If for any reason you cannot find the paperback version of Playing the Indian Card at your favourite bookstore or online retailer, please ask them to carry it. Protest and picket the store entrance if necessary.
A Catholic friend, whom I could characterize as a Bergoglian, that is, a follower of Pope Francis, asserts that the original sin was impatience and a failure to appreciate the full depth of God’s love. Had Eve only waited, God would have given her and Adam the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. She simply jumped the gun.
I asked at the time if he could give any scriptural support for this claim that God would have given them the fruit later. He demurred.
It makes no sense to me. If God intended all along to give them this fruit, what was the point of first withholding it? Was he training them for obedience, as you would a dog? Does God love us like a pet? Isn’t that rather insulting? It is certainly manipulative.
And what about the pronouncement by Bergoglio himself that God does not, and would never, lead us into temptation, would never tempt us? Surely prohibiting this one tree, for no particular reason but to teach obedience, would be exactly that?
Not an entirely good and loving God, then. Eve would have reason to be suspicious.
Why then did God reserve the fruit of the tree? It cannot have been so arbitrary. It must not have been only to tempt. It must somehow have been necessary.
And it was. God cannot give us free choice, cannot give us free will, without allowing wrong choices to exist. If we cannot make a wrong choice, we cannot make choices. We would indeed be no more than pets or AI bots. Not full persons.
Therefore, in the Garden, there had to be one wrong choice available. It was inevitable, and it is inevitable in the case of each of us, that we will sooner or later make a wrong choice. Eve in this was each of us. Given the ability to think of ourselves as gods in our freedom, it was inevitable, and it is inevitable to each of us, that we sooner or later turn away from God and elevate our ego instead.
It was all inevitable and in the plan.
“O Happy Fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer!”
It is oddly reassuring that the Epstein files, or millions of them, have now come out.
Appalling as some of the revelations are and will be, it is reassuring to know their real scope, and not what imagination might suggest. Nothing can top imagination and rumour. And it is especially reassuring to see that the rich and powerful were not powerful enough in the end to suppress them forever.
Seek the LORD, all you humble of the earth, who have observed his law; seek justice, seek humility; perhaps you may be sheltered on the day of the LORD's anger. But I will leave as a remnant in your midst a people humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the LORD: the remnant of Israel. They shall do no wrong and speak no lies; nor shall there be found in their mouths a deceitful tongue; they shall pasture and couch their flocks with none to disturb them.
Zephanaiah 2:3; 3:12-13
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven."
The Gospel reading for this Sunday mass is the absolute heart of the Christian message: the Beatitudes. Paired with a similar first reading from the Old Testament.
First question: what does “blessed” mean? Obviously not “happy” or “joyful”; for “blessed are they who mourn.” Jesus says what blessed means in the first beatitude: “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” And this is repeated after the last beatitude: “for your reward will be great in heaven.” They will find reward in eternity. These are the ones who will get to heaven, and be exalted in heaven.
When it comes to “Blessed are the meek,” Jesus seems to promise them instead the Earth: “for they will inherit the land [the earth].” But note the word “inherit.” That means not the present earth, but a future earth, when someone dies. This refers to the new earth at the end of time.
“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered”
“Blessed are the poor in spirit”—Luke has simply “poor.” “Poor in spirit” seems to me a more plausible theological formulation than simply “poor.” I can imagine that Luke’s eyewitness source misunderstood or misremembered; it would be easy to do. After all, simply being poor is a gross materialistic measure. Some poor deserve to be poor—the welfare queens, those who are poor because they are lazy.
“For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.’”
Conversely, some who are wealthy did not seek wealth, but attained it as a byproduct of producing some benefit to mankind. And use it not for their own physical comfort, but to accomplish more.
By “poor in spirit,” I take something like “not motivated by money.” Such people will, usually, also be materially poor.
This is, not incidentally, an argument against the modern attitude that priority should be placed on political acts supposed to eliminate poverty. And this is common event in modern churches. This too puts too much emphasis on money. If it gets you into heaven, poverty is not a bad thing; the Franciscans seek it. It is charity that is the good thing: not because it ends poverty, but because it ennobles the soul of the giver. It is something due one’s brother.
The poor you will have always with you.
“Blessed are they who mourn.” I love to point this one out. So much for “happy happy joy joy” Christianity. If you are happy in and with this world, your mind is not in the right place. You should be yearning for heaven. Here we are living in exile, in the valley of soul-making.
It is true that elsewhere Paul says “Rejoice in the Lord always.” But that is not “rejoice always”; that is, “keep your mind always with the Lord, to keep your spirits up.”
This has important implications for the modern psychiatric concept of “depression.” Insofar as it is used to describe a state of chronic sorrow, this is to pathologize sanity. Any sensitive and intelligent person should be sad.
"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."--Dostoevsky
“Blessed are the meek.” This is the most difficult beatitude, I think. “Meek” is not a great translation from the original Greek, which means something more like “restrained” or “reserved.” It does not carry the implication of timidity that “meek” does in English.
I’d take it as “those who do not seek power or attention.” This meshes well with the promised reward: they will inherit the Earth. And it parallels “blessed are the poor in spirit.” Blessed are those not motivated by money, and blessed are those not motivated by power.
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” This puts paid to the modern idea that universal forgiveness is the core Christian message. To hunger and thirst for righteousness is the opposite of forgiving and forgetting, or of wanting to be forgiven.
Moreover, this promises that God too is not forgiving. For they shall be satisfied.
One should not be motivated by money or power. One should be motivated by righteousness, by a sense of justice.
This is neatly followed by “blessed are the merciful.” Making the distinction between mercy and mere forgiveness. Mercy is not unqualified forgiveness of a fault. Merriam-Webster: “mercy: leniency, or restraint (as in imposing punishment) shown especially to an offender or to one subject to the power of another.”
It comes into play when one is in a position to exact punishment. One does not forgive, but exacts a milder punishment than one could enforce.
Unqualified forgiveness or unconditional love is not merciful. It is not kind. It kills the soul of the other.
“Blessed are the clean [or pure] of heart.” This echoes Jesus’s command to love God “with your whole heart.” Being pure, unadulterated, all of one substance, means being of one mind, unclouded by doubts or qualifications or exceptions. This is directly counter to the modern condemnation of “religious extremism” and promotion of relativism and ambiguity over conviction.
God will spit out the lukewarm. Ambiguity is a vice, not a virtue.
“Blessed are the peacemakers.” As noted in a recent post, this does not mean pacifism. Pacifism, a refusal to fight, leads to and endorses war and strife. Think for a moment of your own inevitable experience in the grade 3 schoolyard. If a kid refuses to stand up for himself, does this discourage the bully? Does refusing to step in for the victim discourage the bully?
It does not mean diplomacy either. Diplomacy sometimes averts war; sometimes it causes it. In either case, it involves a certain level of dishonesty, of compromise of principle. This cannot tally with our first reading, from Zephaniah:
“They shall do no wrong and speak no lies; nor shall there be found in their mouths a deceitful tongue”
It means keeping the peace. Who keeps the peace? The umpire, the referee, the judge, the police. Peacekeeping means setting and honouring clear rules, clear boundaries. Not crossing borders. “Good fences make good neighbours.”
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.” This goes against the common tendency to measure morality by “community standards”; to see conformity as morality. If you are righteous, you will be persecuted for it. If you get along with everybody, you are not a good person. And this is necessarily true. If being good brought you good in this world, everyone would be good simply out of self-interest. It is only when doing what is right goes against your self-interest that it is a righteous deed and a moral act.
This truth is echoed in Jesus’s admonition to keep to the narrow gate: “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”
So you cannot get to heaven by going along to get along.
“Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.”
It follows that the good people of the earth will not be those widely celebrated as good. People famous for being good ought to be held in the greatest suspicion. To the contrary, being genuinely good will attract horrible false accusations from bad people. If someone is commonly portrayed as awful, or mad, without clear evidence, this is the best evidence that they are genuinely good and honourable people.
I will refrain from giving examples, because they will necessarily be controversial and demand justification. Ponder this for yourself.
Catherine O’Hara has died. This is sad for her many fans. But I am offended by the media inevitably referring to this as her “tragic death.”
We all die. Death ends every life. If every death is tragic, every life ends in tragedy. Do we really believe that? Is our vision so narrow?
O’Hara lived to the age of 71: that is a full life, the Biblically alotted threescore and ten. Although we may have become accustomed to people living longer, it is enough. In historical or international terms, it is already an accomplishment to have lived that long.
O’Hara bore and raised two children. That’s a good return on investment: given one life, she produced two more. That is already a great legacy.
She died, according to her agent, “after a brief illness.” It sounds as though she did not go through prolonged suffering. Given that we all need to go, that’s the best way to go. A good death.
And although she did do well, and became famous, Catherine O’Hara spent her life not just trying to make money and acquire things, but in the arts, using the gifts God gave her to the fullest to bring light into other lives. She let her light shine, as we are told to do by our Lord. She stayed salty; she did not lose her savor to the last. She died in harness, still acting, singing, and performing.
Given her talents, we can assume life was not easy for her. It is not easy for most of us; it is the vale of soul-making. Beauty in the arts comes only through pain. Why would she want to linger, if something infinitely better was waiting for her?
It is perverse, profane, and disrespectful to her memory to call this a tragedy.
I recently attended another “Life in the Spirit” session put on by my local Catholic diocese. It was all about forgiveness: the need to forgive yourself and others.
I fear this is to put the cart before the horse. You can’t have one without the other, and the import of the session and the course seems to be that you can.
Notice the progression in the New Testament: first John the Baptist, then Jesus. First repentance, then salvation. One must make the ways straight for the Lord.
“In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
In the session I attended, forgiveness was claimed to heal illness—not just your “mental health,” either. One story was of a woman who, once she forgave her neighbour, was cured of a goiter within a week. And it was of course claimed to improve your relationships.
This is selling it for other than religious reasons. This is selling it as psychology, as worldly wisdom. A Christian as Christian is supposed to do things because they are right, and out of love of God, not because they are good for our health or our finances. Why this approach?
I think they are doing this because the idea of forgiveness without repentance cannot be justified philosophically or theologically. It violates our sense of natural justice, which is to say of the Good. And God is perfect Good, Truth, and Beauty. So you cannot sell it as righteous, as the morally right thing.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” – says Jesus in the Beatitudes. This hunger is incompatible with unconditional forgiveness.
The speaker of course had his Biblical references. But they were partial, and misleadingi.
Their killer claim was that Jesus forgave his own killers from the cross—as they were killing him. How’s that for unconditional forgiveness?
But they are ignoring the second half of that sentence: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” This condition implies that their actions are objectively unforgivable. They are excused by ignorance. This is the principle used to test for a mortal sin.
"Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent." - CCC
To be guilty of the sin, you must be aware of the significance of what you are doing. In the case of the crucifixion, the soldiers were just doing their job, and presumably did not know he was an innocent man, much less that he was God incarnate.
The second Biblical warrant cited for forgiveness without repentance was the parable of the unmerciful servant, Matthew 18:21-35. Forgiven a debt by his master, he will not forgive a debt owed to him.
But they omit his repentance:
“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’”
Imagine the debtor had denied the debt. Doesn’t that make a difference?
Forgiveness, as such, is not the Christian message. Jesus is not forgiving of the Pharisees, scribes, or Sadducees.
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”
He is not forgiving of the moneychangers at the temple. John the Baptist is not forgiving of Herod Antipas; and Jesus fully endorses John the Baptist.
To understand the injustice of this doctrine of forgiveness without repentance, imagine your government is exterminating Jews. Are you obliged to quietly forgive? How about if you are Jewish? That is a way to stay healthy and safe, but it is not the moral way.
Imagine your community is practicing slavery. Forgive and do nothing?
Imagine Kitty Genovese is being raped and murdered in your stairwell. Forgive and do nothing?
No—beyond a right and duty of self-defense, you have a right to fight evil when you see it around you. “None so guilty as the innocent bystander.” Consider the saintly models of St. Michael, St. George, or St. Joan of Arc.
When nothing can be done, when the evil is beyond our power to end, the proper attitude is not forgiveness, but resignation. To turn the other cheek. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” We try to shame the perpetrator, let go and let God, and try to get on with our lives.
When the guilty party admits their guilt and tries to make good, then we must forgive.
“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
Witness the sacrament of Reconciliation: to be forgiven by God himself, we must be sincerely sorry, resolve not to commit the same sin again, and must accept some penance. This is God’s way, and he models it to be our way.
And what is not repaid by penance in this life, must be made up in Purgatory.
It is not a mercy to forgive someone their sin who has not sincerely repented. For to do so is to encourage him in his sin, and lead him on the path to Hell. We owe him the duty of fraternal correction.
Vice is an addiction, like alcohol. The more often you do it, the easier it gets to override your conscience. And affirmation by others does not help.
My own uncle was an alcoholic. His father, my grandfather, was exceptionally mild-mannered, and just put up with it. And, owning a company, he kept his errant son on the payroll so he would not be destitute. He was a model of forgiveness.
Then my grandfather died. My father inherited the company. He fired his older brother.
My uncle told me he is eternally grateful to my father for this.
There he was, alone in his apartment, with the rent due in two weeks, and no way to pay it. In his desperation, he reached for a book his mother had given him, on St. Luke the Evangelist. He began to read. Through the strength of God, he sobered up, and has remained sober since.
It was cruel to have kept forgiving him for such a long time.
The real motivation for this false gospel is always brought up last. Because, after all, it is shameful. It is the supposed need to forgive “even yourself.”
This is paydirt. Jesus has already paid for all my sins. He loves me unconditionally. Why would I need to change? If anyone points out my sins—they are the bad ones. I can just keep punching my brother in the face, keep swindling him, and that’s all right. If he complains—shame on him. He is failing in his duty to forgive.
We are living through an interesting time. Things are happening almost too quickly to follow. And it’s a three-ring circus.
Something is clearly happening in China. Reports of large military movements; the usual internet censorship seems to have sprouted holes; emergency measures are clearly in place.
It seems likely that we are in the middle of a conflict splitting the CCP, which may become a civil war or the collapse of the regime. China is historically difficult to hold together, and always capable of collapsing into chaos.
In Iran, we are waiting for another shoe to fall. Latest reports I hear are of a mob storming the ayatollah’s residence. Trump said he had the back of the protesters. He said he would strike if the regime resorted to violence. Reports now are of 30,000 dead. It seems to me Trump must strike Iran now, and must strike decisively. His credibility is on the line.
Consider now the domino effect typical of revolutionary periods. Reports are there was a shortage of noodles in Chinese markets the day after Maduro was captured in Venezuela. One dines on noodles in celebration in China, like champagne or a birthday cake.
Now imagine the effect on the other if either the Iranian or the Chinese regime falls.
And there are other obvious dominos. Putin is in a terrible fix in Ukraine, losing more men than were lost by Russia in Afghanistan, a conflict that arguably caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. It seems improbable that he can stay in power much longer. And he has been dependant on Chinese and Iranian support. He has already lost Assad and Syria.
Cuba was in dire straits economically before Trump’s coup in Venezuela, and heavily dependent on Venezuelan oil and cash. Now that is gone. Without Venezuelan, Russian, or Chinese support, they are there for the taking.
I can imagine the regimes in Iran, China, Russia, and Cuba all falling over the next year or so. Hard to see North Korea and Belarus holding on. It would be a different world; like the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Trump would look brilliant, the great hero. Parties in the democratic world who espouse Trumpish policies would accordingly get another big boost. Farage in the UK, LePen in France, Poilievre in Canada, Wilders in the Netherlands, AfD in Germany, and so on. Each would probably win the next election decisively, and introduce new policies accordingly. In the Middle East, radical Islam would be dead, and there would be a strong impulse to sign on to the Abraham accords.
Meantime, Elon Musk is predicting a great burst of increased productivity due to AI, leading to an unprecedented increase in general wealth; and he is speaking of the near term.
We could be seeing the birth pangs of a golden age.
A friend is a fan of the late Pope Francis and his synodal way. He supports the suppression of the Latin mass. This has never made any sense to me. Why is it a problem, when it was the traditional form of the liturgy for hundreds of years, and dozens of other non-standard liturgies are well-established.
It is, my friend says, because it causes schism in the Church.
This makes no sense to me. If one group is continuing to do as they always did—traditionalists, by definition—and another group is starting to do something different, surely it is the innovators who are promoting schism?
And how can a difference in liturgy matter? If there is some theological or doctrinal conflict, surely the proper approach is to address that doctrine, not the liturgy.
The problem, he elucidates, is that traditionalism opposes the charismatic movement within the Church.
For those who do not know, the “charismatic movement” is a movement to Pentecostal forms of worship within the Catholic church. Lots of singing and laying on of hands, perhaps speaking in tongues. The idea is to evoke the presence of the Holy Spirit. A more free-form style of worship.
This supposed conflict comes as news to me. I have always considered myself both a traditionalist and a charismatic. I love charismatic forms of worship. But again, surelty different liturgical forms can coexist within the Catholic Church, as they always have. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict both endorsed charismatic prayer, and they are traditionalist heroes. Traditionalism opposes modernism, surely, falling away or turning away from traditional doctrine, not pentecostalism.
But wait... The charismatic movement emphasizes the ongoing action of the Holy Spirit. Francis’s synodality movement is about groups supposedly listening to the Holy Spirit—and then discussing doctrine.
So this looks like a jump from pentecostalism as a style of worship to something else, something deeper.
Of course, to a traditionalist, this too should be no problem. It is the Holy Spirit who has spoken through the prophets, through the Bible, and through the apostles, to bring us to where we are today. Obviously, the Holy Spirit is not going to suddenly contradict itself.
The problem is, however, unlike the Bible or the established magisterium, anyone can claim, falsely, to be guided by the Holy Spirit to propose anything he might want. This has been, historically, the case. The Holy Spirit has told some they had the right to take multiple wives, or to overthrow the government of China, or to kill themselves by drinking poisoned Kool-ade. And the Bible warns us of this danger—that there will be false prophets. This is why private revelation has never been allowed to supersede the magisterium. If something proposed goes against the established teaching, that proves it is the demonic voices speaking, not the Holy Spirit. This is how you “test the spirits.”
So far so good—but if this is your position, what is the possible point of holding these synods? As nothing can change, they are a waste of time.
Cardinal Zen made this point at the recent consistory of bishops in Rome: “the continual reference to the Holy Spirit is ridiculous and almost blasphemous. They expect surprises from the Holy Spirit; what surprises? That He should repudiate what He inspired in the Church’s two-thousand-year Tradition?”
In other words, it seems “the synodal way” is an attempt, through the alibi of the charismatic renewal, to smuggle in changes in church doctrine. And when “charismatic renewal” is understood in this sense, it is indeed opposed to traditionalism, and traditionalism must be opposed to it.
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