21.10.202412:16
Latin is a universal language. In using it, the liturgy forms us into a universal, i.e., Catholic, communion. By contrast, localizing and individualizing the liturgy robs it of this dimension which can make such a deep impression on souls. To avoid making such a mistake, it should be enough to observe the Eastern rites, in which the liturgical action has long been couched in the vernacular. And there an isolation can be seen — from which members of these communities suffer. When they scatter far and wide from their homelands, they need their own priests for the Mass, the sacraments and ceremonies of all kinds. They build special churches, which, in the nature of things, separate them from the rest of the Catholic population.
What do they gain from this? It is not entirely clear that having their own liturgical language has made them more fervent in practicing their faith than people benefitting from a universal language, not understood by man, perhaps, but easy enough to translate.
If we look outside the Church, we may ask how Islam has succeeded in keeping its cohesiveness while spreding over regions as different and among peoples of such diverse races as in Turkey, North Africa, Indonesia and black Africa. It has succeeded in imposing Arabic everywhere as the single language of the Koran. In Africa, I saw marabouts teachings children to recite the sacred texts by heart when they could not understand a single word of them. Islam goes so far as to forbid the translation of this holy book. It is fashionable these days to admire the religion of Mohammed: thousands of French people, it is said, are converting to it and taking up collections in the churches to build mosques in France. We would do well, however, simlly to take note of one example which we should remember: the sustaining power of a single language for prayer and worship.
The fact that Latin is a dead language is in its favour: it is the best means of protecting the expression of faith against linguistic changes which take place naturally in the course of time. The study of semantics has developed rapidly in the last ten years or so; it has even been introduced into French language courses in the schools. Semantics investigates changes in the meaning of words, the gradual shift of signification in the passage of time and often over very short periods. Let us make use of this branch of knowledge, therefore, to understand the danger of handing over the deposit of faith to changing ways of speaking. Do you believe that we could have kept intangible, eternal truths free of corruption for two thousands years if they were expressed in languages that are constantly evolving and which differ from one country and even from one region to another?
— Marcel Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics
What do they gain from this? It is not entirely clear that having their own liturgical language has made them more fervent in practicing their faith than people benefitting from a universal language, not understood by man, perhaps, but easy enough to translate.
If we look outside the Church, we may ask how Islam has succeeded in keeping its cohesiveness while spreding over regions as different and among peoples of such diverse races as in Turkey, North Africa, Indonesia and black Africa. It has succeeded in imposing Arabic everywhere as the single language of the Koran. In Africa, I saw marabouts teachings children to recite the sacred texts by heart when they could not understand a single word of them. Islam goes so far as to forbid the translation of this holy book. It is fashionable these days to admire the religion of Mohammed: thousands of French people, it is said, are converting to it and taking up collections in the churches to build mosques in France. We would do well, however, simlly to take note of one example which we should remember: the sustaining power of a single language for prayer and worship.
The fact that Latin is a dead language is in its favour: it is the best means of protecting the expression of faith against linguistic changes which take place naturally in the course of time. The study of semantics has developed rapidly in the last ten years or so; it has even been introduced into French language courses in the schools. Semantics investigates changes in the meaning of words, the gradual shift of signification in the passage of time and often over very short periods. Let us make use of this branch of knowledge, therefore, to understand the danger of handing over the deposit of faith to changing ways of speaking. Do you believe that we could have kept intangible, eternal truths free of corruption for two thousands years if they were expressed in languages that are constantly evolving and which differ from one country and even from one region to another?
— Marcel Lefebvre, Open Letter to Confused Catholics
20.07.202409:51
Photius promised everything, and was accordingly consecrated, but by the very same Gregory, and took possession of the See. Six months had not yet passed over, since his consecration, and he had broken all his oaths and promises; he persecuted St. Ignatius, and all the ecclesiastics who adhered to him; he even got some of them flogged, and by promises and threats induced several to sign documents, intended for the ruin of his sainted predecessors. Not being able to accomplish his design, he laid a plot, with the assistance of Bardas, that the Emperor should send persons to take information, to prove that St. Ignatius was privately conspiring against the state.
— St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
— St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
10.10.202420:49
European society is dying. The extremities are cold: the heart will be soon. And do you know why it is dying? It is dying because it has been poisoned; because God made it to be nourished with the substance of Catholic truth, and the empirical doctors have given it for food the substance of rationalism. It is dying because, like as man does not live by bread only, but by every word which comes out of the mouth of God, so societies do not perish by the sword only, but by every word which comes out of the mouth of their philosophers. It is dying because error is killing it, and because society is now founded upon errors. Know, then, that all you hold as incontrovertible is false.
The vital force of truth is so great, that if you were possessed of one truth — one alone — that truth might save you. But your fall is so profound, your decline is so radical, your blindness so complete, your nakedness so absolute, that even this one truth you have not. For this reason the catastrophe which must come will be in history the catastrophe above all. Individuals may still save themselves, because individuals may always be saved; but society is lost, not because it is yet in a radical impossibility of being saved, but because it has no will to save itself. There is no salvation for society, because we will not make our sons to be Christians, and because we are not true Christians ourselves. There is no salvation for society, because the Catholic spirit, the only spirit of life, does not quicken the whole; it does not quicken education, government, institutions, laws, and morals. To change the course of things in the state in which they are, I see too well would be the enterprise of giants. There is no power upon earth which, by itself, could reach this end, and hardly all the powers acting together could attain its accomplishment. I leave you to judge whether such cooperation is possible, and to what point, and to decide if, even admitting this possibility, the salvation of society would not be every way a true miracle.
— Juan Donoso Cortés
The vital force of truth is so great, that if you were possessed of one truth — one alone — that truth might save you. But your fall is so profound, your decline is so radical, your blindness so complete, your nakedness so absolute, that even this one truth you have not. For this reason the catastrophe which must come will be in history the catastrophe above all. Individuals may still save themselves, because individuals may always be saved; but society is lost, not because it is yet in a radical impossibility of being saved, but because it has no will to save itself. There is no salvation for society, because we will not make our sons to be Christians, and because we are not true Christians ourselves. There is no salvation for society, because the Catholic spirit, the only spirit of life, does not quicken the whole; it does not quicken education, government, institutions, laws, and morals. To change the course of things in the state in which they are, I see too well would be the enterprise of giants. There is no power upon earth which, by itself, could reach this end, and hardly all the powers acting together could attain its accomplishment. I leave you to judge whether such cooperation is possible, and to what point, and to decide if, even admitting this possibility, the salvation of society would not be every way a true miracle.
— Juan Donoso Cortés
04.10.202409:04
When the body had withdrawn itself, the soul could function as a pure spirit, could contemplate God, and apprehend truths to which others were blind, could prophecy, experience second sight and act upon material things, as is the nature of pure spirits. This corresponds with the views of all Neoplatonists such as Philo, Porphyrius, lamblichus, Proclus. All these ascribed second sight, true dreams, and apparitions to the special powers of the human soul. Indeed this is the consistent teaching of antiquity, and it was from this starting point that Christian writers such as Tertullian, Augustine and Gregory the Great proceeded, though in the time that followed the doctrine was more and more allowed to lapse into oblivion; a confused belief in demons and magic took its place.
In the Middle Ages it was the leading figures of scholasticism who sought to escape from the clutches of a wild belief in demons, as, for instance, St Thomas, who, as already mentioned, speaks in his Summa Theologica (I, q. 86, a. 4) of the soul's power of clairvoyance and states that the soul becomes free in sleep, or when the mind is disturbed and in general when there is the maximum of detachment from the senses. (Hujusmodi autem impressiones spiritualium causarum magis nata est anima humana suscipere, cum a sensibus alienatur; quia per hoc propinquior fit substantiis spiritualibus et magis libera ab exterioribus inquietudinibus.)
In much the same fashion that St Thomas speaks of the higher powers of the soul when it is partly freed from the body, Roger Bacon (d. 1294) speaks of the influencing of souls for the purpose of healing disease, and does so in a manner that suggests the methods of Coué. Mystics like Bonaventure and Meister Eckehart, however, incline to give supernatural explanations when dealing with exceptional states of the soul.
Men in later times were well acquainted with the existence of such states, but did not seem inclined to seek a preternatural explanation for them. Thus Abbot Johann Tritheim (d. 1516) once says in one of his letters: "I am able to communicate my thoughts to one a hundred miles away, who knows this art, and to do so without writing, words or signs; I do not need a messenger at all. It can be made as clear and explicit as may be required, and that by natural means without the aid of spirits or any other kind of superstition."
— Alois Wiesinger, Occult Phenomena in the Light of Theology
In the Middle Ages it was the leading figures of scholasticism who sought to escape from the clutches of a wild belief in demons, as, for instance, St Thomas, who, as already mentioned, speaks in his Summa Theologica (I, q. 86, a. 4) of the soul's power of clairvoyance and states that the soul becomes free in sleep, or when the mind is disturbed and in general when there is the maximum of detachment from the senses. (Hujusmodi autem impressiones spiritualium causarum magis nata est anima humana suscipere, cum a sensibus alienatur; quia per hoc propinquior fit substantiis spiritualibus et magis libera ab exterioribus inquietudinibus.)
In much the same fashion that St Thomas speaks of the higher powers of the soul when it is partly freed from the body, Roger Bacon (d. 1294) speaks of the influencing of souls for the purpose of healing disease, and does so in a manner that suggests the methods of Coué. Mystics like Bonaventure and Meister Eckehart, however, incline to give supernatural explanations when dealing with exceptional states of the soul.
Men in later times were well acquainted with the existence of such states, but did not seem inclined to seek a preternatural explanation for them. Thus Abbot Johann Tritheim (d. 1516) once says in one of his letters: "I am able to communicate my thoughts to one a hundred miles away, who knows this art, and to do so without writing, words or signs; I do not need a messenger at all. It can be made as clear and explicit as may be required, and that by natural means without the aid of spirits or any other kind of superstition."
— Alois Wiesinger, Occult Phenomena in the Light of Theology
07.09.202413:12
All these things, the animal, earthly and corruptible body; the sex that is divided into male and female; propagation by a mode similar to that of the beasts; the need of food and drink and clothing; the increase and decrease of the body; the alteration of sleeping and waking, and the inevitable necessity of both; and all similar limitations from which human nature would have been entirely free if it had not sinned — as it is destined one day to be free again — are the consequences of sin and were added to man’s nature at the time of his creation as something external to his nature on account of sin before sin was committed, by Him whose foreknowledge is not deceived.
— John Scotus Eriugena
— John Scotus Eriugena
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