✣ Highlights from the week online
A gritty catechism At epicpew.com, Stephen Mirarchi opened an older catechism – the 1798 Short Abridgment of Christian Doctrine, “published first in Europe and then ‘newly revised for the use of the Catholic Church’ in the freshly minted USA”. It is, Mirarchi observed, “no-nonsense and gritty”, but also inspiring. “This edition makes clear that Catholics on the verge of 19th-century America were expected to be spiritual powerhouses – or at least they were exhorted to be.” The Abridgment asked: “How shall we know the things which we are to believe?” and answered: “From the Catholic Church of God, which He has established by innumerable miracles, and illustrated by the lives and deaths of innumerable saints.” On the question of why Catholics say the Hail Mary so often, the Abridgment explained: “To put us in mind of the Son of God being made man for us.” Mirarchi commented: “Still the best defence today because it’s true: the Hail Mary is about the Incarnation.” Mirarchi pointed out that, in the following 100 years, the Church in America grew rapidly. “Look at the spiritual fortitude it took to get there. Could we not learn a few things from our 1798 progenitors?” Ridiculous or true At Aleteia, Meg Hunter-Kilmer took a step back from Corpus Christi processions. “A bunch of grown men put on silly robes to hold a canopy over another man.” And thousands sing, fall to their knees and adore “a white wafer in a gold container”. The claim that this is God – “a God who first became a man with a body as vulnerable as mine, and then allowed that body to become a corpse, and then transformed a piece of bread into that very body” – is clearly ridiculous. “Unless it’s true.” Hunter-Kilmer wrote: “The Eucharist is either heinous blasphemy or the most wondrous thing on the planet. It’s either worshipping a cracker or profound intimacy with the divine. No half-way point makes sense.” It may be beyond our understanding, yet “The mystery of God isn’t something to be lamented but to be rejoiced in.” Deadly vocabulary At firstthings.com, Wesley Smith warned against dehumanising language – “foetus” instead of “baby”, “neonate” instead of “newborn”. Proponents of euthanasia understand the power of words: the Hemlock Society has since renamed itself and is now called Compassion and Choices. “We should be vigilant against words that dehumanise weak and vulnerable people and suspicious of rhetoric that masks movements’ real goals,” Smith wrote. “We should be wary of words that serve as honey to make the hemlock go down.”
