Eclectic Amateur

Well, that didn’t take very long.

The new Pope Francis has some very big shoes to fill.  For the sake of my Catholic brothers and sisters, and really, for the sake of all of who bear the name of Christ, I hope and will pray that the Holy Spirit’s strength and guidance will be strong with him.  In that spiritual and political hot-seat, he’s going to need it.

I am amused that the Conclave found a way to finesse the question “Should it be a Latin American? Or is it time for an Italian again?”

Also: First Dominican joke about the new Pope (via Mark Shea):

“Conclave locates Jesuit faithful to the Pope.”

It isn’t the Church’s job to teach a man what does and doesn’t make a woman desperate to have his baby.

— Zippy Catholic

Irish Scholars

When the Irish scholars
decided to lay the
foundations
of medieval Europe,
they established:
Centers of Thought
in all the cities of Europe
as far as Constantinople,
where people
could look for thought
so they could have light.
Houses of Hospitality
where Christian charity
was exemplified.
Agricultural Centers
where they combined
(a) Cult—
that is to say Liturgy
(b) with Culture—
that is to say Literature
(c) with Cultivation—
that is to say Agriculture.

— Peter Maurin, Catholic Radicalism: Phrased Essays for the Green Revolution

Sent by a triumphalist Catholic friend…

My comeback:

This is beautiful:

Be united but not closed off. Be humble, but not fearful. Be simple, but not naive. Be thoughtful, but not complicated. Enter into dialog with everyone, but remain yourselves.

— Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the youth of Genoa, May 18, 2008

(via Amy Welborn)

Today is the one-year anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Address.

As part of our homeschool co-op responsibilities, I find myself about to teach a class on logic.

Using Son #1 as a guinea pig for the class, I ran through the intro with him last night, and needed to find some explanation of why logic and reason matter, and most especially, why they should matter to us as Christians.

My shower-powered inspiration this morning was that I’ve already seen such an explanation, and just need to look up Regensburg. It was a nice coincidence to find out that today is the talk’s anniversary.

Go, read. It’s more lucid (and more important) than anything I have to say.

No, this isn’t about “dialogue” within The Episcopal Church (although it could be).

This week, Pope Benedict XVI gave a lecture at the University of Regensburg on the relationship between faith and reason, and the importance of and legitimate position of Greek philosophy within Church teaching.

Dry stuff, eh? Not when he quotes, in the first third of his talk, the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos:

“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The reactions have been, unfortunately, predictable:

Across the Islamic world Friday, Benedict’s remarks on Islam and jihad in a speech in Germany unleashed a torrent of rage that many fear could burst into violent protests like those that followed publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad….

Chancellor Merkel is not cowed, and still remembers how to use the word ‘dialogue’ in its non-debauched form:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended the German-born pope, saying his message had been misunderstood.

“It is an invitation to dialogue between religions and the pope has explicitly urged this dialogue, which I also endorse and see as urgently necessary,” she said Friday. “What Benedict XVI makes clear is a decisive and uncompromising rejection of any use of violence in the name of religion.”

However, CAIR is busy using ‘dialogue’ in its debased form (meaning, “keep talking until you see things my way”):

“The proper response to the pope’s inaccurate and divisive remarks is for Muslims and Catholics worldwide to increase dialogue and outreach efforts aimed at building better relations between Christianity and Islam,” the group said.

So far, this is all SOP. Here, however, is something deserves a bit more highlighting:

“The pope and Vatican proved to be Zionists and that they are far from Christianity, which does not differ from Islam. Both religions call for forgiveness, love and brotherhood,” Shiite cleric Sheik Abdul-Kareem al-Ghazi said during a sermon in Iraq’s second-largest city, Basra.

(Side note: “Zionists”? I think al-Ghazi’s anti-Semitism is showing.)

Get that? The pope isn’t a “real” Christian, because he’s critical of Islam. Real Christianity does not differ from Islam, according to al-Ghazi. (I’m sure his Chaldean neighbors will be surprised to hear this…)

So. A Shi’ite cleric takes it upon himself to declare what “real” Christianity is — and it turns out to be just like Islam! Those “Christians” who do not accept this vision are therefore not “real” Christians, but rather “Zionists”.

An … interesting approach to inter-religious dialogue, to be sure. One that I think will be rather unproductive with non-dhimmi Christians.

It might have a chance of working at the National Cathedral, however. I hear they go in for that sort of thing.

God have mercy.

I suppose these results aren’t terribly surprising … I’m so “new”, I’m not yet Catholic. And I do love Pope John Paul II of happy memory, and I do feel as if I’m rediscovering a lost faith.

The 2% “Liberal Catholic” result would explain my disconnect with the official ECUSA party line on … well, just about everything.

I was meditating a bit upon Lepanto, and fell into a moderate case of Catholic envy.

After all, the Catholic church has these wonderfully triumphalistic feasts such as Christ the King and Our Lady of Victory.

I’m pretty sure as Episcopalians, our corresponding feasts are of Jesus the Really Nice Rabbi and Our Lady of Perpetual Dialogue.

Now that I’m envious and depressed, I think I’ll go read The Ballad of the White Horse as an antidote (“hair of the dog”, perhaps?). At least we haven’t taken Alfred the Great off of the list of feasts yet.

God bless you and keep you, Benedict XVI. “Be not afraid!”