A Protestant Truth Test

Recently, a Protestant friend of mine (Reformed Baptist, to be precise), outlined what he considered to be a typical truth test used by those who “doth protest too much.” To be clear, a truth test is a kind of trial or examination by which one can identify what is true. An example used by my Protestant friend was the act of sitting upon a chair. The truth test of a person’s belief that a chair can hold their weight is their act of sitting on the chair.

Heresy is Unbelief

“The image of the Lord has been replaced by a mirror.” – Jorge Luis Borges

The further a man travels the downward spiral of Modernism (and this observation becomes especially true of those at the bottom of this spiral, i.e. “postmoderns”), the darker things become and the easier it is to get lost. While the Church has always struggled with heresy, since the deformation of the Church by schismatics like Luther, Calvin and their offspring, heresy has become increasingly fashionable and harder to detect.

Prayer to Jesus Crucified

En ego, o bone et dulcissime Jesu, ante conspectum tuum genibus me provolvo, ac maximo animi ardore te oro atque obtestor, ut meum in cor vividos fidei, spei et caritatis sensus, atque veram peccatorum meorum paenitentiam, eaque emendandi firmissimam voluntatem velis imprimere; dum magno animi affectu et dolore tua quinque vulnera mecum ipse considero ac mente contemplor, illud prae oculis habens quod jam in ore ponebat tuo David propheta de te, o bone Jesu: “Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos, dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea.”

Behold, O kind and most sweet Jesus, I cast myself upon my knees in Thy sight, and with the most fervent desire of my soul, I pray and beseech Thee that Thou wouldst impress upon my heart lively sentiments of faith, hope and charity, with true contrition for my sins and a firm purpose of amendment; while with deep affection and grief of soul I ponder within myself and mentally contemplate Thy five wounds, having before my eyes the words which David the prophet put on Thy lips concerning Thee, o good Jesus: “They have pierced My hands and My feet, they have numbered all My bones.”

Indulgences for the recitation before a figure of Christ crucified: Ten years. A plenary indulgence once a day on the usual conditions: Confession, Communion, one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory be, said in a church.

In cinere et cilicio

“That, then, is the meaning of Lent for us: a season of deepening spirituality in union with the whole Church which thus prepares to celebrate the Paschal mystery. Each year, following Christ its Head, the whole Christian people takes up with renewed effort its struggle against evil, against Satan and the sinful man that each one of us bears within himself, in order at Easter to draw new life from the very springs of divine life and to continue its progress towards heaven” (St. Andrew Daily Missal [1958], 173).

In 1091, Pope Urban II held a council at Benevento. At this council, the Holy Father ordered that ashes should be received by all the faithful. Today we take ashes as faithful members of the Church our Mother as a remember of our mortal state and of the necessity of penance. Along with fasting and abstinence, it is customary to eagerly adopt additional forms of devotion and penance through Lent. For myself, I have decided to pray the Way of the Cross, on behalf of myself and my family and friends until Good Friday. As a gift to my readers, I will be putting up a new page containing the Way of the Cross from the St. Andrew Daily Missal, 1958 edition. Look for the new link, at the top of the blog, in the coming days.

Concede nobis, Domine, praesidia militiae christianae sanctis inchoare jejuniis: ut contra spiritales nequitias pugnaturi, continentiae muniamur auxiliis. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Grant us, O Lord, to begin with holy fasts our Christian warfare: that, as we do battle with the spirits of evil, we may be protected by the help of self-denial. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Without Much Space for God

In his Foreward to Msgr. Nicola Giampietro’s (Fr. Giampietro serves on the staff of the Congregration for Divine Worship) True Development of Liturgy, Archbishop Ranjith (secretary of the Congregration for Divine Worship), offered up these reflections on the the shape of the liturgy after Vatican II. He writes,

Some practices which Sacrosanctum Concilium had never even contemplated were allowed into the Liturgy, like Mass versus populum, Holy Communion in the hand, altogether giving up on the Latin and Gregorian Chant in favor of the vernacular and songs and hymns without much space for God, and extension beyond any reasonable limits of the faculty to concelebrate at Holy Mass. There was also the gross misinterpretation of the principle of “active participation.”

The Church of Austria

Fr Gerhard Maria Wagner has asked to have his appointment to the auxiliary bishopric of Linz revoked. He stated that the “fierce criticism” his appointment received persuaded him to decline. As many may remember, Fr Wagner described hurricane Katrina as a punishment of God upon New Orleans and described the Harry Potter novels as satanic.

The following day, the diocesan bishops of Austria held an emergency meeting, under the leadership of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, to “deal” with this crisis. All but a few of the diocesan deans declared no confidence in Fr Wager. The Rt. Rev. Ludwig Schwarz, Bishop of Linz, stated that he was relieved that Fr Wager would not be appointed and that this was all “for the good of the diocese.” As a result of this emergency meeting, the bishops produced this statement.

Absolute Empire Over All Creatures

It would be a grave error, on the other hand, to say that Christ has no authority whatever in civil affairs, since, by virtue of the absolute empire over all creatures committed to him by the Father, all things are in his power. [. . .] If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth; if all men, purchased by his precious blood, are by a new right subjected to his dominion; if this power embraces all men, it must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire. He must reign in our minds, which should assent with perfect submission and firm belief to revealed truths and to the doctrines of Christ. He must reign in our wills, which should obey the laws and precepts of God. He must reign in our hearts, which should spurn natural desires and love God above all things, and cleave to him alone. He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls (Pope Pius XI, Quas Primas).

The Heresy of Mr Biden, Redux

In the original post on this topic, I stated: “Mr Biden should be declared excommunicated or failing this, he should be restrained from receiving communion as a just penalty for his heresy. A casual reading of Canon Law makes this explicitly clear.” Now, in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com, Archbishop Raymond Burke, head of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest court, makes the same point. The interview is reproduced below.

Prejudice is of Ready Application

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. Thoughtful men [instead of exploding prejudices] . . . try to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them, [and] think it more wise to retain the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reason. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature (Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France).

Not a Supreme Tribunal

Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheist. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal of moral judgment which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one’s moral judgment is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in the conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and “being at peace with oneself”, so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgment.

As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person’s intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgment about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualist ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature (Pope John Paul II, Veritatis splendor).