
{ Radically Orthodox Catholic - Trying to Live & Love without Compromise }
Friday, 29 February 2008
Hey don't forget - Last Day to Vote !

Thursday, 28 February 2008
Our Land - China - The Ways of the Middle Kingdom - Chung Kuo

- Better blood flowing like a river than one extra birth.
- Abort whether early or late, abort using any method!
- Your home will be destroyed and your cows taken away if you don't abort.
There is a list of others such as:
- One sterilization honors the whole family! (Xiandong Province)
- One excess birth, whole village sterilized! (Tsuxiong, Yunnan Province)
- Sterilization dodgers wanted! (Tzechuan Province)
Satanic isn't it...?

Fr Tim over at the Hermeneutic of Continuity informs us that 'commie' China is yet again attempting to 'hoodwink' the West by intimating it plans to remove the legislation enforcing 'one child only' - when it has no intention of doing any such thing. Whether this is true or untrue is a valid point to consider...but I'm afraid Fr Tim is falling into that grim fallacy with which the west hoodwinks us.
China's policies are undoubtedly pure evil...Evil beyond imagining.
But why are they allowed to thrive ? To persist ? What necessitates it ? what compels it ?

Now, keep that in your mind while I ask you to hearken back to 13th May 1981 ; we're forever being told that Pope John Paul II's execution was directly ordered via the Kremlin through the 'subverted' neo-fascist Grey Wolves and Mehmet Ali Agca fired the shots - I'm sure there are many informed catholic bloggers out there close to Rome who will tell you that this is simply untrue - Pope John Paul II was disrupting the tyrannising status quo in Eastern Europe - and it was a rich source of cheap goods and resources [produced in an environment of enslavement of whole populations] and the people who profited were rich Multi-Nationalists in the West - it was these 'secret people' who ordered His Holiness's execution; for they had far too much to lose if eastern europe was freed - a vast amount of lucrative 'fast-bucks' in the West being the main one...whenever we look for Evil thriving, whether it be third or fourth world poverty, disease, violence, chaos and death - you will invariably find money at the root of it....

Why was China allowed to persist in its diabolical policies against its own people ?
What country ever stood against it ?
What country ever spoke out , refused to trade or negotiate or withdraw any diplomatic relations with china while this ongoing evil thrived ?
In fact did we not promote, equivocate, excuse, collaborate and conspire in this tyranny , violence and death..whether it be against Tibet, or Taiwan or the students in Tianamen square or the millions of unborn or any political opposition or christians or the millions in rural communities starved to death when resources were low while the stockpiles of arms and nuclear weapons rose higher to ensure they could oppress the people and blackmail the whole world into economic submission ?
The Chinese government are up to their necks in the blood of millions...
But what of us ?

The clothes I wear were made in China , the TV I watch may have a Japanese name but its components came from China , the baseball boots on my feet - from China, the computer in front of me - US brand but its components? yep Chinese - my £27 suit I recently wore to a funeral - China...I've made a quick glance through my paperbacks - the majority were printed in China - the dvds ? You got it !
T

The company I work for trades $18 billion with China - compelled to as people want their cheap jeans and cheap electrical goods - if it didn't do it someone else would - it's capitalism - it's the way of the world !!!

I vacuumed the living room not long ago - a nice shiny Dyson - good british Inventor - was once a good british company - now it's in china - it had no choice - the globalisation policies of the New World Order have decreed that the World's workshop, the world's factory - is now focussed upon China !
If it were any other way it would be detrimental to our economy wouldn't it ?
Trudy and Justin wouldn't have their Tuscan Villa , their little getaway cottage in the highlands or be able to take Caspar and Jocasta to The London Oratory and the Ursuline sisters in the latest 4by4 ?,

When I lived in the US they were incensed at having to pay $1.40 a gallon for gasoline - imagine how they would feel if they were paying the near $10 we're paying here in the UK ? But no, the tens of billions of dollars of trade with China ensure this doesn't need to happen....

How lucky we are that we can equivocate, squeeze our way out of that one by declaring we are merely indirect participants ? But there is something about the law that makes us uneasy when it implies that if there's a hint of 'without whom the acts would not occur'? - there's culpability....puts us on edge doesn't it ?

So when Fr Tim condemns the murderous Commie bastards and their mephistophelean agenda of violence, tyranny and genocide - I'll side with him and agree in the condemnation....
...Yet in order to be authentic I have to go one step further and condemn the world who, for a fast buck, allows, conspires and promotes this !
In some way, blood is on all our hands...
A Warning - by GKC

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something,
let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to
pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages,
is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner
of the Schoolmen, "Let us first of all consider, my brethren,
the value of Light. If Light be in itself good--" At this point
he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush
for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go
about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality.

But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people
have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light;
some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness,
because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a
lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash
municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something.

And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes.


there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all,
and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what
we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss
in the dark.
Just in case your great-great-great-great-grandchildren appear on your doorstep....

Fascinating News from the New Scientist:
AS YOU may have heard, this will be the year. The Large Hadron Collider - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - will be switched on, and particle physics will hit pay-dirt. Yet if a pair of Russian mathematicians are right, any advances in this area could be overshadowed by a truly extraordinary event. According to Irina Aref'eva and Igor Volovich, the LHC might just turn out to be the world's first time machine.

It is a highly speculative claim, that's for sure. But if Aref'eva and Volovich are correct, the LHC's debut at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, could provide a landmark in history. That's because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the creation of the first time machine, and that means 2008 could become Year Zero!!!!

....I've been reading up on all this for the past couple of days - you would truly be amazed at it all....More Later I promise...
...Who's going to be more angry ? The Trotskyite Politically-Correct Liberals , or the Capitalist Catholics who bow before Toryism and Republicanism?

The Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, confirmed today that Pope Benedict XVI is about to finish his Encyclical on social issues.
"Yes, the Pope is working on a social encyclical, which will have, I believe, a significant impact on the great social and economic problems in the contemporary world," said Cardinal Bertone during an interview published today by the Italian daily "La Repubblica."
Pope Benedict, according to Cardinal Bertone, "will address issues particularly related to the third and the fourth world."
The concept "fourth world" was coined by Pope John Paul II in his social encyclical “Sollicitudo Rei Socialis”, in reference to the poor and marginalized living in developed countries, especially in inner cities.
The Secretary of State gave no clue as to when the document will be released, but unnamed sources from the Vatican quoted previously by the daily "Il Messaggero," said the third encyclical of Pope Benedict would be signed on the feast of St. Joseph –March 19th - and released during Easter.
"The encyclical will focus on international social problems, with special attention to developing countries," Cardinal Bertone told "La Repubblica."
The way to fight Dan Brown !
Now in case you don't live in the UK and understand what Numberwang is :
Dying with dignity , or living with dignity ?


The Pope said: "Death concludes the experience of earthly life, but through death there opens for each of us, beyond time, the full and definitive life. ... For the community of believers, this encounter between the dying person and the Source of Life and Love represents a gift that has a universal value, that enriches the communion of the faithful". In this context, he highlighted how all the community should participate alongside close relatives in the last moments of a person's life. "No believer", he said, "should die alone and abandoned".
All society "is called to respect the life and dignity of the seriously ill and the dying", said the Holy Father. "Though aware of the fact that 'it is not science that redeems man', all society, and in particular the sectors associated with medical science, are duty bound to express the solidarity of love, and to safeguard and respect human life in every moment of its earthly development, especially when it is ill or in its terminal stages.

"In more concrete terms, this means ensuring that every person in need finds the necessary support through appropriate treatments and medical procedures - identified and administered using criteria of therapeutic proportionality - while bearing in mind the moral duty to administer (on the part of doctors) and to accept (on the part of patients) those means for preserving life which, in a particular situation, may be considered as 'ordinary'".
As for forms of treatment "with significant levels of risk or that may reasonably be judged to be 'extraordinary', recourse thereto may be considered as morally acceptable, but optional. Furthermore, it will always be necessary to ensure that everyone has the treatment they require, and that families tried by the sickness of one of their members receive support, especially if the sickness is serious or prolonged".

After noting how it is becoming ever more common for elderly people in large cities to be alone "even in moments of serious illness and when approaching death", the Holy Father noted that such situations increase pressures towards euthanasia, "especially when a utilitarian view of people has become established". In this context, he once again recalled "the firm and constant ethical condemnation of all forms of direct euthanasia, in keeping with the centuries-long teaching of the Church".

Society, said the Holy Father must "ensure due support to families who undertake to care in the home, sometimes for long periods, sick members who are afflicted with degenerative conditions, ... or who need particularly costly assistance. ... It is above all in this field that synergy between the Church and the institutions can prove particularly important in ensuring the necessary help for human life in moments of frailty".
St. Teresa's Bookmark

truth dwells in the inner person;
and if you find your nature given to
frequent change, go beyond yourself.
Move on, then, to that source where the
light of reason receives its light....
St. Augustine "is one of the great converts of Christian history" said Benedict XVI. Reading the "Confessions" , he went on, "it is easy to see that Augustine's conversion was neither sudden nor fully achieved right from the start. Rather it may be defined as a ... journey, and remains as a model for each one of us".


The saint's "passion for mankind and for truth ... made him seek God, great and inaccessible" . But "Faith in Christ, led him to understand that the apparently distant God is not in fact distant. He has come close to us, making Himself one of us. In this context, faith in Christ was the culmination of Augustine's long search along the path of truth. ... This path must be followed with courage and, at the same time, with humility, while remaining open to the permanent purification of which each one of us has need".

St. Augustine , the Pope recalled, "was reluctantly ordained a priest in Hippo and assigned to the service of the faithful", in which role "he continued to live with Christ, but while serving everyone. He found this very difficult at the start, but he understood that only by living for others, and not just for his own private contemplation, could he truly live with Christ and for Christ. Renouncing a life of pure meditation he learned, often with difficulty, to place the fruits of his intellect at the service of others, to communicate his faith to the common people, ... and thus to live for them in that city which he had made his own. ... This was his second conversion".
The Pope then went on to identify another stage in Augustine's journey "which we

could call his third conversion and which brought him daily to ask forgiveness of God. ... We have a perennial need to be washed by Christ, ... to be renewed by Him". We need "the humility to recognize that we are all sinners, constantly journeying until God definitively gives us His hand and introduces us to eternal life". With such humility Augustine lived and died.
"Having converted to Christ Who is truth and love", the Pope continued, "Augustine followed Him throughout his life and stands as a model for all human beings who seek after God. ... Today too, as in his time, humankind needs to know this fundamental reality and, above all, to put it into practice: God is love and meeting Him is the only answer to the disquiet of our hearts".
Benedict XVI concluded his catechesis with a prayer that "every day we may be able to follow the example of this great convert, meeting in every moment of our lives, as he did, the Lord Jesus, the One Who saves us, purifies us and gives us true joy, true life".
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
You really couldn't invent this...

a French blog, received an email from a reader who took his
children to visit the Basilica of Saint Denis, near Paris, where the kings of
France are buried. The blog writes:
He was surprised by the brochure entitled "Tour of Discovery for the Young":
First, on page 8, he read: "Dagobert, the first king buried in Saint-Denis.
[...] A contemporary of Mohammed, Dagobert was King of the Franks from 629 to
639."
Then, on page 9, [...] "In the Bible we find the story of the Angel Gabriel,
the very one who would bring the Koran to Mohammed, who announces to Mary, a
young girl engaged to Joseph, that she will soon give birth to a son named
Jesus."

It seems that Christianity is being explained and taught only in relation to
Islam. It is as if young people in France can only relate to Christianity
through references to Islam
They're at it again....
It is the fashion today for dioceses in England and Wales to offer glossy expensive Programmes with trendy titles for adult lay Catholics. None that we have seen works through either the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” or the “Compendium”,so, although there is a real need for adult catechesis, these programmes should be approached with caution. As most seem to bear little relation to true catechesis or the teaching of the Church they could lead us down the wrong path entirely.
For example, giving an interim report on “Seeking the face of Christ” the Programme of Consultation with the Laity used in Clifton Diocese, Bishop Declan Lang pointed out to an audience of priests, deacons and parish council members that some issues could not be decided by him alone. He cited as examples, “women priests, married clergy and celibacy” explaining that these would have to be “taken to the Bishops’ Conference for discussion.”
Does he really believe that these are proper issues for laity to discuss or that there is any point in taking them to the Bishops of England and Wales for discussion ?
Another programme which we have studied, as it seems fairly typical, is “At Your Word, Lord” – the follow-up to which is currently running in Westminster Archdiocese. Like the others, it aims to set up small ‘faith-sharing’ groups within parishes where people exchange their own ideas about the faith without any correction of error allowed. As the Pope has warned us, there is now ‘widespread religious ignorance’ among Catholics so this is bound to cause confusion and distress.
To compound these errors, the team running the programme, Bishops John Arnold and George Stack, Mgr Keith Balthrop of CASE and Father O’Boy, under the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, seem to have deliberately chosen well-known dissenters as the only resources. For instance they have invited Father Rafeal Esteban, author of “How the Church must change” to come all the way from East Anglia to explain how the Church must change Her teaching on, among other things, contraception. He will also show how we must dismantle the Hierarchial Church, instituted by Christ, in favour of a democratic church of his own devising. We are told that ‘Father is an excellent speaker’ who will explore “ideas of leadership and the development of lay ministry,” but whether he will be following the ‘Lord’s word’ I am not at all sure.
“Sadhana: A Way to God,” is the book chosen as a resource. This book, by Father Anthony de Mello, promotes practices from eastern religions such as mantras, centering prayer, and other Buddhist techniques. It was considered to be so dangerous to Catholics that the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, when under Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, took the unusual step of issuing a stern notification pronouncing it “void” and “ambiguous”. This must prompt the question: Why teach Buddhism when it is Catholicism we need to know? Or is the Lord in “At Your Word, Lord,” the Lord Buddha? And if this was not enough….. Westminster have also invited the psychotherapist Margaret Philpot to indoctrinate Catholics with the discredited Liberation ‘Theology’. Laity will be trained in theory-practice-methodology techniques so they are equipped with the skills they need to take over from the clergy in leading their fellow Catholics - obviously down the wrong road. We must do all we can to expose the dangers of this Programme to the innocent, vulnerable Catholics who will otherwise be led astray by it.
We should also point out to the authorities that there are many faithful Catholic priests much closer than East Anglia who would willingly give talks which are in line with Church teaching to people following a Programme. There are also excellent CATHOLIC spiritual books, some of them by canonised saints, which would not lead anyone astray but would make really worthwhile resources. Indeed, there is now an excellent, truly Catholic Programme for adults called Evangelium which informs and inspires people without dissent of any kind. Evangelium is available from the CTS. It presents the faith extremely well and in an interesting way using modern technology. If this was used in all our dioceses it would go a long way towards correcting the errors instilled by forty years of false catechesis, by the rogue courses ‘Catholic’ ALPHA and CaFE, and by these new Programmes. It could even put whole parishes back on the right path and lead them to Christ.
The Deception regarding the abortion pill and birth defects....

They refused to even consider it ; and subsequently the healthiest of daughters was born, athletic, continually top of her class at school ; so much so that she was even having poetry published in her teens ! We have to ask how many times this happens - and how many confused and distraught women abort because they have been misinformed by the medical profession ?

The man, who was not named for legal reasons, had his jail term increased from a previous one-year sentence set by a district court in June.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeal for Western Sweden found the man guilty of aggravated assault for attempting to make his girlfriend of eight years miscarry by giving her a yoghurt containing three ground-up pills. The sentence also included a more minor count of assault.

The court documents said the woman had decided to have the baby even though he felt he was not ready to be a father. The man ordered some pills on the Internet and fooled his doctor into prescribing others for another condition.
The woman ate the yoghurt and suffered severe stomach pains and vaginal bleeding.
When she later realized what she had eaten, she decided to have an abortion, fearing that the foetus had been permanently damaged by the pills.
Now I have to ask the question - why did she abort ?
Now this is what I was going to write in regard to the issue ; after I'd read the regular details on the pro-choice, medical and pro-life sites :


UNTIL I ACTUALLY READ FURTHER INTO THE ISSUE - and discovered that this was NOT THE CASE !!!!! The Reason abortion is recommended after the ingestion of RU486 is related to litigation over the potential birth defects - the actual chance of birth defects is exceedingly LOW - and not high as all these sites [including the pro-Life sites] imply - and some research has suggested that the susceptibility to birth defects is caused mainly, if not solely, by the subsequent use of prostaglandin !!! The first two articles speak of the 'legal threat' of potential defects after ingesting RU486 and subsequently wishing to continue with the pregnancy [there's even the suggestions that medical professionals wish to make surgical abortion mandatory if the abortion pill does not work to prevent litigation] But have a look at the last two articles - amidst all the technical details and long words it inadvertently says something really shocking - with immediate progesterone treatment the risks of any birth defect is MINIMAL - it's the use of prostaglandin after RU486 that causes virtually all the defects - and this woman had not received prostaglandin....
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20001024_phelps.html
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=707 http://www.theannals.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/2/191?ck=nck
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10759272
Misunderstandings....with an apology to Joanna Bogle.
Anyway : This is the beautiful , considerate passage Joanna Bogle wrote in her blog a few days ago :
"Young people want - need - to know they are loved and lovable, necessary, valued, and capable of great things. They need to know that life can be full of huge challenges and tasks, and adventures in doing them, and they need the structures that come with all that. How horrible that in modern Britain all this is being denied to so many.
Today in the High Street, a team of Christian singers were braving the cold and the weary who-cares-anyway of shoppers, and singing cheerily about the love of Christ. Their joy was suddenly contagious, and I felt warmed by it. It also made God seem real: he came here, lived among us all, joined in. Cares hugely about every single individual one of us. Easy to forget that "
My Response ?
Well I was trying to say one thing but somehow along the way I think it could be misconstrued that I was instigating a personal attack against Mrs Bogle [one blog reader thought so and subsequently launched a vituperative assault on her; grounding their arguments with things I had said {albeit out of context} ] I'm embarassed beyond imagining and feel exceedingly burdened with guilt - so this is my penance - show you how much of a bastard I am and can be....
Well ? Anyway this is what I said and I hope the more excusing amongst you may try and see that I wasn't going for the Bogle-jugular ; but attempting to put a point across regarding the source of the problem. Whatever you think; please don't hate me - I may have been slightly 'sarky'; but I didn't mean to be offensive...
Sorry Joanna but I'd truly love to know what you would suggest for young adults to do ?
I work as a shelf-stacker ; and virtually all my fellow employees under the age of thirty [with one notable exception] spend every ounce of free time [i.e. where they don't have to care for young kids if they have them] in pubs and clubs - because frankly there is nothing else to do - we're talking of millions of people here whose only recreation is alcohol - because that is the way society has decreed it - and please don't tell me that capitalist/conservative policies [of both the Tories and New Labour]which have decimated the arts and entertainments industries since the war hasn't conspired with this ?
What exactly do you propose ? a paper chase , charades , or a bike journey to Budleigh Salterton with brass rubbings and lashings of ginger beer ? a nice lecture on Pugin or teaching them how to crochet ? cream teas with the archdeacon ?
These poor disenfranchised people have been let loose to the wolves...and what did we do to help ?
They are...to go all Newmaniac for once..
'dispossessed , aside thrust chucked down by the sheer might of a despot's will...'
...and what do we do to help ?
I have three kids and it is very ,very hard to keep them safe and informed of their catholic inheritance and responsibilities amidst this secularist tyranny...
I'm sure you meet many admirable young 'gels' and upstanding young catholic schoolkids belonging to youth groups as you venture forth round the country ; and I'd bet my last shiny sixpence that you pray hard and care unremittigly for the drunken drug induced louts or foul-mouthed half-dressed teenage harridans f-ing and blinding on the street corner, knocking seven bells out of each other when they aren't recklessly copulating with all and sundry....but sometimes treating the rash does no good when the disease is allowed to thrive...
...and I agree wholeheartedly ; they most sincerely need to know they are loved and lovable ; but so too do their parents from whom most of this dissolution of sanity, propriety and hope originates...
we need to make an all-out assault on the root of the problem...adult life and their entire disenfranchisement by today's society....
The devil wins when we confuse our priorities...and if [we] delude ourselves into thinking this problem is sourced in the youth we will continue to make the same errors ; merely supporting and sustaining the few already saved while the lost sheep remain in the wilderness.
Tuesday, 26 February 2008
Why it upsets me so...

Bit of a fallacy involved here : it's not whether it's local praxis that makes it a litmus tests ; it's where communion in the hand is enforced that indicates something exceedingly suspect - for instance in seminary it was seen as a warning alarm of Tridentinism if someone received on the tongue and in group masses [performed on coffee tables [once someone placed an upright brass crucifix on the table and it was picked up and thrown onto an armchair by the presiding priest] communion was distributed ilegally before the priest consumed - we were expected to sit there on our bean bags holding the host for up to five minutes ; when I was in a benedictine monastery being part of a team which took underprivileged families on holiday - the kids made their own communion bread which was consecrated - crumbs went everywhere all over the room and was subsequently hoovered up or swept off the kids' jeans and sweaters...

I've seen priests have 'hissy fits' because a sacristan has brought out silver chalices and patens when they have demanded porous unglazed pottery [one of a certain priest's 'chipped mug chalices' was stained red/brown inside from years of non-purification...
One seminarian I knew used to genuflect before reception [his home parish was run by an old traditionalist lithuanian priest] - it was a significant contributory factor to his expulsion from seminary [quote: we don't want any of this pre-council rubbish here !!!]
we had liturgy lecturers who would be incensed beyond all imagining at suggestions that an altar was anything other than a wooden table - they ridiculed notions of reliquaries , ordered us that once we were ordained we had to ensure the tabernacle was removed from the sanctuary as soon as possible in our designated parishes, that benediction and adoration of the blessed sacrament was an obscene anachronism and that we should replace this 'respect for Jesus' by worshipping the 'fully present' Christ when the priest announced the gospel.
We were told that saying the Hail Mary at the end of the bidding prayers was 'illegal' , an english invention 'banned by Rome!!!!' and [get this] that the time when the consecration was completed [in other words Jesus was not fully present in the host and chalice until this point] was at the great Amen after the doxology!!! The participation of the congregation performed the contributory actions of the consecration - not the priest ???
Mother Teresa was asked what the most terrible thing in the modern world was - she was ridiculed, dismissed and mocked by replying 'communion in the hand'...

Monday, 25 February 2008
Ramblings to help me think... plus The Grounding of Beauty - from 'St Thomas Aquinas' by G.K.Chesterton

I was questioning a specific phrase a friend had written in an essay for the Faith Magazine the other day - now ostensibly and peripherally it seemed a perfectly feasible, tenable and appropriate point to make ; and I am certain my friend used it in this light ; but if taken apart and scrutinised it worried me somewhat in that it seemed to be implying something very different - and then I realised this was the main place that Aquinas and Duns Scotus differed in perspectives - the existence of matter without form rather than nothing existing which wasn't either formed matter or spirit ; the haecceity [unique 'this'ness] within individuation rather than the shared communal contiguity of aspects of the created image of the Godhead , and the attribution of universal predicates to both God and man, rather than the analogy that Aquinas insists upon [God is always beyond our understanding- not merely according to degrees of our perception/ability/predication ]- and on each of these I always end up siding with Aquinas.

Why ? Because even though I see where Duns Scotus is coming from ; I find distinct problems when we come to all manner of things :

b] both sacramentals and the sacraments
c] miracles
d] the very nature of the creation of the cosmos and its relationship to/with the Holy Spirit
e] the nature of sin and its effects upon creation
....although I'm certain Duns Scotus never encroached upon it ; I worry that if taken to its natural ends this leads to a kind of 'Deism with subsequent pseudo-interventionism' subsuming all the other considerations - an over-distinction between God and creation - God less a Creator but more a sculptor in clay ; forever adding pieces/re-shaping - an artist who can not leave well alone - an intervening God rather than an immanent constancy irrespective of the 'apeironic' transcendency - I don't think I'm being very clear.
I'm not suggesting our response should be a reversion to a stoical metaphysics , or a Spinozan panentheism warped into a chardinian/meister eckhardtian [as described somewhat tenuously by Matthew Fox] - type 'creation is an inseparable part of God' - But what I am saying is that I worry when we move away from the principle that it is the Holy Spirit in whom we live move and have our being and rather have the Holy Spirit as an animating force - like electricity in an already prepared automaton.... I used the example of Jesus walking on water - how did it occur ? did Our Lord make Himself and St Peter light or the water strong enough to support their weight [which I think is the scotist view] or was none of this necessary whatsoever as the nature of everything involved is reliant upon the Holy Spirit [the Thomist] ?
Is something added to holy water to make it holy [Scotist - implying predication] or is this unnecessary as it is reliant upon its very being as well as nature by the power of the Holy Spirit?


Whereas the Thomist is more like a great novel by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky or Flaubert , or a Play by Chekhov ; or a game of Go [Wei chi] which could be halted at any instant during its course and still have enough intrinsic worth and value to be an entire 'thing in itself' without the necessity of a final act , a denouement or a stalemate/checkmate....


An 'environer' [what a horrible word??] rather than an actuating sustainer...almost like He was a butler or genie providing our every necessity rather than giving us everything we are and ever will be - it's a very subtle difference regarding the nature of grace.


before I'd ever read His Holiness or von Balthasar I had always presumed that the immaculate conception was a very Thomistic-type of concept in that it is an 'Anticipatory' extra-temporal effect of our redemption on calvary - akin to the consecration at the last supper. Whereas it's the Scotist approach which sees that which St Thomas could not...horses for courses I suppose?
It's weird...I should shut up...before the veritable Fathers on these blogs beat me about the head regarding my obtuse ignorance on anything pertaining to the man....I doubt if the clerical lecturer-bloggers ever speak to me again - maybe it would have been better to have kept my mouth shut and made others presume i was a fool rather than opening it and thus confirming it ? throughout all this thinking I had one thing at the fore of my mind ; it's in Augustine:

But I am scattered in times whose order I do not understand...until that day when, purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow together to merge into you. then I shall find stability and solidity in you, in your truth which imparts form to me... [St Augustine's 'Confessions']
I have hunted high and low for a way to express what I'm thinking at the moment; and by happenstance came across this - perhaps it will help...



The mind conquers a new province like an emperor; but only because the mind has answered the bell like a servant. The mind has opened the doors and windows, because it is the natural activity of what is inside the house to find out what is outside the house. If the mind is sufficient to itself, it is insufficient for itself. For this feeding upon fact is itself; as an organ it has an object which is objective; this eating of the strange strong meat of reality.

