Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Meet the Next Doctor of the Church

JhnewmanProbably.

I mean, it’s not certain, but at this point it’s probable.

Why do I say that?

And who am I talking about?

If you don’t recognize his picture, it’s John Henry Cardinal Newman.

As to why is it probable, well, he is to be beatified.

GET THE STORY.

If he is beatified, it is likely that he will (at some point) be declared a saint.

(NOTE: There is already an investigation underway of a possible second miracle needed for sainthood.)

If that happens, it’s a dead certain lock that he will be named a doctor of the Church.

Why?

Because Newman’s writings made the kind of important theological contribution to Catholic teaching that doctors of the Church make.

In particular, his theory on the development of doctrine helped the Church in a very important way by allowing theologians to better articulate the manner in which doctrine progresses, how something can be implicit in one age and made more explicit and precise with the course of time. He also did important work on the doctrine of conscience and other subjects.

Newman’s theological contributions are so substantial that if you look at the index of people cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and if you eliminate all the saints and popes, you’re left with basically three names: Newman, Origen, and Tertullian.

At least those three get mentioned more than anybody else in the not-a-saint, not-a-pope category.

Tertullian will never be a saint, because he died a schismatic.

Origen is undergoing something of a rehabilitation, as can be seen from the kind of treatment B16 gave him in his series of Wednesday audiences on early Christian figures.

But Newman is the closest to being given the title "doctor."

It may even happen at the same time as his canonization, should that be forthcoming.

MORE ON NEWMAN.

A Pope for the Internet Age?

Pope Benedict’s trip to the United States is obviously a focus of attention right now.

I’d like to CHT the reader who e-mailed a link to THIS STORY by Peggy Noonan.

In it, she reflects on the personal styles of JP2 and B16, and offers a number of insights, among them this:

A Vatican reporter last week said John Paul was the perfect pope for the television age, "a man of images." Think of the pictures of him storm-tossed, tempest-tossed, standing somewhere and leaning into a heavy wind, his robes whipping behind him, holding on to his crosier, the staff bearing the image of a crucified Christ, with both hands, for dear life, as if consciously giving Christians a picture of what it is to be alive.

Benedict, the reporter noted, is the perfect pope for the Internet age. He is a man of the word. You download the text of what he said, print it, ponder it.

Actually, I don’t print it. I have my text-to-speech engine read it to me and then ponder it, but I get the idea.

Now if the Holy See would only get the perfect web site for the Internet age.

Unfortunately, not everyone is as appreciative of B16 as Mrs. Noonan.

Stephen Prothero, the Chair of the Department of Religion for Jesuit-run Boston College, for example, ISN’T:

Young American Catholics treated John Paul II like a rock star. Yes, he was socially and theologically conservative, but at least they could relate to the guy with the "Popemobile" and the smile and the energy to travel to some 130 countries during his 26 years at the Holy See. But can they relate to Benedict XVI? And can he relate to them? What can a pope who is an academic theologian first and foremost offer young Americans, save for dogmas they don’t believe in and rituals they do not understand? Is he coming to scold us? Or to hug us?

We are about to find out.

Actually, someone should scold Stephen Prothero, but it should be someone other than B16.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there’s LOTS OF COVERAGE OF THE PAPAL VISIT FROM EWTN.

Classic Lit Bleg

Perov_dostoevsky_2
Hey, Tim Jones, here.

One thing I have wanted to do for a while is go back and read all the classic Western literature I missed in college. They don’t exactly require a lot of reading from art students (which is a pity) so I feel impoverished in that area.

What I would like is some guidance. If anyone knows a good list of, say, the top 100 works of Western literature (the Must Read stuff), please let me know and provide a link, if you can. Also, please feel free to make your own classic lit recommendations in the combox.

I’m already primed to read a few by Dostoevsky. That’s him, pictured. A portrait by Russian artist Vasily Perov (1834-1882).

(Visit Tim Jones’ blog Old World Swine).

Pope Benedict XVI . . . Now In English!

It’s really cool being able to put the pope directly on your blog, so here goes: B16 as guest blogger.

Here is a video from Pope Benedict introducing his forthcoming visit to the United States.

What’s ultra cool about this, to me anyway, is that I’m hearing the pope speaking in English. I’ve read I don’t know how many documents he’s written, but there is nothing like hearing someone speaking your native language to give you a sense of them on a personal level (even if they are reading from a prepared text, as is the case here).

MORE HERE.

Calling Priests “Father” In Latin

They don’t.

Call priests "Father" in Latin, that is.

This is a fact that came to my attention recently when I was reading a volume of Roman Replies and CLSA Advisory Opinions (a canon law journal that prints what its name indicates) that had a revision from the reign of John Paul II of the rescript of laicization that is given to priests who are returned to the lay state (in terms of how they function in the Church; they still remain priests ontologically).

The revision was notable in that it allowed bishops to do things like, after a period of time, allow the ex-priest to serve as a lector or an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.

What caught my attention, though, was the way the document refers to the priest.

In the English translation, it says something like "Father _____________ of the Diocese of ______________ is hereby . . . blah, blah, blah, etc."

But in the original Latin, it doesn’t say the Latin equivalent of "Father _____________," which would be "Pater _____________."

Instead, it said, "D.nus _____________."

D.nus?

I recognized that as almost certainly an abbreviation for "Dominus" or "Lord," which is a title that is still used for clergy in Latin, as it is in some countries (like England) as a title for nobility.

Thus when B16 was elected, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez announced:

« Fratelli e sorelle carissimi ! ¡ Queridísimos hermanos y hermanas ! Biens chers frères et sœurs ! Liebe Brüder und Schwestern ! Dear brothers and sisters ! Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum : Habemus papam ! Emminentissimum ac reverendissimum dominum, dominum Iosephum, sanctæ romanæ Ecclesiæ cardinalem Ratzinger, qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedicti decimi sexti. »

The blue part would be "Lord Joseph (Cardinal of the holy roman Church) Ratzinger."

(BTW, you can listen to that online HERE. I just love listening to it and recalling that day. I especially like the brief pause before he enthusiastically says "Ratzinger." WHEEEE! I love it. HERE ARE MORE HABEMUS PAPAM RECORDINGS OF OTHER POPES.)

Anyway, after looking at the rescript, I called a friend who is a Latinist and who is well acquainted with Church documents in Latin and asked two questions:

1) Is Dominus the normal honorific used for priests in Church documents.

Yes.

2) Do they use Pater or an synonym?

No.

So it seems that calling priests "Father" is something that happens in vernacular languages like English (Father) or Spanish (Padre) or Arabic (Abunah) but not (at least not typically) in the Church’s official documents.

Interesting.

I said to my friend: "I bet there are a bunch of priests who don’t know they are ‘Lord So-and-So’ in Latin."

My friend: "Let’s not tell them."

California Home Schooling Update

EXCERPT:

I think the state court is looking at the state Constitution upside down. The court finds no constitutional right to homeschool one’s children. But in a free country, people are free to do anything not expressly prohibited by law. If the Constitution is silent about homeschooling, then the right is reserved to the people. That’s how the Framers of the U.S. Constitution said things are supposed to work.

Last week, the appellate court surprised everyone by agreeing to rehear the case.

GET THE STORY.

NewsWeak – “Well, That About Wraps It Up For God”

As always, the rumor of God’s demise is a tad premature. The
journalist (and I use the term only in the driest academic sense) of this piece is all a-twitter because an upcoming experiment might provide evidence of a particle that might lead to more experiments that might
one day lead to a Great and Glorious Unified Theory that permanently
consigns God to the dustbin of history, and she wants to be there with
a dustpan.

Archimedes is once supposed to have said something like "Give me a
lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I can move the world".
Journalist Ana Elena Azpurua is all giddy over the mere rumor of a
"lever long enough", but fails to consider the lack of any place to
stand.

Her problem is this; How does she expect scientists to
mathematically disprove the existence of God, when they can’t prove the
existence of mathematics? I’m puzzled how she hopes Science will go
about proving that faith is unreasonable, when it can’t begin to demonstrate even that reason
is reasonable. All Ms. Azpurua’s faith is in Scientism, her chosen
religion, and she is on the verge of a religious ecstacy, overtaken by
mysterious utterances that sound a great deal like gibberish;

"At some point will it be possible to find proof that God or the Ultimate Designer does not exist?" or, "What about possible contributions toward finding a final theory? Would that upset religious believers?"

I
don’t care how many theories and equations you stack on one another,
explain "2+2=4". For that matter, explain why "2" is not just a private
concept to which you have some inexplicable sentimental attachment.
Face it, madame, the first and fundamental action of Reason is an
unreflective leap of blind faith. Faith in our senses, first, and in
our ability to rely on reasonable guesses after that. You (and your
interview guest) are as thoroughly religious, in your fashion, as any
cloistered nun.

Add to that the fact that we learn absolutely nothing of scientific
interest from the interview, and you begin to understand how such
science groupies as Ms. Azpurua are doing more to destroy real science
than any tub-thumping fundamentalist preacher could ever hope to. She’s
too busy salivating (over the prospect of mankind handing God his pink
slip) to actually ask any questions that have to do with, you know,
science. It makes the article not only silly, but mind-numbingly dull.

Way to go, Newsweek.

(Visit Tim Jones’ blog Old World Swine)

An Important Question

A while back I was watching the 1970s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and there’s a moment where the four heroes are holed up in Donald Sutherland’s San Francisco apartment/house/whatever, and they’re surrounded by pod people, and they can’t phone for help because the pods control the phone system, and they can’t stay where they are, and they don’t know what to do or how to defend themselves, and in this panicky moment Jeff Goldblum turns to Donald Sutherland and anxiously says, "Do you own a gun?"

"No," Donald Sutherland says sheepishly.

And at that moment every gun owner in the audience wants to say, "Yeah! Take that, you 1970s Bay Area stereotype! That’s where you and all your gun-controlling friends will get the human race: Overrun by shape-changing extraterrestrial plants!"

LET’S HOPE THE SUPREME COURT DOES BETTER.