In the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, the Gospel for the Mass of Easter day is John 20:1-9. In the Extraordinary Form, this is the Gospel for Easter Saturday.
John and Peter run to the tomb. John, the younger of the two, gets there first, but stops and peers in. True to character, Peter, rushes headlong in. John sees and believes.
What did he see?
Was it the image on the shroud? Was it the way the jaw cloth was tossed aside?
The Shroud of Turin will be exhibited this spring from April 19th through June 24th. At National Review, Myra Adams asks, "What Does the Shroud of Turin Prove about Easter?" It also reproduces Babara M. Sullivan's 1973 article, "Reading The Shroud of Turin."
While a famous (infamous?) carbon dating puts it in the medieval period, there are a great many mysteries that baffle scientific explanation, particularly if it were a medieval forgery:
1) Why is the image a photographic negative?
2) Since the image consists of light scorch marks on the outer fibers of the cloth, what process created it?
3) How did the image come to contain three dimensional information, a technical feat only brought out by the technology used to interpret images sent from probes to outer space in the twentieth century.
4) How did the cloth acquire the micro spores from precisely the right centuries and locations that show its originating in first century Palestine, resided in Syria and Turkey as well as modern Europe?
The list goes on.
No known scientific process could have produced the image. It is more difficult to explain it as a forgery than as being authentic.
Resurrexit sicut dixit, Alleluia!
Sunday, March 27, 2016
What If the Presidential Election in 2016 Ends in an Indecisive Three Way Race
People are already speculating on the possibility of a three way race. One scenario is Senator cruz or Governor Kaisic is nominated by the Republicans and Trump runs as a third party candidate. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is nominated by the Democrats and is indicted before the election. (If Clinton were indicted before the convention, the pols would desert her for Vice President Biden.)
Let us further speculate that none gets a majority of electors in the electoral college. What happens?
The House of Representatives votes and each state gets one vote. (Article II Section 1.) There is a possibility of deadlock, but presumably multiple ballots are possible. The Senate only gets involved in the case of a tie for Vice President, the president of that chamber.
If I remember right, John Quincy Adams was the last president so elected, although Andrew Jackson, the Trump of his day, had more popular and electoral votes (neither anywhere near a majority.)
Adams was certainly worthy of the office. I can not make the same judgement about his successor. Unfortunately, in the next election the populist, rabble-rouser Jackson won, financed by the crony capitalists of the day (mostly country bankers.) The "man of the people" had as his running mate, the well heeled New Yorker Martin Van Buren. The demon of the Trail of Tears promptly drove the economy into America's first recession and the the first of the banking crises we have suffered from every ten years since (in my professional judgement, no coincidence.)
Jackson was the godfather of the expansionist policies that hoped to extend slavery to ever newer lands. Professional historians frequently rate him among our five greatest presidents. Greatest is not best and he hardly exemplifies the virtue that the Founders believed essential to the Republic's success. The German word for "great" is "gross."
The moral: do not believe every judgment you read in the history books.
Let us further speculate that none gets a majority of electors in the electoral college. What happens?
The House of Representatives votes and each state gets one vote. (Article II Section 1.) There is a possibility of deadlock, but presumably multiple ballots are possible. The Senate only gets involved in the case of a tie for Vice President, the president of that chamber.
If I remember right, John Quincy Adams was the last president so elected, although Andrew Jackson, the Trump of his day, had more popular and electoral votes (neither anywhere near a majority.)
Adams was certainly worthy of the office. I can not make the same judgement about his successor. Unfortunately, in the next election the populist, rabble-rouser Jackson won, financed by the crony capitalists of the day (mostly country bankers.) The "man of the people" had as his running mate, the well heeled New Yorker Martin Van Buren. The demon of the Trail of Tears promptly drove the economy into America's first recession and the the first of the banking crises we have suffered from every ten years since (in my professional judgement, no coincidence.)
Jackson was the godfather of the expansionist policies that hoped to extend slavery to ever newer lands. Professional historians frequently rate him among our five greatest presidents. Greatest is not best and he hardly exemplifies the virtue that the Founders believed essential to the Republic's success. The German word for "great" is "gross."
The moral: do not believe every judgment you read in the history books.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Blessed JJose Sanchez Del Rio
On October 16th, the Church will recognize the teenage martyr of the
Cristero revolt for religious liberty, Blessed Blessed Jose Sanchez Del Rio as a saint of the universal church.
They were fighting for their religious liberty to worship Christ the King (whose feast, not so incidentally, was proclaimed for the universal church by Pius XI in 1925.)
Whether the Callas regime was motivated by its socialism, communism, sheer egotism, or free masonry may be fun to debate, but the crucified Mexicans and the numerous martyrs were the fruits by which we know that regime's true nature.
Religious liberty is under attack here in the United States by dogmatic secularists who are willing to use the power of the state to suppress it as they are Brussels and Ottawa among other places. The case of the Little Sisters of the Poor and the challenge to state Blaine amendments are before a Supreme Court suffering from the loss of Anton Scalia. We need prayer and fasting.
Religious liberty is a fundamental human right that inheres in our god-given human nature and that the church has dealt with it differently over the centuries. To my mind, how the church should treat this right is prudential rather than dogmatic. I appreciate anti Vatican II Catholics and I may differ on this.
History does not treat the consequences of using state power to impose Catholicism kindly. It is no coincidence that the areas where Charlemagne imposed Christianity by the sword were the strongholds of the Protestant Revolt seven centuries later (Niedersachsen and Martin Luther's own Sachsen Anhalt.) The sins of the fathers fall to the sons even to seven centuries. Increasingly even the secularists are coming to appreciate the wisdom of Benedict's address in Regensburg, an address that seems prescient in light of the Brussels attacks.
History does not treat the consequences of using state power to impose Catholicism kindly. It is no coincidence that the areas where Charlemagne imposed Christianity by the sword were the strongholds of the Protestant Revolt seven centuries later (Niedersachsen and Martin Luther's own Sachsen Anhalt.) The sins of the fathers fall to the sons even to seven centuries. Increasingly even the secularists are coming to appreciate the wisdom of Benedict's address in Regensburg, an address that seems prescient in light of the Brussels attacks.
¡Viva Cristo Rey!
When in Buenas Airies, Even Our President Tangos
¡Unos fenómenos! Los Obama bailaron tango en la cena de honor
Mora Godoy y José Lugones invitaron al presidente y a la primera dama de los Estados Unidos a la pista.
Miércoles 23 de Marzo de 2016And on CBS:
He looked like he was tried to start an American Tango: shame, shame.
She then backled him all the way, but she couldn't backlead him into a dip!
Por Una Cabeza: perfect comment on his tenure in el Casa Blanco.
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