massacred tens of millions but that it accomplished this via the apparatus of bureaucracy and the rule of law within the Modern State, with all of modern technology and science at its disposal. Stalin and Mao actually killed many more millions in the years since but this crime which targeted invalids, the retarded, Gypsies, non-conformist Catholic and Protestant Clergy, and Jews was significant in that as Pope Benedict XVI pointed out at Auschwitz the attempt to eradicate the Jew was the attempt to eradicate the sense of the transcendent at the heart of the Judeo-Christian Civilzation. And thus to liberate man, which actually  ended up annihilating him. Turning human beings into soap, and their hair into blankets. The current backslide into abortion and euthanesia is an eerie return of this underlying destructive will.

Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote for the dwindling Yiddish Newspapers and Magazines in New York, capturing the lost world of his youth, until his work began to be translated into English. By 1978 he had won the Nobel Prize. Here is an anectdote from the introduction to one of his many books of Short Stories:

"I have lived through a number of epochs in Jewish history. I was brought up in a home where the old Jewish faith burned brightly. Ours was a house of Torah and holy books. Other children had toys; I played with the volumes in my father’s library. I began to write before I even knew the alphabet. I took my father’s pen, dippied it in ink, and started to scribble. The Sabbath was an ordeal for me, because on that day writing is forbidden.

    My father moved to Warsaw when I was still very young, and there a second epoch began for me: the age of Enlightenment. My brother. I.J. Singer, who later wrote The Brothers Ashenazi, was at that time a rationalist; it was not in his nature to hide his opinions. He spoke frankly to my parents, advancing with great clarity and precision all the arguments that the rationalists- from Spinoza to Max Nordau-had brought against religion. Though I was still a child, I listened attentively. Fortunately, my parents did not lack answers. They replied with as much skill as my brother attacked. "Who made the sky, the stars, the sun, the moon, man, the animals?" My brother’s answer was that everything evolved had evolved. He mentioned Darwin. "But," my mother wanted to know "how can a creature with eyes, ears, lungs, and a brain evolve from earth and water?" My father used to say: "You can spatter ink but it won’t write a letter by itself." My brother never had as answer for this; as yet none has been found."

The Judeo-Christian belief in Creation has an implicit understanding of the comprehensibility of the Universe because it reflects an Intelligible order, which mirrors a Higher One. That is, Final causes are important and any scientism which reduces everything to Efficient causality is worthless.
Isaac’s brother here cannot respond because he has contructed an evolutionary view that is not scientific but metaphysical, and it is thus incoherent. It is not able to explain why things are the way they are or why anything exists at all but only mechanisms on how efficient causes are involved in the development of biological life on Earth, nothing more.

    If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? And when I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? (Pirkei Avot 1:14)

              -Hillel

    Apropos of nothing I was writing a story recently featuring a Rabbi and an Imam in a religious dialogue group. Suffice it to say the Rabbi was easy to inhabit, frighteningly so. It reminded me of the ties that bind. Also recently I had begun readin parts of the Koran,  I perused sections of the Talmud and found a kinship there which was not in the Muslim Scripture. These sages of the Torah and Mishnah, these rabbis had something which I shared. Of course Christianity and Rabbinical Judaism in their various forms descend from Second Temple Judaism respectively and this kinship in thought and speech is not surprisng despite the turbulent history between them. This got me to thinking about the whole issue of Anti-Semitism and how it seems to ebb and flow along with Anti-Catholicism in a way.

    Now I am not crazy about many of the actions taken by the State of Israel particularly post-1967, but the rising tide of Anti-Semitism in the West is worrisome to me. Many argument can be made about the Zionist movement, in that it was mainly secular in its origins, and indeed Israel remains largely secular in nature. To wit, Israel is the product of the West and is more akin to Europe and its offspring the Liberal Democracies in the Americas, Austronesia, and Africa. At its worst the founding of the State of Israel was an attempt to build a secular utopia, a Jewish state on secular principles. However like it or not Jews have a right to settle in the Holy Land, you cannot bar them from living there, just as one cannot bar Christians- Arab and non-Arab and Muslims.
The disturbing thing is that the pattern of the Jews in Palestine in modern times has been one of a constant defensive war after attacks by hostile forces, mainly Arab Muslims.
In British Palestine these attacks were not uncommon, in fact, there were massacres that have since been forgotten like the one in 1927.  The UN plan for both a Jewish and Palestinian state never came to fruition as the Palestinian Arabs would not consent to a Jewish presence on their land and launched an attack just as the State of Israel was declared in 1948. Ever since then the Palestinian Arabs have been without a state. Later in 1967 neighboring Arab states launche an attack on the High Holiday of Yom Kippur only to meet with defeat and lose more land to Israel, such as Jersualem and much of the Sinai Peninsula.  Violent as this history is one can barely forget the Lebanese Civil War of the 80’s and the Israel invasion of that country which we just saw replayed a few months ago.
The reigning politically correct climate would have me side with the Palestinians against the Evil Israelis. Problem is this position can seem to separate Anti-Zionism from Anti-Semitism and soon becomes violently anti-Jewish and frothing at the mouth with Jewish conspiracy theories. Not to mention the fact that many Arab countries have allowed the Palestinians to suffer the indignity of living in refugee camps, and positions of utter poverty to use them as a tool against Israel.  If we keep those Palestinians angry enough, and keep the Western Intelligenstia on their side then we can finally purge the Jews from Palestine." Add to this the histeria over the Jewish roots of Neo-Conservatism and you get the picture.

The irony is that many Europeans that embrace this positon ignore their own historical ties to Israel and its creation.  Israel, as I have said, is an outgrowth of Western Europe smack dab in the Middle East. European Public Opinion was barely forced to recognize its own Anti-Semitism before caving to the demonization of Israel which unfortunately is often allied with

Yet the opposite position is unequally untenable in that it is too uncritical of Israel. Particularly Christian Zionism which sees Biblical prophecy being fulfilled in the return of the Jews to Palestine. Speculation on the End Times are filled with problems, no less of which is that Our Lord said we would not know the day nor the our. Alos as I have said, religious argument can be marshalled against Zionism as such as trying to establish another secular utopia for the Jewish Nation. These view can be developped within forms of Orthodox Judaism which never a fan of the Zionist option, but had no option after the destruction of Jewish culture in Europe. not to mention Christian circles. There is also valid basis to the fear of nationalism in that Jewish nationalism derives from secular European roots. And we all saw how well secular utopias allied with nationalism did in the 20th century. So this European concern is understandable.

However, as the gradual withdrawl from "settlements" as as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has shown, forces are looming which will not be satsified with anything less than the destruction of Israel.  Now one would ask could this be bad? The idea of a Jewish State was utopian in the first place, right? Well it turns out that the idea of defense comes in again. Something tells me that it is not the State they don’t like it’s the fact that there are Jews in Palestine that is the problem. So without the military forces to protect them the Jewish community would be put to the slaughter.

To wit, this is a global problem for Jews in Europe, America, as well as the Holy Land.

It matters not if you are Secular or Religious, a Jew’s a Jew. Even though the Jew pretends not to know it, everyone else does.

 

To be continued . . .

     Just a little Meme from Eric at Advise and Dissent. It took awhile because I guess I don’t care much to write about celebrities. They might be a tad over exposed I think. As for the category Those in the Process of Canonization, I don’t think with the exception of Mother Teresa and John XXIII that the rest will be officially recognized as Saints beyond their current Blessed or Venerable status.

If
you could meet and ask a question of any five people on earth, living or dead,
from any time period, who would they be and what would you ask? Name five
people from each of the following categories: Saints, Those in the Process of
Being Canonized, Icons from your Native Country, Authors/Writers, Celebrities.

Saints

Saint
John Chrysostym- In your sermon for catechumens waiting to be baptized was your
mention of the fact that everyone in Constantinople seemed to be at the
Hippodrome meant to be funny? What do you think of American football games on
Sunday?

San
Juan de Sahagún- Is that legend about you stopping the bull run loose in the
streets of Salamanca by uttering the words “Tente necio (stop stupid)” true?

San
Sebastián de Horozco- What was Fray Luis de León like?

San
Juan Diego- Why was your Aztec name “The Talking Eagle”?

Saint
Paul- What was the thorn in your side?

Saint
John the Divine- What inspired you to write the Apocalypse?

In
process of canonization

Blessed
Ramón Llull- Did you think your mission to the Muslims in North Africa would be
successful?

Blessed
Mother Theresa of Calcutta- When you were helping the poor and suffering did
you think that people knew about your own inner suffering?

Venerable
John Henry Newman- Do you consider your predictions on the dangers of
liberalism in religion to have been surpassed?

Blessed
Duns Scotus- Are you concerned on the legacy of voluntarism in your metaphysics
as exploited by William of Ockham and others? Also, did you hear that your first name is now used as an insult in the word "dunce"?

Blessed
Pope John XXIII – What inspired you to call the Second Vatican Council and did
you know you would not live beyond its First Session?

Iconic
Americans

Sequoia-
How did you ever come up with the Cherokee alphabet?

John
Clay- Was the Missouri Compromise really worth it?

Abraham
Lincoln- Were you a son of Kentucky or of Illinois?

Jonathan
Edwards- Did you consider yourself more of a Lockean than a Calvinist? Also did you  know about that Crossing Over guy who’s sporting your name and did you hang your head in shame?

George
Washington Carver- Did you realize the ramnifications for canine kind when you
came up with peanut butter? How about Nutter Butters?

Authors/Writers

Cervantes-
Are you still mad at Lope de Vega?

G.
K. Chesterton- What do you think of the UK nowadays?

Flannery
O’Connor- Were you really the only Catholic in your hometown?

Nicolai
Gogol- Where did you get the idea for your story The Nose?

Isaac
Bashevis Singer- As a Polish Jew uprooted to America what did you think of John
Paull II, the Polish pope?

Celebrities

Rodney
Dangerfield- So now do you get respect?

Ben
Affleck- Now that Bennifer the First is officially toast do you secretley envy
Brangelina?

Robin
Williams- Why is tonight more special than all other nights?

Weird
Al – How is Bermuda Schwartz?

George
Lucas- Why George, dear God, why?!

While the Pope’s claims that the
Modern West has divorced Faith and Reason are irrefutable but what about Islam?
The main problem is the lack of a central authority within Islam, which is in
reality many Islams- Sunni, Shiite within many nationalities: Iran, Morrocan,
Indonesian. Pakistani.And while there are some so-called Neo-Mu’tzailites the
forces of violence within Islam are palpable. So one could say that while not
necessarily inevitable there is a certain intentionality within Islam that
gravitates toward violence. The military conquest of the Formerly Christian
East speaks for itself. What of St. Augustine’s Thagaste, what of Antioch where
the followers of Christ were first called Christians, what of Philo and
Origen’s Alexandria, and finally what of Constantinople? There have been
periods when the Christian Faith was imposed by the sword, namely in the
Americas. This was recognized as a grave sin even at the time. Yet despite the
sword it produced fruit and such violence was counteracted through charity and
service to the oppressed native populations by many missionaries. We have come
to realize as thinkers knew then that one cannot impose ones faith by violence.
That is precisely what Benedict was saying as he segued to deride the errors of
the West.

For we in the West largely get
that now. We struggled to understand but we finally have some understanding of
this truth: violence is against reason, and against God. Instead of the Muslim
World today we take Faith and lock it in a closet leaving an instrumental,
naked Reason to dispute things in the public square. Yet since we cannot
address ultimates such disputes are often a waste of time. For if we view
Reason merely as a tool and not as a way toward truth we will abuse it to do
what we want and not what we ought.
Kill them all as long as it works we say. Sad to say but in the end the rationalist secularism of the West is just
as irrational as the violent Faith of the jihadist.

As for Paleologus’ statement that
all that was new in Islam was evil and inhuman, while not putting terms so
harshly there is truth in this. While the Muslim religion is a monotheistic
faith with Abrahamic roots to the Catholic mind it would not be wrong to assert
that Islam is a collection of Eastern Heresies. Thus Arianism and Docestism are
clearly visible in the account of Christ who is immacuately conceived and goes
on to be a Prophet. However he is not crucified but rather God takes him up to
heaven and it is said he will come again at the End of Days. While they are
deigned as previous instances of revelation the Jewish Scriptures and the New
Testament are said to have been corrupted. In contrast, the Koran is seen as
the perfect and unerring Word of God revealed to Muhammed by the Angel Gabriel
in successive Sura, the original of which resides in a bronze tablet in Heaven.
The credal statement “There is no God but God and Muhammed is His prophet” is a
testament to the ultimacy of the Koranic revelation as understood in Islam,
which can be adequately termed a religion of the book. While most religions have authoritative
texts the Koran takes on the status the Bible has for some Protestants, taking
over the role of Christ, the encarnate Word of God, held in Christianity. So
ultimate is this sense that subsequent Sura overrule previous Sura in
authority. Therefore the dating of the Sura 2, 25 quoted by the Pope: “There is
no compulsion in religion”, is important in that it would establish its
premacy. According to the the Pope’s analysis this was at a period when
Muhammed did not yet have military supremacy. Other scholars have subsequently
contested this but it still stands that the dating of Suras is important in
Koranic exegesis.

I myself have begun a cursory
reading of an English adaption of the Koran. I do not know what to think about
it really. Many stories from the Old Testament are retold accurately such as
Abraham, Lot, Noah and Joseph. Yet I do not know how to interpret the text save
for relying on an interpretive tradition. .

So while Islam and Christianity
have much in common such as the belief in one transcendent Creator God and the
Abrahamic covenant they also differ sharply on many issues. So while
controversial, consider the role of woman in Islamic versus Western sociey as
well as public debate and free speech for example.

For at its base Christianity
largely holds that man’s reason is at some level analogous to the Divine Image.
Therefore to act against Reason as is to go against God. Although the
differences between God and mean are far greater than the similarities as the
CF 320 4th Lateran Council: "For between creator and creature no
similitude can be expressed without implying a greater dissimilitude."

Within the Koran itself there is
evidence of a monotheistic God which while similar in some respects is
different than the Christian conception. So while God is often described as
“kind and merciful” yet God also “does what He will”, implying that God’s Will
is not only sovereign above all but arbitrary and somewhat distant.

As the late John Paul II explains
in Crossing the Threshold of Hope:

“Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the
Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine
Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God
said about Himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then
finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam all the richness of
God’s self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New
Testaments, has definitely been set aside (from Chapter: Muhammad? p.92). ”

However, at the same time the
current Pope Benedict XVI recognizes, as John Paul II before him, that dialogue with
Muslims is essential. To this end the document Nostra Aetate from the Second
Vatican Council states:

The
Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration
with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and
in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and
promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural
values found among these men.

 3. The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one
God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator
of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit
wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the
faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they
do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor
Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In
addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to
all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral
life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting. (Nostra
Aetate 3)

    So let us hope that the Pope’s comments and the meeting with Muslim leaders be more fruitful than conflictive in that it brings about a new encounter between Christianity and Islam that allows the two religions to better know themselves. And thus be able to live more perfectly along side one another.

Sources:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church. 1993. Editrice Vaticana.

Documents of Vatican II. 1961-65. Editrice Vaticana.

Fakhry, Majid. 2004. A History of Islamic Philosophy. Columbia University Press.

John Paul II. 1993. Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.