Learned explanation . . . from a learned man . . .

Fr. Hunwicke is at pains to explain why canonization is infallible — the saint’s in heaven, all’s right with the process — but not with the infallibility defined in 1870 at the First Vatican Council.

“Defined,” he points out, meaning limited, as any catechism-familiar grade-schooler knew in the ’40s and ’50s, to ex cathedra pronouncements, meaning “from the chair” or with the special full authority of the papacy.

Why does he explain?

I have returned to this question because the current, apparently politically motivated, frenzy for canonising recent Bishops of Rome may have tainted for many the very concept of canonisation . . . may have rubbed off it some of the gloss. How can we enjoy the oncoming event [canonization of Cardinal Newman] with proper exuberance when the currency of canonisation has been so devalued, so reduced to a political formality?

I have no problems. Since Saint John Henry [Newman] taught a great deal which is directly in opposition to the attitudes of the current pontificate, his canonisation cannot be seen as a political act intended to subvert the Great Tradition.

“On the contrary,” he says.

I regard it as a triumph of divine Grace in the midst of the dark clouds of this pontificate; as a sudden bright burst of sunlit glory piercing the clouds and giving us a certain pledge of the ultimate triumph of orthodoxy!

So, as one of those recently canonized bishops of Rome used to repeat, Be not afraid.

(Note various spellings of canonization, where I use the right way.)

“I can think of few suggestions more childishly perverse,” opines the astute Fr. Hunwicke.

But, he adds:

I am afraid that we are going to get more of this: as we approach the canonisation, Begoglians, illiterates, and other life-forms will crawl out of the woodwork, claiming to instruct us on the teaching, and the significance, of this great Saint. How irritating. I suggest that readers who have not already done so should educate themselves by reading Dr [Ian] Ker’s biography of JHN in the ‘Oxford Lives’ series.

Which I intend for myself, being already caught up in Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, with foreward by the same Dr. Ker, compliments of the Chicago Public Library.

This analysis by prolific and all-knowing Rich Miller has a stunning headline in its Sun-Times version of yesterday, calling it “Lightfoot’s pension blunder” to deal as she did with Governor P.

Stunning because it’s still early in her honeymoon period to be accused so bluntly in a head, especially with her landslide victory only three months old. Jumped out at me, I know.

The head, stunning as it may be, seems justified in view of Miller’s acidulous commentary, including this:

What this rookie mayor doesn’t yet seem to quite grasp is that if she wants state help for her city then she has to make friends and allies. And you obviously don’t do that by allowing the state’s leaders to be blindsided by a tax proposal which has zero chance of being considered, let alone passed.

You also don’t make friends by setting up the governor and the General Assembly to take the blame for your own failure. They aren’t the City Council, which can be pressured into standing at the new mayor’s command during an inauguration ceremony. [Emphasis added]

So much for Miller’s perspicacity.

Time for some acidity at this end, however, in re his:

The governor has flatly ruled out any sort of state assumption of local pension liability. He explained, with strong evidence, that doing so could quickly hurtle the state’s bond rating into junk territory.

He wants to say (and surely grinds his teeth over not saying) . . . hurl? Or propel? Or maybe just send?

But hurtle? No. Things hurtle, you don’t hurtle them. It’s intransitive.

It’s spelled out by a veteran

Read the whole thing. Ferraresi’s point is that not only are Francis and the Italian bishops pushing a very unpopular immigration line, but they also have more or less abandoned the field on abortion and LGBT. Into this gap steps Salvini, to the horror of Church leadership.f

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/as-the-vatican-turns-pope-francis-vigano/

. . . has nothing good to say about it, sums it up as this:

We cannot now invent the Church as if the Church is old-fashioned and now to be refashioned according to those calling themselves progressives, who want to build the Church according to their ideas.

Which precisely is what “those calling themselves progressives” want, in or out of the church; and no good can come of it. They have these ideas, you see . . .

Sent as is.

The Anglican connection . . .