28 January 2016

Have a good summer

I expect readers will have noticed, on Rorate and NLM, notices of the Conference in Norcia. The website is http:www.albertusmagnuscss.org/p/summer-program-2016.html

You will be able to hear, among others, the charismatic and erudite Dom Cassian Folsom, and the learned and lucid Fr Thomas Crean. As well as much else, you will be taught what S Thomas Aquinas taught about the Letter to the Hebrews. And you need to know about that. It is a Letter substantially ignored by the recent very iffy Vatican document (NOT Magisterial) on Church and Jews. It is an Epistle disliked by Cardinal Kasper. Do you need any further recommendation? July 10-24. I do urge you to take this seriously.

But there's somewhere else you should have been just before that. The Roman Forum annual Conference will have been 'on' Lake Garda June 27-July 8. This year we shall be be concentrating on the 500th Anniversary of Luther's so-called Reformation. There's going to be endless nonsense about Luther and his -ism over the next couple of years. You need to know the facts. I don't know who's on this year's list, but last year you could have nattered with Henry Sire (Phoenix from the ashes), Chris Ferrara (The Great Facade), have listened to the greatest living Church Historian, Professor de Mattei. And Professor John Rao and many others from all over the world. This is for 'unacademic' and 'academic' people. We are a wonderful mix!

Finally, in the beautiful hills of North Wales, the LMS Latin Summer School. With Fr Richard Bailey of the Manchester Oratory and myself. For both clergy and laity; for beginners and advanced students. July 24-31. Latin gives you an entry-ticket to the great theological and liturgical tradition of the Western Catholic Church. This course enables you to examine your own roots. Or is that what hairdressers do?

2 comments:

Fr. Michael LaRue said...

Cardinal Koch may have said that the document was non-magisterial, but, according to Dr. Ed Peters, being in the correct form, it must be so:

"If Cardinal Koch had wanted to publish personal reflections on Jewish-Catholic relations he could have sent them to a scholarly or popular journal. Context would have satisfied all but the most scrupulous that such remarks were personal, not ‘magisterial’ in character. But that is not what Koch did. Instead, in his capacity as the prelatial head of a pontifical commission in charge of certain questions he issued a document expressing certain theological points. That makes this document a small, but definitely magisterial, exercise."

(A non-magisterial magisterial statement?

In the same article, he is also of the opinion, based on the current Code of Canon Law, that papal homilies are likewise so, a question about which I was uncertain.

Deacon Augustine said...

Re Hebrews: I have just finished teaching a bible study on this book to a group of 80+ men, a fair number of whom are illiterate. Strangely, they did not struggle with the concept that what was old, ineffective and weak has now been made redundant and obsolete by what is new, efficacious and supernaturally powerful.

It is remarkable what men of pure faith are able to grasp even when they do not have the academic credentials of Cardinal Kasper.

Who will be teaching on Hebrews at the conference?