This club and its members support the reading of old books...
Friday, August 1, 2008
The Black Madonna of Mount Irazú
In 1635 a young black girl found a small black stone statue of Our Lady and the Holy Child in the woods near Cartago. She took it home with her but it returned by itself to where she had found it. After several futile attempts to keep it, she took the statue to the village priest, who tried hiding it, but to no avail. It was always found back in the woods.
The black families nearby built a little chapel to house their treasured Mother and Child on the spot that she herself had chosen to stay. In time it became a famous place of pilgrimage for all of Costa Rica. The image of the black Madonna, gaily dressed with Jesus, was solemnly crowned in 1927.
Cardinal Ruini describing the ills of modernity...
The first and greatest priority is God himself, that God who is too easily pushed to the edges of our lives, focused on "doing," especially through "techno-science," and on "enjoyment-consumption." That God is even expressly negated by an evolutionist "metaphysics" that reduces everything to nature, to matter-energy, to chance (random mutations) and to necessity (natural selection), or more often is said to be unknowable according to the principle that "latet omne verum," all truth is hidden, as a result of the restriction of the horizons of our reason to that which can be experienced and measured, according to the view now prevalent. That God, finally, who has been proclaimed "dead," with the assertion of nihilism and the resulting collapse of all certainty.
The most terrible malady in the West today is not tubercolosis or leprosy but feeling unwanted, unloved and abandoned. We know how to cure bodily sickness with medicine, but the only remedy for loneliness, helplessness and despair is love. Many die in our world for lack of a piece of bread but even more die for lack of a little love. Poverty in the West is a different sort of poverty: not just the poverty of being alone but also of spirituality. There is such a thing as a hunger for love just as there is a hunger for God.
-Blessed Theresa of Calcutta
About the author...
I am a Catholic Christian deeply concerned about the state of affairs in the modern world; certainly, the world is fallen, but these are unique times. We are living in a civilization that has lost its roots- a world dominated by phony 'consensus building' and the "dictatorship of relativism". John Paul II famously observed during a speech at the 'Mars Hill' of the modern world - the U.N.-
It is one of the great paradoxes of our time that man, who began the period we call "modernity" with a self-confident assertion of his "coming of age" and "autonomy", approaches the end of the twentieth century fearful of himself, fearful of what he might be capable of, fearful for the future.
Over the last four decades, Christianity has even questioned the importance of its doctrines, tradition, identity, and even itself. I am convinced that orthodox Christian faith, especially Catholicism, bears the fullness of Truth to shed light on the darkness of this world, leading mankind to his ultimate destiny with God. The Church has the ability to answer the deepest longings of the human heart: love, Truth, justice, hope, faith, charity, communion, unity, and above all a relationship with the Creator. The Church, divinely instituted, is the only power on earth that has the tools to build a culture around those aforementioned longings. She must permeate every aspect of modern life with a powerful witness to the Truth; as Pope Benedict has said,
Christianity, Catholicism, isn't a collection of prohibitions; it's a positive option.
Ideas that are central to the thought of this blog...
"Affirmative orthodoxy"
"Christianity, Catholicism, isn’t a collection of prohibitions: it’s a positive option."
"The entire span of human history is marked by the the choosing of Love or the refusal to Love."
Battling the "Dictatorship of Relativism"
Cooperatores Veritatis (We are Co-operators of the Truth)
Dominus Iesus (Jesus is God)
Ecumenism: unity only without sacrificing Truth
Fides et Ratio (Faith & Reason)
Helping the modern west: a Civilization without roots
Hermeneutic of Continuity - the lens by which the Church views herself
Liturgy: Say the Black, do the Red.
Natural Law
ORA ET LABORA (prayer & work)
Save the Liturgy, Save the World! (rich Christian culture/identity enriches the surrounding culture in a positive way)
The Dignity of the Human Person
The Family: foundation of civilization
Tradition: the passing on of the living faith
Truth
Pope Benedict XVI & Ecumenical Patriarch Barthowlomew I
Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thine image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thine Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Father John Zulsdorf)
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