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Saturday, July 11, 2020

Points to Ponder:

'My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’ [GK Chesterton]
Briefly on "Traditionalist Critiques":

This is in response to the following statement which was seen on social media earlier in the year.
[T]here are...quasi- or semi- or crypto-trads, people who intellectually or emotionally agree with traditionalist critiques of the modern situation, but for one reason or another stick it out in the novus ordo paradigm
Virtually all traditionalist critiques are facile and ignore underlying causes in favour of focusing on symptoms. They also usually manifest a shocking degree of spiritual immaturity and ignorance of traditional Catholic spiritual principles in practice even if some may know of them in theory.

There are exactly two (and only two) strong arguments from the traditionalist camp and they rarely focus on either as much as they should. Those arguments involve aesthetics: the two chief weaknesses of the ordinary form contingent as a rule. The first is church architecture. The second is church music. If trads spent most of their time developing those areas and not wasting time on subjective nonsense, they would get further with most folks than they usually do. Well that and ceasing the spiritually immature bile{1} that tends if unchecked to propagate their enclaves over time of course.

Note:

{1} I agree with you that the concern that animates their positions is important. However, a lot of it is simply a lack of spiritual maturity on their side -something I made note of in many of my writings... [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa May 7, 2004) as cited in a Rerum Novarum Vault Posting (circa July 18, 2018)]

Friday, July 10, 2020

Points to Ponder:

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic. [Zig Ziglar]
On the Inexorable Path of the Intransigent Traditionalist:

My words will be in regular font. Without further ado...

This is pretty straightforward...he...Cardinal Burke...bishop Schneider...Cardinal Brandmueller and others need to sit down and write a serious plan on how to go forward and then submit it to Francis...and if he won’t listen, to his successor...

In other words they would appeal "from a pope ill informed to a pope better informed"?

absolutely. Its clear Benedict felt it was manipulated. Francis might not. He's clearly wrong if he doesn't think it was. A successor not formed during and right after would likely agree.

You do realize you have just sided with Fr. Martin Luther against Pope Leo X right? (I used the words of Luther's appeal against Leo nearly verbatim.)

You would do well to think long and hard about this and not just delete my follow up and pretend it did not happen. This is how schism is cultivated my friend. Seriously.

Monday, July 06, 2020

When doing a quick archival search for something I had previously stated, I discovered the posting it was in had a number of formatting glitches that somehow was overlooked in the compositional and revision stages prior to final publication.

I took a few minutes and did a quick scan and made about a dozen fixes to the text. Most of them were minor but annoying oversights but three were more significant including two bits of discoloured font that got missed in reformatting including half of a paragraph long footnote. I also discovered a uniformity glitch in my footnotes so I changed one word to fix it.

Anyway, all these changes have been published and here is the new hopefully fully deglitched version of a piece I believe is among the most (if not the most) important I have done in two decades plus of web writings.{1} Without further ado...

On the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, Obedience, and the Requirements of Faithful Catholics (circa February 26, 2020)

Note:

{1} The above piece of writing is one that is so significant that it pre-emptively beget three prefatory spinoff pieces composed of material edited out of the piece during revisions (but linked to it in various places later on) as well as a subsequent clarification and retraction piece. The latter can be read here:

On Clarifying and Retracting Some Prior Statements on the Magisterium (circa March 8, 2020)

The most significant of three former pieces can be read here:

On Magisterial Interpretation (circa January 4, 2020)

Sunday, July 05, 2020

Points to Ponder:

Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness. [James Wilson]