Economic Wisdom

The current controversy over same sex "marriage" and the increasing level of social acceptance of a variety of other socially destructive behaviors and entertainments should be alarming to all of us, especially in view of the fact that the past has been prologue , and is likely to be so in the future. Each of us is a sinner, of course, no exceptions; the problem is acceptance of our destructive behaviors as harmless when, in reality, they're sins precisely because they're destructive.

Here's a telling observation by a nineteenth century French economist, Frederic Bastiat: "When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress, and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe."

Wouldn't it benefit everyone to take note, and maybe take action, even if politically incorrect, to avoid the "terrible lessons of catastrophe"?

R. E. Hurley, M.D.

Is Christ Still King? Sunday November 24 6 PM

We have heard a great deal about Religious Freedom the past couple of years, but what does that really mean? What about The Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Is Christ still King or has that teaching been dropped?

At this year’s Christ the King Forum, Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S., S.T.D., will address one of the gravest doctrinal issues that has troubled and divided the Church since Vatican Council II. Many traditionalist Catholics complain that the Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom has "dethroned" Christ the King from his rightful sovereignty over human social and political life by embodying a twofold contradiction of weighty papal documents from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Its first error, they say, is to present Church-State separation as the best constitutional arrangement for all nations, even those with predominantly Catholic populations. Secondly, they read the Declaration as teaching that non-Catholics, in every historical period and in every country on earth, have a natural right to civil freedom (i.e., immunity from government coercion) in publicly manifesting their false religious beliefs.

Click here to register before Wednesday 20-November

AHC Lecture Series: Introduction to Theology, Faith Seeking Understanding

The twelfth lecture series, sponsored by the Association of Hebrew Catholics and given by Dr. Larry Feingold began on Sept. 25, 2013. The series is entitled: Introduction to Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding. Dr. Feingold is a Credo Advisory Board Member, the AHC Director of Theology, and Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, St. Louis. The eleven lectures of this series, along with the question/answer sessions, may be listened to or downloaded to your computer at no cost, after they have been posted to our web site. When all the lectures have been given, they will also available from our web store as an mp3 disc.

For those who wish to attend, the lectures are given on Wednesdays, from 7:00-9:00 pm in the Gannon Room of the Cathedral Basilica Rectory. Entrance and parking is on the west (left) side of the Rectory. You may request more information here.

What Young Catholics Truly Want

One advantage I suppose to the condition of never quite having grown up is I spend time with young adults. This is becoming more and more difficult as I am less and less young myself -- before my hair turned entirely grey I could fit in a little easier. Still, one thing I hear from time to time is a cry in the wilderness about what young Catholics truly want.  Maybe I get to hear it because I'm 1) not their parents, and 2) not a priest. But especially from the better educated or more sensitive, some variation on this is common

The problem is all these pastors, youth pastors and music directors keep telling us young folk what bores us, what we really like, what we find interesting. And guess what, THEY’RE WRONG!

There's a young woman with a blog who calls herself Rachel and wrote an essay What Young Catholics Truly Want. I recommend it. Some of the comments are evidently from priests who seem to know what Young Catholics Truly Want and want (evidently) to give it to them, but they're afraid of alienating Catholics my age on up. I don't quite know what to tell them about that particularly, but it sure looks to me like the concept of Youth Ministry should be revisited. Any Young Catholics reading this? What do you think?

HHS Mandate A Blessing in Disguise? 11 August 2013 6 PM

As of January 1, 2014 the HHS Mandate will take full effect for religious institutions. But the Mandate itself is only one of a series of issues that have challenged religious freedom in the United States in the last few years.

Did you hear about the photographer in New Mexico (Elane Photography) who was sued for refusing to photograph a gay wedding? How about the florist in Washington (Arlene’s Flowers) who was sued – by her own state’s Attorney General – for refusing to provide flowers for a gay wedding? Or the baker in Colorado (Masterpiece Cakeshop) who faces not only fines but even jail time for his refusal to provide cakes for gay weddings?

In many different kinds of cases we’re seeing that the fundamental push in our culture is not really to ‘promote diversity’ or even ‘tolerate’ everyone’s views, but to enforce a new set of cultural and legal norms – even at the cost of violating religious freedom. The evidence is mounting that – as Robbie George said – the days of comfortable Catholicism are over.

How should Catholics respond when our religious freedom is threatened? And how can these challenges actually be a blessing in disguise – an invitation to draw closer to Jesus?

Click here to register before Wednesday 7-August

Logistics

This Forum will be held at the Rigali Center, not at the Crowne Plaza hotel as usual. The address is 20 Archbishop May Dr; St Louis, MO 63119, but that doesn’t help very much. The Rigali Center is off of S. Laclede Station Road, about 8/10ths of a mile north of Watson Road. Click here for a map.

Our August Forum with Archbishop Carlson will include a delicious buffet dinner, catered by Genesis. You may recall that they served us in some of our past forums and received rave reviews of their food quality.

We’re going to get underway at 6 PM sharp, so please arrive early enough to get checked-in beforehand.

Help us Promote this Forum

Click here to download a flyer. Distribute at your church or school. Give one to your RCIA leaders. Send a link to a friend. Share on Facebook. Bring a friend.

Archbishop Carlson's Sermon

In case you missed it, here is a transcription of Archbishop Carlson's Sermon given at the closing Mass of the Fortnight For Freedom, July 3rd, 2013. For the time being at least, you can click here to hear and see the St. Louis Review's video made at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica, with about 1,500 in attendance. It may go behind the paywall, we don't know. The transcript was made from the video by a Credo Board member, and he added some footnotes and hyperlinks. The opening greetings have been omitted. Without further ado, the Most Reverend Robert J. Carlson, Archbishop of St. Louis:

… As I welcome you to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, as we gather to pray this day for the protection of Religious Freedom, we do so on the Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle. St. Thomas is probably best remembered for the passage in today's Gospel that speaks about his doubt of the resurrection of our Lord. But through God's great mercy and love, he was able to encounter in a personal way as each of must Jesus Christ. And through God's good Grace, his heart was opened. And he said to the Lord as we read in today's Gospel making his great act of faith “my Lord and my God¹”.

Go and Announce the Gospel of the Lord Archbishop Robert J Carlson

Archbishop J. Carlson has written a pastoral letter for the Year of Faith titled Go and Announce the Gospel of the Lord  wherein he gives a forthright recitation of what Credo Co-Founder Ken Jones called Leading Catholic Indicators, asks what it means for the future, and moves on to examine what caused it and what can be done about it.

He identifies three causes: 1) Confusion following Second Vatican; 2) Secularization, and 3) Personal Sin, which his Excellency called “Personal Choices”. But he wrote unequivocally about sin. He hints at solutions in this section: leadership, education, engagement and personal holiness.

New Life in Renewal A Response to Vatican II

In response to the challenge that the Second Vatican Council presented to religious congregations, which was to renew the charism of their institute according to the authentic and original spirit of their foundress, seven sisters participated in an experiment that ultimately led to the forming and founding of a new branch of  Mercy.

The vision of Mother Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the congregation, was to establish Houses of Mercy. The Sisters strive to develop and amplify this vision within the mission of comprehensive health care, understood as the care of the entire person (spiritual, intellectual, physical, and emotional) and the Church has approved this for their particular institute.

Register on-line before Wednesday 5-June by clicking here.

Peter Kreeft Lecture on Blaise Pascal and the New Evangelization

The first annual John Cardinal Glennon Lecture in Philosophy was a Peter Kreeft Lecture on Blaise Pascal and the New Evangelization. This assigned topic turned out a lively recap of his 2003 book Christianity for Modern Pagans, which is a commentary on (some of) Pascal’s Pensées (thoughts), which in turn was a posthumously published collection of little notes he’d made and didn’t live long enough to ruin by turning them into a book. If you’re wondering what Pascal might have to offer “apostate Christendom” besides his famous Wager, Kreeft said he thinks Pascal is the single most effective apologist he knows of for moderns. What follows here is only one example from the lecture and is very much abbreviated, so by all means order a copy of the lecture by calling St. Joseph Radio at (636)447-6000. $10, tax & postage included. If you can send a little extra, it will help pay the rent and carry on with an important (if grossly underutilized) service. We recommend buying several copies and giving them to any modern pagans you may know. Maybe it'll whet their appetites for the book.

Can Dignitatis Humanae Be Reconciled With Traditional Catholic Doctrine?

Can Dignitatis Humanae be reconciled with traditional Catholic doctrine? A new book-length debate on this question between Credo Spiritual Adviser Fr. Brian Harrison O.S. and Arnold T. Guminski has just come off the press and is available for order from St. Augustine's Press by clicking here.

One of the gravest and most divisive issues confronting the Catholic Church in recent decades—a major factor in an ongoing institutionalized rupture between Rome and at least half a million traditionalist Catholics – is the question of whether Vatican II’s Declaration Dignitatis Humanae (DH) can be reconciled with traditional Church doctrine on religious liberty. Although the book is not a primer on the Church's traditional teaching and is not an exhaustive treatment of DH, it does provide a tour and "a sound albeit select introduction to the history of Church teaching on religious liberty."

Don't Be an Idiot says Anthony Esolen

Doctor Anthony Esolen, professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island, presented “Fatherhood and Freedom” as 2013 Frederick Philip Kenkel Memorial Lecture for the Feast of St. Joseph, co-sponsored by Credo of the Catholic Laity and the Catholic Union of Missouri. With over 130 in attendance, Professor Esolen explained the necessity of fathers and fatherhood, not only in the family, but also in society.

Touching on works by Milton and even ancient classics such as by Dante, the members of Credo were given illustrations of the largely unchanging role of fathers from times long past up to the present, in societies stretching from east to west.  Far from being only a western, or Christian, or relatively recent institution in the history of man, the role and identity of fatherhood is universal and has always been an important, even necessary component for the preservation of freedom and law.

Francis Pope of Firsts

Working away on the next issue of Evangelium with EWTN in the background, I heard “I announce to you a great joy: We have a pope! The most eminent and most reverend lord, Lord Jorge Mario, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Bergoglio, who has taken for himself the name Francis.” It was of course in Latin, but because of many influences including Credo, I was able to catch most of it.

So Cardinal Bergoglio has decided to call himself Francis. We have not yet learnt which Francis he means to name himself for — Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, or even Francis de Sales. But he is a Pope of firsts: the first Francis, the first from the New World, the first Jesuit Pope, very likely the first Pope to ask the people to pray for God to bless him before he blessed them. Probably the first Bishop of Rome to greet his new diocese with “good evening, everybody” and to close with “go get some sleep”. And the first pope properly called a son of Second Vatican.

Audio Recordings from Day of Recollection Available from St. Joseph Radio

A successful CREDO Day of Recollection in the Chapel of Saint Anselm at the Oratory of Saints Gregory and Augustine last Saturday proved a worthwhile occasion to enhance our Lenten observance and enjoy some Christian fellowship. Father Ambrose Bennett of the Saint Louis Priory presented the opening conference and this was followed by the Sacrament of Penance as the rosary was prayed in common. Father Bennett also celebrated the Mass and our own Father Brian Harrison was in attendance to sing the day’s Epistle and provide a homily.

The Mass was very uplifting, being sung in the Extraordinary Form with the schola of St. Mary of Victories under the able direction of Mr. Stan Metheny. After a catered lunch and a break, Father Bennett gave a second conference. New to our annual event was sung Vespers, concluding with Benediction. The CREDO Day of Recollection is an annual event. If you missed this year, we hope to see you at our next event!

Audio recordings of Fr. Ambrose’s conferences and Fr. Harrison’s sermon from the Day of Recollection are available from St. Joseph Radio for $12 including postage. 2 CD set, about 1-3/4 hours of material. Call (636) 447-6000 or e-mail ordermo1@saintjosephradio.net. (Fr. Ambrose made two Chesterton references!)

Anthony Esolen Fatherhood and Freedom April 14, 2013

Anthony Esolen, acclaimed author, speaker and professor of English at Providence College in Rhode Island, will be the featured speaker at the annual St. Joseph Forum sponsored by Credo and the Catholic Union of Missouri.  Dr. Esolen is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization  and Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of You Child, which Peter Kreeft called “A worthy successor to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.”  He is a regular contributor to Magnificat, Touchstone, First Things, Catholic World Report, Latin Mass, and the author of published articles and essays beyond counting.  Fr. C.J. McCloskey describes Esolen’s recently released Reflections on the Christian Life as “written by today’s best Catholic writer in the English speaking world – and this is his best book yet.” (Click the image to order from Sophia Institute Press. Bring it to the Forum and have it inscribed by the author.)

Dr. Esolen’s talk will include an analysis of the important connection between fatherhood and freedom, how the father naturally represents the claims of law, and how all just law, far from inhibiting our freedom, inhibits the license that enslaves, and clears away a wide space for freedom.

Join us at 6 PM Sunday April14^th for an evening of stimulating analysis and discussion at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Clayton, Missouri. Non-Members $35; Members $30; Group of 8+ $30. Menu choices this time are Salmon or Chicken Parmesan. As ever, you may order a vegetarian meal, but it is Chef’s Choice as to exactly what it is. Entrees are served with salad, rolls, appropriate veggie, dessert, iced tea, and coffee. Free inside parking at the 7777 Bonhomme Parking Garage. The bridge from the garage to the hotel is on the Orange Level. The garage gate will be open when you leave. First time? Other Questions? contact us here and be sure to leave your phone number.

Register Here before Wednesday, April 10^th.

Book Review: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization

Book Review
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization
By Anthony Esolen
Regnery Publishing, Inc. 2008. 310 pp.
Reviewed by Robert Hurley, M.D.

[editor’s note: Anthony Esolen will be Credo’s St. Joseph Dinner speaker in St. Louis on Sunday, April 14^th, 2013 with a talk titled Fatherhood and Freedom]

If you’ve ever wondered how Western civilization arrived at the present predicament in which it finds itself, morally, fiscally and relationally, and how it might extricate itself, and if you aren’t in a position to spend a lifetime finding answers to those important questions, this book is for you.

NaProTechnology Naturally Addresses Infertility Issues 7 PM Thursday March 14

• Learn how NaProTechnology Naturally Addresses Infertility Issues


• NaProTechnology is a Major Breakthrough in Monitoring and Maintaining a Woman's Reproductive and Gynecological Health.


• Local physicians who have practiced NaProTechnology for a combined 37 years will explain the science & methodology behind it.


• Hear from real women who have experienced real solutions.


• Click Here to Read a St. Louis Review article

Featuring

• Richard Brennan, M.D., ObGyn


• Michael Dixon, M.D., ObGyn & Credo Advisory Board Member


• Patrick Yeung, M.D., ObGyn


• Mrs. Jennifer Brinker (Click Here for a Story)


• ... and more

Thursday, March 14, 2013
7 pm to 8:30 pm
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Parish Center
4900 Ringer Road (Click Here for Map & Directions)
Oakville, MO 63129
No Charge – Light Refreshments
RSVP requested but not required
To RSVP & for more information please contact:
Patsy Kalbac (Click Here to E-mail), 314-894-2384,

Reviewed: Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child by Anthony Esolen

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child
By Anthony Esolen
ISI Books 2010. Xiii + 237 pp.
Reviewed by Robert E Hurley, M.D.

Editor's Note: Anthony Esolen will be Credo's St. Joseph Dinner speaker in St. Louis 14-April-2013 with a talk titled Fatherhood and Freedom. For a preview of his wit, watch this interview on Fox & Friends where he pranks the anchors. Listen to Esolen but watch the male anchor.

“Don’t buy this book – unless you like non-stop wit, energetic writing, fresh insight, and abundant wisdom about how to shape a good life for your children, and maybe even yourself.” -- Robert Royal, President, Faith and Reason Institute

Day of Recollection

Mark your calendars for the 2012 Credo Day of Recollection: Saturday, March 2^nd, 2013. We return this year to the Chapel of St.  Anselm at the Oratory of Ss. Gregory and Augustine in Creve Coeur, located on the grounds of The Abbey, at 530 Mason Rd.

The Rev. Ambrose Bennett, O.S.B. will give two conferences, and Credo's spiritual advisor, the Rev. Brian Harrison , O.S. will be the homilist at Holy Mass. We believe you will be inspired by our Day of Recollection Speakers. Take advantage of this opportunity to help make this coming Lent one of your most efficacious.

Click Here to Register by Monday, February 25th. Seating is limited to 80.

$25 per person. Lunch is included.

If you need a flyer for your church, school, Catholic Bookstore, or anything else, click here.

Celebrating the New Mass in Latin

This Sunday, February 10^th, at 9:00 a.m., St. Mary of Victories (map and directions) will celebrate a special Mass, sung in Latin and English in the ordinary form (Novus Ordo), to mark the first five years of continuous Sunday celebration of Holy Mass in this form. St. Mary's is currently the only church in the St. Louis Archdiocese offering a public Sunday Latin Mass in the ordinary form, and no other parish in the Archdiocese has ever offered it on a regular basis for anything like this period of time.

This Mass with Gregorian chants will be celebrated with the priest facing versus orientem during the Liturgy of the Eucharist (second half of Mass) at our beautiful high altar. Communicants have the option of receiving the Host either kneeling along the altar rail in the traditional style, or standing in the aisle, following the more usual modern practice.

Fr. Harrison and everyone at St. Mary's warmly invite you to join us for this occasion, and thus experience the nearest thing now available to the form of Eucharistic celebration that the Fathers of Vatcian II had in mind when they promulgated the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

Brunch will be served in the church hall free of charge straight after the Mass, thanks to the ladies of our community.

Below you can read the full text of an article about this Mass which was published in a slightly abbreviated form in last Friday's St Louis Review (in the "Viewpoints" section, p. 25).

Saint Thomas More a Model for Our Time

[caption id="attachment_1676" align="alignleft" width="143"] Hilaire Belloc[/caption]

It strikes me that we have in Saint Thomas More a model for our time. The question we face is similar: shall religion be supreme or shall temporal opinion? What is the extent of the accommodation that may be reached? Has truth itself a claim on our very lives? And have we the courage of Saint Thomas More to act entirely without support? Read this talk given by Hilaire Belloc in July of 1929, before Thomas More was raised to the altars, at the More Memorial Exhibition, and then let us in these days invoke the patronage of Saint Thomas More, earning it, so to speak, by our own actions, and lending him a support in posterity he has not found in England, France, or elsewhere in the ruin of Christendom.

This was delivered as a speech and has the quality of spoken word. Further, it had sentence structures more complex than we are used to and was given by an Englishman, not an American. My advice to you is to read it aloud in full voice so you will slow down and pay attention to how it sounds. At the very least, imagine you are reading aloud, moving your lips. I found it in a book compiled by Patrick Cahill titled Hilaire Belloc One Thing and Another A Miscellany from His Uncollected Essays, Hollis & Carter, 1955. In turn Cahill found it in The Fame of Blessed Thomas More, Sheed & Ward, 1929.

The Witness to Abstract Truth

by Hilaire Belloc

I come to speak to you to-day upon the Blessed Thomas More, and I come to speak of him under one aspect alone; for what one man can say in the few brief moments of a public address should not, upon such a subject, touch more than one aspect, lest his audience be confused. But that aspect is surely the chief one in connection with such a name.

Federico Barocci Renaissance Master

The St. Louis Art Museum has an exhibit up Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master through this coming Sunday, January 20th, that is well-worth seeing. This particular preview image here is better than many you will find online -- the colors and tone-scale are pretty true, but nothing compared to seeing the real thing in person. The idea that "religious art" is dark and somber is wrong, wrong, wrong. These paintings are stunning and huge -- most of them are of architectural scale, not paintings for a suburban living room.

Barocci had a truly Catholic eye -- he could capture a supernatural vision within mundane (even funny) ordinary life. An example is here in the painting called La Madonna del Gatto, or roughly Our Lady of the Cat. She is holding St. John and our Lord in a domestic setting where the last prophet of the Old Testament is playing with (teasing?) a cat. The message here is that Salvation History isn't a mere abstraction -- it happened and looked at least at the time pretty ordinary (and conventionally nuts). This is what  "incarnation" means and Barocci got it on canvas.

AHC Lecture Series, Typology: How the Old Testament Prefigures the New

The Spring 2013 lecture series, “Typology: How the Old Testament Prefigures the New”, sponsored by the Association of Hebrew Catholics (AHC) begins on Wednesday Jan. 23. This series, consisting of 14 lectures will beheld in the Gannon Room of the Cathedral Basilica Rectory, every Wednesday from 7-9 PM. Entrance and parking are on the west (left) side of the Rectory. The lectures are of general interest to all Catholics and presented free of charge by Dr. Lawrence Feingold. Dr. Feingold is a Credo Advisory Board Member, the AHC Director of Theology, and Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, St. Louis.

While there is continuity from one lecture to the next, each lecture in the series can stand alone. You can view the schedule and titles of all lectures, as well as retrieve MP3 podcasts of past lectures here. Call the AHC at 314-535-4242 for additional information.

Professor James Hitchcock’s History of the Catholic Church

Finally! Professor Hitchcock’s long awaited and comprehensive  History of the Catholic Church is out. Join Credo in welcoming his book and congratulating him on his latest achievement at a reception and book signing event from 2 – 4 PM on Sunday, January 27^th at St. Louis the King School (Boland Hall) at the Cathedral Basilica. Copies will be available on-site at the discounted price of $25 (cash or check, please). Professor Hitchcock will give a short talk, and will be happy to inscribe your copy if you like. There will be light refreshments. No charge but donations appreciated. Questions? Click Here.

Click the photo here to be taken to the Ignatius Press webpage for the book. Need a flyer for your church or school bulletin board? Click Here.