Bearded Gentlemen on Plinths

Roger Scruton, "Monumental Egos," The American Spectator (April 10, 2012):

Recently I spent a few days in Budapest, a city that is full of monuments. In every park some bearded gentleman stands serenely on a plinth, testifying to the worth of Hungarian poetry, to the beauty of Hungarian music, to the sacrifices made in some great Hungarian cause. The monuments include bas-relief, incorporated into the corner of some building, showing soldiers advancing into war, or patriotic faces against a background flag. They include classical colonnades linking buildings across the edge of a park, and gateways lending dignity to a public street. None stands out, none is designed to draw attention to itself. On the contrary, all attention comes from the monuments, onto the city and the people who live and move within their sight. They are like the eyes of a father, resting on his children at play. They are full of the joy of belonging, and convey a serene acceptance of death in the national cause. Source

Plinthos Made Doctor of Philosophy, PhD

Topic of Doctoral Thesis: "Truth and Relativism in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger"

The Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome

Tuesday, June 23, 2020, 9AM-11:30AM

Doctoral Defense Commission

President: Rev. Dr. Rafael Martinez

Commissioner: Rev. Dr. Santiago Sanz

Secretary: Rev. Dr. Robert Gahl

Podcast audio version of the Defense: Part 1 (1:46:09)

                                                              Part 2 (3:04)

The recordings include the entire Defense, cutting off just before the final actions of the conferral of the title with some instructions about the publication of the thesis, the Candidate puts on the doctrinal biretta, and then recites the Profession of Faith and the Oath of Fidelity (below).

PROFESSIO FIDEI

Ego N. firma fide credo et profiteor omnia et singula quae continentur in Symbolo fidei, videlicet:

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem cœli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium et in unum Dominum Iesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula, Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri per quem omnia facta sunt, qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de cœlis, et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto, ex Maria Virgine, et homo factus est, crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est, et resurrexit tertia die secundum Scripturas, et ascendit in cœlum, sedet ad dexteram Patris, et iterum venturus est cum gloria iudicare vivos et mortuos, cuius regni non erit finis; et in Spiritum Sanctum Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit; qui cum Patre et Filio simul adoratur et conglorificatur qui locutus est per Prophetas; et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum, et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

Firma fide quoque credo ea omnia quae in verbo Dei scripto vel tradito continentur et ab Ecclesia sive sollemni iudicio sive ordinario et universali magisterio tamquam divinitus revelata credenda proponuntur.

Firmiter etiam amplector ac retineo omnia et singula quae circa doctrinam de fide vel moribus ab eadem definitive proponuntur.

Insuper religioso voluntatis et intellectus obsequio doctrinis adhaereo quas sive Romanus Pontifex sive Collegium episcoporum enuntiant cum magisterium authenticum exercent etsi non definitivo actu easdem proclamare intendant.

Plinthos' Doctoral Dinner with some brother priests.

The Slavery of America Today

+Indifferentism (Wikipedia, New Advent)

+Apostasy

+Heresy

+Fornication and every manner of sexual immorality

+Drug abuse

+Pornography

+Abortion

+++And a social "welfare" system and a media industry which encourage and perpetuate all of the above.

The irony is that the greatest enemies of American minorities, which are irreligion, sexual perversion, contraception and abortion, posture as the benefactors. The Catholic faith is maligned as the enemy. That is what Sacred Scripture calls AntiChrist, calling evil good and good evil.

Because "black lives matter," we promote freedom and life, which only Jesus Christ can give. Cf. John 8:31-32.

"Amen, amen I say unto you: that whosoever commits sin, is the slave of sin." John 8:34

N.B. Recall that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of "humiliation, fasting and prayer" to combat the evil of hatred and violence of the American Civil War.

"By the President of the United States of America.
"A Proclamation.

"Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation.

"And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

"And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

"It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

"Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.

"All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

"In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

"Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.

"By the President: Abraham Lincoln
"William H. Seward, Secretary of State."

"I don't think Jews are prisoners of their biology." E. Michael Jones

Vienna Pro-Family Demonstration Today

Our Credo:

+Inviolable right to life from conception
+Maximum help for pregnant women in need
+Marriage only between man and woman
+Maternal salary instead of child-care
+Against the gender craze
+Sole parenting rights of parents
+Protection against forced sexualization in pre-school and school
+No adoption right for same-sex couples

https://gloria.tv/post/PsjgA6veEKEc3ZVBrm8RCa2ia

Christ's Peace Comes Only from True Love

Saint Thomas Aquinas says that Christ's peace is threefold.

1. Peace with God.
2. Peace with oneself.
3. Peace with others.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux says that true love is its own reward. The love itself is perfect joy, it does not seek any compensation. There is no compensation because the love itself is supreme. That is perfect peace. There is no "ulterior motive." Non plus ultra!

"All true love is without calculation and nevertheless is instantly given its reward, in fact it can receive its reward only when it is without calculation.... Whoever seeks as the reward of his love only the joy of  love will receive the joy of love. But whoever seeks anything else in love except love will lose both love and the joy of love at the same time."

De diligendo Deo, ed. W.W. Williams (Cambridge, 1926), 32f. in Joseph Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1997, 244.

The Corpus Christi Procession Blessing

Toledo, Spain

[The Corpus Christi procession is related to the "rogation" processions.]

[With the four altars of the rogation procession]...[t]he world...is declared to be the realm of God's creative word; matter is subordinated to the power of his Spirit. For matter too is his creation and hence the sphere of his gracious power. Ultimately we receive the very bread of the earth from his hands. How beautifully the new eucharistic bread is thus related to our daily bread! The eucharistic bread imparts its blessing to the daily bread, and each loaf of the latter silently points to him who wished to be the bread of us all. So the liturgy opens out into everyday life, into our earthly life and cares; it goes beyond the church precincts because it actually embraces heaven and earth, present and future.

How we need this sign!

Liturgy is not the private hobby of a particular group; it is about the bond which holds heaven and earth together, it is about the human race and the entire created world.

In the Corpus Christi procession, faith's link with the earth, with the whole of reality, is represented "in bodily form", by the act of walking, of treading the ground, our ground...[W]e carry the Lord himself, the Creator, over the ground--the Lord who willed to give himself in the grain of the wheat and the fruit of the vine...

[T]he rogation procession and the procession with the Most Blessed Sacrament which developed out of the liturgy of Holy Week...come together on Corpus Christi in a single solemn profession of faith in the world-embracing power of Jesus Christ's redeeming love.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Feast of Faith, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987, 134-135.