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.

Fr. Rutler’s Weekly Column June 7, 2019 There is dark humor in counting the number of “motivational speakers” who flood public television stations, and go as quickly as they come, just like the profitable “self-help” books of the type that counsel: “God wants you to be happy.” In some churches, there is a tendency to replicate this kind of “snowflake” Gospel that shortchanges people out of the truth. Our opioid generation, whether drugged chemically or culturally, has had more suicides than in any decade since the Second World War. It does not understand Socrates’ statement: “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates was not “self-motivated” but was moved by the one True God for whom he searched as best he could long before Pentecost. Unlike modern motivational speakers who retire to Malibu or Hawaii to count their royalties, Socrates drank hemlock as a primitive, albeit heroic, sacrifice for objective truth. There are those who would reduce Christ to a glorified motivational speaker. Thomas Jefferson edited the New Testament so that the Resurrection and Pentecost were irrelevant, making the Sermon on the Mount the pinnacle of Christ’s teaching. But this reduced the Messiah to an aphorist. Even had that been the case, there were others more verbose than any “Sage of Galilee.” In the eighteenth century, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield wrote his son four hundred letters on how to live as a gentleman, oblivious to the fact that the youth had been born out of wedlock to a housemaid left to live in penury. A wiser author of epigrams was the last of the “Five Good Emperors,” Marcus Aurelius, who was a Stoic in the second century—and if you have to be a pagan, Stoicism is as good a way as any, if not as much fun as Epicureanism. Both of those men warned against procrastination. Lord Chesterfield coined the phrase: “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” This was wisdom, albeit snobbish, and not unlike Benjamin Franklin’s homely advice on how to make a man “healthy, wealthy and wise.” Marcus Aurelius was almost prophetic, and remarkably so since he left words he did not expect to be recorded but which ring true to Christ, when he wrote: “Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage.” The Gospel is not a compendium of maxims, nor is Christ an amiable motivational speaker expecting to retire in Galilee and count his royalties. When he tells the scribe to follow immediately and not bury his father, and forbids another would-be follower to tarry to say farewell to his family, he is speaking of procrastination that defers the primacy of God to tomorrow. But Christ can only be a soul’s Saviour if he saves today: “Today if you should hear his voice, harden not your hearts . . .” (Hebrews 3:15). Subscribers, Like what you’re reading? If so, please consider making a special donation to the Church of St. Michael the Archangel at 424 West 34th Street, so that we can afford to continue distributing the column! If you have Parish Pay, you can also contribute to the column by clicking the button below. Parish Pay P.S. – You can also now hear Father’s Sunday homilies. Simply go to https://fathergeorgerutler.podbean.com