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Paranoia. Identity Politics. Rebellion. Us vs. Them.

The fight over health care reform?

No, the fight over the Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States.

That fight has been verbal in nature, but that does not mean it hasn't been more than a little testy. An example, from a recent NPR article:

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — which enforces theological purity — is investigating the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents about 90 percent of women's orders. In February, the Vatican wrote the leadership conference, asking the group to clarify its stand on three doctrinal issues: that only men can be priests; that homosexual practice should not be sanctioned; and that the Catholic Church provides the way to salvation.

"As women religious, we wouldn't believe that we've done anything to create the need for this," says Nancy Schreck, president of Sisters of St. Francis in Dubuque, Iowa. "It feels like an affront to us."

Schreck says the Vatican typically only launches this kind of inquiry when a group goes seriously astray. Even after the priest sex-abuse crisis, she notes, the Vatican refrained from investigating the priesthood or men's orders in the U.S., although it did conduct a visitation at seminaries. Schreck wonders if Rome is putting the sisters' behavior in the same category.

"I can't help but have some suspicion about where this is coming from and who's really behind it and what they're trying to do," she says.

Sister Schreck's deflective technique is one my four-year-old uses on a regular basis: "Why am I in trouble for hitting my sister? She called me a 'meany-head'! Why isn't she in trouble?" (Well, son, she is, but that's not the issue at hand, now is it?)

The piece, written by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, is titled, "America's Nuns Suspicious Of Vatican Probes". That title, needless to say, is misleading; it should be: "Some of America's Nuns Suspicious Of Apostolic Visitation." Or, "Some of America's Nuns Suspicious of Catholic Doctrine, Practice, and Devotion."

The piece is only partially correct in saying the focus is on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), as the apostolic visitiaton "is intended to comprehensively assess and encourage the growth of Catholic Institutes of women religious in the United States who engage in apostolic works." The LCWR has had enjoyed a nearly forty-year-long reign, representing about 90% of the women religious in the U.S. But its numbers are decreasing and, as Ann Carey explains in her recent CWR article, "Post-Christian Sisters," the Vatican has been working (slowly, but hopefully surely) to clean the LCWR house of dissent and heterodoxy:

The Reform of the Liturgy and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar

The Reform of the Liturgy and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar | Uwe Michael Lang | From Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (2nd edition)

The reform of the Roman Rite of Mass that was carried out after the Second Vatican Council has significantly altered the shape of Catholic worship. One of the most evident changes was the construction of freestanding altars. The versus populum celebration was adopted throughout the Latin Church, and, with few exceptions, it has become the prevailing practice during Mass for the celebrant to stand behind the altar facing the congregation. This uniformity has led to the widespread misunderstanding that the priest's "turning his back on the people" is characteristic of the rite of Mass according to the Missal of Pope Saint Pius V whereas the priest's "turning towards the people" belongs to the Novus Ordo Mass of Pope Paul VI. It is also widely assumed by the general public that the celebration of Mass "facing the people" is required, indeed even imposed, by the liturgical reform that was inaugurated by Vatican II.

However, the relevant conciliar and post-conciliar documents present quite a different picture. The Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, speaks neither of a celebration versus populum nor of the setting up of new altars. In view of this fact it is all the more astonishing how rapidly "versus populum altars" appeared in Catholic churches all over the world. [1] The instruction Inter Oecumenici, prepared by the Consilium for the carrying out of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and issued on September 26, 1964, has a chapter on the designing of new churches and altars that includes the following paragraph:

Praestat ut altare maius exstruatur a pariete seiunctum, ut facile circumiri et in eo celebratio versus populum peragi possit. [It is better for the main altar to be constructed away from the wall so that one can easily walk around the altar and celebrate facing the people.] [2]

It is said to be desirable to set up the main altar separate from the back wall, so that the priest can walk around it easily and a celebration facing the people is possible. Josef Andreas Jungmann asks us to consider this:

It is only the possibility that is emphasized. And this [separation of the altar from the wall] is not even prescribed, but is only recommended, as one will see if one looks at the Latin text of the directive.... In the new instruction the general permission of such an altar layout is stressed only with regard to possible obstacles or local restrictions. [3]

In a letter addressed to the heads of bishops' conferences, dated January 25, 1966, Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro, the president of the Consilium, states that regarding the renewal of altars "prudence must be our guide". He goes on to explain:

Above all because for a living and participated liturgy, it is not indispensable that the altar should be versus populum: in the Mass, the entire liturgy of the word is celebrated at the chair, ambo or lectern, and, therefore, facing the assembly; as to the eucharistic liturgy, loudspeaker systems make participation feasible enough. Secondly, hard thought should be given to the artistic and architectural question, this element in many places being protected by rigorous civil laws. [4]

With reference to Cardinal Lercaro's exhortation to prudence, Jungmann warns us not to make the option granted by the instruction into "an absolute demand, and eventually a fashion, to which one succumbs without thinking". [5]

Inter Oecumenici permits the Mass facing the people, but it does not prescribe it. As Louis Bouyer emphasized in 1967, that document does not at all suggest that Mass facing the people is always the preferable form of Eucharistic celebration. [6] The rubrics of the renewed Missale Romanum of Pope Paul VI presuppose a common direction of priest and people for the core of the Eucharistic liturgy. This is indicated by the instruction that, at the Orate, fratres, the Pax Domini, the Ecce, Agnus Dei, and the Ritus conclusionis, the priest should turn towards the people. [7] This would seem to imply that beforehand priest and people were facing the same direction, that is, towards the altar. At the priest's communion the rubrics say "ad altare versus", [8] which would be redundant if the celebrant stood behind the altar facing the people anyway. This reading is confirmed by the directives of the General Instruction, even if they are occasionally at variance with the Ordo Missae. [9] The third Editio typica of the renewed Missale Romanum, approved by Pope John Paul II on 10 April 2000 and published in spring 2002, retains these rubrics. [10]

Continue reading....

Calling on St. Thomas Aquinas...

From a short essay, "America Needs St. Thomas Aquinas" (Chicago Daily Observer, Aug. 23, 2009), by Fr. Robert Barron:

As I prayed before the tomb of Aquinas, I found myself ruminating on the importance for our own time of the one whom the church calls its “common doctor.” What can this thirteenth century Dominican master teach us? First, Thomas Aquinas saw with utter clarity that since all truth comes from God, there can never be, finally, any conflict between the data of the sciences and the facts of revelation. In his own time, there were advocates of the so-called “double truth theory,” which held that the “truths” of philosophy and science were in one category and the “truths” of the faith in another. On this interpretation, one could hold mutually exclusive positions as long as one remained cognizant that the opposing views were in separate departments of the mind.

Well, Thomas saw this as so much nonsense and said so. Apparent conflicts between science and religion (to use our terms) are born of either bad science or bad religion, and they should compel the puzzled thinker to dig deeper and think harder. Following Augustine, Thomas said that if an interpretation of the Bible runs counter to clearly established findings of the sciences, we should move to a more mystical and symbolic reading of the Scriptural passage. How important this is today when forms of fundamentalism have given rise to a terrible rationalist counter-reaction. Biblical literalism—a modernism, alien to the patristic and medieval minds—produces a variety of views repugnant to physics, evolutionary biology, cosmology, etc. And this has led to the sequestration of some religious types and some scientific types into separate and mutually hostile camps. Thomas Aquinas would see how foolish and counter-productive this is for both science and religion. The faith, he claimed, should always go out to meet the culture with confidence, and the culture should see its own deepest aspirations realized in the faith.

Read the entire piece.

• A Conversation with a Post-Liberal, Post-Conservative Evangelical Catholic Priest | Interview with Fr. Robert Barron | Carl E. Olson
• Eucharist (DVD) | Fr. Robert Barron
• Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Lively Virtues (DVD) | Fr. Robert Barron
• Untold Blessings: Three Paths to Holiness (DVD) | Fr. Robert Barron

Pope Benedict XVI on the Apostle Bartholomew

From the Holy Father's October 4, 2006, General Audience:

We have no special information about Bartholomew; indeed, his name always and only appears in the lists of the Twelve mentioned above and is therefore never central to any narrative.

However, it has traditionally been identified with Nathanael:  a name that means "God has given".

This Nathanael came from Cana (cf. Jn 21: 2) and he may therefore have witnessed the great "sign" that Jesus worked in that place (cf. Jn 2: 1-11). It is likely that the identification of the two figures stems from the fact that Nathanael is placed in the scene of his calling, recounted in John's Gospel, next to Philip, in other words, the place that Bartholomew occupies in the lists of the Apostles mentioned in the other Gospels.

Philip told this Nathanael that he had found "him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jn 1: 45). As we know, Nathanael's retort was rather strongly prejudiced:  "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 1: 46). In its own way, this form of protestation  is  important  for  us.  Indeed, it makes us see that according to Judaic expectations the Messiah could not come from such an obscure village as, precisely, Nazareth (see also Jn 7: 42).

But at the same time Nathanael's protest highlights God's freedom, which baffles our expectations by causing him to be found in the very place where we least expect him. Moreover, we actually know that Jesus was not exclusively "from Nazareth" but was born in Bethlehem (cf. Mt 2: 1; Lk 2: 4) and came ultimately from Heaven, from the Father who is in Heaven.

Nathanael's reaction suggests another thought to us: in our relationship with Jesus we must not be satisfied with words  alone. In  his  answer,  Philip offers Nathanael a meaningful invitation:  "Come and see!" (Jn 1: 46). Our knowledge of Jesus needs above all a first-hand experience: someone else's testimony is of course important, for normally  the  whole  of  our  Christian life begins with the proclamation handed  down  to  us  by  one  or  more  witnesses.

However, we ourselves must then be personally involved in a close and deep relationship with Jesus; in a similar way, when the Samaritans had heard the testimony of their fellow citizen whom Jesus had met at Jacob's well, they wanted to talk to him directly, and after this conversation they told the woman:  "It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world" (Jn 4: 42).

• Jesus, The Apostles, and the Early Church | Pope Benedict XVI
• Selections from Jesus, The Apostles, and the Early Church | Pope Benedict XVI

Liturgical news of interest

A couple of items from the liturgical front, both of them quite significant:

• Via CatholicCulture.org:

The US bishops' conference has released a new web site designed to introduce the faithful to a new English translation of the Mass. After years of work, the translation will be introduced after it receives final clearance from the Holy See.

The revised translation adheres to new Vatican norms requiring greater adherence to the original Latin text of the Roman Missal. Bishop Arthur Serratelli, who chairs the US bishops' liturgical committee, describes the new texts as "understandable, dignified and accurate."

From the USCCB webpage devoted to the new English translation:

The Missale Romanum (the Roman Missal), the ritual text for the celebration of the Mass, was first promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as the definitive text of the reformed liturgy of the Second Vatican Council. A second edition followed in 1975.

Pope John Paul II issued a revised version of the Missale Romanum during the Jubilee Year 2000. The English translation of the revised Roman Missal is nearing completion, and the Bishops of the United States will vote on the final sections of the text this November. Among other things, the revised edition of the Missale Romanum contains prayers for the observances of recently canonized saints, additional prefaces for the Eucharistic Prayers, additional Votive Masses and Masses and Prayers for Various Needs and Intentions, and some updated and revised rubrics (instructions) for the celebration of the Mass. The English translation of the Roman Missal will also include updated translations of existing prayers, including some of the well–known responses and acclamations of the people.

Here are several examples of the improved translation.

• The New Liturgical Movement site carries news that "Reform of the Reform" proposals have reportedly been approved by the Pope:

ROME. The document was delivered to the hands of Benedict XVI in the morning of last April 4 by Spanish Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. It is the result of a reserved vote, which took place on March 12, in the course of a "plenary" session of the dicastery responsible for the liturgy, and it represents the first concrete step towards that "reform of the reform" often desired by Pope Ratzinger. The Cardinals and Bishops members of the Congregation voted almost unanimously in favor of a greater sacrality of the rite, of the recovery of the sense of eucharistic worship, of the recovery of the Latin language in the celebration, and of the remaking of the introductory parts of the Missal in order to put a stop to abuses, wild experimentations, and inappropriate creativity. They have also declared themselves favorable to reaffirm that the usual way of receiving Communion according to the norms is not on the hand, but in the mouth. There is, it is true, and indult which, on request of the [local] episcopates, allows for the distribution of the host [sic] also on the palm of the hand, but this must remain an extraordinary fact. The "Liturgy Minister" of Pope Ratzinger, Cañizares, is also having studies made on the possibility to recover the orientation towards the Orient of the celebrant, at least at the moment of the eucharistic consecration, as it happened in practice before the reform, when both the faithful and the priest faced towards the Cross and the priest therefore turned his back to the assembly.

Read the entire piece.

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Articles, Interviews, and Book Excerpts:

• The Spirit of the Liturgy page
• For "Many" or For "All"? | From God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Music and Liturgy | From The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Altar and the Direction of Liturgical Prayer | From The Spirit of the Liturgy | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• The Mass of Vatican II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Reform or Return? An Interview with Rev. Thomas M. Kocik, author of The Reform of the Reform? | Carl E. Olson | July 14, 2007
• Does Christianity Need A Liturgy? | From The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy | Martin Mosebach
• Walking To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory
• Rite and Liturgy | Denis Crouan, STD
• The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP
• Worshipping at the Feet of the Lord: Pope Benedict XVI and the Liturgy | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.
• The Latin Mass: Old Rites and New Rites in Today's World | Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.

Marian Imagery in the Old Testament

The Past Her Prelude: Marian Imagery in the Old Testament | Sandra Miesel | Ignatius Insight

St. Augustine said that "the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old is fulfilled in the New." Like other Church Fathers he distinguished between the outer "literal" and the inner "spiritual" meaning of Holy Scripture. And like the others, he often preferred spirit to letter.

The categories into which various Fathers divided the spiritual sense need not concern us here, only their zealous attempts to read the figurative meanings of the Bible. They saw the New Testament foreshadowed in the Old through several devices. Types are persons, things, or events taken as historical (Adam is a Type of Christ); prophecies are predictions (the Messiah will be born of a virgin); and allegories are poetic comparisons, not limited to strict personifications (Holy Wisdom is a gracious woman). Our discussion will move freely across all these categories.

The Fathers saw every part of the Scriptures as linked to every other part. They believed that God had encoded patterns of similarities and contrasts into his Word to produce flashes of illumination. Making cross-comparisons rounds out our picture of what Salvation is--and is not. For instance, innocent, devout Abel is a Type of Christ while jealous, murderous Cain his Antitype.

Mary entered this web of associations early, when St. Justin Martyr (d. 165) contrasted her obedience with Eve's disobedience immediately after referring to Christ's symbolic titles in prophecy. His insight was repeated a generation later by St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. ca. 200): "What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith." Thus Mary came to be called the New Eve and the Latin pun Eva/Ave for the reversal entered Christian lore.

Eve is the mother of all according to the flesh, but Mary according to the spirit. As universal spiritual mother and first Christian, Mary is also a Type of the Church, a parallel first noted by St. Irenaeus. Therefore, the same Biblical imagery used for the Church can also apply to Mary: she is the living Ark of the Covenant, the ultimate Temple, the new Jerusalem, and the perfected Israel as Bride of God.

These Old Testament prefigurations are brought forward into the Book of Revelation and amplify the Woman Clothed in the Sun (Rev 12:12), the "great sign" manifested immediately after the scene of the Ark in the celestial Temple. The pregnant Woman's body carries the Messiah as the Ark once held the Divinely sent Tablets of the Law, Aaron's rod that flowered, and a pot of manna Moreover, she is also the mother of all Christians. But this Woman flees from the threatening Satanic Dragon, unlike Eve who fatally lingered when the Serpent spoke.

The Woman does not, however, grapple directly with the Dragon, though some Marian devotees wish it were otherwise. Direct engagement with the Foe is left to other Marian Types. Deborah rallies the Israelite army (Jgs 4:4-16), Jael smashes the head of an enemy general (Jgs 4:17-22), Judith beheads Holofernes (Jdt 13), and Esther maneuvers Haman onto the gallows (Est 7), in each case saving their people from certain destruction.

Besides the typology of specific characters, Messianic Psalm 45 has been traditionally taken to represent Christ as the king with Mary as the queen who stands beside him adorned "in gold of Ophir". This Psalm is often quoted in the liturgy, including texts of Marian feasts such as the Assumption. There it refers to Our Lady's entrance into heaven and justifies showing her enthroned beside her Son.

The queen in the Psalm is the king's bride but the normal structure of a Semitic court gave the king's mother far more power than any wife. This situation, demonstrated by the relationship between Solomon and his mother Bathsheba (1 Kgs 2:12-25) does fit Mary, so Bathsheba was used as a Type of Mary. In the incident shown, however, Bathsheba's intercession gets the petitioner executed. The only other queen mothers shown in action, idolatrous Maacah (1 Kgs 15: 18) and murderous Athalia (2 Kgs 11), could be called Antitypes of Mary.

Read the entire essay...

The DoNated Code

From across the Pond:

His new novel is tipped to set new global sales records - but Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown's works have been revealed as the books most likely to be offloaded to secondhand shops.

Brown has been named the "most donated" author in a survey of the nation's Oxfam shops as people discard his bestsellers.

Maybe that should be The Discarded Code? Readers are either so overwhelmed by Brown's writing and research that they don't feel worthy to keep his novel, or they are trying to ditch the evidence that they actually read it. I, on the other hand, still have my copy. There's no way I'm going to possibly let strangers, children, or humor-impaired goddess-worshippers see what I wrote in the margins of the book...

Omnipotence and Mercy

Omnipotence and Mercy | Fr. James V. Schall, S. J. | August 21, 2009 | Ignatius Insight

"Since God himself is now near us, we can know him; he shows us his Face and enters our world. There is no longer any need to make do with those other powers, because he is the true power, the Omnipotent." -- Benedict XVI, Aosta Cathedral, July 24, 2009.

I.

While in the Italian mountains, the Holy Father officiated at Vespers in the Cathedral at Aosta, during which he gave a brief, but incisive homily. He began by citing a Vesper prayer, itself based on Paul's Letter to the Romans. The pope noted that the Italian text of the prayer begins simply: "Merciful Father." Then he amusingly chides the Italian bishops responsible for this translation. The Latin text, the pope pointed out, is a little "fuller." It says: "Almighty and Merciful God." He added, that, in Caritas in veritate, he tried to show the importance of God both in one's private sphere and in "the life of society, of the world, of history."

One's relationship to God is a profoundly personal matter. Each person has a relation to other persons. If the relation to God is not a living one, then no other relation to anything else "can find its right form." This remark means that a disordered relation to God will also result in a disordered relation to others. The same principle holds for society and for humanity as a whole. Without God in the right place, with His power, we have nothing by which to guide ourselves. We lack a compass.

Thus, "we must bring the reality of God back into our world." Yet, "how can we know God?" Benedict recalled that he regularly meets bishops from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, so their concerns are vivid to him. These bishops differ in many ways, but they have one thing in common. "They all know that God exists, one God, that 'god' is a singular noun, that the gods are not God, that God exists, God." Yet, God seems "absent." He "hides, we do not know his Face."

Most religions thus deal not with God but with "objects. They are aware of nearer "powers." These are spirits, ancestors or, I suppose, even demons. People thus "make do" with the nearer powers. What Christianity is about is the closing of the distance to God. God takes the initiative to make Himself "truly known." He shows "his Face." We can see His Face. No veil covers Him any longer. "There is no longer any need to make do with those other powers, because he is the true power, the Omnipotent."

Read the entire essay...

Food for thought...

... from G. K. Chesterton, taken from his very interesting book, What I Saw in America, first published in 1922:

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal.

There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfectly simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact. Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant. An idealist may say to a capitalist, 'Don't you sometimes feel in the rich twilight, when the lights twinkle from the distant hamlet in the hills, that all humanity is a holy family?' But it is equally possible for the capitalist to reply with brevity and decision, 'No, I don't,' and there is no more disputing about it further than about the beauty of a fading cloud. And the modern world of moods is a world of clouds, even if some of them are thunderclouds.

For I have only taken here, as a convenient working model, the case of negro slavery; because it was long peculiar to America and is popularly associated with it. It is more and more obvious that the line is no longer running between black and white but between rich and poor. As I have already noted in the case of Prohibition, the very same arguments of the inevitable suicide of the ignorant, of the impossibility of freedom for the unfit, which were once applied to barbarians brought from Africa are now applied to citizens born in America. It is argued even by industrialists that industrialism has produced a class submerged below the status of emancipated mankind. They imply that the Missing Link is no longer missing, even from England or the Northern States, and that the factories have manufactured their own monkeys. Scientific hypotheses about the feeble-minded and the criminal type will supply the masters of the modern world with more and more excuses for denying the dogma of equality in the case of white labour as well as black. And any man who knows the world knows perfectly well that to tell the millionaires, or their servants, that they are disappointing the sentiments of Thomas Jefferson, or disregarding a creed composed in the eighteenth century, will be about as effective as telling them that they are not observing the creed of St. Athanasius or keeping the rule of St. Benedict.

Also see, "What Is America?", another excerpt from the same book.

"When we study the most ancient liturgical practices of the Church...

... we find that the priest and the people faced in the same direction, usually toward the east, in the expectation that when Christ returns, He will return “from the east.” At Mass, the Church keeps vigil, waiting for that return. This single position is called ad orientem, which simply means “toward the east.”

That is from a column by Bishop Edward Slattery of the diocese of Tulsa in the September 2009 issue of The Eastern Oklahoma Catholic (PDF format; ht: New Liturgical Movement), announcing the following:

Even before his election as the successor to St. Peter, Pope Benedict has been urging us to draw upon the ancient liturgical practice of the Church to recover a more authentic Catholic worship. For that reason, I have restored the venerable ad orientem position when I celebrate Mass at the Cathedral. This change ought not to be misconstrued as the Bishop “turning his back on the faithful,” as if I am being inconsiderate or hostile. Such an interpretation misses the point that, by facing in the same direction, the posture of the celebrant and the congregation make explicit the fact that we journey together to God. Priest and people are on this pilgrimage together.

Of course, most Eastern/Byzantine Catholic churches continue to follow and adhere to the ancient practice of ad orientem, as Fr. Uwe Michael Lang notes in Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (Ignatius Press, 2009; 2nd edition), pointing out that "the Congregation for the Oriental Churches declared in its instruction Il Padre incomprensibile of 6 January 1996 that the ancient tradition of praying toward the east has a profound liturgical and spiritual value and must be preserved in the Eastern rites" (p. 104). Back in July of 2007, writing about Summorum Pontificum as someone who has been in a Byzantine Catholic parish for ten (now twelve) years, I said:

Having a certain "Eastern" perspective can be helpful. For example, I have to laugh a bit when I read or hear some Catholics insist that having the priest "turn his back to the people" is a bad or bizarre thing, as though it will somehow create a sort of dark and emotionally-draining chasm between the priest and the people. It's interesting to hear the reactions of Western-rite Catholics after they go to Divine Liturgy for the first time; they are usually both mildly confused and extremely moved. And more than once such folks have said, in essence, "Now I understand far better why the priest does that (that is, stands ad orientem)."

Now, after all these years "in the East," whenever I am at a Novus Ordo Mass, I am a bit—maybe even more than a bit—uncomfortable with the priest facing the people (versus populum). Not that my pastor doesn't ever face the people; on the contrary, he faces the people at several different places in the Divine Liturgy, often to bless them, which takes place several times. But during the prayers he faces east with the people. And it not only not bothersome, it makes complete sense, both theologically and liturgically.

Here are a couple of quotes from Cardinal Ratzinger about ad orientem. First, from the third chapter of The Spirit of the Liturgy:

Despite all the variations in practice that have taken place far into the second millennium, one thing has remained clear for the whole of Christendom: praying towards the East is a tradition that goes back to the beginning. Moreover, it is a fundamental expression of the Christian synthesis of cosmos and history, of being rooted in the once-for-all events of salvation history while going out to meet the Lord who is to come again. Here both the fidelity to the gift already bestowed and the dynamism of going forward are given equal expression.

The Orientation of Worship and God’s Omnipresence

Modern man has little understanding of this "orientation." Judaism and Islam, now as in the past, take it for granted that we should pray towards the central place of revelation, to the God who has revealed himself to us, in the manner and in the place in which he revealed himself. By contrast, in the Western world, an abstract way of thinking, which in a certain way is the fruit of Christian influence, has become dominant. God is spiritual, and God is everywhere: does that not mean that prayer is not tied to a particular place or direction?

Now we can indeed pray everywhere, and God is accessible to us everywhere. This idea of the universality of God is a consequence of Christian universality, of the Christian’s looking up to God above all gods, the God who embraces the cosmos and is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. But our knowledge of this universality is the fruit of revelation: God has shown himself to us. Only for this reason do we know him, only for this reason can we confidently pray to him everywhere. And precisely for this reason is it appropriate, now as in the past, that we should express in Christian prayer our turning to the God who has revealed himself to us. Just as God assumed a body and entered the time and space of this world, so it is appropriate to prayer – at least to communal liturgical prayer – that our speaking to God should be "incarnational," that it should be Christological, turned through the incarnate Word to the Triune God. The cosmic symbol of the rising sun expresses the universality of God above all particular places and yet maintains the concreteness of divine revelation. Our praying is thus inserted into the procession of the nations to God.

<snip>

On the other hand, a common turning to the East during the Eucharistic Prayer remains essential. This is not a case of something accidental, but of what is essential. Looking at the priest has no importance. What matters is looking together at the Lord. It is not now a question of dialogue, but of common worship, of setting off towards the One who is to come. What corresponds with the reality of what is happening is not the closed circle, but the common movement forward expressed in a common direction for prayer.

And from his Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (2nd edition):

There is nothing in the Council text about turning altars towards the people; that point is raised only in postconciliar instructions. The most important directive is found in paragraph 262 of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, the General Instruction of the new Roman Missal, issued in 1969. That says, 'It is better for the main altar to be constructed away from the wall so that one can easily walk around the altar and celebrate facing the people (versus populum).' The General Instruction of the Missal issued in 2002 retained this text unaltered except for the addition of the subordinate clause, 'which is desirable wherever possible'. This was taken in many quarters as hardening the 1969 text to mean that there was now a general obligation to set up altars facing the people 'wherever possible'.

This interpretation, however, was rejected by the Congregation for Divine Worship on 25 September 2000, when it declared that the word 'expedit' ('is desirable') did not imply an obligation but only made a suggestion. The physical orientation, the Congregation says, must be distinguished from the spiritual. Even if a priest celebrates versus populum, he should always be oriented versus Deum per Iesum Christum (towards God through Jesus Christ). Rites, signs, symbols, and words can never exhaust the inner reality of the mystery of salvation. For this reason the Congregation warns against one-sided and rigid positions in this debate.

Ignatius Press has moved!

And California Catholic Daily has the story and pictures:

After 27 years of working from a three-story building generously provided for them rent-free by the Carmelite nuns next door, the staff of Ignatius Press decided in September, 2008 to pull up stakes from McAllister Street, a stone’s throw from the University of San Francisco, and move to the other side of Golden Gate Park into a turn-of-the-century historic firehouse in the Sunset area.

Ignatius is the largest publisher in English of current Catholic leading theologians, including Joseph Ratzinger, Henri De Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, plus the distributor of hundreds of other Catholic books, not to mention the magazines Catholic World Report and Homiletic & Pastoral Review.

Finally this year, in May, 2009, the renovation and move were complete and this summer, the executive work of Ignatius Press takes place in the firehouse (brass firepole included) on 1348 Tenth Avenue.

Much of the work of the press is done elsewhere - printing in Michigan, order taking in Colorado, copy editing and proofreading at copy editors’ and proofreaders’ homes.

But the executive work – decisions about which books to publish, how to market them, the layout decisions – are made at the San Francisco headquarters.

Read the entire piece.

It's been three years or more since I've been to San Francisco, so I've not yet seen the new place. Hope to do so someday soon.

Post-Christian Sisters: A CWR Special Report

Post-Christian Sisters | By Ann Carey | A Special Report | Catholic World Report

The Vatican's investigation of women religious in the US was a long time coming.

The unprecedented decision by the Vatican to undertake an apostolic visitation to assess the quality of religious life in orders of sisters in the United States came as a big surprise to many people when it was announced in January. That surprise was doubled with the news two months later that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) will be conducting a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents most of the leaders of US women religious.

But people who have been closely watching the deterioration of many of the women’s religious orders in this country were not at all surprised that the Vatican initiated these assessments. Indeed, many sisters themselves have asked and prayed for Vatican attention to the condition of women’s religious communities. Certainly there is concern that the numbers of sisters are plunging and ecclesial properties are being converted to secular use, but even more critical problems are evident: many sisters no longer work in apostolates related to the Church and no longer live or pray in community, and sometimes sisters even openly dissent from Church teaching on matters such as women’s ordination, homosexuality, centrality of the Eucharist, and the hierarchal nature of the Church.

Likewise, the LCWR has had a stormy relationship with the Vatican for the past 40 years, and the LCWR has been very clear about its determination to “transform” religious life as well as the Church itself.

Read the entire article...

The Times: Dan Brown is "the defining author of our time."

The Apocalypse has transpired. The End of the World is nigh. The West has fallen. Again.

Or, to put it into Brownian prose (granted, I'm not a best-selling novelist, so bear with me, fair critics):

Langdon saw a large mushroom cloud in the distance, emerging like a white, puffy finger from the pale palm of the earth. What is that? He walked forward squinting, not moving. The light was incredibly dark, and the high sky was low on the horizon. Was the world ending? He adjusted his impeccable tweed jacket and thought languidly for a moment about the enigmatic but passionate kiss Sophie had planted on his lips before leaving an hour earlier. She's so cute, he noted. And she thinks I look like Tom Hanks.  "I wonder if she knows we're all going to be dead soon", he mumbled to himself silently. His stomach rumbled, and he hoped there was still time for poached eggs and dry toast. A symbologist can't very well perish on an empty stomach.

Alright, alright, enough good, clean "literary" fun. I simply wanted to give a proper introduction to this subhead from an article, "The key to Dan Brown's success," in The Times (ht: Mark Shea): "As the clock ticks down to Dan Brown’s latest opus, we unlock the mystery of how an Elton John wannabe became the defining author of our time." More on that sentence in a moment, but first this:

Contemplation

Contemplation | From "Reflection and Contemplation," chapter 6 of Transformation in Christ | Dietrich von Hildebrand | Ignatius Insight

We contemplate ends, not means

In order to describe the characteristics of contemplation, we may start from its contrast with the position we take towards the means when engaged in a purposive activity. In all such activities our inward appreciation of the end is strictly differentiated from our relation to the means. Suppose we wish to meet someone, and for that Purpose betake ourselves to a certain place. Meeting that person, or the performance of a definite task in this connection, constitutes our end. Walking to the place in question—or taking a train for that destination, buying tickets, etc.—are means pure and simple. it is the end that directs our steps, governs our activity, coordinates our thoughts and movements; it represents the telos and the thematic meaning of our enterprise. The means are mere points of passage as it were; they are merely used; none of them becomes thematic except in the context of its usefulness for the end. We are not intent on them as such, nor do we take any one of them seriously as a whole, in its essence; we are only interested in them according to their serviceableness for our purpose.

The structural difference between our attitude towards the end and towards the means is obvious. The strict attitude of uti, of using something, as applied to the means within a system of action, is the exact opposite of the contemplative attitude. It embodies the specifically pragmatic way of treating an object, characterized by the fact that our proper attention belongs to something other than the object with which we are now dealing, namely, to our object in the sense of our end or purpose. The immediate objects of our activity, with which we deal in terms of uti, play a merely instrumental (and transitory) role. On the other hand, full attention to an object as such, or an interest taken in its essential character as a whole, constitutes a first mark of contemplation.

Certainly, as a formal principle of our attitude, the difference between our relation to the end and to the means is always present. Yet, when the end itself is subordinated to a greater whole, which in its turn is governed by another supreme end, that difference becomes a merely relative one. Such is the case, for instance, when our meeting a certain person or our execution of a certain task for which purpose we are to betake ourselves to a specified place—is again meant to subserve some other purpose.

But even if there is no such successive subordination of aims if, that is to say, our given purpose is not incorporated into a superior teleology but represents a relatively final end, the conclusion of a chain of meaning—even then, with the formal difference between end and means being clearly present, the material difference between our attitude towards the end and towards the means may not necessarily be great. Thus, for example, when we wash or eat, the momentary aim we are pursuing is not, strictly speaking, experienced as a means towards some other superior aim, but rather as a conclusive end in itself; but neither is—it a substantial or important purpose, whose attainment could possess anything like the dignity of a self-contained theme. Most activities in our life are of this kind; they subserve some purpose which is not a sovereign theme by itself and which cannot, on the strength of its own substance, become the object of a frui proper—of contemplative or self-immersing enjoyment.

Continue reading...

"An Evangelical Call for Response to 'Caritas In Veritate'"

On the First Things site, signed by 68 Evangelicals leaders, theologians, and professors:

Recent global events awaken us to the importance of sustained Christian reflection on the nature and goal of economic life, both within our own societies and in other parts of the world. Accordingly, as evangelical Protestants we applaud the release of Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) by Pope Benedict XVI. We call on Christians everywhere, but especially our fellow evangelicals in the global North, to read, wrestle with, and respond to Caritas in Veritate and its identification of the twin call of love and truth upon our lives as citizens, entrepreneurs, workers and, most fundamentally, as followers of Christ.

In Christ's death and resurrection, God removes all that stands in the way of right relationships between God and the world, among humans, and between humanity and the rest of creation. Human development is included in this restoration of all things to right relationship.

We commend the way in which this encyclical considers economic development in terms of the true trajectory for human flourishing. Caritas in Veritate, following in the tradition of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio, argues that development is about the transformation of both persons and institutions and of relations among and between them. We echo its call for a new vision of development that recognizes the dignity of human life in its fullness, and that includes a concern for life from conception to natural death, for religious liberty, for the alleviation of poverty, and for the care of creation.

Read the entire statement.

Transparency, Creativity, and Heresy

From an August 17, 2009, Associated Press report:

An association of U.S. Roman Catholic sisters raised questions Monday about why they are the target of, and who is paying for, a Vatican investigation that is shaping up to be a tough review of whether sisters have strayed from church teaching.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing about 800 heads of religious orders, said there was a "lack of full disclosure about the motivation and funding sources" for the inquiry. The group also said it objects to the Vatican plan to keep private the reports that will be submitted to the Holy See.

"There's no transparency there," said Sister Annmarie Sanders, a conference spokeswoman.

The investigation, announced earlier this year, will examine the practices of the roughly 59,000 Catholic sisters working in the United States. Some sisters have privately expressed anger over the assessment, which they say unfairly questions their commitment to church teaching. However, in public they have remained largely circumspect in their comments.

At the conference's assembly last week in New Orleans, the outgoing president of the group, Sister J. Lora Dambroski, described the investigation as a challenge to creatively live out the Gospel and said it could be "another definining moment" for Catholic sisters.

Ah, yes, the challenge to "creatively live out the Gospel..." That would hold a bit more water if the LCWR, which was established in 1970 and represents the majority of women religious in the U.S., actually demonstrated some sincere interest in the Gospel as it has been taught by the Church for 2,000 years. But, alas, that has never really been the case. As Donna Steichen summarily states in Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (Ignatius Press, 1991): "Stressing autonomy and self-realization instead of corporate identity and self-sacrifice, LCWR encouraged the exodus from traditional apostolates, and initiated or supported many of the organizations and coalitions formed to hasten the radical 'renewal' of its members" (p. 286).

In a booklet titled, "Feminism and the Catholic Church" (Association of Catholic Women, 1992; available online in PDF format), Steichen flatly stated, "Most North American women’s religious communities are corrupt. That is why they are dying; why the average age of nuns is 66; why, unless God sends new St. Teresas to reform them, major U.S. women’s communities will cease to exist within 20 years." Whether or not the in progress Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States will prove to be that reforming moment, it is long overdue.

The AP article notes, in muted understatement, "But the nature of some questions seems to validate concerns that they are suspected of being unfaithful to the church." It's hardly a secret that the LCWR has been in a perpetual state of defiance toward the Magisterium and has consistently, and often openly, supported beliefs and statements directly opposed to Catholic doctrine and dogma. In a detailed special report, "Post-Christian Sisters," for the July 2009 edition of Catholic World Report, Ann Carey (author of Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities [Our Sunday Visitor, 1997]), wrote, "Specific issues identified [by the CDF] were acceptance of the Church's teachings on homosexuality and women's ordination, as well as acceptance of the doctrines reiterated in the CDF document Dominus Jesus that Christ is the savior of all humanity and that the fullness of his Church is found in the Catholic Church."

An perfect example of these issues is found in "A Marginal Life: Pursuing Holiness in the 21st Century" (PDF format), the 2007 LCWR Keynote Address, given by Laurie Brink, O.P., in Kansas City on August 2, 2007:

Search!

As you may have noticed, I recently added a search engine function to Insight Scoop (see upper left hand corner). Several readers have asked about a search engine, and I finally put on my dusty, poorly fitted techie hat and made it happen. I also added a "Share" bar, and I am looking at other widgets and utilities to possibly add to the blog. Let me know what you think, and share any ideas or comments you might have. Thanks!

Chapter 1 of "The Living Wood: Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine"

Chapter One of The Living Wood: Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine (A Novel) | Louis de Wohl

There was fog in the channel.

The lone man, groping his way over the cliffs, was cursing softly as his feet slid over the wet grass, which was scarce, like the ugly tufts of hair on the bald head of a giant.

Rain came down through the gray atmosphere in a monotonous, hesitant, lazy drizzle. There was nothing refreshing or wild or aggressive about it; it was wet and queasy, an old man's rain.

A hopeless country, thought the man, wiping the drops off his face: a hades of a country. Mad idea to be out surveying this coastline.

Rufus had warned him, of course, and Rufus knew the country, for he had been stationed in Britain these last seven years, poor fellow. But he had not listened; instead, he had barked at him: "Very well, if you're afraid of getting wet feet, you can stay in camp and play dice. I don't need an orderly. I'll go alone!"

And Rufus had made his long-suffering service face and saluted, and he had gone out alone, like a fool.

Damn that grass. Damn the rain. Damn the whole god-forsaken country! What was the good of surveying this strip of coast, anyway? No one in his senses would try to invade a country like this, not even the Germans.

Service in any of the districts along the Rhine was sheer joy compared with this land of mist and wetness—to say nothing of Belgium, or Gaul.

It had looked quite different, when the news of his command in East Britain had come through, in the middle of an amusing time with the Fourteenth Legion at imperial headquarters in Milan. Or rather, at the former imperial headquarters. The generals had been taking it easy ever since the Emperor went east-to Egypt, for the campaign against that little Queen in Syria, Zenobia.

Among the younger officers there had been no doubt whatsoever about the purpose of Aurelian's campaign. Let the old warhorses of the staff gibber about the importance of Palmyra as the crossing of the great caravan roads to the east and the south.

Caravan roads! As though an Emperor would think fit to make war for the sake of a few roads! But Zenobia was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and old Aurelian had always known what was good.

So it had been wine and women and an occasional bit of drill for the Fourteenth in Milan, and there wasn't much future in that for a man of ambition.

It was not bad to be a tribune at the age of twenty-seven; but it was better to be a legate, and you cannot be a legate at that age unless you get an opportunity. And Britain, after all, was an outpost of the Empire and not just the place where oysters came from.

By Pluto, he had actually gone so far as to pull strings in order to get transferred to this.

Continue reading...

On poisoned water and the principle of subsidiarity

LifeSiteNews.com interviews Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Baker, Oregon, about President Obama's health care legislation:

Vasa noted that he believes "the notion of providing more comprehensive health insurance coverage is a just and right thing to do."  However, he said: "that does not mean that THIS health insurance plan, only because it promises comprehensive health insurance coverage, must be supported. 

"In effect, should we support giving poisoned water to the thirsty?  I think not."

Bishop Vasa's sentiments reflect the words of two other prelates who have spoken on the issue: Cardinal Justin Rigali, head of the U.S. Bishops' pro-life office, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver.  All three have urged opposition to the bills in their current form, insisting that the bills' abortion expansion flies in the face of the Church's advocacy for more available health care.

"The Church is very clear in supporting health care, but these are absolute requirements," Rigali told LSN in a telephone interview last week.  "So our message is very clear: support genuine health care reform that respects the life and dignity of all. That has to be made clear ... for it to be acceptable to us."

Chaput criticized the supposed "common ground" abortion language in the House bill as a "shell game," and urged citizens to demand that abortion be taken out of the bill.

Read more of Archbishop Chaput's comments here. Cardinal Rigali's statement about health care reform and abortion provisions can be read here.

To continue with Bishop Vasa's imagery, it's not just that the water is poisoned—every indication is that it is also wildly overpriced, it will be rationed, it won't be delivered on time, and it will be forced down your throat regardless of whether you want it or not. In addition, it is an unproven product that is being badly marketed, to the point that many Americans, including myself, strongly suspect we are being sold a pool of rotten swamp water, not crystal clear stream water from the Rocky Mountains.

One problem with President Obama's health care plan that doesn't seem to be getting much attention among Catholics, is how it squares with the principle of subsidiarity, a key principle of Catholic social doctrine that I bring up from time to time. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church says this of subsidiarity:

The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to certain forms of centralization, bureaucratization, and welfare assistance and to the unjustified and excessive presence of the State in public mechanisms. “By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending”. An absent or insufficient recognition of private initiative — in economic matters also — and the failure to recognize its public function, contribute to the undermining of the principle of subsidiarity, as monopolies do as well. (par 187)

The principle of subsidiarity was strongly invoked by Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete in a short August 5th essay, "The health care reform and the lack of the value of subsidiarity in Obama's background," for an Italian newspaper:

I think the problem is that the American people almost instinctively feel a threat to one of the most important, defining values of American nationhood, namely the value of subsidiarity. I think it is the President whose background lack of experience of the value of subsidiarity makes it difficult to him to understand the dangers almost instinctively experienced by the majority of the people.

The fact is that the American people pay more to get less health care security than any other industrialized nation in the world. I think most Americans understand this. Most Americans understand that there is need for reform of their present system. The question the ask is: at what cost?

There is definitely something to what Monsignor Albacete says about Americans having a certain instinctive sense about the principle of subsidiarity, even if most of them have never heard of it. But his remark about American having less health care security than other industrialized countries is problematic in itself. How many Americans are actually turned away from treatment at hospitals or clinics? How many Americans have to wait months or even years to have major surgery? (Ironically, just as the debate over nationalized health care is heating up in the U.S., the country to the north is admitting that its "is imploding" and that "there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system".) In reality, most Americans are happy with their health care, and American health care (when life expectancy is adjusted for deaths by homicide and accidents), is the best in the world. This is not to ignore or understate the real problems that exist, but to emphasize that real problems are the same thing as national emergencies.

So, the question indeed is: at what cost? Those who believe that the State is God, or at least a substitute for God, hold as dogma the need to control, direct, and coerce people from the womb to the tomb. Some significant steps to this end have already taken place over the past few decades, most notably with the canonization of compulsory public education, which most people view as being as American as apple pie, even though it is far more Prussian than American, as well as being far more controlling and invasive than Horace Mann, John Dewey, and Co. could have ever dreamed of it being. The bottom line with (greatly expanded) government control of health care is that it equates to control of so much more than just when you should visit a doctor or swallow a pill, as Jonah Goldberg rightly notes:

When it comes to civil liberties, liberals are often distrustful of government power. But, for reasons that baffle me, they are quite comfortable with Uncle Sam getting into the business of deciding, or providing “guidance” on, which lives are more valuable than others. A government charged with extending life expectancy must meddle not just with our health care, but with what we eat, how we drive, how we live. A government determined to cut costs must meddle not just with how we live, but how we die.

Whenever the federal government has taken on tasks that should, I think, be limited to families, communities, churches, and other local or state institutions, it has usually done a mediocre to very poor job and has come in
wildly over budget. Public education is one example; another is the so-called "War on Poverty," a product of the so-called "Great Society," which has led to increased poverty, more crime, and more births out of wedlock, all for billions of dollars (not "great" and certainly not good for society). There is also the fragile and largely broke Social Security system. Each of these failures were created by or supported by men—Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ—who believed the State is a sacred entity who rightly demands our full and final allegiance. That belief flies in the face of both common sense and Catholic doctrine, as Pope Benedict XVI explained so well in Deus Caritas Est:

The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. The Church is one of those living forces: she is alive with the love enkindled by the Spirit of Christ. This love does not simply offer people material help, but refreshment and care for their souls, something which often is even more necessary than material support. In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live “by bread alone” (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human. (par 28)

Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links, Articles, and Excerpts:

• What Is Catholic Social Teaching? A Review Essay on An Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching | Mark Brumley
• "Can Catholics Be 'Real Americans'?" | Mark Brumley
• On Being Catholic American | Joseph A. Varacalli
• The State Which Would Provide Everything | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Secularity: On Benedict XVI and the Role of Religion in Society | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• Speaking Up For Life | An Interview with Deirdre McQuade, the USCCB's Director of Planning and Information
• On Being Neither Liberal nor Conservative | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• The Role of the Laity: An Examination of Vatican II and Christifideles Laici | Carl E. Olson

Fr. Joseph Fessio on Kindle and e-books

From "Kindling the Fires of Faith" (sub required for full piece), an article in the August 23rd edition of National Catholic Register:

The faith is well represented on Kindle, with a developing selection of older classics as well as items from major Catholic publishers. Ignatius Press has approximately 50 books available for Kindle, with numerous titles by Pope Benedict XVI. Said Ignatius founder Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, “We intend to have all our new titles available not only in Kindle format, but in a more generic e-book format so that readers can download Ignatius books electronically from Amazon (for the Kindle), MobiPocket (for computers and personal digital assistants), and from our own website. We are in the process of converting our backlist into electronic format also.”

<snip>

For now, e-books aren’t replacing paper books — but they can supplement them. As Father Fessio noted about his own Ignatius Press, “We prefer books in the traditional print medium, especially the kinds of books we ordinarily publish — books that have lasting value and the beauty of whose outward form reflects, incarnates the nobility of the content. For those whose idea of a cozy living room is not a wall of bookshelves with one Kindle in the corner, or who like to touch real paper and see real ink when they relax to read, we intend to continue to publish ‘real books.’

“However, as the appearance and convenience of electronic books more closely approximate that of printed books, and as more readers will have grown up text messaging rather than talking to their friends, there will be — and there has been already — an increasing number of people who, for a variety of reasons, prefer the electronic format. We want to make what we publish available to them.”

Here is a partial list, on Insight Scoop, of the Ignatius Press books now available (or available soon) in electronic format. And here is a listing on Ignatius.com. I especially, and with complete objectivity, recommend this title.