The Little Houseboat that could...or couldn't?

Unam Sanctam Catholicam just published another important article related to evolution theology HERE.


I agree with USC's position, and I'll offer a couple of my thoughts.


I understand the apparent need to make all things fit into the most current scientific hypotheses, nobody strives to be the object of the "knuckle-dragging" jokes so often directed towards anyone who strictly adheres to Church tradition. But, to believe in God while accepting scientific principles does not necessarily demand, as I saw in a Catholic school last year, the use of timelines describing on which day of the Biblical Creation cycle it was that dinosaurs appeared or when furry critters began climbing trees. As smart as we think, as we hope, ourselves to be, we must remember the one basic principle that science and scripture clearly agree upon: There is always knowledge which lies beyond the science of Man.


I may have related this before, but there was a time as an undergrad that, inspired by Carl Sagan, I deluded myself into thinking that I could excel at astrophysics...that was until I realized that they were serious about the "physics" part. 
My enthusiasm for the cosmos happened to coincide with a NASA deep-space satellite passing by Saturn. NASA received images of the rings of Saturn. The images revealed certain abnormalities of orbit.


The next day, in our morning lecture, the head of the department (did they all TRY to look like Einstein or was it just coincidence?) rushed onto the stage and climbed up onto the lab table. He raised his arms into the air, and casting his eyes upwards, he shouted as if he cried out to heaven, "Today, the laws of physics have changed!"


The impression I had that day, that science "law" was a house built upon shifting sand, has never left me. In fact, at that moment, the House of Science seemed more like a houseboat on the wide Mississippi; however, instead of navigating the strong central current in the middle of the river, it seemed to perpetually drift and bounce along the shoreline, its route subject to a constantly fluctuating current, at the mercy of structural obstacles and inflowing streams.


I still wonder if the little houseboat will make it out to the center of the river or just sort of bounce along until the Big Dump into the great ocean.

Conversation Before and After Mass, a clean break that priests must mend

It's been my experience that (silent) reverence is offered to the Blessed Sacrament in those parishes where the priest preaches reverence for the Blessed Sacrament.


There is a precedent for priests mentioning this often: reverence for the Blessed Sacrament is a recurring topic throughout Church history. Never taken for granted, it has been prescribed by councils, by popes, and in the surviving sermons/writings of many saints, including St. John Vianney whose feast day in the new calendar was yesterday: "What is it that makes our churches so sacred and so venerable? Is it not the presence of Jesus Christ?...We must appear before Him with the greatest reverence, and when taking part in sacramental processions we should awaken within us the most profound respect...We should consider those moments spent before the Blessed Sacrament as the happiest of our lives. Let us, sinners as we are, pray with tears and sorrow for the forgiveness of our sins...Let us say to Him in all earnestness that we would rather die than to offend Him again!" (_Sermons of the Cure of Ars_, The Neumann Press, 1995)


The disposition before the Blessed Sacrament, as prescribed by the patron saint of parish priests, St. John Vianney, describes the joy before the Blessed Sacrament not as moments of profane conversation and laughter in an attempt to "celebrate" the Eucharist with people, but as a time of "greatest reverence" and "profound respect" directed to the Blessed Sacrament.


While conversation and laughter in the church can be very distracting to those praying and adoring the Blessed Sacrament after Mass, there is something far more pernicious afoot here.


This modern behavior constitutes a clean break with the pre-Vatican II Church in the application of Eucharistic dogma to discipline. This Unam Sanctam Catholicam blog article offers an important observation: "The real danger is not that the Church will teach error as truth, but rather, that the Church will tolerate error and allow deviations from Catholic discipline because it feels like it can't stop them anyway. Thus, the teaching will remain 'on the books', so to speak, but like obsolete laws in many American states that ban drinking on Sundays but have not been enforced for decades, the teaching of the Church will remain a dead letter while aberrations and dissent will be accepted as the norm."

Our faith determines how we worship, yes, but our faith is handed down from generation to generation, to a large degree, by the manner in which we worship and in the disciplines associated with Eucharistic dogma. This reciprocal relationship does not bode well for orthodoxy when so many insist on engaging in unprecedented practices which are only justified by the liturgical opinions of the post-conciliar liturgical reformers.