Sunday Snippets - A Catholic Carnival (13 April 2014)

     Our local cathedral is a great testament to the ability of the Catholic Church to draw strength from diversity.  I am told that among our parishioners there are native speakers of at least twenty-seven different languages; there are French-Canadians, Poles, Spanish speakers of various national backgrounds, Africans from a number of different countries, and a large Vietnamese community, some of whom can be heard singing the rosary in their native language in the back of the church after the 8 o’clock Mass on Sunday mornings. 

Deer in back yard, 12 April 2014

     Why is diversity a source of strength in the Church, when the diversity relentlessly extolled in the secular world is the source of so much division and discord?  Because in the Church what unites us is much, much greater than our individual differences: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile. Neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).  Or as St. Paul says in another place, “There is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism” (Ephesians 4:5).  When we find our true identity in Christ, all the accidents of birth, pigmentation or whatever markers are fashionable today out in The World no longer look that important.  Instead, all those things are gifts we can bring to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, where they can be a sign of the Universality, the “Catholicity”, of the Church.

     One can catch at least a glimpse of the diversity in the Church, certainly a diversity of experiences, approaches, and ways of “being Catholic” in the group of Catholic bloggers who gather weekly at This That and the Other Thing for “Sunday Snippets” [Here!] to share their various posts of the week past.

     Here at Principium et Finis we’ve discussed a variety of things this week, including language, Scripture, the state of the world, music and prayer.  More specifically:

Monday - Anthony Esolen had some interesting and thoughtful things to say about Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae.  It was indeed “A Good Piece By Anthony Esolen” [link] –

Tuesday – Esolen’s piece also sent me off on a tangent about language and translation called: “Scripture: Why Is Language Important” [link]

Wednesday – Most people are understandably reluctant to condone the killing of innocent human beings, even very small ones, which is why pro-abortion folks need to de-humanize the unborn; how effective are their arguments? “ABORTION MYTH #10” [link]

Also – A courageous woman rises above a life of abuse, sees friends murdered, and is constantly threatened with death herself, but continues to speak out against the culture and ideology that has inspired these wrongs; strident apologists for that very same culture and ideology want to shut her up.  Guess who Brandeis University sides with?  “A University Grovels” [link]

Thursday – Hey, nobody’s perfect! So why does Jesus tell us to be perfect? “Be Perfect (Throwback Thursday Edition)” [link]

Friday – One last musical selection for Lent:  “J. S. Bach, St. Matthew Passion. ‘O sacred head, sore wounded’” [link]

Also – And, to end the week, one more installment in my series of posts on the Liturgy of the Hours for laypeople: “Compline: For Tonight And Forever” [link]

Finally, the weekly  question posed to us Sunday Snippeteers is “What is your favorite part of Holy Week?”  I find all the liturgical observances of the Triduum to be particularly moving, but what has always had the greatest impact on me is the sudden silence at the end of the Holy Thursday Liturgy.

(P.S. - The deer above has nothing to do with this week's posts - he and three others were browsing in the back yard this morning, and I took the opportunity to take a picture.  Notice that the snow is still not completely gone . . .)