Know-nothing, sideline-observer, passerby president ...

... supposedly. But this is unbelievable in a president for whom everything is political, every conceivable event is a political move in a zero-sum high-stakes political game.

What happened to the non-political dimensions of life? Surely life is more than politics -- work, study, art and leisure, Mass, play, movies, reading, afternoon tea, an evening with friends at the pub ...

What happened to truth, for crying out loud, the first casualty of an administration that reduces everything, including tax collecting, to politics and media spin?

Has any other administration so egregiously placed politics ahead of truth, ahead of justice, ahead of national security, ahead of the personal security and lives of its own embassy officials, ahead of non-partisan treatment by the IRS?

Even foul-mouthed agitprop comedian Jon Stewart apparently sees a problem with the administration now:

Scandals, scandals everywhere! And what's a Dem to think?!

• IRS HID PROBE UNTIL AFTER ELECTION...
• Agency stalled conservative groups, but gave speedy approval to Obama foundation...
• Used 'planted' question to reveal scandal...
• 'Absolutely Not Illegal'...
• 'IS THIS STILL AMERICA?'
• Congressman Receives Standing Ovation After He Rips IRS Commissioner...
• IRS ASKED GROUP ABOUT 'CONTENT OF THEIR PRAYERS'
• THEY KNEW...
• ...LAST JUNE
• IN CHARGE DURING 'TEA PARTY' TARGETING, NOW RUNS IRS OBAMACARE OFFICE...
• IRS henchwoman got $103,390 in bonuses...
• Top Dem Warns: Much More to Come...
• OUSTED CHIEF: 'Don't Remember' ...
• House Chairman Accuses WH of 'Cover-Up'...
• Political intimidation...
• Conservative Hispanic Groups Targeted...
• NOONAN: This Is No Ordinary Scandal...
• News Anchor Who Complained of IRS Harassment 'Off the Air'...
• How You Can Tell If the IRS Is Eyeing You...
• SHOWDOWN: Rep. Issa subpoenas Benghazi auditor Thomas Pickering...

[Hat tip to M.D.]

Catholic samurai rebels of 17th-century Japan

In the latest Latin Mass magazine, an article by the ever-informative Prof. Anne Barbeau Gardiner called to my attention that in 1962 Nagisa Ôshima directed a film called, in English, "Shiro Amakusa, the Christian Rebel," about the leader of the Shimabara uprising of 37,000 Christians in Japan (1637-38) against the Tokugawa Shogunate. The shogun eventually had to send a force of over 125,000 troops to suppress the rebellion, after learning that it wasn't a rag-tag army of peasants but a well-trained and armed rebellion led by Amakusa. At the heroic showdown at Hara Castle (in the southwestern Kyushu province of Hinzen), which was occupied by the rebels, the uprising was finally crushed, but only after a siege of several months in which the rebels were starved, yet inflicted huge losses (8,000-13,000) on the shogun's army. The result was a policy of "absolute seclusion" of Japan for over two centuries, and Christians were put to death by the thousands or were forced to apostatize.

I couldn't find a copy of the movie anywhere. But in my research online, I found that a short film on a similar topic was made in 2007 that I hadn't noticed, starring Shin Koyamada, who played alongside Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, but even more remarkably disclosed his own Catholic roots among the "kakure kirishitan" (Christians in hiding) who had suffered persecution in the Shimabara rebellion. In this movie, Koyamada plays Masuda Jinbei (the FATHER of Shiro Amakusa, and a samurai who dared to challenge the ideology of the warrior class, follow his personal beliefs, and face what was considered back then to be social suicide). In the linked article interviewing Koyamada below, he talks about the personal meaning the role had for him in this movie, entitled "Good Soil" (2007). Here's a trailer:


Dr. Craig Reid, "GOOD SOIL: LAST SAMURAI to First Christian Samurai" (Kungfu Magazine):

GOOD SOIL is a groundbreaking film about the first samurai warrior who refused to give up his allegiance to Christianity and blindly accept the Shogun as his master. To the film's star, Shin Koyamada, who plays Masuda Jinbei (a samurai who dared to challenge the ideology of the warrior class, follow his personal beliefs, and face what was considered back then to be social suicide), the role had personal significance.

"I was interested in this film because it's a samurai film that portrays true historical events of Japan, stuff we don't have many opportunities to learn school," Koyamada told kungfumagazine.com, "and even though there is this history of Christianity, we don't talk about it in school, just like we don't talk about in Japan what we did to China (during World War II). They try not to reveal that past but want to focus on the future. But learning one's own roots and identity are important, so when I read the script, I was not familiar with the story, but Jinbei hit me close to home."

Koyamada became interested in learning about his samurai heritage one year after coming to America, and the impulse to search for his past became stronger after starring with Tom Cruise in THE LAST SAMURAI.

"After that film, I spoke to my grandfather to find out more about my ancestors," he says, "and he told me about Kakure Kirishitan, which means 'hidden religion,' something that existed hundreds of years ago back in Kagoshima, Japan, throughout Kyushu. Apparently, my ancestors believed in a sort of 'hidden religion,' and when I asked what it was, he (Koyamada's grandfather) didn't know and wasn't interested. My parents told me not to tell anybody about my family heritage because it is considered shameful.

"People were persecuted by the government in the 1600s if you were part of Kakure Kirishitan, this was a bad thing. My ancestors were part of that, and it didn't click in me until I started doing GOOD SOIL and was talking to Craig (the film's director Craig Shimahara) and he was telling me the history of Jinbei and his son Amakusa Shiro.

"I'm the first in my family interested in this, so after I researched Jinbei, Amakusa, and the history of Christianity in Japan, something bothered me and after I spoke with Craig about my past he said, 'Wow.' When I told my parents and they asked if I spoke to Craig before the film and I said I didn't, I knew something was up. These stories are similar and as it turns out Kakure Kirishitan, the hidden religion, was Christianity.

"What's interesting is my ancestors escaped or were sent to the countryside because they were Christian, like in this film where Jinbei stands up for his beliefs and was sent to the countryside where he passed on his legacy to his descendants. All my ancestors were possibly Christian samurai in Kagoshima. Two years ago I visited my ancestors' land, we own a mountain, the place they were sent and secretly passed down our history from generation to generation, and I'm the direct descendant who can now pass it on."

So how do Koyamada's parents feel now that that he openly speaks to the world of those things that are considered shameful family secrets?

"I convinced them that times change, people change, there's nothing to hide," he says. "One need not be ashamed or afraid to speak up. Four hundred years ago it was a problem to speak about being a Christian to the public, but now there is no need to hide. If we admit the past, we can move on. I broke the rule by finding this out, I also broke the rule by marrying a Columbian. I'm the family troublemaker but you can't make a mark without risks, can you. Working on this film became personal."

Read more »

The Distracting Prayer of the Faithful

By Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

N THE SPIRIT OF THE Reform of the Reform, one might well question the role of the Prayer of the Faithful (or General Intercessions) in the new Mass. A motley collection of petitions, usually poorly written and even more poorly read, disturbs the natural flow of the liturgy as it proceeds from the readings into the Profession of Faith, which is the natural response to God’s revelation of Himself, and into the Offertory. The homily already threatens to disturb the liturgical flow, because it represents more the temporal human axis of liturgy, but a good homily need not last for more than a few minutes, and if it is truly good, it has whetted the soul’s appetite for the Bread of Life through pondering the Word of God. With the solemn chanting of the Creed, the eternal divine axis of the liturgy decisively reasserts itself, as the soul exercises the gift of faith and prepares to bring gifts to the altar, where the Lord will transform them into the gift of Himself. Seen from “above,” looking at the structure and flow of the liturgical action, the intercessory prayers mark a most awkward caesura in the liturgical action.

It is different in the Good Friday liturgy because this liturgy is already radically different from the form that evolved for the other days of the year. The public intercessory prayers have all the more power and force for being specially and solemnly recited on Good Friday, the day on which we recall the historical event of the Lord’s sacrifice and death. One is almost knocked over by the power of the Good Friday liturgy; one only waters down its forcefulness by borrowing its features and distributing them widely, albeit superficially, throughout the year.

One can make a similar argument regarding the low Mass and the Requiem, which served as models for the Novus Ordo. As long as they were done in their own limited context, the low Mass and the Requiem perfectly served their purposes. As soon as certain features of the Requiem low Mass became the standard Mass, the balance was destroyed. If the reformers were so concerned about the hegemony of the merely recited Mass and the daily Mass for the Dead, they should have found intelligent ways to limit these practices rather than effectively allowing them to take over completely. Nowadays, almost every Mass is a low Mass, and the Mass for the Dead itself has been “lowered” to such an extent that it seldom seems to be what it actually is. Even the qualities that were precious in the low Mass and Requiem were destroyed, ironically by taking the “low” elements and lowering them as far as possible without vitiating the validity of the Mass as such.

Returning to the intercessory prayers: it is unnecessary to establish a separate part of the liturgy for them as long as one retains (as one should) the Roman Canon, with its beautiful intercessions for the Church, the Pope, the Bishop, priests, and the people, and, after consecration, for the faithful departed. There is a pause at the Memento, Domine, famularum famulorumque tuorum for remembering those for whom we have promised to pray and “all those dear” to us. Once more, the Placeat tibi is intercessory, and rightly so: it brings to a full close the majestic action of the sacrifice begun at the Suscipe, Domine and tracing an arc whose apogee is the elevation and whose perigee, if I may so speak, is the Domine, non sum dignus, when the glorified Lamb of God, of infinite holiness, is besought to heal our souls, that he may enter and make His dwelling there. The end joins to the beginning in a cycle that is not Nietzsche’s despairing eternal recurrence but the joyous certainty of faith: He who created the world at the beginning, He who re-created it by His incarnation, will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and will give to His faithful servants the reward of everlasting happiness.

A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College (B.A. in Liberal Arts) and The Catholic University of America (M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy), Dr. Peter Kwasniewski is currently Professor at Wyoming Catholic College. He is also a published and performed composer, especially of sacred music. The current article was first published as: Dr. Peter Kwasiewski, "The Distracting Prayer of the Faithful" (Corpus Christi Watershed, May 16, 2013).

Hymns, Propitiation, and Terror of God's Wrath

Perhaps some of you may be able to help in responding to the concerns of this reader, who writes:

"I have read in several places comments from Catholic commentators/theologicals vehemently opposing the Propitionary View of Atonement that shaped me decisively as a Protestant. The idea of the "Wrath of God" seems like a concept people are sort of embarrassed by, one they consider an anachronism. Interestingly I recall a comment in the prolix and disturbingly clinical Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (Herbert Vorgrimler) where Ratzinger sort of warily but obligatorily acknowledges the "mystery of the wrath of God." The Puritan in me was pleased to read that. As was the fan of so much moving Protestant hymnody.

"But speaking of the latter, is anyone other than Evangelicals, and even among them a select few, going to retain a memory of this concept [of propitiation], despite its obviously forthright place in Paul's teaching (NT Wright notwithstanding)? Check this out [Mary Louise Bringle, "Debating hymns" (Christian Century, May 1, 2013)]

"[And I would love to know what readers recommend as a good accessibly theological book on the Atonement {emphasis added}.Evangelicals have John Stott's The Cross of Christ. I think I mentioned a few years ago that I was pleasantly surprised that NOR ran a review of Catholic basher but pretty sharp apologist R.C. Sproul's book, The Cross, which was halfway complimentary. Is there a Catholic equivalent? Possibly Stephen Clark's Redeemer? Don't know, but would like to hear recommendations.]"

My own immediate thoughts are that WRATH is important, missing, and needed in contemporary RC teaching. One of my hobby horses has been "fear." We need more "FEAR of God" -- as in "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

There's little if any AWE in contemporary Catholic sensibilities, and I think that is in large part due to liturgical and catechetical changes since V-II. When do alter servers and priests prostrate themselves before the almighty during the Mass? Where is there FEAR of God, when he's a stand-in for Barney the Dinosaur? -- Or, as the reader put it, God becomes an all-loving, all-understanding, ever-rooting for everyone figure in the sky who is On Our Side. His sole business is our coddled happiness. What do you do with that?

[Hat tip to J.M.]

The Nun who kissed Elvis

Here is something possibly "lighter" -- a throwback to a an era when faith and culture were at least on courteous terms: Thom Geier, "Mother Dolores Hart: The Nun Who Kissed Elvis Presley" Entertainment Weekly ran this piece in 2011, and I thought it was (to use a now almost never heard expression) charming, in terms of content and tone. [Especially welcome too since EW is the most irony-driven of secular magazines. You almost feel automatically gay-cultured, jaded, or studio-insider simply scanning it!]

Dolores Hart appeared in 10 movies in the late 1950s and early '60s, starring opposite some of the biggest stars of the era: Anthony Quinn, Myrna Loy, and Montgomery Clift. She was one of Elvis Presley's first onscreen kisses. At age 20, she earned a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut in The Pleasure of His Company. She was an above-the-title star of 1960's spring-break romp Where the Boys Are, which led to an invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

And then in June of 1963, the striking starlet with the dark blond hair and piercing blue eyes left it all behind. She packed a single suitcase and attended one last autograph-signing session in New York City for Come Fly With Me, an MGM comedy about three husband-hunting air hostesses. ''I remember I had makeup on from some photography that they were doing,'' she recalls. Then a man working for the studio approached her. ''He wanted to know if he could take me somewhere when it was over, so I said, 'It's a long way. You could just take me to the bus.''' But he insisted, and so he drove her just over two hours north of the city and deposited her at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn., where she has lived the quiet life of a cloistered Benedictine nun ever since.

It's not every nun who enters the convent in the back of a chauffeured limo, admits Mother Dolores Hart, now 72. "Well, if that's in the script, then why not?" Read more >>

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Why "Imagine" is a Suitable National Anthem for ObamaNation

"This is a brilliant summary of why conservatives, or Christian conservatives, are uneasy with liberalism," writes our correspondent, J.M. "I think it is quite obvious that Obama is the political equivalent of Oprah (with race being a secondary factor), and here is why: Dr. Jeff Mirus, "Liberalism: Must we really make it all on our own?" (CatholicCulture.org, March 19, 2013):

When a serious Catholic talks about liberalism, he is not referring primarily to a political preference but to a philosophical outlook. For example, the Catholic is far more interested in whether the fundamental principles of liberalism conflict with a Christian worldview than in whether many liberals happen to favor extensive government programs to support the poor. In exactly the same way, the Church’s official condemnations of liberalism have not centered on specific social policies but on general attitudes toward religion and supernatural truth.

Consider, for example, the third proposition condemned in the Syllabus of Errors of Pope Pius IX, which is the very soul of liberalism: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations.”

The problem, as the Catholic sees it, is that liberalism tends to denigrate truth, and especially supernatural sources of truth, and to argue against the salutary influence of revealed truth in human affairs. Liberalism asserts the perfectibility of both the person and society through human agency alone, and presumes that the human mind is capable of judging and disposing of the claims of God in favor of its own rationalistic projects. This assertion denies all objective representations of divine authority, thereby reducing everything, including religion, to human opinion. What Pope Benedict XVI called the “dictatorship of relativism” inevitably follows.

Read more »

Drifting leftwards since Vatican II

Thomas Albert Howard, history professor at Gordon College, recently wrote a review of Massimo Faggioli's excellent Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning in the evangelical journal, Books and Culture. The review, entitled "A Very Young Council," isn't half bad. What is interesting, however, as one of our correspondents pointed out recently, is the exchange that followed between a reader of the review (Steinfels, from Fordham) and Howard. Our correspondent writes:

"What stuck me was the distressing fact that whenever liberal assertions are granted ground, the argument field is repositioned dramatically. Thus notice how Steinfels can claim Kung as a priest in good standing, and both he and Rahner as stalwart, if "strident," Catholic voices, and dismiss the SSPX, of whom such a description is actually far more accurate.

"This is the enduring problem with the post-Vatican II Church. The borderline heretical doctrines it allows to exists without any explicit condemnation become the de facto positions of a large group of the faithful. Suddenly voices like Garrigou-Lagrange become more marginalized than the equivocations of a Karl Rahner, and suddenly Ralph Martin's book on Hell is viewed warily by Ignatius Press while Fr. Barron can dismiss the idea of Hell in his popular Catholicism series without anyone even caring.

"Note also in Howard's reply the sublimal slam on the SSPX ... which he calls a "Secret Society." No such games are played with the more liberal players. Seems like something worthy of the Obama storm troopers, really!

"Steinfels and Fagglio both would do well to read David Well's takes on Vatican II written in the immediate aftermath of the council, Revolution in Rome. It had and is still have these consequences.

A Very Young Council

It was good to read Thomas Albert Howard's very positive review of Massimo Faggioli's Vatican II: The Battle for Meaning in the March/April issue ["A Very Young Council"]. Unfortunately the review contains an extraordinary claim that should not go unchallenged.

As Howard accurately reports, Faggioli divides interpretations of Vatican II into two main camps, Thomist and Augustinian, the former generally grouped around the journal Concilium and the latter around Communio.

But Howard then adds: "Beyond the Thomists and the Augustinians are those we might label the hyper-progressives and the hyper-traditionalists. The former would include Hans Küng ... and Karl Rahner .... By contrast, the hyper-traditionalists would include the so-called 'sedavacantists' [sic] (who claim the Holy See has not had a legitimate Pope since Pius XII) and the French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the members of the secretive Saint Pius X Society."

Let's be clear that the "we" in this passage is reviewer Howard and not author Faggioli. Faggioli uses no such labels as "hyper-progressives" and "hyper-traditionalists." He does not treat Küng and Rahner as "hyper" anything but explicitly names them in the ranks of the Concilium writers.

The idea of creating a parallel between these two major theologians, on the one hand, and the sedevacantists and Lefebvrists, on the other, is absurd. The sedevacantists are full-bore conspiracy theorists and the Lefebvrists and Saint Pius X Society are in formal schism. Father Küng has voiced many criticisms of the last two papacies that needed voicing, even if he sometimes serves himself poorly by an unnecessarily strident tone. He is, moreover, a Catholic priest in good standing and a prolific and respected scholar and popularizer. As for Rahner, rather than some "hyper-progressive" equivalent of the sedevacantists and Lefebvrists, he is widely recognized as one of the great theological and spiritual minds of the 20th century.

What was Howard up to in creating such a false equivalency, one without basis in the book he was praising? Is this another gambit in Catholic culture-wars polemics? I hope not.

Peter Steinfels University Professor Emeritus Fordham University New York City, N.Y.

Tal Howard replies:

I'll accept this as a fair criticism of my review. The "Secret Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is "hyper-traditionalist" in a manner that does not tidily present a parallel with the progressive and much-discussed theological views of Küng and Rahner. And the prefix is my own, not Faggioli's; it admittedly can be used to serve polemical purposes. Nonetheless, it was quite extraordinary for Küng to have hismissio canonica (right to teach recognized Catholic theology) taken from him in 1979. If he was not "hyper-progressive," perhaps we can both admit that he was (and has been) pushing the envelope. And we agree that Faggioli has written an engaging book.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Purge of lavender mafia in Church hierarchy begins?

Related: Matthew Despard, Priesthood In Crisis: One Priest's Experience(Kindle Edition, 2013, based on the current scandal in Scotland).

Long, hot summer

"Trust, but verify ..."

Worship as a tragic sense of life

"Fr. Friendly, you have a call ..." reads the subject line of our liturgical correspondent's email, sending the linked article below.

Carl R. Trueman, in "Tragic Worship" (First Things, June/July, 2013), writes:

The problem with much Christian worship in the contemporary world, Catholic and Protestant alike, is not that it is too entertaining but that it is not entertaining enough. Worship characterized by upbeat rock music, stand-up comedy, beautiful people taking center stage, and a certain amount of Hallmark Channel sentimentality neglects one classic form of entertainment, the one that tells us, to quote the Book of Common Prayer, that “in the midst of life we are in death.”

It neglects tragedy. Tragedy as a form of art and of entertainment highlighted death, and death is central to true Christian worship....

Christian worship should immerse people in the reality of the tragedy of the human fall and of all subsequent human life. It should provide us with a language that allows us to praise the God of resurrection while lamenting the suffering and agony that is our lot in a world alienated from its creator, and it should thereby sharpen our longing for the only answer to the one great challenge we must all face sooner or later. Only those who accept that they are going to die can begin to look with any hope to the resurrection.

I remember in my Protestant days discussing with some friends the purpose of the Sunday sermon. Was it education, exhortation, entertainment, inspiration? What was it? Whatever was said, I remember the sinking feeling I would get when anyone would suggest that sermons, like our Sunday worship generally, ought to be "more joyful." What that usually meant, among other things, was that people ought to be smiling. Which often reminded me of being scolded by our elementary school teachers during class pictures for looking too glum.

After my reception into the Church twenty years ago, I also remember more than one occasion on which either (a) a Protestant visiting a Catholic Mass would comment that the worship didn't seem sufficiently "joyful," because the people didn't look "happy" and weren't "smiling"; or (b) Catholic individuals would express similar views, suggesting that Mass was a "celebration," and should therefore be more "expressive," "happy," and "joyful." Again, that sinking feeling.


There is a place for smiling, laughter, and joy. I'm not sure the foot of the cross of our crucified Lord is that place. This is what we have forgotten in our new, contemporary liturgies. This is what the traditional liturgy, with its atmosphere of severe mercy, has never forgotten.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Extraordinary community news

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (May 12, 2013):

The Apostleship of Prayer

O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer Thee my prayers, works, and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of Thy Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, for the intentions of all our associates, and in particular for the intention recommended by our Holy Father, the Pope.

Perhaps you have seen the above Morning Offering of the Apostleship of Prayer or similar prayers in a traditional missal or prayer book, such as The Blessed Sacrament Prayer Book. Have you ever stopped to consider what The Apostleship of Prayer is, or how one becomes an Associate? Clearly this must have been a fairly major entity, due to the prevalence of such prayers in so many pre-Vatican II books.

Unbeknownst to many Catholics, The Apostleship of Prayer still exists, and in fact maintains an impressive web site, www.apostleshipofprayer.org. Membership is free, and those who sign up on-line will be mailed an information package. The organization is dedicated to praying for the Holy Father’s two monthly intentions. Some excerpts from their web site explain the Apostleship’s history and objectives:

The Apostleship of Prayer began in France in 1844. At that time Fr. Francis X. Gautrelet told a group of Jesuit seminarians who were eager to work on the missions: “Be apostles now, apostles of prayer! Offer everything you are doing each day in union with the Heart of our Lord for what He wishes, the spread of the Kingdom for the salvation of souls.”

In 1861 the first Messenger of the Sacred Heart was published. Besides promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, this periodical also tried to develop in its readers an awareness of the needs of the Universal Church. In time the Pope himself proposed a particular monthly intention and since 1929 a specific mission intention has also been proposed to the faithful for their prayerful attention.

At the center of the Apostleship of Prayer is the Morning or Daily Offering. In this simple prayer, we offer every moment of our day to God. We strive to take seriously the call we received in baptism to be “a royal priesthood” (see 1 Peter 2: 9). ...Pope John Paul II once said that the practice of praying the Morning Offering is “of fundamental importance in the life of each and every one of the faithful.” It is a daily reminder to make our entire day, our whole life “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12: 1).

In 2005 the Synod of Bishops urged in Proposition 43 “Eucharistic Spirituality and Sanctification of the World” through daily participation in Holy Mass. The Proposition goes on to mention the Apostleship of Prayer by name: “The daily offering (taught, for example, in the Apostleship of Prayer, practiced by millions of Catholics worldwide) can help each one to become a ‘Eucharistic figure,’ following the example of Mary, uniting one’s own life to that of Christ, who offers himself for humanity.”

The Pope’s monthly intentions are posted on the Apostleship’s web site. Those for May, 2013 are as follows:

General Intention: For Administrators of Justice: That administrators of justice may act always with integrity and right conscience.

Missionary Intention: For Seminaries: That seminaries, especially those of mission churches, may form pastors after the Heart of Christ, fully dedicated to proclaiming the Gospel.

Pentecost Octave Masses

Ann Arbor’s Old St. Patrick’s Church will be celebrating the Tridentine Mass every day throughout the Pentecost Octave. Holy Mass will be offered on Pentecost Sunday, May 19 at 12:30 PM; on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:30 AM; on Tuesday at 7:00 PM; on Thursday and Saturday at 8:30 AM, and finally on Trinity Sunday, May 26 at 12:30 PM. Thanks to pastor Fr. Gerald Gawronski and to Paul Schultz for organizing this splendid observation of a neglected Octave. Note that the Church marks each day of the Pentecost Octave as a First Class Feast, with Gloria and Credo. It’s worth mentioning that the weekend of May 25-26 is shaping up to be one of the busiest ever, Tridentine Mass-wise.

Upcoming Juventútem Masses

Juventútem Michigan has a number of special upcoming Masses. As part of their Pentecost Pilgrimage for Christian Culture (read more and sign up at www.juventutemmichigan.com), there will be special Masses in the Extraordinary Form on Sunday, May 19 at 12:30 PM at St. Mary Church in Lowell, MI, and at 5:00 PM on Monday, May 20 at St. Mary Church in Westphalia, MI.


On Friday, May 31 at 7:00 PM, Juventútem’s monthly last Friday Mass will be held at Grand Rapids, Michigan’s beautiful Basilica of St. Adalbert, pictured. Young adults age 18-35 are invited to a dinner after Mass. For more information, see the Facebook event page.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 05/13 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Robert Bellarmine, Bishop, Confessor, & Doctor)
• Tue. 05/14 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Boniface, Martyr)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat (Detroit) and Assumption (Windsor) bulletin inserts for May 12, 2013. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

WH off-record Benghazi briefing: "C'mon guys, let's get our story straight!"

The White House circled the wagons with an "off-the-record" briefing with reporters yesterday (Friday), which began around 12:45pm and pushed back the daily, on-the-record WH press briefing to 1:45pm, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO. WH press secretary Jay Carney did not respond to a request for confirmation of the meeting.

The off-the-record session was announced to reporters in the wake of an ABC News report showing that White House and State Dept. officials were involved in revising the now-discredited CIA talking points about the attack on Benghazi.

According to WH representative Josh Ernest, the meeting was conducted on "deep background." When asked by Politico to explain the meaning of "deep background," as defined by the White House, POLITICO reports that Ernest emailed: "Deep background means that the info presented by the briefers can be used in reporting but the briefers can't be quoted."

Our undercover Washington correspondent tells us that a clandestine source, operating under the name of "Deep Throat," told him that President Barack Milhous O'Nixon, referring to the 14 news organizations present (including television, print and online), called them a "trusted arm of the White House press office." Further, the President impressed upon them the importance of credibility: "C'mon guys, let's get our story straight!"

[Photo credit: The Ulsterman Report]

Alvin Plantinga: "Fundamentalist" = "sombitch"?

All of us are familiar with how the dreaded f-word is trotted out to stigmatize this or that group, whether Muslim or Christian. Well, now philosopher Alvin Plantinga offers a full philosophico-grammatico-semiological analysis of the term "fundamentalist":

On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like 'son of a bitch', more exactly 'sonovabitch', or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) 'sumbitch'. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of 'fundamentalist' (in the widely current use): it isn't simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like 'stupid sumbitch' (or maybe 'fascist sumbitch'?) than 'sumbitch' simpliciter. It isn't exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation is that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase 'considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.' The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like 'stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine'.

Source: Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief,2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2000).
[Hat tip to E. Echeverria]

New Revelations: State Department's Benghazi coverup

When ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl begins pointing out glaring contradictions in the administration's Benghazi narrative, you know Hilary must be feeling the heat. The bottom line is this: The Obama administration's politically expedient story cost American lives.

The Middle East was supposed to despise Bush, not Obama. Obama's smooth-as-corn-syrup Cairo speech of 2009 was supposed to have given us the new "Arab Spring," not a continuation of the Bush-era "War on Terror." Instead, we have watched as our government has helped deliver upwards of half-a-dozen Arab countries into the hands of radical jihadis ("rebels," "liberation fighters," he called them). And the jihadi attacks on Western targets have continued unabated. From Benghazi to Boston, our administration has been trying desperately to impose their narrative in the teeth of reality, like flat earthers waving away photographs of the earth taken from space and believing that by sticking to their talking points they can flatten the earth.


Jonathan Karl, "Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference" (ABC News, May 10, 2013).

Michael Medved Comments on, and Plays ABC's Jonathan Karl's Devastating Benghazi Report (detailed and targeted):


Paul Farhi, "Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, a persistent voice of media skepticism on Benghazi" (Washington Post, May 7, 2013).

"Peggy Noonan: The Inconvenient Truth About Benghazi" (Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2013) -- one of the clearest and most articulate statements from the conservative side.

Captives of the Liberal mindset completely miss the irony of the Liberal narrative on Islam. They think they can sweet-talk Muslims into their corner by their urbane post-modern, self-congratulatory enlightened vision of the geo-political history. This is what they think Obama achieved by all of his apologizing for Western imperialism his Cairo speech of 2009. They think that all that is wrong with the world can be laid at the feet of George W. Bush and everything they think he stands for -- a swashbuckling American cowboy bravado, yahoo-individualism, guns, Bibles, xenophobic Christianity, the oil industry, American exceptionalism, etc. They think that Muslims, or at least the more 'educated' and 'enlightened' ones, can be brought around to seeing this as their common enemy too.

The problem is that Liberalism has a blind spot. It's not these things that outrage Middle Eastern Muslims. Rather, they are outraged by all that American Liberalism itself stands for -- namely, "liberty" understood as the freedom from traditional values of moral restraint manifest in our rampant pornography, contraception, abortion, promiscuous embrace of recreational sex as an acceptable lifestyle, no-fault divorce, same-sex 'marriage', and all that spews forth from the fevered studios of Hollywood onto TV sets across the world. Nothing embodies this irony more than our own presidents' public endorsement of same-sex 'marriage.' This is anathema to Islam, as it should be. Yet our State Department was willing to lie about a terrorist attack on our embassy at Benghazi, Libya, at the cost of four American lives, including our ambassador, rather than compromise its Liberal fairy tale about everything coming up roses with Liberalism and its enlightened relations with the Muslims amidst the new "Arab Spring" aborning in the Muslim world.

Heads should roll.

[Hat tip to A. Sistrom]

Related: Brian Saint-Paul, "Radical Islam and the Left" (Crisis, February 7, 2007).