After a few minutes, an elderly man exited the confessional, and the light on the confessional box turned green.

I went in to the penitent's stall, and kneeled. I made the sign of the Cross, and through the grill I said "Bless me Father, for i have sinned. it has been a little over three months since my last confession."

I could make out the outline of Father tim's face through the confessional.

"Good afternoon, John," he said. "We've been looking for you."

"We," I asked, "In the sense of 'you and the Lord', or 'we' in the sense of you and someone else?"

"We, in the sense of the bishop and I," he replied. "The Lord knows where you are at all times, and the Lord knows we've been looking for you."

"I've been doing some thinking," I said.

"I understand," he said.

"I note that that was phrased in the singular."

"You note correctly," Fr. Tim replied. "He was considering filing a missing person's report. I convinced him you'd turn up soon."

"Thanks, Tim, I appreciate it."

"Though I did say some prayers to St. Anthony to make sure," he added.

"Well, that never hurts," I said.

"Do you want to talk in the rectory or do you have things to confess?"

"Both," I said.

"Go on," he said.

"Father, in the last ninety days, I have, although I am a priest, failed in my requirement to say mass each day. I believe I've missed mass four times."

"Go on," he said.

"I have suffered from the sin of acedia. I have also gotten drunk a number of times."

"You are medicating the memory. I understand."

"I have also failed to identify where I failed in my last case. I do not know that I have even applied myself diligently to self-examination."

"It is probably still too early, and at any rate, you did not kill her, a demon did," he said.

"You say that as if you believe that," I said.

I could see him turn to me, through the grill. "I do, John. No one thinks you were at fault."

"Father Ricardo might disagree with that," I replied.

"Father Ricardo is dead," he replied. "And he has been for over three years now. Time to face that, John."

"I pray to him, you know," I said.

"And I am certain," said Fr. Tim, "That he prays for you. And assuming he is in Heaven, we can only assume that because of his proximinty to the Lord, he has more power there than he ever did here, and is looking after you there better than he ever did here. In which case, he could not have prevented the girl's death any more than you could. In which case, the girl's death served some purpose in accord with God's ineffable will, which we are obliged to accept, even when we do not understand it."

I considered this for a moment. Tim had prepared this trap for me with some consideration. He was a good friend.

"I've never had this happen before," I said.

"Well, hopefully it will not happen to you again. And if it does, consider a different line of work if you cannot accept the consequences. All of us fail, John. No one is perfect."

I sat in silence for a moment or two.

"Do you have anything else to confess?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"Make an act of contrition," he said.

I did so.

“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace. And I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," he said.

"Amen. Thank you Father," I said.

"And for your act of penance you can come over to the rectory with me. I need your help with a case."

"Now, Tim, that's not fair," I said. "You can't use penance to make me take a case for you."

"I didn't ask you to take the case. I have permission from the bishop to proceed on it on my own, and I intend to do so. Since you were out of the loop, I had little choice. I will be the lead on it. That being said, I want your help, and since St. Anthony sent you to me today, I'm pretty confident I'm going to get it."

"Ok," I said. "You've done the necessary preparation?"

"Of course," he said.

"When are you planning to do this?" I asked.

"Tonight," he said.

I sighed. "Ok, Tim," I said, "But I'm only in this as backup. And don't let the old man know about it."

"My lips are sealed," he said.

I often think that Joseph Ratzinger will be remembered in history long after many of his contemporaries are forgotten, and not simply because he is Pope.

His writing is, in so many ways, a perfect antitode to the spirit of the age.

Introduction to Christianity is a meditation on the Apostles' Creed. As such, it is very catechetical in its approach, but like all of Ratzinger's writing, it is catechesis for the very thoughtful. This book would be good for someone who is struggling with the faith on a philosophical level; who has considered the faith but hasn't quite crossed the threshold yet.

It is crisscrossed with his usual thorough quotation of scripture, and his inclusion of many different approaches to the faith. He is a very well read man.

Fr. Tim and I left the church, and walked over to his rectory, a small, Victorian-era house. We entered it, and took a flight of steps down to the basement, where Fr. Tim kept his office.

"You have the case file, I assume. Followed the procedure?" I asked.

"No, John, I'm just playing it by ear, winging it," he said in a bemused voice, which took the edge off the sarcasm. "Of course I followed procedure. The bishop didn't even want to proceed at all unless we were absolutely sure, especially given what happened in the last case. He's had his hands full keeping that story out of the press; you can imagine the circus that would descend on us if the details of that got out."

I could only imagine.

We often saw stories in the newspaper about failed exorcisms, of patients being killed by shamans, or well- meaning but profoundly misinformed lay people; of cases where patients were held without water, or beaten to death, by people who thought they were doing God's will. What we did was of a profoundly different kind. Our procedures protected us from charges of sensationalism or abuse; we collected pages of medical and psychological testimony, as well as the results of tests we had devised to differentiate mental illness from possession. A schizophrenic will occasionally let loose a torrent of scatological profanity in a voice that doesn't sound like their own. A drug-addict can overwhelm you with seemingly superhuman strength from time to time.

Very seldom will they be able to levitate; very seldom will they respond to the presence of hidden sacramentals; very seldom are they able to distinguish between Holy Water and tap water. I have been cursed at by mental patients; that is never an occasion for surprise. Frequently the site of a Roman collar will provoke the mentally ill; occasionally it will even provoke muttering from the perfectly sane.

But very rarely will a person curse you in Aramaic, or tell you of sins you committed years ago and had never remembered to confess, or tell you precisely what a relative in another city was doing at that exact moment.

Fr. Tim unlocked the filing cabinet, and pulled out a manila folder.

"Man or woman," I asked him, before opening it.

"A boy of ten," he said.

"Suspected cause?" I asked.

"Well, events started about a week after a sleep-over party that the boy had for his little league team. According to the interviews, they were playing with a Ouija board."

"Anything unusual or paranormal occur that night?"

"No," said Tim. "Some of his friends were making fun of him because he seemed scared of it, though."

"To them, it was a game. To him, it was something different. Is he a sensitive at all?"

I disliked using the word, but it was a fair enough description, and some times, even he new age types got something right. Sensitives are, in their parlance, people who are unusually receptive to spiritual things.

"Not that anyone is aware of. Up until a few months ago, he seemed like a completely normal, happy kid. A better than average student. No reports of visions or him being prescient, or anything. He does have a love for animals. Always bringing home strays, that kind of thing. But nothing out of the ordinary."

I opened the folder, and looked at the medical reports. The boy's conduct had begun to deteriorate. Problems in school. Disrespectful to his teachers, starting fights on the playground. Verbal cruelty toward a disabled classmate. Playing with matches; starting small fires.

The last one reminded me of something.

"Tell me Tim, any foreign languages?"

"French," he said.

"You speak French?" I asked.

"Enough to recognize profanity in it. And some other language I can't identify. Sounds like an American Indian dialect of some kind."

"A dollar says it's Iroquois."

Tim looked at me. "Have you heard of this before?"

"Similar to one of my cases a few years back," I said.

I continued to read the medical reports, and the psychological analysis. One psychologist saw nothing unusual about the boy, just some acting out to get attention.

The other psychologist said that his interview began well enough, but then as he asked him questions beyond mere conversation, the boy's manner and facial aspects had seemed to change. His voice had become deeper, and more worldly. The boy had begun to make fun of him, to respond to his questions dismissively. Then he had begun to respond to questions in French. The doctor spoke French, but only conversationally; the boy began to discuss psychology with him in French that was impressive in its vocabulary and erudition, peppered with remarks so gravely insulting and disturbingly profane that the doctor began to get uneasy. The doctor wanted to hypnotize the boy, because he thought he might be experiencing some sort of past life regression. In looking through his desk drawers for an object to use as a pendulum; he found a small crucifix on a chain. When he dangled it in front of the boy and asked him to focus on it, the boy became deeply agitated, and began to curse violently. The doctor also noted that the room began to grow cold. He first thought that it was his imagination, but he began to see his breath as he exhaled. The doctor said that it seemed like a more or less classic case of demonic possession according to the literature on the subject, but he would not say so except confidentially. The boy's words to him on concluding the interview were "I shall never let him go."

"Reading the psychologist's report," I said to Tim.

"Pretty discouraging, huh?" said Tim.

"Actually, I was going to say the opposite. The demon used the singular, rather than the plural. We might be only facing one here," I said.

"Could be lying," said Tim.

"Yeah, well, they do that, too. But usually when they are trying to frighten, they like to claim there's a whole bunch of them. It's a matter of pride for them. They invite in all their friends."

"You said you had a similar case?" Tim asked.

"Drive me back to my rectory, and I'll show you the case file."

We drove in the car that Tim's parish had provided for him, Tim at the wheel, with me in the passenger seat reading more of the file.

Tim's notes.

The boy's mother, though not particularly religious, had asked to see her parish priest. She mentioned the boy's symtpoms. The priest asked them to come to Mass that Sunday, and said he would bless the boy, afterward. The boy became agitated as the Mass went on, and during the Offertory, he had began to mutter profanities under his breath, which naturally disturbed the people around them. The boy's mother had to take him out of the church. Afterwards, as the priest had approached him in his stole to try to give a blessing, the boy broke away and began to curse at the priest.

The priest referred the matter to the bishop; the bishop had, since Fr. John was on leave, asked for Fr. Tim, since he had worked with Fr. John and Fr. Ricardo some years before.

Tim ran a series of tests. The boy seemed cheerful enough as they met in the boy's home, and Tim saw nothing unusual at work, until at one point Tim excused himself, and went out to his car. He retrieved a vial of holy water, a third class relic (a piece of cloth that had been touched to the bones of the Cure de Ars, St. John Vianney), and a Bible.

When Tim reentered the house, the boy's manner was completely different. He said to Fr. Tim, "I thought we were going to play nice, priest," and began to curse in French, referring a number of times by name to St. John Vianney, although the relic had never left Tim's pocket and he had not mentioned it to him. The room also had become markedly colder; Tim also had a digital thermometer in his jacket pocket, and it had dropped to 45 degrees.

Tim then took out the Bible, and calmly began to read a passage he had marked with the ribbon. Philippians, 2:1-11.

"Kid freaked out at Philippians?" I asked.

"When I got to the words 'and under the Earth' he physically attacked me," said Tim. "It took both his parents and an uncle to restrain him."

I closed the file.

"So you concur, then?" asked Fr. Tim

I looked at him. "I knew in the confessional," I said. "Just from the tone of your voice. If you had any doubts, you've answered them to your satisfaction. That alone, Tim, is good enough for me."

We pulled into the the driveway for the rectory of my parish. It was on the south side of town, St. John the Baptist, or as the colloquial expression of my old neighborhood had always referred to it, "Southside Johnny," to differentiate it from St. John the Apostle church on the hill. The south side of town was a blue collar neighborhood, once predominantly Irish, now predominantly African-American. In the diocese, Southside Johnny was perceived as being a poor parish. The church was old, and badly in need of repair. The rectory had been broken into a few times. Its collections were generally pretty thin.

The church was poor in everything except faith. It had a school that, despite the failing radiators and the badly patched roof, routinely won spelling bee contests and National merit scholarships where the public school down the road functioned largely as a prep school for the state prison. St. John the Baptist had won the CYO league basketball tournament for so many years in a row that the league's runner-up trophy was proudly displayed by whoever won it. At 9:30 each Sunday, it's mass featured a gospel choir that would have been perfectly at home in an A.M.E. church, followed by the diocese's only Tridentine Latin mass at eleven, with the same choir singing all the responses.

Unlike Tim, I was not a pastor; the church was not mine, but was rather the parish of Fr. Bob Wannamaker, a highly eccentric old priest who could hold all of these seeming contradictions in his head. Fr. Bob was kind enough to house me, even though I rarely did anything for him except occasionally assist at Mass or fill in for him at a funeral if he was away on retreat. We sometimes had long discussions about the nature of evil; Fr. Bob felt that he confronted the physical weapons of the enemy in his parish -- crime, violence, and drug addiction -- where I confronted the more supernatural weapons of the enemy, dealing with cases of possession and infestations. He felt that there was no real difference between these things; they were simply different tools employed by the same enemy, who absolutely hated humanity and was trying to destroy it in any way he could.

He felt that a lot of priests did not understand this -- that the priests in the diocese, and there were plenty, who did not believe in my ministry -- simply had too narrow a view. He always said to me that there was profoundly more to life than meets they eye; and that priests who denied the reality of the enemy would soon enough come to doubt in the reality of the Lord. He himself had never performed an exorcism or even seen a person who was possessed; but he had seen gangs and the effects of drug addiction, and understood everything I told him of my work in reference to his own. His own parish had not had a case of possession in the time I was there. He occasionally wondered about this, but he said "I guess we have enough enemies already that the Lord sees we don't need any more."

I thought there was a simpler explanation. The demons avoided Southside Johnny because they couldn't stand the sheer amount of love that the parish radiated.

We came to the rectory, and Fr. Bob answered the door.

"John," he said. "Tim. What are you boys up to?" He said it as if he was our father; in retrospect, he was old enough to be.

"I have a case that I've asked for John's help on," said Tim.

"I'm guessing you weren't coming over to play bridge," he said. To me, he said, "You back for good, John?"

"Yes, I am, Bob. Been away on a little vacation."

"You needed it," said Fr. Bob. "Good to have you back."

I'm amazed at the number of people who think Barack Obama is something special; to me he seems like just another politician. Put me in the tone deaf category, I suppose, but I'm immune to his soaring rhetorical appeals. To me, there are two major questions for the next President -- is he going to keep the economy strong, and is he going to keep the country safe? Barack Obama has no experience in either of these areas; he is a Harvard law school grad who worked as a community agitator before going into politics. He won the primaries by playing on the identity politics of the Democratic party and by going to the left of Hillary Clinton on the issue of the Iraq war.

For some people, that is not enough of an explanation. Obama, you see, is a lightworker . . .

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it's not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Does the "new way of being" on the planet have anything to do with associating with corrupt mobsters or racial hate-mongers? It's not like you can avoid looking at that side of his resume.

To me, this is just silly. Obama's giant Nuremberg-sized rallies where he doles out platitudes hardly indicate any professional competence or great ideas. In fact, I think the rallies are designed to hide the lack of competence or great ideas.

As for being a "lightworker", as the New Age speak has it, well, we're all aware of who masquerades as an angel of light. I'm not accepting that Barack Obama is anything more than any ordinary man.

Hat tip to Ace.

I'm moving my home network from Windows XP to OpenSuse Linux 10.3; I'm doing this mainly as a preeemptive measure so that I do not have to start converting things to Vista, which, from all reports, is a very broken operating system.

There are some things Linux does well; there are others it does poorly. One thing it has terrible difficulty with is wireless networking. I have one box, an old laptop, that I really care about being networked wirelessly, as I use it downstairs in my home. It, of course, is refusing all native Linux drivers for its wireless card, and is also refusing to run a Windows driver emulator known as NDISWRAPPER, which, in theory, uses the Windows drivers to make it run. There are pages and pages written about my specific problem on the various Linux forums, but no answer appears to work. Linux troubleshooting is a bit like philosophy; you'll find various theories of being and ontology to explain things, but in the end you're left with "Well, this worked for me in Fedora", or "this works in Ubuntu" and maybe other builds, or "this worked fine in 10.1 but not 10.2." All I know is that my wireless card does not work.

I will probably buy a PCMCIA wireless card today and engage in a fresh round of struggles with it.

My wired machines work beautifully; my main system is running a dual boot OpenSuse 10.3/Windows XP Pro, so that I have access to my old Windows universe should I need it. Overall, I'm impressed with the functionality of Linux and the quality of the design. I'm running the KDE interface, which is elegant.

The other dilemma is this -- my computer room is upstairs in my house. Right now, I have no air conditioning installed in it; the window units I use my wife is refusing to let me install unless she is there to supervise; we had new windows put in last year and she doesn't want me to scratch them. So I suffered in 90+ degree heat trying to troubleshoot these problems; periodically going down to the first floor where I have it at 68 degrees in order to cool off. Wireless networking would let me stay on the first floor. It is of course the one functionality I cannot get to work.

I have a clearer notion now of what Hell is like. It is working on computers in terrible heat with an unfamiliar operating system while getting conflicting advice from 5 different web forums.

UPDATE: The solution was changing to a PCMCIA card using the Atheros chipset and a Linux plugin named Madwifi. It's working -- not great mind you, but it's working.

One of the things I bought when I decided to pursue my master's in theology was a good copy of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. The edition above is a modern printing of what is considered to be the most faithful English translation of it, the edition done by the English Dominicans at the turn of the last century. My copy is from Notre Dame's Ave Maria Press, and is of the 1947 edition, with an imprimatur from Francis Cardinal Spellman, then Archbishop of New York. Back in the day, in other words, before the great apostasy, before zombies and neo-pagans and Lindsay Lohan roamed the Earth. Sauron was still a shadow then; he was unable to take physical form. You get my point. I'm not a crazy rad-trad Sedevacantist or anything, but when you get a Catholic book printed before 1960, it has a certain solidity to it.

At any rate, I'm off (academically) until the fall, and I'm considering going through the Summa, Question by Question, Article by Article, and blogging it.

I probably won't get through the whole thing, but it might be fun.

Pope Leo XIII was a good pope.

I know him from three things he wrote. One of them is the prayer to the Archangel Michael, which he asked be read after every Mass. He composed the prayer after a vision he had in which he saw the church threatened by demons.

"I do not remember the exact year. One morning the great Pope Leo XIII had celebrated a Mass and, as usual, was attending a Mass of thanksgiving. Suddenly, we saw him raise his head and stare at something above the celebrant's head. He was staring motionlessly, without batting an eye. His expression was one of horror and awe; the colour and look on his face changing rapidly. Something unusual and grave was happening in him.

"Finally, as though coming to his senses, he lightly but firmly tapped his hand and rose to his feet. He headed for his private office. His retinue followed anxiously and solicitously, whispering: 'Holy Father, are you not feeling well? Do you need anything?' He answered: 'Nothing, nothing.' About half an hour later, he called for the Secretary of the Congregation of Rites and, handing him a sheet of paper, requested that it be printed and sent to all the ordinaries around the world. What was that paper? It was the prayer that we recite with the people at the end of every Mass. It is the plea to Mary and the passionate request to the Prince of the heavenly host, [St. Michael: Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle] beseeching God to send Satan back to hell."

The practice of saying the prayer after Mass was suppressed in 1964; in my view, unwisely. I am hoping that Pope Benedict will reinstate it at some point.

The second document of his which I admire is the encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which is an encyclical he wrote explaining how Catholics are to read and interpret Sacred Scripture. It is a work that is in the preface to my Douay-Rheims Bible, and is a sound guide to the proper reading of Scripture.

The third document I read today as I prepared my reading of the Summa for my exercise in blogging it; it is the encyclical Aeterni Patris in which he commends the works of St. Thomas Aquinas to be read anew by the church. It is a good read; in includes passages such as this:

Lastly, the duty of religiously defending the truths divinely delivered, and of resisting those who dare oppose them, pertains to philosophic pursuits. Wherefore, it is the glory of philosophy to be esteemed as the bulwark of faith and the strong defense of religion. As Clement of Alexandria testifies, the doctrine of the Saviour is indeed perfect in itself and wanteth naught, since it is the power and wisdom of God. And the assistance of the Greek philosophy maketh not the truth more powerful; but, inasmuch as it weakens the contrary arguments of the sophists and repels the veiled attacks against the truth, it has been fitly called the hedge and fence of the vine.(22) For, as the enemies of the Catholic name, when about to attack religion, are in the habit of borrowing their weapons from the arguments of philosophers, so the defenders of sacred science draw many arguments from the store of philosophy which may serve to uphold revealed dogmas. Nor is the triumph of the Christian faith a small one in using human reason to repel powerfully and speedily the attacks of its adversaries by the hostile arms which human reason itself supplied. This species of religious strife St. Jerome, writing to Magnus, notices as having been adopted by the Apostle of the Gentiles himself; Paul, the leader of the Christian army and the invincible orator, battling for the cause of Christ, skillfully turns even a chance inscription into an argument for the faith; for he had learned from the true David to wrest the sword from the hands of the enemy and to cut off the head of the boastful Goliath with his own weapon.(23) Moreover, the Church herself not only urges, but even commands, Christian teachers to seek help from philosophy. For, the fifth Lateran Council, after it had decided that "every assertion contrary to the truth of revealed faith is altogether false, for the reason that it contradicts, however slightly, the truth,"(24) advises teachers of philosophy to pay close attention to the exposition of fallacious arguments; since, as Augustine testifies, "if reason is turned against the authority of sacred Scripture, no matter how specious it may seem, it errs in the likeness of truth; for true it cannot be."(25)

That's just beautiful. The Church is never more beautiful than when it is embattled; Leo XIII was under no illusions that the church could make peace with the modern age or politely submit to its tutelage. It's a good Pope who stands athwart history and demands that the modern age learn from the medieval church. The Catholic church is at its best when it acts as a brake or a corrective to the spirit of the age (which is almost always a false spirit); I think our current pope recognizes this, and is cut from similar cloth.

Thank you, Pope Leo XIII.

From Gerald Augustinus come two interesting stories.

The first is on the President's visit, in Rome, with the Pope:

Pope Benedict XVI took President Bush on a rare stroll through the lush grounds of the Vatican Gardens on Friday, stopping at a grotto where the pontiff prays daily.

Normally, VIPs are received in the pope's library in the Apostolic Palace. That's where Bush had his first meeting with Benedict in June 2007.

But in a gesture of appreciation for the hearty welcome Bush gave him in Washington in April, Benedict welcomed the president and first lady Laura Bush near St. John's Tower in the lush Vatican Gardens.

"This is fantastic up here," Bush said. "Thank you so much for showing me this."

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the two leaders have the kind of relationship that allows them to speak frankly. They discussed such issues as human rights, HIV and AIDS in Africa, and poverty around the world, she said.

After their private meeting ended, Bush and Benedict posed for official photographs and exchanged gifts.

The second story builds on the first -- rumors in the Italian papers that the President is considering becoming a Catholic:

The usual protocol for heads-of-state is a meeting in the pope's library in the Apostolic Palace, but a spokesman for the Vatican said Benedict wanted to reward Mr Bush for the "warmth" of his reception at the White House earlier this year.

The two men have grown increasingly close in the past two years, and Mr Bush was overheard whispering: "What an honour, what an honour, what an honour!" as he ascended the steps to the tower.

After a stroll through the Vatican gardens, the men listened to a recital by the choir of the Sistine Chapel. However, Mr Bush did not, as expected, kneel in prayer before the Grotto of the Madonna of Lourdes. It was thought that he may have prayed with the pope in private. Mr Bush prayed with Benedict in the Oval Office during the Papal visit to the US in April.

Several Italian newspapers cited Vatican sources suggesting that Mr Bush may be prepared to convert. One source told Il Foglio, an authoritative newspaper, that "Anything is possible, especially for a born-again Christian such as Bush."

George William Rutler, a New York-based priest who is close to the president, was quoted by the Washington Post earlier this year saying that Mr Bush "is not unaware of how evangelism, by comparison with Catholicism, may seem more limited both theologically and historically".

Mr Bush has filled the White House with Catholic speech-writers and consultants and is also thought to have asked a Catholic priest to bless the West Wing.

Before he became president, Karl Rove, his former political adviser, invited Catholic intellectuals to Texas to lecture the candidate on the church's teachings. Mr Bush appointed the Catholic judges Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

However, it is thought unlikely that Mr Bush would convert until after he has left office. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, has already converted to Catholicism.

Catholics have noted that during the contested election in 2000, Jeb Bush travelled to Mexico and prayed to the icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe. His victory was announced by the Supreme Court on December 12, the feast day of the Lady of Guadelupe.

You've got to love that last part.

UPDATE: More important than Texas?

Your Score: The Theist

You scored 20 Materialism and 10 Phenomenology!

A common mistake is assuming that "Theism" means religion. Theism isn't religion, it is in fact metaphysics, originating with Emperor Constantine, who transformed Christianity from a minority religion to the ideological standard of Rome.

What Theism simply means is that you are convinced that there is a Final Ordering Principle to the universe, that it has agency (will), that it ordains all power structures as will as instilling reality with purpose and design, and that everything must be interpreted within that context.

Thinkers you may agree with: St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Iraneus
Thinkers to challenge you: Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Don Cupitt

No real surprises there . . .

The full question and response can be found online here. In this question, I've included everything; but on future questions, I'll probably truncate it to discuss what interests me.

Aquinas begins the Summa with a question about theology itself -- whether it is necessary. He raises two objections to the idea that it is necessary.

Article 1. Whether, besides philosophy, any further doctrine is required?

Objection 1. It seems that, besides philosophical science, we have no need of any further knowledge. For man should not seek to know what is above reason: "Seek not the things that are too high for thee" (Sirach 3:22). But whatever is not above reason is fully treated of in philosophical science. Therefore any other knowledge besides philosophical science is superfluous.

Objection 2. Further, knowledge can be concerned only with being, for nothing can be known, save what is true; and all that is, is true. But everything that is, is treated of in philosophical science--even God Himself; so that there is a part of philosophy called theology, or the divine science, as Aristotle has proved (Metaph. vi). Therefore, besides philosophical science, there is no need of any further knowledge.

This is an important question -- it is as important question today as it was in the thirteenth century. Today, underneath the mantle of philosophy we would include science, and so if we were considering this first proposition today, it would be even more compelling -- Do we really need anything beyond philosophy, science, and technology?

Consider the relationship between science and religion and it certainly seems that science no longer believes that any sort of theology is necessary -- the big bang explains physics, and Darwin explains biology. But these are merely physical explanations. One can assert that the big bang occurred from reason, but that reason cannot answer why the big bang occurred. Science is ultimately tautological; it can explain rules within its system of definitions, but it cannot go beyond it.

I think Aquinas shows us a central problem with Science -- Science assumes that everything can be answered by reason alone. just as philosophers did. You'll find that if you take this approach, you can get pretty far -- Science does have a lot to offer. But it cannot answer things beyond a defined beginning; it can get to the big bang, but can offer nothing before it. It can get to natural selection, but it cannot tell you why life began. Science ultimately becomes trapped in its own tautologies.

At the beginning of Aquinas's great enterprise is an entirely different proposition. Reason is not man's highest function, and there are things beyond what reason can get to. Reason, in other words, has limits. But beyond those limits there must be something; some purpose. Aquinas finds it in God, in the drama of man's salvation, in Scripture, and this shapes his answer:

On the contrary, It is written (2 Timothy 3:16): "All Scripture, inspired of God is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice." Now Scripture, inspired of God, is no part of philosophical science, which has been built up by human reason. Therefore it is useful that besides philosophical science, there should be other knowledge, i.e. inspired of God.

I answer that, It was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: "The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee" (Isaiah 66:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation.

Aquinas thus argues that beyond reason must come revelation from a creator, from a being greater than ourselves. Theology is therefore a science which deals in that revelation, which Aquinas finds in Scripture and the church. Aquinas also ties in the question of man's purpose to a question of salvation -- central to his understanding of man is that man is a fallen being, in need of salvation from man's creator. Aquinas therefore presupposes that his reader has a Christian worldview -- he does not presume to prove theology from first principles; he supposes therefore that any reader of his works has gotten at least that far. Aquinas viewed the works of the Greek philosophers as a kind of preparation for Christianity; doubtless he would turn his readers in that direction should they need training in reason (Aquinas finds that one can reason to God's existence, but having gotten that far, one needs God to reveal to man things which man cannot understand through reason alone). A person coming to read the Summa therefore is best prepared if that person has already made two humble assumptions -- that man in not God, and neither can Man, on his own, understand God.

In dealing with the objections, Aquinas disposes of the first question through a further analysis of the text of Sirach:

Reply to Objection 1. Although those things which are beyond man's knowledge may not be sought for by man through his reason, nevertheless, once they are revealed by God, they must be accepted by faith. Hence the sacred text continues, "For many things are shown to thee above the understanding of man" (Sirach 3:25). And in this, the sacred science consists.

Thus, the first book of the Bible that is mentioned to the reader of the Summa is not, as one might expect, one of the Gospels; but rather a book that is part of the Jewish wisdom literature. Sirach was the last book in the Old Testament of the Vulgate, and is from an original Hebrew text that was translated into Greek for edification of Greek- speaking readers; in other words, of the Jews of the diaspora. Sirach is one of the Deuterocanonical works; it comes from the Septuagint; and is therefore found in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, but generally not in the Protestant bibles, except where they are included as Apocrypha. Aquinas makes great use of the Deuterocanonicals in the Summa. This is not surprising because the wisdom literature of the Septuagint forms one of the great bridges between the Greek world and the Hebrew world. Aquinas has as his philosophical mission the desire to bring the world of the Greek philosophers into the reasoning of the Church; in that his works form a kind of hinge between reason and revelation, it is not surprising that he uses earlier bridges or hinges to make his case.

I also often wonder if part of Luther's desire to exclude the Deuterocanonicals was not simply to get rid of the doctrine of purgatory, but also to attempt to banish much of the thought of Aquinas. If the Summa is not built on Scripture, one can disregard it. Rather than facing Aquinas head on, one can simply avoid him entirely by undercutting his work from below.

Aquinas deals with the second objection to the question, which is a technical one, by differentiating between theology and what is today called philosophy of religion. The theological work performed in philosophy of religion is not dealing with revelation, therefore it is not theology proper, as he defines it.

Reply to Objection 2. Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy.

Ite ad Thomam, a "new to me" blog, has a post which contains the short resumes of the 33 doctors of the Catholic Church.

Enjoy.

The next Dan Brown movie won't be shot inside any churches in Rome.

Producers of the film, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks, were turned down because the movie "does not conform to our views," said Monsignor Marco Fibbi, a spokesman for the diocese.

The crew had asked to film in the churches of Santa Maria del Popolo and Santa Maria della Vittoria, two architectural jewels in the heart of Rome that include paintings by Caravaggio, sculptures by Bernini and a chapel designed by Raphael.

Permission was denied in 2007, but the issue surfaced only now that filming is ongoing in Rome, Fibbi said. The Sony-produced film was put on hold during the Writers Guild of America strike that ended in February and is now scheduled for release in May 2009.

Fibbi's comments first were reported this week by the Italian entertainment magazine "TV Sorrisi e Canzoni." "It's a film that treats religious issues in a way that contrasts with common religious sentiment," Fibbi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We would be helping them create a work that might well be beautiful but that does not conform to our views."

I'm glad.

Looking at the credits for The DaVinci Code, it does not appear there were any interior shots taken inside any Catholic churches -- all the churches that allowed the filmmakers in were Protestant. The St. Sulpice scenes were evidently done on a sound stage.

A resistance movement is born.

I particularly liked this passage from the manifesto:

Message to the pagans and apostates in government, media, education, industry & the arts We will not surrender our rights in civil society. We will not stand by and watch while our culture, our Church and our Lord are insulted, ridiculed, marginalized and attacked. We will not submit to laws which attempt to make us complicit in your rebellion against God and nature. We reject the pornographic and materialistic culture which seeks to lure our children away from the Faith. We reject Mammon, Molech, Ashtoreth, Gaia and Baal in all their forms and disguises. Our first allegiance is reserved not to country or flag, but to God. The Church is our nation.

Hat tip to Some Have Hats, who wants wristbands. I'm thinking the Scapular might be appropriate.

A fascinating article at Whispers in the Loggia.

This part I found interesting, also:

Under usual circumstances, the US appointment docket will likely see a bit of movement between the days following this weekend's USCCB meeting in Orlando and mid-July's effective suspension of Vatican business for the summer. (For the record, as of this writing, eight American dioceses stand vacant, with another ten whose ordinaries are serving past the retirement age of 75 and holding on for successors.

Eight vacant dioceses and ten dioceses soon to see changes. Benedict XVI will have quite an impact on the American church if the Vatican fills these sees in a timely manner. I can only think his changes will be for the good.

Rorate Caeli is calling for the removal of a bishop.

Catholic Charities of Richmond is obviously out of control; the overseer (επίσκοπος) of all Catholic activities related to the Diocese of Richmond is its Bishop, Francis Xavier DiLorenzo. What took place under his watch was no mere "incident". It was the death of an innocent human being, placed by Divine Providence under the care of a Church agency, whose overseer was and is the Bishop. He must resign.

The full story is here. It seems that Catholic Charities of Richmond not only assisted in getting a Guatemalan immigrant girl a contraceptive device -- itself a flagrant violation of church teaching -- but when that contraceptive device failed (as they sometimes do), drove the girl to an abortion clinic and had an employee illegally sign a parental consent form.

I'm not sure of all the circumstances, but this clearly indicates a failure of leadership.

At any rate, an argument used for artificial contraception is that it is the lesser of two evils -- that contraception prevents abortions. I think we can see the fallacy pretty clearly in this example. One may never do evil that good may come of it. Lesser evils lead to greater evils, and all evils eventually lead to the author of death. All evil potentially leads to death, because that is what evil does, and that is what evil is.

What was the proper role for the charity here? To counsel the girl that should she wish to escape poverty, she should abstain from sex until she is married. If the girl goes out and gets pregnant, then the charity ought to assist in getting the girl proper care and help her provide for her children. Instead, the charity participated in a murder.

How any Catholic could do this is beyond me. It's not as if church teaching is unclear. There simply is no grey area.

Roman Catholic doctrine condemns deliberate abortion as a mortal sin in all cases and imposes automatic excommunication upon anyone who obtains one or knowingly helps someone else do so.

You cannot do evil that good may come of it. Evil doesn't work that way.

Matt at Absolutely No Spin, a former Presbyterian, finds that the church he grew up in has closed. He lays out the reasons here. Good reading.

I think that Protestant churches live and die by Scripture. Catholic churches live and die by their liturgy.

Benedict has made his offer; they have til the end of the month to decide.

Il Giornale says that the accord proposed by the Vatican has several stipulations, including two important provisions that the newspaper has learned: the SSPX would be required to recognize the authority of Vatican II teachings and to affirm the validity of the Novus Ordo Mass. The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of the SSPX, had accepted both of those terms before his break with the Vatican in 1986.

The Vatican proposes the erection of a traditionalist prelature, Il Giornale reports. This prelature would allow the SSPX to continue its work and to train its own seminarians.

In other words, kiss the ring and you get to go on as before. Refuse to do so, and you're facing a declaration of formal schism. Where Rome has already brought back the 1962 Missal, Benedict's hand is strong. The SSPX will potentially see its laity drift back to Rome if the laity believe that their leaders are heretics.

UPDATE: Looks like the SSPX is refusing the offer. At some point, the church is going to have to declare them heretics.

A red hat will most likely happen soon, too.

Vatican, Jun. 27, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, Missouri, has been named by Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) to head the Vatican's top canonical court.

Archbishop Burke will become the prefect of the supreme tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, a judicial body that is roughly the equivalent of the US Supreme Court. He will replace Cardinal Agostino Vallini, who has been named the Pope's vicar for the Rome diocese.

Archbishop Burke was installed as head of the St. Louis archdiocese in January 2004. His tenure there has been marked by controversy, with the archbishop-- an acknowledged expert on canon law-- meeting resistance and public criticism as he sought to enforce the Church's norms. He announced the excommunication of women who claimed ordination to the priesthood, and of the leaders of a parish that refused to acknowledge his authority. In each case the Vatican confirmed the archbishop's decision.

Some people see this job, which moves Abp. Burke to an administrative post in Rome, as something of a lateral move -- but clearly, his talents as a canon lawyer are being put to use on behalf of the whole church. In that Abp. Burke is relatively young, I think he has a bright future still ahead of him and we will eventually see him in the Curia.

A fine article in America magazine.

My pro-choice views (and I imagine those of many others) were motivated by loving concern: I just did not want women to have to suffer, to have to devalue themselves by dealing with unwanted pregnancies. Since it was an inherent part of my worldview that everyone except people with “hang-ups” eventually has sex, and that sex is, under normal circumstances, only about the relationship between the two people involved, I was lured into one of the oldest, biggest, most tempting lies in human history: the enemy is not human. Babies had become the enemy because of their tendency to pop up and ruin everything; and just as societies are tempted to dehumanize their fellow human beings on the other side of the line in wartime, so had I, and we as a society, dehumanized what we saw as the enemy of sex.

As I was reading up on the Catholic Church’s understanding of sex, marriage and contraception, everything changed. I had always assumed that Catholic teachings against birth control were outdated notions, even a thinly disguised attempt to oppress the faithful. What I found, however, was that these teachings expressed a fundamentally different understanding of sex. And once I discovered this, I never saw the world the same way again.

It sometimes surprises people who have an idea of what the Church teaches to really read what the church teaches. A fine starting point is the Catechism, in which the Church tells you what it believes, and why. It is a finely reasoned document which very few of the Church's critics will ever take the time to read, because it is more convenient to dismiss the Catholic church than it is to debate it.

Ideally I would have taken an objective look at when human life begins and based my views on that alone, but the lie was just too tempting. I did not want to hear too much about heartbeats or souls or brain activity. Terminating pregnancies simply had to be acceptable, because carrying a baby to term and becoming a parent is a huge deal, and society had made it very clear that sex was not a huge deal. As long as I accepted the premise that engaging in sex with a contraceptive mentality was morally acceptable, I could not bring myself to consider that abortion might not be acceptable. It seemed inhumane to make women deal with life-altering consequences for an act that was not supposed to have life-altering consequences.

And that's the heart of the lie. Separating the purpose of sex (to create new life) from its side benefits (pleasure and love) leads inexorably to contraception, and from contraception to abortion. We are responsible for our actions, and what we lose sight of is the fact that sex is an act fraught with deep moral consequences; it is the stuff of life (and death) itself. It does indeed have life-altering consequences. Which is why it ought not to be engaged in lightly. Which is why marriage is the proper place for it.

The prohibition on abortion in the Catholic church has nothing to do with the Church wishing to control people. The church is simply telling you what the real (potential) cost of the act is -- it can generate life. A person confronted with that life then has a choice -- do I nurture this life or do I exterminate it? No one else will tell you what the cost of sex is except the church, which is why it reserves it to those who can raise a newborn.

Hat tip to Carl Olson.

The Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul. Traditionally, the day in which metropolitan archbishops receive their palliums; the new Archbishop of Baltimore receives his today.

Orate Pro Nobis.

In Sydney, Australia, in advance of World Youth Day. Our friends at Coo-ees from the Cloister have the details, and yes, I did swipe the graphic from them. Too good to resist.