Category: Ecclesiology
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Church Patriotism
Simone Weil, somewhere in Gravity and Grace, speaks of "church patriotism." It's comparable to the knee-jerk patriotism of the "my country right or wrong" sort. Both are forms of idolatry. Ecclesiolatry on the one hand, statolatry on the other. (That's not my coinage; bang on the link.)
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Rogues in Bergoglio’s Footsteps
The truth is too magnificent a thing to be the the property of any one religious institution. Too magnificent a thing, and too elusive a thing to be owned or housed or patented or reduced to the formulas of a sect or finitized or fought over. Institutions too often value their own perpetuation over the…
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On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion
Substack latest. Ecclesiolatry is one of the topics discussed.
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Me, Merton, Vows, and Ecclesiology
I study everything, join nothing. He studied everything, but joined the Trappists. Therein one root of one of his inner conflicts. His natural bent was to range freely over the cartography of the mind, but he voluntarily accepted intramural enclosure physically, intellectually, and spiritually. He took vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability. My impression from…
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Why Swim the Tiber?
A philosophy colleague I thought was Protestant has unbeknownst to me swum the Tiber. I asked him why. Here is part of his response, slightly redacted: My story is rather boring, I’d wager. Since my late teen years I was nonplussed with the lack of intellectual vigor in most Protestant denominations (Baptist, Methodist, etc.) I…
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An Ecclesiological Contretemps: Edward Feser versus Rod Dreher
Start here with Dreher. Feser's response to Dreher. Dreher's reply (scroll down). Feser again. …………………………… Addendum 5/31. Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, comments (minor edits added by BV): With regard to the exchange between Edward Feser and Rod Dreher on the latter’s rationale for leaving Roman Catholicism for Orthodoxy, which I too have been closely following,…
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Sacramental Efficacy Despite the Corruption of the Church?
Here: Therefore, the serious believer is thrown back upon his or her own inner resources. Thankfully, the Sacraments are still efficacious despite the corruption of the Church . . . . Suppose I go to what used to be called Confession, but is now foolishly called Reconciliation. The priest, I have reason to believe, is…
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On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion
Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68: A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer. It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude. What passes for prayer…
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Miniscule and Majuscule; catholic and Catholic
I am too catholic to be much of a Catholic. But if one needs institutionalized religion, one could do far worse, assuming one can stomach the secular-humanist liberal namby-pambification and wussification that the post-Vatican II church can't seem to resist, the dilution of doctrine and tradition that empties into the nauseating Church of Nice. There…
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Popes and Dopes
I was planning on writing something along these lines, but James Taranto has done the job and done it well. Atheist Malcolm Pollack gets it right too and refers us to a fine piece by Pat Buchanan. And then there is this by Michael Brendan Dougherty on the ascendancy of Jorge Bergoglio: But the other…
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On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion
Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68: A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer. It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude. What passes for prayer…
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The Stove ‘Dilemma’ and the Lewis ‘Trilemma’
This from D. J. Stove, the son of atheist and neo-positivist David Stove: When the possibility of converting to Catholicism became a real one, it was the immensity of the whole package that daunted me, rather than specific teachings. I therefore spent little time agonizing over the Assumption of Mary, justification by works as well…