An Apology for Adventism

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, reviewing a recent book on the Branch Davidians, calls on the Seventh-day Adventist Church to “acknowledge some responsibility on the part of their tradition for the developments” that led to the Waco conflagration. One matter that impressed me particularly as an evangelical reading Newport is his insistence that…

Can We Remain Silent in the Face of Antisemitism?

Five years ago I documented the plagiarism of antisemitic sources by apologist Robert Sungenis. Since then, several men who worked for him at that time and since (Michael Forrest, Jacob Michael, Ben Douglass), and who once defended him, have left his organization and are making their own criticisms of his anti-Jewish writings, building upon what…

Missing the Forest for the Trees

Bill Donohue. What a job he has. To get paid looking for anti-Catholicism. To have to read student newspaper opinion pieces in the quest. “Penelope” is writing a sex column for the Ohio State Lantern–a paper that is rather tardy in getting on the student-sex-columnist bandwagon. In her introductory piece, she describes the kinds of…

After 500 Years …

John Allen asks, “Why hasn’t Catholicism had a more positive effect in Latin America?” The most frequent explanation I heard boils down to this: For most of the 500 years since the arrival of Columbus, Catholicism in Latin America often has been skin-deep. People were baptized into the faith, married and buried in it, but…

A Fearmonger’s Manifesto

Michelle Malkin shows us how freedom dies. It is strangled by the fearful, who interpret acts of piety and prayer and devotion as threat, subversion, and terrorism. As a child, I heard graphic apocalyptic narratives of an America turned upside down, where, in the name of freedom and faith, a faithful remnant would be persecuted…

Things to Come …

I’ve said little about the much rumored, speculated, and bally-hooed Motu Proprio that will allegedly free the Tridentine Mass and, if some rumors are to be believed, inaugurate the eschaton. But this from CWN leads to a discussion on that page that I must draw attention to. DV: Remember that even the very traditional-minded young…

Tomberg on Ghosts and Reincarnation

Heretical nonsense Valentin Tomberg‘s Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, discussed earlier in connection with the Afterword by Hans Urs von Balthasar, is, as Theodore Parker once said of another work, “a curious farrago of sense and nonsense.” And it is most certainly nonsense of a heretical nature, denying fundamental Christian teachings…

Von Balthasar’s Occultism

Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973), a Russian emigre, was the “Anonymous” author of Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, written in 1967, but published over a decade after his death. Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote a foreward to the 1983 German edition, and this is included as an afterward in the 2002 English edition…

Von Balthasar’s Casta Meretrix

Meretrix: prostitute, harlot, whore, woman of ill repute. In a recent Spero News commentary, Susan Beckworth expressed shock that the (to all reports) conservative theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, friend of popes, would use such a term to describe the church. She said, In Hans Urs von Balthasar’s 1950’s published work, “Casta Meretix” [sic], he…

Plato’s Purgatory

How much does the traditional understanding of purgatory owe to Plato? Consider this selection quoted by Eusebius in Praeparatio Evangelica (ch. 38): For [Plato] speaks as follows in the dialogue Concerning the Soul: ‘…As soon as the dead have arrived at the place to which each is conveyed by his genius, first of all they…

St. Gregory’s Ghost Stories

Move over, Alfred Hitchcock. St. Gregory the Great was telling spine-tinglers 1300 years before you were born. You’ll find much of his collection of ghost stories in his Dialogues, many of which were quoted by F. X. Schouppe, SJ, in his Purgatory. And it is to warn the reader of the punishments of purgatory, and…

Medjugorje

And now let us say some thankful words to Catholic traditionalists. Yes, sometimes they are a conspiratorial bunch, but as wise folks have said, “Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.” There’s one area where the traditionalists have been very vigilant and have done all Christians a great favor–and…

Reformulating Eschatology

While reading Ratzinger on eschatology, I came across a reference to a 1979 statement of the CDF (under his predecessor, Franjo Cardinal Seper), Letter on Certain Questions Concerning Eschatology. The document emphasizes the need for solid formulation of key aspects of Christian faith, at a time when theologians are confusing people and leading them to…

Absent shepherds

From AMDG: Terri Schiavo’s brother has written an open letter to Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg in anticipation of the second anniversary of his sister’s murder. He notes recent comments by Lynch on the homeless, and sees a terrible irony therein. And he writes to explain why he holds the Bishop more responsible for…

The Pope and the Press

The Times reports: Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, the Pope has said. Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, Benedict XVI said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had…

Mel Gibson Makes More Friends

If you go to a university, and show a movie, and open the floor to questions from academics who specialize in the subject, you should not be surprised if they ask tough questions. Mel Gibson, however, could only cuss out one such professor, who was then escorted out by campus police. Alicia Estrada is an…

Sobrino & von Balthasar

Grant Gallicho posts a letter written by Nicholas Lash to The Tablet regarding the Sobrino affair. Lash quotes some statements from Hans Urs von Balthasar that appear to advocate the same ideas for which Sobrino was reprimanded (Christ being a man “assumed” into God and having “faith”). Lash accuses the CDF of sloppiness in its…

Anachronistic Art

The calendar on our refrigerator, which I got from Holy Cross Chapel, has a different work of art for each month. For March, it is “The Communion of the Apostles,” by Justus of Ghent. Jesus stands before the table with a paten in his hand, bearing small hosts, and he places one on the tongue…

A Meaningless Victory

If you lock up a man for five years without charges, subject him to what you may claim is not torture but what everyone else in the world calls torture, should you be celebrating his guilty plea?

Albacete on Evangelization

Jim had a post a while back on evangelization, quoting Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete: … Some insist on the need to promote or recapture Christian doctrinal orthodoxy, that is, the need to emphasize and teach the intellectual convictions that properly proclaim the Christian faith. For others, what matters is promoting and defending Christian morality as an…

Update: Catholic School and MySpace

St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic School in Michigan has not just banned student use of MySpace. Rather, the ban extends to any “personal internet site.” The school’s webpage states: At the beginning of each school year, students and a parent are required to sign the school’s Internet Use Policy.  The policy discussed the expectations…