What Cardinal Avery Dulles said about capital punishment

From a Fr. George Rutler essay:

One essay, “Hanging Concentrates the Mind”, particularly caught my attention. Fr Rutler is not of the view that capital punishment is always wrong. Indeed, he quotes Cardinal Avery Dulles: “If the pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millennia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture.”

As reviewed by Francis Phillips in the Catholic Herald.

Well, Francis has never been a fan of tradition, whether he knows it or not . . . Nor has he shown himself overly familiar with papal teaching. As for Scripture, he has a way of quoting it to his purpose.

I’d say he’s ready for a Pauline conversion. Lots of us are, for that matter. Woe.

Facing the people in 1955, Paul Claudel’s lament continued . . .

Paul Claudel’s final statement.

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

The new, experimental mass in France drew fevered objections from the poet, dramatist, and diplomat Paul Claudel in a Figaro article a month before he died . . .

“It is true that in the traditional liturgy,” priest with back to worshipers, “the most moving part of the Holy Sacrifice is hidden from the faithful. But it is not hidden from their hearts and their faith.”

At Solemn High Masses of old, this sense of wonderment was such that the sub-deacon, one of the regulation three celebrants, at the foot of the altar remained standing during the Offertory, hiding his face with his left hand in reverence.

“We too are invited to pray,” he said, “to withdraw into ourselves, not in a spirit of curiosity but of recollection.

[Emphasis added throughout]

He took note of the (Catholic) Eastern-rite practice of in effect hiding the altar behind the iconostasis, a…

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Will Jussie Smollett make the hate hoax list?

Blog called Moonbattery has a “hate hoax” list, on which the Jussie Smollett story has not yet arrived, pending fulfillment of certain qualifications.

First, the list as of 1/29/19, at least the first screen-full, of which there are dozens more:

Hate Hoax List

Nathan Phillips

Marcus Boyd and Derrick Brooks

Fynn Ajani Arthur

Drake University Coed of Color

Nicole Wallace

Michael Kadar

Masud Ali

Anthony Derlunas

Heath Levey

fiji

Anna Ayers

Seneca Valley High School mean girls

Adwoa Lewis

Grand Rapids golden showers

Etc.

Then the qualifications/requirements:

Jan 29 2019

Will Jussie Smollett Join Hate Hoax List?

As a general policy, hoaxes must be confirmed by confession or police investigation to qualify for the Hate Hoax List. Empire star Jussie Smollett may soon find his way onto it.

Presenting qualifications so far:

Smollett was allegedly attacked at 2:00 this morning in Chicago by two men in ski masks.

Reports of the incident state that Smollett was walking from a local Subway sandwich shop when the two men started yelling homophobic and racial slurs to get his attention, including: ‘Aren’t you that f***ot “Empire” n*****?’

Smollett sits atop the Cultural Marxist caste system, being both black and homosexual.

The two then started beating on the actor while pouring bleach on him.

A noose was said to have been tied around his neck during the attack.

Racists always carry around nooses and bleach when they are out and about in Chicago in the middle of the night during single-digit cold for just such purposes.

Sources close to the singer told TMZ that both of the men were white and yelled that ‘this is MAGA country.’

Who would have guessed that homogeneously Democratic Chicago, colloquially known as Chicongo, is MAGA country rife with white supremacists?

Surprisingly, the assailants were not said to be wearing MAGA hats.

At least (conservatively), it’s 50-50 the Jussie incident will make it.

The crime of sentimentalism . . .

Yvor Winters, cont’d.

Not for attribution

More from Yvor Winters . . .

This association-of-ideas idea — promoted by 18th-century philosophers Hobbes and Locke and fingered by Winters — seems to absolve the thinker of a need for coherence and unity, leaving him with nothing but emphasis — lots or less of it depending on the weather. In other words, your ideas are great, kid, even if they don’t hold water. They’re yours, aren’t they? And who am I to say you’re wrong? Etc.

Romantic poets — one of whom coined or made memorable the phrase “blithe spirit” — followed Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney and looked in their hearts and wrote. (And there’s something to be said for that.) Winters, however, favored “a logical, plain-spoken poetic,” as reviewer-commentator David Yezzi put it in the June 1997 New Criterion. This meant he vastly preferred the far less known and honored Barnabe Googe to Sidney, both…

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“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” by John Milton

Hear Milton out.

Not for attribution

The blind poet asked God what he could do for Him. The answer:

“God doth not need
   Either man’s work or His own gifts. Who best
   Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
   And post o’er land and ocean without rest;
   They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Seems that would go for the rest of us, physically blind or not. A reminder to hang loose while doing the best we can.

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Newsweek’s source for its “EMPIRE’ ACTOR JUSSIE SMOLLETT HOSPITALIZED”?

Plus its closer, “Smollett was admitted to Northwestern Hospital and released on Tuesday morning”?

Conradicted by the police account in Chi Trib:

After being treated for lacerations to his face, Smollett did not spend the night at the hospital, [police spokesman Anthony] Guglielmi said.

It’s entirely Smollett’s story in any case.

From Newsweek:

Much of the online conversation surrounds the possibility of the “Make America Great Again” appearing in the altercation. It’s unconfirmed that Trump-endorsed hats or sayings were used.

Newsweek:

Unconfirmed accounts claim the men who attacked Smollett were wearing ski masks and yelled “This is MAGA [Make America Great Again] country]”

Sun-Times:

Smollett told officers the attack happened at 2 a.m. about one block away. Not much else can be determined from the [“really dark”] photos [both Chicago papers ran].

Well not much can be determined by anything but Smollett’s account and his condition at the hospital, apparently in its emergency room.

So we should stay tuned, with only Smollett’s word as to how he got lacerations to his face and neck.

Facing the people in 1955, Paul Claudel’s lament

Famed dramatist reacts . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

From the eminent poet, dramatist, and diplomat Paul Claudel, January 23, 1955, in the French daily Figaro a month before he died:

I wish to protest with all my strength against the growing [unauthorized] practise in France of saying Mass facing the people.

He explained:

The most basic principle of religion is that God holds first place and that the good of man is merely a consequence of the recognition and the practical application of this essential dogma.

Basic, that. Let God be God in your worship. The rest will follow.

More:

The Mass is the homage par excellence which we render to God by the Sacrifice which the priest offers to Him in our name on the altar of His Son. It is us led by the priest and as one with him, going to God to offer Him hostias et preces [Victims and prayers]. It is not…

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