The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man. He is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, made flesh. His humanity was true humanity. He was indeed made a man like us in all things apart from sin, but we should remember that being without sin also makes Him very different from us in some respects. Being truly God, Our Lord did not have original sin, did not have disordered desires, never committed a sin, and could never commit a sin. When the devil tempted Him, Our Lord responded in peremptory fashion, and with absolute authority. Hebrews 4:15 is sometimes erroneously translated to imply that Our Lord was subjected to all the temptations that we have, though he tried awfully hard and managed to resist. This gives the quite false impression that Our Lord might have actually sinned. In fact, the world for “temptation” in Greek also means a test or trial. Our Lord was not subject to disordered desires or past habi...

When chanting the epistle at Mass for the feast of St Matthias, I must confess to being amused at the part where Saint Peter says, “Let their habitation become desolate, and let there be none to dwell therein. And his bishopric let another take.” (Acts 1:20) The prince of the Apostles first quotes verse 26 of Psalm 69 which is one of the many verses of various psalms that were omitted in the modern Liturgy of the Hours , and secondly verse 8 of Psalm 108, which is one of the three psalms that were omitted in their entirety. The General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hour s explains that “Such omissions are made because of certain psychological difficulties” (n.131) I hope that you did not become depressed or neurotic during the epistle. St Peter applies these verses to Judas because He betrayed Our Lord. He then explains to the 120 or so men and women, including the apostles and Our Lady, that they must choose someone to tak...

Someone asked if I would recommend some reading for Lent. Here goes! On such matters I generally try not to be original and instead to introduce good Catholics to classic spiritual works in case they have not come across them. If you have read all the below, you are probably in a good position to find other worthwhile reading yourself. But if these are books that you haven’t read, then any one of them would be a potential life changer. And if you have read them all, you will probably know that they are all worth reading again. Most of these books are readily available as books with paper and glue, books that go on your e-reader, web pages, and pdf versions. I don’t have so much experience of audio books but my guess would be that they are now all around in that format too. Over the past couple of years I have gravitated more and more to the Internet Archive  which I now use in lieu of a library, with the help of a Kindle Fire 10 which makes pdfs readable. And do not forget the e...

Since the US election, Fr Zuhlsdorf has been subjected to a concerted attack from some liberal catholic publications. This would not be noteworthy except for the fact that as a result, he has been asked to move from the diocese where he currently works and has now to find accommodation. It is therefore reasonable to speak of an attempt to “cancel” him as the saying is nowadays. The Character of Fr Z’s Blog As an outspoken blogger, Fr Z is accustomed to opposition from Catholics who object to his promotion of the traditional Latin Mass, gays who object to his unequivocal defence of Catholic moral teaching, and modernist priests and theologians whose theology he criticises for being contrary to the magisterial teaching of the Church. In the online “wild west” of the blogosphere, he is happy to give as good as he gets. This makes his blog enjoyable for his followers and probably annoying for his opponents. At the same time, of...