Have you ever gone shopping … for heresy? If you were invincibly ignorant before, prepare to receive a mega-dose of truth! Error doesn’t take a vacation: it’s ripe for the purchasing at the everyday low price of your soul.

Let’s look at some of the offenders:

Glade’s slogan: “Created by nature, captured by Glade.”

The Holy Catholic Church says (Canons of Vatican I):

If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God; or holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself; or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: anathema sit

Sorry, Glade. I’m sure you’ll be enjoying the refreshing scent of cinnamon apple for all eternity–in Hell.

Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Desire for true happiness frees man from his immoderate attachment to the goods of this world so that he can find his fulfillment in the vision and beatitude of God. “The promise [of seeing God] surpasses all beatitude. . . . In Scripture, to see is to possess. . . . Whoever sees God has obtained all the goods of which he can conceive.”

You lose, kitty.

Council of Trent:

If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; anathema sit.

Oh, don’t worry. You earned your eternal destiny.

“Looks so natural, no one can tell.”

(1 Samuel 16:7):

Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.

(Luke 12:7):

Even the hairs of your head have all been counted.

Utter foolishness and pomp.

This came in handy on the Catholic Answers Forums the other day regarding a question about whether water had to be poured over the head in baptism.

Tractatus Canonico-Moralis de Sacramentis by Felix Cappello (Vol. 1, Fourth edition, p. 105) says this:

1 Aqua immediate tangere debet corpus baptizandi. Id ex ipso conceptu et fine ablutionis liquet. Nomine capitis intelligitur frons, vertex, visus.

Invalidus est Baptismus, si, prole nondum in lucem edita, matris corpus abluatur; item, si aqua tangat solum vestes baptizandi; validus, contra, est Baptismus, si aqua effundatur super caput crusta ulcerosa opertum aut sordibus ante lotionem adhuc obductum, quia corpus vere tangitur.

Dubius est Baptismus collatus super secundinam, i.e., super membranam qua usque ad partum infantis corpus involvitur.

Baptismus collatus super crines validus est, quia crines revera ad corpus pertinent ideoque, dum ipsi abluuntur, caput vere proprieque abluitur. Contraria opinio quavis caret solida probabilitate; quare attendenda non est.

2 Aqua super caput effundi debet. Id affirmatur, ut certa omnino sit validitas Baptismi. Probabilissime est validus Baptismus, speculative loquendo, si in alia notabili corporis parte, ex. gr., in pectore, vel scapulis, puer ablatus fuerit. Tamen certum omnino est, Baptismum in casu habendum esse practice ut dubium, et consequenter sub conditione postea repetendum.

My translation:

1 The water should directly touch the body of the person to be baptized. This is proved from the concept and purpose of washing. By the name head is understood the forehead, the crown, it seems.

Baptism is invalid, if, while the child has not yet been drawn into the light [read "born"], the body of the mother is washed; likewise, if the water only touches the clothes of the person to be baptized; Baptism is valid, on the other hand, if the water is poured over the head covered over by scabs or drawn out [read "delivered"] still covered in filth before being washed, because the body is truly touched.

Baptism is doubtful if conferred over the amniotic sac, i.e., over the membrane in which the body of an infant is wrapped up even till birth.

Baptism conferred over the hair is valid, because the hair in fact pertains to the body therefore, when it is washed, the head is truly and properly washed. Whatever opinion there is to the contrary lacks solid probability; therefore it should not be regarded.

2 The water should be poured over the head. This is affirmed, so that there might be the altogether certain validity of Baptism. Baptism is very probably valid, speculatively speaking, if the child is washed on other notable body parts, e.g., on the chest or shoulders. Nevertheless it is altogether certain, that Baptism in that case should be regarded practically as doubtful, and consequently should afterward be repeated under condition.

Nick Winker wrote an hilarious (fictitious) interview with Archbishop Lefebvre in the context of the Church as a software project. It’s very well written. Actually it reminds me of when X.org was formed from XFree86, only kind of backwards.

The Culture of Death kills our desire and ability to respond to the vocation God has given us in life. Working to build a Culture of Life is intrinsically linked with a fruitfulness in the area of vocations. This should be obvious to us, but oftentimes does not seem so because we have grown accustomed to thinking of our lives within the framework provided by the Culture of Death.

Abortion–the most heinous example–is a personal matter for everyone. First, it is an offense against God. Second, it does unspeakable violence to people that we love. Third, it is an insult against our own dignity because it claims that our lives have only arbitrary or subjective value.

Committing offenses against God (e.g., those sins which tear down the Culture of Life, i.e., build the Culture of Death¹) always wounds Charity which makes it harder for us to do God’s will.

We also must turn a somewhat stark glance to the consequences upon the world of the Culture of Death. How many priests we would have now if we hadn’t killed tens of millions of children by abortion in the last few decades in the United States alone? How many mothers and fathers? How many great saints?²

The Culture of Death teaches us to think of our lives as fundamentally purposeless, in fact, as not fundamentally anything since it teaches us that we have no origin as persons who are intended to exist and no destiny for which we are intended.³ When we think of our lives as separated from the purpose for which we were made, any concept of a vocation–much less the ability to respond to it–becomes impossible.

If we think the consequences on the priesthood have been bad, let’s look at married life. The Culture of Death is a direct (undoubtedly demonic) attack on the family. The family, after all, is rightly called “the domestic Church” because it is there that the newest members of the Church first learn to know and to love God.

While abortion is a denial of the dignity of every human person–and this has a very personal and concrete effect on each one of us–it causes not only harm to each individual but to families. After all, my vocation is not for my sake, it’s for the sake of the Church: every person can say that. The worst offense is not that my dignity as a person is absolutely insulted by the Culture of Death: it’s that God’s honor and sovereignty are insulted, it’s that the Church is insulted, and it’s that unspeakable violence is done to the least of my brothers–the poorest of the poor.

If the root of our lack of zeal for doing God’s will is Pride, then we must also recognize that the Culture of Death is a culture of Pride. It’s a culture that says “my value comes from me, or from the fact that I can stand up for myself, or from my own accomplishments, or from the government, etc.” That’s Pride. The Culture of Life always recognizes in humility that life is a gift that is not deserved but which is loved greatly–that the great value of every human person comes from God alone and not from us.

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis sed Nomini Tuo da gloriam.

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1 I did not merely say “build the Culture of Death” because the Culture of Death is, more accurately, an anti-culture. Since evil is not a substance, any so-called “culture” which promotes evil (and therefore leads to death) is only a corruption of something more substantial. “God did not make death” as it says in Wisdom 1.

2 This is not to imply that those children who died by abortion are not saints but simply that their greatness has not been manifested in the world as it should have been.

3 Interestingly, this is an important reason that the Eucharist is the cure for the Culture of Death as well as for our lack of response to vocations: the Eucharist is the source and the summit of Christian life whereas the Culture of Death primarily teaches us that our lives have no source and no summit. I plan to develop this theme in a later post.

No, it’s not the latest Harry Potter book, it’s the age-old question posed by devout Catholics to priests and seminarians.

What if a person confesses that he’s poisoned the wine in the chalice before Mass?

Well, I was reading today a certain book by your friend and mine (ICEL translation: “our friend”^*), one Felix Cappello, whom I’ve quoted before and I came across this example. Now, I never did end up mentioning that I did get a copy of some of his books for a very reasonable price (ten dollars per volume). My gamble also paid off, they’re not in French (as the description indicated) but in Latin as I had thought that they would be. Anyway, Volume II, De Poenitentia, was mis-bound such that the tops of many pages were not separated. So, today I finally decided to go through and cut the pages apart in the sections I wanted to read.

From Tractatus Canonico-Moralis de Sacramentis by Felix M. Cappello:

Item quaeritur de sacerdote, qui ex confessione noverit insidias sibi parari, aut venenum esse in vino quo debet Missam celebrare, etc., utrum possit vitare insidias sibi paratas aut Missam omittere.

Lugo ita respondet: << Non est dubium, quando illa actio vel omissio (scil. fugere insidias sibi paratas, vel omittere Missam propter notitiam veneni) non ostenderet aliis notitiam peccati nec ullum damnum poenitenti affert, quod confessionem redderet odiosam ac gravem, tunc utique posse alio praetextu fugere vel Sacrum omittere >>

At quaestio gravior est, an liceat id ipsum si, deficiente alio praetextu, ex fuga vel omissione alii, qui sunt conscii criminis, coniicerent poenitentem esse confessum illud peccatum, ita ut indirecta sigilli revelatio haberetur.

Quidam concedunt, confessarium posse nihilominus fugere vel Missam omittere.

Alii negant, ob indirectam revelationem. Quae sententia, si revera adsit revelatio indirecta, certa omnino est.

My translation:

Likewise one might ask about the priest, who knows from confession that an attack is planned against him, or that there is poison in the wine with which he should celebrate the Mass, etc. whether he can avoid the attack planned against him or omit the Mass.

Lugo responds thus: “There is not a doubt, when that action or omission (namely to flee the attack planned against oneself, or to omit the Mass on account of knowledge of poison) would not show to others knowledge of the sin nor cause some other injury to the penitent, which would render confession hateful and burdensome, that he can certainly, therefore, on another pretext flee or to omit the Sacred.”

But the more serious question is whether it is permitted if, lacking another pretext, those who are conscious of the crime would infer from flight or from the omission of something that the penitent confessed that sin, such that this would be held to be an indirect revelation of the seal.

Some concede that the confessor can nevertheless flee or omit the Mass.

Others deny this, on account of the indirect revelation. This opinion, if in reality indirect revelation is present, is altogether certain.

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* The current ICEL translation of “sacrificium meum ac vestrum” (my sacrifice and yours) is “our sacrifice” which does not accurately represent the different modes of offering the sacrifice which the priest and the faithful have. See also, for example, Christ’s repeated references in the Gospel to “my Father and yours” indicating the difference in the type of sonship (e.g., John 20:17).

I don’t need to tell you about the Motu Proprio, but you may also be interested in this new document on the Church from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It contains responses to certain questions on the doctrine of the Church presented in Lumen Gentium, including an explanation of what ’subsists’ (SUBSISTS?!!*) means when it says that the Church Christ founded subsists in the Catholic Church.

* Note: Most people will not get this joke. It has to do with a slight rant I went on once about misinterpretations of Church documents, especially this infamous passage in Lumen Gentium. You could also substitute something Clinton-esque such as “it depends on what your definition of ’subsists’ is.” In fact, there’s a question on ’subsists’ versus ‘is’.

There is often talk these days of a “vocations crisis” in the Catholic Church in America. I believe this is an accurate diagnosis, but I would clarify that I believe we have a “vocations crisis” properly speaking, that is, we are not merely lacking priests (or even religious) in terms of numbers. No, the problem is much deeper and more serious than one of manpower.

What is the vocations crisis we are facing:

1. The vocations crisis is a “crisis of response to vocations,” that is, a vocation is a calling from God. Certainly, there is no lack on God’s part.

2. The vocations crisis necessarily affects every vocation. Vocations are complementary because they are given for the benefit of others, of the Church. Therefore, the crisis affects the married life (look at the state of family life in America), the single life (in various manifestations), the priesthood, and the religious life.

3. The vocations crisis is symptomatic of an “identity crisis” inasmuch as people either no longer believe that God created them for a purpose or they would rather invent their own purpose in life.

This identity crisis is fostered by our culture, and it strikes at the heart of every human person. Those who do not know that God created them out of love, to be happy in Heaven live a tragic existence, and it is the duty of Christians to evangelize the culture as well as those persons who suffer in this way. Those who believe God has a purpose in mind for them–a way of loving for which he especially designed them, a way that they will be of service in the Church as they ought to be, a way for them to be happy–but who would rather invent their own purpose are in a different situation. They do not lack Faith–as do those who do not believe God has a vocation for them–they lack Love, which is the more serious deficiency. In fact, it is deadly.

The lack of Faith and the lack of Love have the same cure: the sacraments. These physical meetings with Christ that give us grace are the only way that the disease of Pride will be eradicated from our hearts.

There is a fairly concrete way to overcome the vocations crisis that I can see:

1. The worthy celebration of the liturgy according to the norms of the Church (Without worshiping God rightly, we cannot serve him well in other ways).

2. A rejection of sin, especially sins that undermine the dignity of the human person such as abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and contraception (These sins, in a very powerful way, teach us to regard the persons whom we ought to love as objects. They destroy the family, which is rightly called “the domestic Church.” Without a family united by real love, it will be very hard for someone to give his life to God.)

Without these, our hearts cannot be free enough to give our lives to God.

God became man.

When we think of the Incarnation, believe it or not, some of us–at least me–have a tendency to minimize it. What I mean is that we treat it as an event that is too localized in both space and time. The Incarnation, of course, is by definition an historical event because we human beings exist in history.

The Incarnation, however, changed everything. When Christ became a man, nothing created could stay the same and especially nothing human. Man’s relationship with God can never be the same as it was before because the perfect relationship between God and man, between the uncreated and the created, between the purely spiritual and the spiritual-material exists in the Person of Christ himself. He is our relationship with God, the perfect Mediator since he is Son of God and Son of man.

Now, we literally see God face-to-face and live. God loves us with a human heart. God was born of a woman in time. God died on the cross to save us.

The material, the contingent, the human is exalted now in dignity. All creation was made for Christ (Colossians 1:16). In the Incarnation, the gift of creation is not removed from him but he is the center of all creation and all history. Even our system of keeping time is measured in relation to this singular event.

God became man to redeem the whole man–body and soul. Christ desires a bodily encounter with each of us. That’s why he established the Church. If Christ had become man and then left man after the Ascension with only the Bible or only an invisible, spiritual Church, then what a pity it would have been. If that had been true, then those who saw Christ while he was on earth would have been the only ones to have a full man-to-man encounter with Christ, the only ones to receive grace from him in a bodily way through his touch or his words.

But not so! Christ gave us the sacraments, matter and actions that bring about grace, the Eucharist–his real bodily Presence, and the Church as his visible presence in the world and the guardian of the sacraments. Matter has been so exalted that it is now a means of grace. The power of the Incarnation continues through the sacraments. Those who were born after the Ascension lack nothing from Christ because he has honored his promise: “I am with you until the end of the age.”

From the Incarnation ripple wonderful effects throughout material creation: the Eucharist chiefly, the other sacraments, the Church, the sacramentals (especially statues, icons, etc.). None of these things were possible before Christ became man, but his Incarnation changed everything for us.

Perhaps you are familiar with this scene from The Little Prince:

“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”

“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”

“I am a fox,” the fox said.

“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”

“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”

“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

“What does that mean–’tame’?”

“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”

“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–’tame’?”

“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–’tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”

“‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”

“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”

“Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

“On another planet?”

“Yes.”

“Are there hunters on that planet?”

“No.”

“Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”

“No.”

“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

“Please–tame me!” he said.

“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”

“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”

The next day the little prince came back.

“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”

“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.

“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:

“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

The point which the story makes about ‘rites’ is interesting to me, but up until recently I’ve fallen into the usual trap we human beings fall into of getting things entirely backwards. You see, I had–like many others and often unconsciously–been thinking of ‘rites’ and as a consequence of the whole spiritual life as an effort by men to put themselves in a relationship with God.

What foolishness of mine!

How could I have been thinking that I was pursuing God when in fact all along he has doggedly and eagerly pursued me? Perhaps the best metaphor for the relationship that God wants to have with us is marriage. Christ is the bridegroom and we are his bride. He loves us and pursues a permanent relationship with us. The relationship between God and man is, of course, summed up and exists perfectly in the Person of Christ himself: two natures, united as closely as possible in him, one Person, our Lord Jesus Christ.

I think it is also possible to express the spiritual life in terms of God’s taming of man. Look at Genesis. We begin before the Fall, in the Garden. Man was domesticated, that is, “at home” with God as God was at home in his soul before he sinned. Once man had sinned, what is the first thing he did? He hid from God: he became for the first time afraid of God with a disordered and servile fear (1 John 4:18). Man was no longer fit for the Garden but had to live “in the wilderness.”

Through the history of the human race and in the history of each individual life, God acts constantly to tame our wild hearts. We must learn slowly to love him and not to be afraid of him. The often repeated exhortation of the angels to man: “Do not be afraid” bears remembering for us. God wants us to love him which requires obedience–being tamed (2 John 1:6). But, again, Christ was perfectly obedient “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

How does God tame us? There are at least two important ways: rites and silence.

The key to avoiding pelagianism regarding rites is to recognize that the rites of the Church are given by God to us. God establishes the rites by which he tames our wild hearts. Just as if I wanted to tame a timid wild animal, I would establish a rite where, for example, I would put out food at the same time each day, God himself has told us what rites we are to follow in worshiping him. This is the liturgy of the Church because the core of the liturgy is revealed by Christ and the Church through the authority given to her by Christ has embellished her public worship in certain ways.

We also may contribute to the rites by which God tames us. The habits of prayer and devotion that are peculiar to us or to some of us can be our way of making ourselves available to God’s work of teaching us to love him. These private devotions are very necessary since they support the liturgy–the rites establised by God.

Besides rites, silence is very necessary. Our hearts are too timid and wild to stay close to God if we do not stay quiet for a long time with him. This process is very slow, but it teaches us not to be afraid of him and to love him. There will be many times where we will sense that he has gotten closer and will try to flee from his presence out of fear only to let him approach us again very carefully.

You seduced me, O Lord, and I let myself be seduced.

At Mass today, we began to sing a hymn selected for Communion. I had never heard it before, and I don’t remember its name or many of the lyrics, but I do remember being surprised by it. The lyrics mentioned something quasi-eucharistic and then began an invocation to “help us recognize your presence.” I, naturally, expected that it would talk about Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. The line continued, however, to talk about God’s presence in us and in others.

While I don’t remember enough of the song to critique it, it reminded me of a certain sentiment I’ve commonly heard about focusing less on the Eucharist and more on Christ’s presence “in us” or “in others” or “in the faces of the poor.” Am I anti-seeing-Christ’s-presence-in-his-people? No. In fact, the point is that without the Eucharist, the love and respect we owe to other people is less than what it should be.

In other words, the Eucharist really is the source of the Christian life because it is Christ himself. I can have a certain natural love for my fellow men. After the Incarnation, though, human nature has a dignity which deserves the supernatural love of Charity. Not just that, though, but I owe a very special kind of love to those who have been baptized and who have been fully incorporated into the Body of Christ by their reception of the Eucharist.

Because of the Eucharist, the Church has a special concern for the poor and for missionary work, etc. Why? We must love people more than ever because of the great love which Christ showed us in the Incarnation and which he continues to show for us through the re-presentation of his sacrifice in the Mass. Christ’s gift of himself to us in the Eucharist is so unique and so singular that it makes possible a communion with God and with our fellow men that cannot come about in any other way. That’s why recognizing Christ’s presence in the Eucharist has to be primary. The apostles have to spend time with the Lord before they can be sent out to preach the Gospel and heal the sick.