The Ignatian Indifference

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. All other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him fulfill the end for which he is created. From this it follows that man is to use these things to the extent that they will help him to attain his end. Likewise, he must rid himself of them in so far as they prevent him from attaining it.

Therefore we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things, in so far as it is left to the choice of our free will and is not forbidden. Acting accordingly, for our part, we should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short one, and so in all things we should desire and choose only those things which will best help us attain the end for which we are created.

- The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius - Principle and Foundation

St. Ignatius of Loyola

Today is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and composer of Spiritual Exercises that have edified and helped sanctify many a religious and layman for centuries.

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Now it is recognised that among all the methods of "Spiritual Exercises" which very laudably adhere to the principles of sound Catholic asceticism one has ever held the foremost place and adorned by the full and repeated approbation of the Holy See and honoured by the praises of men, distinguished for spiritual doctrine and sanctity, has borne abundant fruits of holiness during the space of well nigh four hundred years; we mean the method introduced by St. Ignatius of Loyola, whom we are pleased to call the chief and peculiar Master of "Spiritual Exercises" whose "admirable book of "Exercises" ever since it was solemnly approved, praised, and commended by our predecessor Paul III of happy memory, already to repeat some words we once used, before our elevation to the Chair of Peter, already we say "stood forth and conspicuous as a most wise and universal code of laws for the direction of souls in the way of salvation and perfection; an unexhausted fountain of most excellent and most solid piety; as a most keen stimulus, and a well instructed guide showing the way to secure the amendment of morals and attain the summit of the spiritual life." And when at the beginning of Our pontificate satisfying the most ardent desires and vows of sacred Prelates of almost the whole Catholic world from both Rites in the Apostolic Constitution "Summorum Pontificum", given on July 22, 1922, We declared and constituted St. Ignatius of Loyola "the heavenly Patron of all "Spiritual Exercises", and, therefore, of institutes, sodalities and bodies of every kind assisting those who are making the "Spiritual Exercises"," we did little else but sanction by our supreme authority what was already proclaimed by the common feeling of Pastors and of the faithful; and what together with the aforesaid Paul III, our illustrious Predecessors Alexander VII, Benedict XIV, Leo XIII, had often said implicitly, when praising the Ignatian meditations, and what all those who, in the words of Leo XIII, had been most conspicuous "in the discipline of ascetic, or in sanctity or morals," during the last four hundred years had said by their praises and yet more by the example of the virtues which they had acquired in this arena. And in very deed, the excellence of spiritual doctrine altogether free from the perils and errors of false mysticism, the admirable facility of adapting the exercises to any order or state of man, whether they devote themselves to contemplation in the cloisters, or lead an active life in the affairs of the world, the apt co-ordination of the various parts, the wonderful and lucid order in the meditation of truths that seem to follow naturally one from another; and lastly the spiritual lessons which after casting off the yoke of sin and washing away the diseases inherent in his morals lead a man through the safe paths of abnegation and the removal of evil habits up to the supreme heights of prayer and divine love; without doubt all these are things which sufficiently show the efficacious nature of the Ignatian method and abundantly commend the Ignatian meditations.
- Pope Pius XI, Mens Nostra

Overpopulation is a Myth

Plays, Performances and School Pictures

I post a few pictures from the 2008-2009 school year at the Dominican girl's school. We had three girls attending this past year, and will have five there this coming year which is now just right around the corner.

A Concerto for a Beautiful Day

I wonder if Fr. Antonio Vivaldi was gazing out the window of his study on a bright, cheery day like today in the North Country while composing this Concerto for Two Violins. I believe most days in Venice are bright and cheery (at least according to the weather), are they not?

Civil War Weekend - Photo Log

Working on the pot of stew

New Mothers Commiserate

So how do we get Mom and Dad to buy us...

Bubble moment

North and South skirmish

Union artillery

Before the battle

Lunch at the marina on the St. Lawrence River

19th century fashion show

Dresses weighed an average of 40 lbs!

More artillery
Rubbing shoulders with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln

Fr. Pfeiffer Sermon

Fr. Timothy Pfeiffer's last sermon (Principles for Living) at St. Therese's before leaving for the missions in India is posted in the links.

Dr. Alveda King on Capital Hill Today

Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is on Capital Hill today with a clear and important message:

Our message is clear – abortion is neither health care nor a benefit. It's genocide ... Give us procreative reproductive rights. Repair our communities with life affirming programs. My fellow civil rights workers and I will be on Capitol Hill to say that if President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, or anyone else truly wants to reduce the number of abortions, they will not coerce Americans to pay for them and they will not subsidize Planned Parenthood, the billion-dollar business that has killed more black children than the KKK."

A fetal surgery of little Samuel who is 21 weeks old in this photo. About 19,500 boys and girls Samuel's age or older are killed by abortion every year (Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute, 2001).

Follow this link to a sermon given a few years ago by Fr. McMahon at St. Isidore Church in Denver. Father, Headmaster of LaSalette Boys Academy, speaks briefly on the importance of Catholic education and the formation of Catholic gentlemen.

I expect to be posting more family pictures shortly. The weather looks like it will be good this weekend, in which case we will be heading off to a Civil War re-enactment on Saturday and an afternoon at the lake on Sunday.

Marriage is Immutable

and it is the cornerstone of civilization. Emphasis mine:

The true origin of marriage, venerable brothers, is well known to all. Though revilers of the Christian faith refuse to acknowledge the never-interrupted doctrine of the Church on this subject, and have long striven to destroy the testimony of all nations and of all times, they have nevertheless failed not only to quench the powerful light of truth, but even to lessen it. We record what is to all known, and cannot be doubted by any, that God, on the sixth day of creation, having made man from the slime of the earth, and having breathed into his face the breath of life, gave him a companion, whom He miraculously took from the side of Adam when he was locked in sleep. God thus, in His most far-reaching foresight, decreed that this husband and wife should be the natural beginning of the human race, from whom it might be propagated and preserved by an unfailing fruitfulness throughout all futurity of time. And this union of man and woman, that it might answer more fittingly to the infinite wise counsels of God, even from the beginning manifested chiefly two most excellent properties -- deeply sealed, as it were, and signed upon it -- namely, unity and perpetuity. From the Gospel we see clearly that this doctrine was declared and openly confirmed by the divine authority of Jesus Christ. He bore witness to the Jews and to His Apostles that marriage, from its institution, should exist between two only, that is, between one man and one woman; that of two they are made, so to say, one flesh; and that the marriage bond is by the will of God so closely and strongly made fast that no man may dissolve it or render it asunder. "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."
-ARCANUM (On Christian Marriage), Pope Leo XIII

+ St. Mary Magdalene

What's in the health care reform?

From Concerned Women for America:

This legislation will create a fundamental right to abortion in our health care system. Concerns about the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) were spot on - this health care legislation is FOCA by stealth. The health care legislation will mandate and subsidize abortion coverage in American health plans, will nullify state laws that limit abortion, and require "access" to elective abortions, which will result in more abortion clinics.

The health care reform bill will lead to rationing. A government board will determine what treatments can and cannot be allowed. Pres. Obama says only people who will get "healthier" should get treatment - which theoretically excludes the disabled, the elderly, and others who bureaucrats decide aren't worth the cost. Many doctors, who will be forced to violate their consciences under this bill, are planning to leave the profession if it passes. This means all of us will have less access to every kind of health care.

Offering a "public option" virtually guarantees that people will move from private to public health insurance. A provision in the House bill would outlaw citizens obtaining new private plans after the public plan begins. Health care decisions will be taken out of patients' and doctors' hands and placed into the government's hands.

The current health care reform bill also requires every individual to buy health insurance or pay a fine. Radical pro-abortion Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would determine whether a particular plan would qualify. This mandate means that cost-sharing arrangements, such as Christians who jointly pay for health care for families within their groups, could be forced to purchase a health insurance plan that violates their religious beliefs.

The overwhelming cost of the health care reform bill is staggering, especially when experts have predicted that current Medicare funding could run out within seven years. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this reform package will cost $1 trillion. Others estimate it to be $1.6 trillion with $800 billion in tax hikes and fees that could add as much as $239 billion to the deficit.

The Martin Family

I have the Martin Family on my mind this morning after listening to an excellent talk by Dylan McDonald of the Family Cloister Learning Center entitled "Saving the Soul of Catholic Family Life". There are many lessons to learn in St. Therese's family for sanctifying our own families today.




+ St. Jerome Emilian, St. Margaret

The Frankfurt School and the Silent Communist Revolution in the West

I just read a penetrating article entitled "The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to corrupt" by Timothy Matthews, that shines the light on one of the primary players in the continual cultural degeneracy that has happened in the West over the last several decades. The article needs wide distribution. For those who have never heard of the Frankfurt School, it was started in the 1920s by several prominant Marxists for the purpose of provoking a socialist revolution in the West. Their angle was not a bloody revolution, but rather a cultural revolution that would rot the mind and soul of contemporary society, thus paving the way for change, very insidious change. Communism is not dead. The Franfurt School recommended the following tactics. Think about what is happening in government and schools today as you read them:

1. The creation of racism offences.
2. Continual change to create confusion
3. The teaching of sex and homosexuality to children
4. The undermining of schools’ and teachers’ authority
5. Huge immigration to destroy identity
6. The promotion of excessive drinking
7. Emptying of churches
8. An unreliable legal system with bias against victims of crime
9. Dependency on the state or state benefits
10. Control and dumbing down of media
11. Encouraging the breakdown of the family

Please read this important article found here.

Think, Watch and Pray...

Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

The Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, from the Sisters of Carmel in Colorado Springs:

Greetings to you all as we celebrate Carmel's great Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. This feast is not only for Carmelites, but is beloved by all of Mary's children, since so many of them wear her Scapular with affection and loyal devotion and form the worldwide Confraternity of the Scapular. Many have called this day the "Feast of the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel," so attached are they to this emblem of the Blessed Mother's tender solicitude and guardianship over her children. And with good reason, since for over 700 years she has used this sacramental to convey the graces God so desires to give to the world. On July 16, 1251, Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock surrounded by angels and holding in her hands the brown scapular of the Carmelite habit. "This shall be a privilege for you and for all Carmelites: whoever dies clothed in this garment shall not suffer eternal fire, rather, he shall be saved," she promised. These words are kept in reverent memory by all who wear the scapular with faith and hope. Saint Claude tells us, "Of all the pious practices which have inspired the faithful to honor the mother of God, there is none so sure as that of the Scapular. No other devotion has been confirmed by so many and such extraordinary miracles." A few of these miracles are recounted in the little book called Garment of Grace. Pope Pius XII exhorted the faithful to wear the Brown Scapular as a sign of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and said, "Truly, the holy Scapular, being the habit of Mary, is a sign and a pledge of the protection of the Mother of God." It is edifying and encouraging to read what other Popes have said about the holy Scapular.

On this special feastday for Carmelites and all children of Mary, we share again Father Gabriel's excellent description of devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel. This renowned Carmelite spiritual guide and writer says in his book, Divine Intimacy:

"Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel indicates a strong call to the interior life... Those who wish to live truly devoted to Our Lady of Mount Carmel must follow Mary into the depths of the interior life. Carmel is the symbol of the contemplative life, a life wholly consecrated to seeing God and tending wholly toward divine intimacy; and she who best realizes this very high ideal is Mary Queen, Beauty of Carmel."

A Little Fun - Ice Skating Priests

You don't see beer commercials like this in America...

Sermon Posted

This past Sunday's sermon is posted over in the links. Sorry for the delay.

Feast of St. Henry and Thomas' Due Date

The irony of Thomas' due date was just discovered recently. If you go back a few months in the blog posts, you are likely to find a post mentioning that we intended to name the new baby Henry. Over the course of time and various name negotiations we decided on Thomas as the middle name, and then switched the names around to Thomas Henry, finally arriving at Thomas Campion, dropping poor Henry altogether. Thomas is after the Angelic Doctor Thomas Aquinas, and Campion is after the great Jesuit Martyr of the Sixteenth Century Edmund Campion. We did not realize that the due date fell on the Feast of St. Henry. So was Thomas destined to be a Henry? Well, too late now. But... there is always the Confirmation name.

I knew very little of the life of St. Henry, a noble king and defender of the faith. As you all have come to witness, I am big on excerpts since I do not have much time to research and write myself, something I hope to do more of some day (hopefully sitting in a warm Tuscan villa with my beautiful wife, Palestrina rolling through the balmy air, sipping a young Chianti from the vineyard down the road). This is from a biographical sketch on Henry II, Emperor of the Holy Roman German Empire in the eleventh century, by Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira.

The Scene After the Fall of the Roman Empire
Gradually the Roman population also fell into barbarianism. The roads were abandoned with no one to care for them; the aqueducts that supplied the cities with water broke and no one repaired them; the palaces occupied by barbarians became dirty and disorganized; works of art in public places were ruined, and the cities fell into chaos. Everything that represented culture and civilization was miserably destroyed. In this situation Europe became illiterate and its level of customs sunk to unimaginably low levels. It took centuries to bring Europe to a state of civilization again.

While everything was being crushed, the Catholic Church remained as the one existing institution. Those barbarians began to convert under her influence. The work the Church did with the European peoples was not so different from the work she later undertook to convert and civilize the Indians in the New World [note: see previous post on our recent pilgrimage to Auriesville. ACH] The missionaries arrived, preached the catechism, and through successive generations the Indians became civilized and acquired a certain culture. The same took place with those European tribes.

In the year 1000, civilization had already achieved much in relation to the original barbarian way of living, but Catholic Civilization was still far below the standards it would reach 200 or 300 years later. That is to say, at the time of St. Henry II, we are in a semi-barbarian situation.

Henry II
In the person of St. Henry II, we see an Emperor who was also a Saint. That a great political leader and head of an army was a saint does not fit very well with the lives of the saints taught by a certain sentimental piety. Indeed, he held the highest office in the most important political organization of his time and was, therefore, the most powerful man in Europe. Simultaneously he was the greatest warrior of Europe and the first son of the Church. He was par excellence the son of the Church. He was the one who always protected the Church against the attacks of her enemies.

He also had to face the peoples of the East who continuously attacked the Empire. So he gathered together a large army and counter-attacked those barbarians. He waged many wars and acted as a Catholic hero who had the spirit of Faith, relying more on supernatural help than on his natural forces. He asked God for the might to win his battles. To show St. Henry how his prayers were pleasing to Him, God gave him a miraculous victory on one occasion. As the two armies came face to face, the enemy troops fled the battlefield in panic for apparently no reason. In fact, to terrify his enemies, God had sent an Angel and the holy martyrs to whom Henry II had prayed. God was so pleased with the prayers of the warriors that he gave them the victory even without the combat.

With this victory, the pagan forces from the East were broken and the claws of Paganism lost their strength.

St. Henry, Ora Pro Nobis!

Saint Bonaventure

Happy Feast of St. Bonaventure. Below is an excerpt on his life and work. More can be found here along with commentary on other important personages and events of what has been called the greatest of centuries, the thirteenth.

St. Bonaventure was born in 1221, five years before the death of St. Francis, at Bagnorea near to Viterbo. He entered the Friars Minor at the age of seventeen and at Paris he was the pupil of the very first of the Franciscan doctors, the Englishman Alexander of Hales who, in his old age, had crowned a triumphant career in the schools by abandoning all for the Lady Poverty. In 1248 St. Bonaventure took his licentiate's degree and for the next seven years taught in the university. His course was interrupted by the fierce attack made on the Friars' position in the university by the Masters of Arts, which was also in some measure an attack by the Aristotelians on the Traditionalists. The pope intervened, and when he confirmed the Friars' rights he named St. Bonaventure to be the occupant of the chair assigned to his order. A year later he was named general of the Friars Minor (1257) and his career as a professional theologian came to an end.

The object of all St. Bonaventure's teaching is practical. Through theology, through philosophy, too, he will lead man to attain God and to attain Him as the Being who is supremely lovable. It is love of the object which is the motive that urges the assent of Faith. The knowledge of God we have through Faith is surer than any other knowledge, surer than the philosophical knowledge that comes through reasoning. Philosophy is, none the less, most useful to explain the truths of Faith and to justify our assent to them. Man's life is a pilgrimage towards God, and in the saint's treatment of theology from this point of view we see revealed all the simple charm of the piety of his order. In him St. Francis lives again. Everything that meets man on the road cries God to him, if man is but attentive. Faith: helped by reason reveals God in all. True it is that man does not read the message as readily as God had intended. It is the penalty of the fall that man's perceptive powers are dimmed. A special grace is necessary that man, as he now exists, may discover God. He must be formed again, purified, enlightened. Nevertheless, it remains true that the whole universe is formed to express God and God's infinite love, to be a book in which all may read its author the Trinity. The saint is not over-concerned to elaborate these proofs of God's existence from the things He has created. "The splendour of creation reveals Him, unless we are blind. His works cry ' God' to us and, unless we are deaf, must awaken us. The man must be dumb who cannot praise God in all that He has caused; he must be mad not to recognise the first origin of all, where so many signs abound."

God is equally discernible, to every man, in his own soul if he will but look into it. Here it is not a mere reflection of God that meets the believer's gaze, not a mere trace of His power, but His very image. For the idea of God is bound up with the very simplest of our intellectual operations. Unless the idea of a self-existing being were present to the mind, man could not know anything. The image of God is naturally infused into the soul, and whoever will gaze into its depths must find God. Note, however, that it is not any understanding of God's essence, that comes in this way to the searcher of his own soul, but merely the realisation that God exists.

In his solution of the problem how we know, the saint makes use, at the same time, of ideas that are Plato's and of others taken from Aristotle. Corporal things we know through the senses, universal truths by the intellect. The senses are necessary for all knowledge of things below the soul. To know the soul, and whatever is above it, is the function not of the senses but of the intellect and an interior light, namely the principles of knowledge and of natural truths innate in the soul. For each of the orders of knowledge there is thus its own mechanism, and if Aristotle is the distant author of the saint's explanation of our knowledge of corporal reality, for his theory of the higher knowledge he is indebted to Plato -- to Plato through St. Augustine, and to St. Augustine for the idea of this synthesis of the two. Natural knowledge has, then, a double aspect, as man is intermediary between God and things. The things that are below him he knows with relative certainty, the things above with absolute certainty, and yet in a confused way only, knowing them as he does -- not in the Divine ideas themselves -- but in the reflection of these external ideas that he finds in his own soul.

It is then from creatures that we come to God. Our first knowledge of God is as Creator and, for St. Bonaventure, to admit the eternity of the world is to admit a contradiction. All things are created, and in all created reality matter and form are to be distinguished, in the angels, in the human soul too. The soul is thus a complete substance, and upon this doctrine the saint builds his proof of its immortality. There is not only one substantial form to each being, but several forms according to the properties of the being, several forms hierarchically subordinated to the general form and thereby saving the unity of the being.

Mini Monday Update

Blogging has slowed down a bit as summer activity and a busy work schedule continue to ramp up. I had intentions of posting a Thomas picture last Friday for his one month birthday, but time slipped away. I will try to have additional pictures up shortly. As for an update, Thomas is doing well. Leslie is still having some mysterious issues with blood pressure and will be in this week to see a primary care physician for an opinion. I think we are still dealing with post-baby issues that are just slow to work their way out of her system. As for other activities, the Bruise Brothers head off to camp tomorrow so we've been busy getting them all outfitted. The weather in the North Country is still a bit on the chilly side, so not much summer swimming yet, but we are hoping to begin making trips to the lake soon. With school preparation already in the air, the summer will be gone in a flash.

I thought this was a poignant little cartoon for Monday consideration. The insurance companies are bad enough; wait until the government starts calling the shots and determining who is worthy and who is not worthy of medical procedures and medications...

Fatherhood

A touching and sober reminder of the impact of a father's influence on his children.

The Way Back Machine

I found a few fun pictures of Christopher and Joseph (the 'Bruise Brothers') from circa 2004 that I just could not resist posting.

Thomas' Baptism

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Amen, amen I say to thee, unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
-St. John 3:5

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Thomas and Nicholas Fox became members of the Mystical Body of Christ today, purged of Original Sin through their baptisms. Both boys were consecrated to Our Blessed Mother immediately following the baptism. Leslie also received a special Mother's Blessing, given by the Church after childbirth. We are honored to have Tom and Kari McCarty as Godparents.

Happy 2nd Birthday Sophia!

The Man-made Global Warming Swindle

As legislation is currently being rammed through (e.g. H.R. 2454) that will significantly raise taxes on every American family as well as impose gestapo-like 'home energy audits' to reduce man's carbon footprint, it is important to hear from those scientists who debunk human CO2-related climate change. There is a political agenda here not to mention a growing multi-million dollar industry whose interests many in power want to protect. Study. Know the facts. The mainstream media has virtually silenced the opposition, as it has done with those who oppose abortion, legalized same-sex "marriage" and other critical issues of our day that directly impact individuals and families.

Thomas and Fr. Joshua

Here are a few recent pictures at home. Joshua is rehearsing for the priesthood and looks to be in good form. Thomas is alert and ready for breakfast.

When visiting my office one day, Joshua was asked by a fellow coworker what he wanted to be when he grew up. I wish I could have snapped a picture of her expression when he said 'a priest'. I do not think that is the answer she was expecting.