Sola Scriptura Protestants Don't Really Believe In Sola Scriptura!

I've had a lot of interactions with Protestants on social media over the years, anonymous Protestants usually. They often have no interest in an honest discussion about faith and the differences between Catholic belief and Protestant belief. Often they tell you what Catholics believe which is almost always wrong and, when you correct them, they just repeat their errors insisting they're right. It's actually pretty funny. They know more about what Catholics believe than a life-long Catholic does. They often aren't interested in a good-faith exchange; they just repeat their bigot points. Catholics worship Mary. The Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon and the pope is the anti-Christ. Catholics aren't allowed to read the Bible. Yadda Yadda. Many Protestants are rabidly anti-Catholic bigots who are just trolling and lobbing insults -- not exactly a model of Christian charity.

On Spider Patrol -- Physically and Spiritually!

I decided to go downstairs today and do spider patrol. Our basement is only half below ground, but the spiders and centipedes love to collect there, since the Camp Kreitzer staff holds basement cleaning as a low priority. As I began eliminating the cobwebs and long legged arachnids, I thought of how short a time it takes for them to begin to take over. 

Sunday Meditation: The Nature of Love

I recently read an article about courtly love in the Middle Ages that began, "Love is the universal feeling." (my emphasis) Is that an accurate statement? If it is, then -- can one also say that "hate" is a universal feeling...or anger...or the desire for vengeance? 

Thought for the Day from C.S. Lewis and The Last Battle

As regular readers know, I read the Epoch Times and love it! My favorite section is Life and Culture. This week Marlena Figge has a wonderful article on the C.S. Lewis' series, the Chronicles of Narnia focusing on the final book, The Last Battle. Some readers may be a little confused because she discusses the books, not according to their publication order, but their chronological order. Like the Star Wars series, Lewis began in the middle with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when the four children of the Pevensie family were evacuated from London and went to live with a professor in the country. One rainy day playing hide and seek, the youngest, Lucy, hides in an old wardrobe, an entrance into the wintry world of Narnia where she meets Tumnus, the faun, and begins an incredible adventure with her siblings.

Time Out for a Break! Sometimes Ya Just Deal with it....

....And we had one, a break that is, literally when a powerful gust of wind caught an umbrella and shattered the tempered glass on top of an aluminum table around our pool.  Little bits of glass everywhere! Two of my five sisters are visiting this week and they helped me clean up with brooms and dustpans and then vacuuming with the shop vac. Larry was out and we didn't want to leave the mess for him to deal with when he got home. Fortunately, only a few small bits went into the pool. That's on the cleanup list for today -- a good thorough pool vacuuming.

Guest Post: The Mask - A Security Blanket for Adults imposed by "Omnipotent Moral Busybodies"

Ready for the Post Office?

by Lise Baur

Today I was thrown out of a post office because I did not have a mask. No, the post office was not in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, aka East Germany, it was in Silver Spring Maryland. I stopped in to get a free small flat rate box and the check on the amount of postage required. If it were possible, I would have mailed my item but, since I was being hollered at and told to leave, I left.

Sunday Meditation: Mr. Tumnus (and C.S. Lewis) Explain it All for You!

I love this sculpture, a gift from our daughter. It's on the buffet in our dining room and I see it at every meal. 

Should We Obey the United Nations?

I've been reading up on Catholic social doctrine and international organizations since the pope said Catholic doctrine means "we should obey" the United Nations and other international organizations.

Really? I'd like a citation for that in the dogmatic teaching of the Church.

Coincidentally (or providentially), the U.N. was established the same year C.S. Lewis' novel That Hideous Strength was published. The evil bureaucracy in his novel could be the model for the U.N.! Sometimes I wonder if the Holy Spirit was involved using Lewis (who certainly had great insight into the workings of Screwtape and his Father Below) to send a warning about the new Big Brother in town getting ready to unleash incredible evil on the world.

The evil bureaucracy at work. Is that Big Sister on the screen?

Take Your Children to a Cemetery Today to Pray for the Dead!

Why are we here? Really? What is life on earth all about?

Some think it's to "eat, drink, and be merry", acquire as many toys as you can, seek power and prestige and the money that brings it (and surrounds you with sycophants who flatter and cajole).

Is that what it's all about? Is that ALL it's about?

HELL NO! (And I mean the hell part literally.)

How many are dancing merrily along the primrose path to perdition? It seems like a pleasant saunter, but those foolish souls who choose it are missing the big picture. They spend all their energy on what is essentially the first ten feet of the journey that ends here:

The Universal Call to Suffering

"A voice was heard in Ramah...Rachel weeping for her children."
 Massacre of the Innocents by Rubens

If there is one vocation shared by everyone (in addition to the call to holiness) it must be the call to accept and embrace suffering. I have been thinking about that almost daily for many months. When we started attending Grief Share two weeks ago, I remembered all the people I know touched by tragedy and loss. No one gets out of life without paying a price in suffering, often a high price.

All You Need to Know About C.S. Lewis and Other Nonsense

A couple of days ago I read a post in the National Catholic Register by Fr. John Cush, who was giving recommendations for quality Catholic fiction to read. 

As I almost NEVER read fiction, and have taken significant flack for my stubbornness in avoiding it, I thought just maybe there would be something on his list I could consider to pacify my detractors.  As it turns out,

On Grammar and The Abolition of Man

What is education doing
to our children?

I just finished reading C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man, and, it illustrates what I was saying in my last post -- words matter. Not only that, but the way words are put together, i.e., grammar, matters as well. The saying, "The pen is mightier than the sword." cuts two ways. The pen can be used to spread the truth and goodness as Dante does in The Divine Comedy or the pen can be used to spread the lie and evil like the works of Marx and Hitler.

Lewis' book is about education and how relativism leads to the "abolition of man" making him little more than a social experiment of his "conditioners." It begins with a discussion of an unnamed work Lewis calls the Green Book which is a "little book on English intended for 'boys and girls in the upper forms of schools.'" Lewis doesn't name the book or the authors because, "I do not want to pillory two modest practising (sic) school-masters who were doing the best they knew." At the same time he decries the evils he sees in the "actual tendency of their work."

He particularly emphasizes a "momentous" paragraph where the authors attribute statements of judgment to personal feelings when they write, "This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings."

True Love Requires "One Particular Woman."

“We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he “wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want.

"He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes).

"Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give."
C.S. Lewis - The Four Loves

And this is exactly why we talk about "sex objects." A man filled with lust treats many things as equal, i.e., anything that can be used to bring it on. I won't get graphically specific. 

The man who loves, on the other hand, treats the woman he loves with great respect. He is moderate in his love-making. In other words, if she is sick or exhausted from caring for a young baby, etc. he places his own desire for sexual gratification after what is good for his wife and family. He is a man of self control rather than selfish, uncontrollable little boy.

Thank God for manly men who imitate Jesus Christ rather than Adam. We certainly need more of them.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader Opens This Week

C.S. Lewis fans welcome the third film from the Narnia series this week. Take a Christmas cruise on the Dawn Treader. Personally, I can't wait. But first, I want to reread the book. Reep-a-cheep is one of the greatest characters in fiction, a mouse with the heart of a lion!

About Grandchildren and C.S. Lewis

My favorite companions are my grandchildren (except for my husband, of course.). I don't care what we do together: play dominoes, read stories, jump on the trampoline, throw rocks in the river -- it is all just an excuse to be together. Children fascinate me because they haven't lost the wonder of living. I think part of the reason, as Charles Dickens said, is because they are "so fresh from God."

C.S. Lewis was another lover of children and he understood them very well which I find fascinating because he was a confirmed old bachelor who married a widow late in life, only then, finally becoming the stepfather of two young boys. He had already written his famous Narnia tales and engaged in extensive correspondence with his young fans, a correspondence that showed his absolute respect for them. One of my favorite letters he wrote to Lucy on September 14, 1957. "I am so glad you like the Narnian stories and it was nice of you to write and tell me," he wrote. "Do you know Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I think you w[oul]d like it....It makes me, I think, more humble than proud to know that Aslan has allowed me to be the means of making Him more real to you. Because He could have used anyone -- as He made a donkey preach a good sermon to Balaam." His humility and sense of humor both shine in the charming picture of himself as a donkey for Jesus!

There is no talking down to Lucy in Lewis' letter. Whether she knows the biblical story of Balaam or not, Lewis gives Lucy enough information to figure out exactly what he is talking about. Children, he said often in his letters, understood the symbolism of Aslan as a Christ figure when adults did not. I can relate to that because when we went to see the movie version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, we had an amusing exchange with the man selling popcorn. Presumably he had seen the film more than once. "I finally figured it out," he told us proudly. "The professor is the lion." I had to stifle a laugh because I didn't want to offend him. He illustrated Lewis' point so perfectly.

C.S. Lewis must have been childlike in the best sense of the word. He had a real sense of wonder about the world and the One who created it. If you want to get some measure of the man, reading his Letters to Children is a good place to start.