Does the Chair of Peter Exist?

I came across the Protestant who claims, since Popes are only infallible when speaking from the chair of Peter, and since no chair carpented before the late 9th C. exists, this means that Popes are not infallible.

No joke, here is the article:

Sitting in the Chair of Peter
Beggars All : Reformation and Apologetics | FRIDAY, JULY 09, 2010
https://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2010/07/sitting-in-chair-of-peter.html

Here is a quote from Keating involving Boettner:

Then comes the blooper. Boettner says, "Infallibility is not claimed for every statement made by the pope [true enough], but only for those made when he is speaking ex cathedra, that is, seated in his papal chair, the chair of St. Peter, and speaking in his official capacity as head of the church." At the end of the sentence is an asterisk, which takes the reader to this footnote: "A scientific commission appointed by pope Paul VI in July, 1968, to investigate the antiquity of the 'Chair of St. Peter' . . . reported in early 1969 that the chair dates from the late ninth century . . . ." The point is that Peter's real chair does not exist, so a Pope cannot sit in it. Since, by official decree of Vatican I, he is infallible only when sitting in Peter's chair, he cannot issue infallible definitions at all. The Catholic Church is refuted by its own archaeology!

Boettner entirely misconstrues the meaning of ex cathedra. ...

So Boettner considered and Keating dismissed the idea that the material chair in which St. Peter himself sat is a requirement.

Now, John Bugay (on that blog) pretended to defend Boettner by quoting* Optatus of Mileve ...

We must note who first established a see and where. If you do not know, admit it. If you do know, feel your shame. I cannot charge you with ignorance, for you plainly know. It is a sin to err knowingly, although an ignorant person may be blind to his error. But you cannot deny that you know that the episcopal seat ["cathedra"] was established first in the city of Rome by Peter and that in it sat Peter, the head of all the apostles, wherefore he is called Cephas. So in this one seat unity is maintained by everyone, that the other apostles might not claim separate seats, each for himself. Accordingly, he who erects another seat in opposition to that one is a schismatic and a sinner. Therefore, Peter was the first to sit in that one seat, which is the first gift of the Church. To him succeeded Linus. Clement followed Linus. Then Anacletus Clement ... [he gives the list of popes down to his own time]. After Damasus, Siricius, who is our contemporary, with whom our whole world is in accord by interchange of letters in one bond of communion. Do you, if you would claim for yourselves a holy church, explain the origin of your seat. (Cited in Shotwell and Loomis, "The See of Peter," pgs 111-112, writing to the Donatists.)

So, my dear John Bugay, are you saying Caiaphas had no infallibility when officiating in the Temple, because it was not the one which materially was built in the time of King Solomon? St. John seems to have disagreed with you then:

John 11:51
And this he spoke not of himself: but being the high priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation.

It would seem that infallibility worked even if the temple was restored materially in other stones later on, than those used by Solomon or even by Ezra.

A chair or cathedra has a double meaning. Part of it is the material object, part of it is the authority it symbolises, tied to a specific succession of authority bearers. If the material object is replaced by another material object, the chair in this more important sense remains the same.

If St. Edward's chair was not woodworked on the orders of St. Edward of Wessex, but on the orders of Edward I of England, does this mean that any monarch crowned in it is ipso facto not the monarch of England? Hardly.

Or if I stand on a soap box in Hyde Park one day, and continue to stand there week after week, am I no longer speaking from my soap box if one day that soap box breaks and I use another one? Hardly.

But for some reason, when it comes to the Vicar of Christ, when it comes to an office that's supposed to be tied to Christ's promise about perpetual assistance to His Church, all of a sudden a phrase involving a reference to a material object is supposed to become meaningless, if the material object is replaced!

Such people seriously think the New Covenant weaker than the Old one was. Despite Matthew 28 being a permanent covenant, up to Doomsday, and Deuteronomy 28 being a conditional one, involving the promise of a permanent one. Yes, Caiaphas was able to validly sacrifice for the sins of the people up to when Jesus had made His eternal sacrifice, in the Last Supper and on Calvary. Even if "the temple" had twice needed rebuilding or similar building projects, under Ezra and under Herod.

The solution is, if I stand on "my soap box" in Hyde Park, it seriously doesn't matter if it's the same soap box I began standing on, and if I share it with a younger apprentice who takes it over after me, it also doesn't matter if he replaces it, he would still be standing on my soap box, if I had had the talent and will to form a school of speakers in Hyde Park. The episcopal chair functions as such, even if the material chair is replaced by a newer artifact. I hope you believe the Gospel of St. Matthew functions as Gospel of St. Matthew, even if you are not holding His autograph! (I hope, I'm not quite reassured ...)

Hans Georg Lundahl
Pompidolian Library, Paris
St. Thomas Aquinas
7.III.2024

* Omitting the bolds and italics.

Glories of Mary

Papa Stronsay Redemptorist Fathers have Digitalised this English Edition:

The Glories of Mary
St. Alphonsus Liguori
https://www.papastronsay.com/publications/library/Saint%20Alphonsus/the-glories-of-Mary.pdf

Thoroughly recommended./HGL

Atheists Tend to Take Over a Protestant Attitude to Catholic Legend

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Contra Hume · Great Bishop of Geneva! Atheists Tend to Take Over a Protestant Attitude to Catholic Legend

As already mentioned — Protestants of the 17th and 18th C. had very certainly all, as probably most already in the 16th C. abandoned hope of working miracles. I do not speak of Pentecostals, I speak of Lutheran, Zwinglian, Buceran, Anglican, Calvinist sects. The "usual suspects" of Anti-Catholic violence in times of upheaval. Many of them tyrants on nation state level, all of them at least some places on a local level.

As a consequence, they had a great motivation, rather than theoretical good reasons to deny miracles continuing in the Catholic Church after the Apostolic age.

That is a huge deal when it comes to the longer versions of legends of saints, the popular one, the Legenda Aurea. The martyrologies often speak of "many miracles" but usually do not enumerate them. The Legenda Aurea, or Butler's Lives of the Saints, that is what the people would read, and that is what a non-Catholic foreigner, like Hume, would encounter first. The miracles are often enough described as clear as in the Gospels (canonic) or III Maccabees (variously held as canonic by Orthodox and typically apocryphal by Catholics).

Some of the miraculous survivals of attempts to martyr someone finally martyred are also recorded in the martyrology.

Again, Protestants, before they later on typically became Atheists, would regard this as nonsense.

Some other things could occasionally contribute. St. Christopher was described as having a dog's head. I think this description in antiquity often enough meant someone with slit eyes, because the dog breeds known today as pit bulls and similar in antiquity have slit eyes. But it could also mean someone, I suppose at least, very hirsute, someone "suffering" from (or enjoying, as the case may be) hypertrichosis. I mean, dogs have hairs in the regions corresponding to facial, so such a description makes sense.

Now, if instead of thinking "hypertrichosis" or slit eyes, you think full canine anatomy of the head, like an Anubis statue, you probably may be in two minds. Or outright reject St. Christopher for that alone.

Yesterday had a similar topic, not in the martyrs, but in the ones martyring them.

14 Januarii, main feast Sancti Hilarii, Episcopi Pictaviensis, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris; qui pridie hujus diei evolavit in caelum. But that's just the main feast.

Now, when I saw the fifth feast, it made me jump a bit:

In Rhaithi regione, in Aegypto, sanctorum quadraginta trium Monachorum, qui, pro Christiana religione, a Blemmiis occisi sunt.

In the Rhaitus region (wherever that is) of Egypt, holy forty three Monks who, for the Christian religion, were killed by Blemmii.

By what?

Yes, I thought I saw Blemmyes too. And that's probably what I did see.

Various species of mythical headless men were rumoured, in antiquity and later, to inhabit remote parts of the world. They are variously known as akephaloi (Greek ἀκέφαλοι 'headless ones') or Blemmyes (Latin: Blemmyae; Greek: βλέμμυες) and described as lacking a head, with their facial features on their chest. These were at first described as inhabitants of ancient Libya or the Nile system (Aethiopia). Later traditions confined their habitat to a particular island in the Brisone River,[a] or shifted it to India.

Well, how did they get their name? Two theories:

Samuel Bochart of the 17th century derived the word Blemmyes from the Hebrew bly (בלי) "without" and moach (מוח) "brain", implying that the Blemmyes were people without brains (although not necessarily without heads).

... Leo Reinisch [de] in 1895 proposed that it derived from bálami "desert people" in the Bedauye tongue (Beja language). Although this theory had long been neglected,[8] this etymology has come into acceptance, alongside the identification of the Beja people as true descendants of the Blemmyes of yore.[9][10][11]

I agree with Leo Reinisch, obviously, the ones killing the 43 monks were "bálami" or "desert people" ... Herodotus had heard of them, and probably via an intermediate which would have been prone to distort the name in the Semitic etymology meaning "without brains" (by enmity) and then in a twisted type of humour transmitting the info on what it meant, namely even as "headless people" ... perhaps because they didn't know the Greek word for brain.

But this would have been unknown and not considered for the rare Protestants who came across the 43 monks martyred by Blemmyes, in Butler or in Golden Legend.

However, I will not deny the possibility of the marvellous and the preternatural, as today's saint, also in Egypt, St. Paul the First Hermit, once was visited by St. Anthony, who, on the way to him, met a faun and a centaur.

A third source of Protestant disbelief in Catholic legend is however disagreement about the moral content. When Calvin (with ludicrously inaccurate estimates) objected to the relics of the Holy Cross, obviously he has a moral incentive or gives Calvinists a moral incentive to disbelieve the Finding of the Holy Cross, celebrated on 3.V.

When Luther bemoaned his having disobeyed the father who didn't want him to become a celibate priest, he invented a new moral theology not just about monastic vows (in and of itself a source of disgust with lots of Catholic legend in Protestants back then), but also about what kind of obedience one owes to one's father.

Believing St. Barbara was with God, who had vindicated her disobedience (or as Catholics with some scholastic background would argue rather being non-obedience, not the same thing) against her Pagan father, that did not sit well with Lutherans. Dito for Sts. Francis and Clare of Assisi.

And, getting back to St. Christopher ... according to the full legend in Legenda Aurea, he had proposed he would serve "the greatest king" ... here are his three successive loyalties :

• an earthly king who trembled when he saw
• Satan, who in his turn was afraid of
• an image of Jesus Christ, to whom Christopher turned at last, and to Whom he remained true.

It doesn't sit all that well with this kind of Protestants (who, remember, were not at all Pentecostals back then) that a man having made a compact with the Devil should save his soul, or that the way in doing so would involve works of penance (part of what Protestantism turned away from and what St. Christopher examplified).

So, Protestants turned away from the legend that Child Jesus had appeared to St. Christopher, first asking to be carried over, and then asking the saint to plant his staff (dead wood), which thereon came to life, sprouted leaves and grew roots, before his very eyes. Plus, obviously, the Protestant prejudice against appearances of Jesus or of Mary or of some saints to someone alive and later sainted.

One huge dealbreaker with me over rejecting the Novus Ordo was actually that at least temporarily Sts Barbara and Christopher were taken out of the martyrology and of feast days. That is obviously not the last indication that the Novus Ordo establishment is unduly influenced by Protestants — the other day, Cacey Cole, a Novus Ordo Franciscan, repeated Protestant talking points about Boniface VIII.

But as mentioned, the main heirs of this Protestantism, this rejection of Catholic legend, and this disagreement with Catholic morals too, is not the Novus Ordo. It's outright Atheism. I have said before, and will probably have to say it again, that Atheists are Protestants who lost the remainders of Christianity that the Reformation had left them with.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Paul the First Hermit
15.I.2024

Could Anabaptists Be Right That Reformation was a Meiji Régime for the True Christians?

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: First Half of Heschmeyers Video Against Mike Gendron · Heschmeyer Refutes "Trail of Blood" · Great Bishop of Geneva! Could Anabaptists Be Right That Reformation was a Meiji Régime for the True Christians? · back to Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: I May Feel Like Exonerating Mike Gendron, But I Won't Admire Him

Here is a story about the secret Christians in Japan, and what has happened since the Meiji régime, starting in 1868 (by the way, Hirohito was not part of it, the Meiji era* ended in 1912). Obviously, in this case, the secret Christians were Catholics.

Japan's Holy War on Christianity
MARYLINE ORCEL WORLD, 5 Jan. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEXzoSANtzE

Now, if you hear of things like Trail of Blood or Ruckman, you will get the impression, Constantine started a much longer Shogun era, which applied much wider, and which persecuted true Christians to the point of making them socially invisible, as the Japanese Christians were under the Shogunate.

You will get the impression that the Reformation Churches, like the Meiji régime, were not embracing Christianity. But they were still, also like the Meiji régime, lifting a very heavy yoke from the Christians.

There is a reason why this could not work on a whole world scale.

Matthew 5:15.

The reason why secret Christians could be part of the Church of Christ was that there were open Christians. I don't mean primarily the ones who got martyred in Japan. While they got martyred, they were, unlike the Church in Antiquity, not giving instructions to the Heathen. Justin Martyr wrote an Apology he sent to Caesar. Here are his works before Pagans:

1. The First Apology addressed to Antoninus Pius, his sons, and the Roman Senate;[31]
2. A Second Apology of Justin Martyr addressed to the Roman Senate;
3. The Discourse to the Greeks,[a] a discussion with Greek philosophers on the character of their gods;

I do not know, have so far not heard, of the secret Christians in Japan doing anything like this.

Hence, they were not fulfilling the Great Commission, and as such, they could not be by themselves, the true Church. By contrast, they were in Communion with people fulfilling it, and were as such, part of the true Church.

Similarily, a hypothetic Anabaptist Church in 1300 AD could not have been the true Church, because it was clearly not fulfilling the Great Commission, either the Catholics and Orthodox were fulfilling or misfulfilling it, but no Anabaptist Church was fulfilling it. Waldensians existed, and they were not writing to Wenceslaus II of Bohemia, also king of Poles and Hungarians, nor to Albert I of Germany, nor Frederick III, Duke of Lorraine, nor Robert II, Duke of Burgundy, nor Philip IV of France, nor Edward I of England, nor to anyone else, not even to Amadeus V, Count of Savoy, who was ruling, I presume the Marca di Torina, the Marquisate of Turin, where they lived.

And, this time unlike the Japanese secret Christians, neither could they be even part of the true Church, because they were not in communion with others who elsewhere were fulfilling it.

No, there was not a Shogunate for 1260 literal years, spanning all countries or all Christian countries. There will be be only one thing close to the Shogunate, but on a world wide scale. According to prophecy, it will have 1260 literal days. Three and a half literal years. That's time enough to make the Christians hated, before making himself so, even by non-Christians, but not time enough to make them forgotten or totally invisible, or their teachings unknown.

Back when I was a reader of manga more than now, I was a fan of 1. Rurouni Kenshin. I have heard, he was based on a man who was a Christian after the Meiji Restoration. When I look up Kenshin Himura, I find he was based off someone more probably not a Christian, Kawakami Gensai. But what's definitely true is, his first relation, like that of Catholics, with the Meiji régime was release from captivity.

The video also speaks of how Catholicism is still often seen as shameful in Japan. This is for different reasons, also the case with Catholicism in Sweden or England, though Australia is where Cardinal Pell got his fake trial and years in prison.

And that's a reason to relish France.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Ember Friday after Epiphany**
12.I.2024

PS, as the video underlines, the Shogunate was an exaggerated nationalism. Here is what Las cinco quiebras de la Cristiandad medieval, by Roberto Moreno says about Antichristian Nationalism:

Más allá de los avatares heréticos, con la noción de libre examen Lutero introduce ya el mecanicismo formal subjetivista que caracterizará la modernidad; aunque él lo recorta a escala individual, otros lo ensancharán a la escala estatal. ...

Actually, it was already Luther who introduced "free enquiry into Scriptures" on the state level, rather than the individual one. He did not want a peasant to challenge him, he thought he could stand approved by princes, which he made the new popes of his true religion. What Catholics have suffered a few centuries from the Reformation in Northern Europe is a better parallel than Waldensians in 1300 living in separate valleys to what the Japanese Christians went through./HGL

Notes:

* The Meiji era was exactly the personal reign of Emperor Meiji, previously known as Mutsuhito.

** I was wrong. Ember Days are in Latin called Dies Quatuor Temporum, and that means they are four times a year, not five. I treated the Octave of Epiphany as the Octave of Pentecost (which actually has Ember days). This kind of mix-ups you can arrive at when you live the Catholic life without the support of a parish. A bit like the Japanese Catholics, except I was not obliged to hide. So far no Mass in Paris is celebrated "una cum papa nostro Michael" (II). Meanwhile, I've made up for the unnecessary fasting.

Do Catholics Claim, Sins After Baptism are Only Forgiven in Confession?

I was starting to listen to a video, which this time was not from the other mystic, I think Anne Katherine Emmerick*, but from St. Bridget of Sweden (or as we say in Sweden, Denmark, Norway : of Vadstena).

Second, think about the mercy of God, because there is no man who is so sinful that his sin is not immediately forgiven, if he only prays for Gods forgiveness with an intention to better himself and with true repentance for his former sins.

Note, in order for St. Bridget to be canonised, every jot and tittle of her revelations was scrutinised to contain no doctrinal and no known factual error. This is about doctrine. If someone is truly repenting, God forgives even before confession, and even if one should have no opportunity to go to confession before dying. However, before you go to receive Holy Communion next time, except in case of huge hurry before dying, you do need to confess, you need to be forgiven sacramentally, before holding communion with Christ sacramentally./HGL

Here is the video:

What if Adam and Eve had not sinned? The Prophecies and Revelations of Saint Bridget of Sweden
Penance! | 19 Dec. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bquytGA6Rk

* I am used to the spelling Emmerich, the High German form. However, she was born in Coesfeld, a village in the diocese of Münster, and this is not far from the Netherlands, so, the Low German or Dutch form makes some sense in this context.

Let's Assume Some Orthos are Blocking

1) I am a convert from Lutheranism and from further back a basically Evangelical outlook before I was baptised, but also a revert from Neohimerite Orthos. I did not abjure Roman Catholicism when converting to them, and I did not abjure Eastern Orthodox when converting back, a k a reverting.
2) I know for a fact that Neohimerite Orthos are neither comfortable with the papacy nor with some traditional readings of the Bible, like the ones involves in Young Earth Creationism.

So, I providentially or by feeds being pushed by actual people get suggestions for watching things. One video-short is by an Orthodox priest. Another one is by Brewery Ministries, and I follow up.

My problem with such people isn't that they find some things I have written objectionable and then object to them. My problem is, they don't object to them, but decide I should not "rush ahead" (from their perverted pov), they need to give me "another chance" (after 1000 "other chances" already offered and already declined) to think things through, SO, they don't confront me in a comment "hey, I think you wrote sth incorrect here" they pray for me to get confronted with or use the feed's possibility of video suggestions, to get me to get confronted (obliquely, by someone else) to the pov they would like me to be confronted with but will not confront me with themselves.

Here are the videos (technically known as shorts) I am talking about with my comments under each:

Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic? ☦️
@RootsofOrthodoxy
https://youtube.com/shorts/NZf-ayrD0Vs?si=5o1nup8xnMNhPay5

Saint James was monarchic bishop in Jerusalem after the Twelve Apostles spread out, so these were in fact collectively ruling Jerusalem before he did.

They were also ontologically bishops, i e consecrated, before he was.

The Roman Catholic claim is not that Apostolic Succession comes only through St. Peter.

The Apostolic Succession in the order of episcopal consecration can come from any of the Twelve.

We claim however, the episcopacy can only be canonically exercised in communion with St. Peter or the canonic successors of St. Peter.

Debunking the myth: Did one language exist before Babel?
@breweryministries
https://youtube.com/shorts/pnRVzjvxSzg?si=b9Y4rO8mIrfS_yGz

1) Genesis 11:1 does not chronologically follow after Genesis 10.
2) The texts were created at the events or closely after and transmitted to Moses. Each could change in response to more correct info being added, like if the confusion of languages happened after the overview in Genesis 10, this would affect the original text of Genesis 10 and the oral tradition would add that.
3) That Moses stringed these two texts after each other that order doesn't equate to chronological order, but to the Genesis 10 text referring back to getting out of the Ark and then on to the Tower text, while the Shem genealogy refers back to the Tower text and on to Abraham. That's why the Tower text is put between these two. The chapters were only divided in the 13th C. AD by a bishop going on a hunt and doing it as he knew the Bible by heart.

How stupid can Bible scholars be?

They think it was a shared trade language, while each culture had its own language, two problems.

Glaring ones.

1) Peleg is born 101, 401 or 531 years after the Flood, depending on text. That's not long enough for languages like Sumerian and Old Egyptian to differentiate, at least not without massive conlanging. This problem can be restated "where did 'other languages' come from if this was shortly after the Flood.
2) God confuses a trade language, which differred from already different native languages. Well, that means each participant in the project already had experience of language learning and at least the concept of a lingua franca. That would not have put the project on a halt for 4500 years to Cape Canaveral and Bajkonur, but just a decade or two, while a new lingua franca was being constructed.

If on the other hand everyone had the same native language, with very minute dialectal differences (lesser than within English, since some versions of English go back to or are influenced by versions going back to dialects pre-existing Caxton's printing press, and since 500 generations were fewer generations back then), and God confronts them for the first time in their lives and their memory with language barriers, it could take some centuries until people learned how to learn someone's language. This would definitely have derailed Nimrod's project far more effectively (Nimrod's doesn't equate to him taking sole initiative, he was trusted to execute the plan).

Bible hints that people existed outside of Eden
@breweryministries
https://youtube.com/shorts/fWmR9nrT4hg?si=XUnNLuDS-qqeLsdY

By the time Cain was even born, every human creature (at his birth exactly three) was living outside Eden.

Are you aware that the idea that the creation of Adam is distinct from the creation of man in Genesis 1 comes from Jewish extra-Biblical and highly racist texts, that post-date Christianity?

There is no traditional reading of the story in which, by the time he commits fratricide, he, his parents, and his dead brother are the only people, back to three.

The Genesis 5 statement of Adam begetting sons and daughters doesn't start with Adam begetting Seth, it's placed after it just to mention it doesn't end there.

Cain's wife was his sister or possibly niece.

Remember Seth was born 230 or in the Masoretic and perhaps Samaritan 130 years after Adam was created. He and Eve were created adult and fully fertile. They didn't live in crowded cities yet in which certain couples might find other people an obstacle to taking care of their children.

By the time of the fratricide, there were plenty of people already around, Adam, Eve, their children, their grandchildren. Cain married a sister or a niece or was already married to one when doing the killing.

Brewery Ministries

@breweryministries

I don't think I'd heard that about Adam but I favor the oldest possible sources. I usually try to avoid anything written after the first century. It helps avoid some of those problems where new traditions emerged.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

OK, @breweryministries ... you are aware that all the CF of the first C. as well as the NT itself in Mt 24:16-20 exclude your view that traditions emerged that did not come from Jesus and still enveloped all of the Church?

Brewery Ministries

@hglundahl I'm not sure I understand what you mean. I really haven't decided whether or not people existed outside of Eden or not. Just sharing what Bible scholars discuss and find it interesting.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

OK, @breweryministries ... if a Bible scholar pretends "whom was he afraid of, when there had been only four people and now were back to three?" that's strawmanning the traditional position heavy.

I don't believe in strawmanners, neither should you.

NOW.

Perhaps some Orthos imagined I needed to hear the anti-YEC stuff from an Evangelical, as if they were my authority. I am leaving out for now an Ortho video debunking at once Original Sin (which St. Gregory Palamas believed in, believing the Virgin was exempt!) and Total Corruption, as if these were the same. The fact I got that in the prompt however confirms my suspicion. My authority for YEC being true in its exegesis of the Bible is Sts. Augustine and Basil, not Kent Hovind and Ken Ham, even if I find them refreshing. When it comes to solving problems posed by so-called science, the modern Creationist movement has contributed, but Orthos rejecting Creation Science will nevertheless accept the "science" of Atheists, as if they likened the accreditation of Academics to the Apostolic Succession and Catholic Communion of the Bishops. Now, the Church back when St. Augustine wrote City of God actually had and still has a promise from God, Academics don't have that promise. They are people with minds created in God's image, and so am I. Their minds are not totally corrupt by Adam's sin, neither is mine. In fact, it's probable the idea we need to rely on Academics and cannot trust our own judgement comes from Calvinists believing the TULIP T, which, as said, I don't. Can some Orthos please get it into their minds that I have thought through why I returned to Catholicism, and I had thought through Young Earth Creationism and Geocentrism at least in relation to basics, before I made my excursion to them?/HGL

PS, comments under my original ones added in later, where appropriate./HGL

What is Jesuit Spirituality?

"He bore His wrath for me" — Did He? · Did the Devil Retain His Power? No · What is Jesuit Spirituality?

It obviously does not involve claiming God poured His wrath on Jesus.

I was just looking up an email from the Jew-Gone-Christian Dr. Michael Brown or his ministry Charisma House.

He outlines a problem:

For many, revival is something they want to experience, but don’t know what to do with it after a first emotional encounter.

A hope:

However, as God’s people, we CAN sustain the flames of revival to share the gospel with all of creation!

If I am right that the Catholic Church is God's REAL people, this should be even more true about Catholics.

And he gives a detailed solution:

In Dr. Michael Brown’s Seize The Moment, you’ll learn how to spread and sustain revival throughout your community by partnering with the Holy Spirit. You will be challenged to:

• make Jesus and the cross central
• reach the lost
• never downplay the importance of holiness
• steer clear of doctrinal weirdness
• keep the main thing the main thing
• and so much more

OK, some will quibble with me for indirectly promoting a book by a (technical) Protestant. Here is the deal. He is so perfectly resuming Catholicism in this outline (cannot guarantee the same is to be said for the book, though).

Let's take each part separately, and find out how that matches Jesuit spirituality. Well, except perhaps the first one or two.

spread and sustain revival throughout your community

To St. Ignatius of Loyola, sustaining his personal revival after Manresa involved getting, not indeed the whole parish, but at least a few devout women friends of his profit from it.

However, once he had a bit more meat on his bones, after studies in Paris and ordination to priesthood, he actually was more into spreading it to all Catholics. At personnalised degrees, though.

by partnering with the Holy Spirit

How about "submitting" rather than "partnering"?

But, yes, he did.

He lived from the inspirations of grace (and had a good technique on how to distinguish these from the subtle temptations of the devil).

He lived from the sacraments, which is how the Holy Spirit is given to members of the Church.

make Jesus and the cross central

Have you seen the Jesuit logo?

In the middle, you have IHS = IHSOYS = Jesus.

Above it, you have the Cross.

Below it, three nails used at the Crucifixion (one for each hand, one for both feet together).

Around all, to underline how central it is, rays like sunrays emanating from what's inside. On this painting of St. Michael throwing the Devil down to Hell, the sunrays are lacking, but the rest of the Jesuit logo is on the shield of St. Michael:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesuiten#/media/Datei:Castiglione-H%C3%B6llensturz.jpg

Höllensturz – Gemälde des jesuitischen Chinamissionars Giuseppe Castiglione, 18. Jahrhundert
Giuseppe Castiglione - Der ursprünglich hochladende Benutzer war Dr. Meierhofer in der Wikipedia auf Deutsch, transferred to Commons by User:Ireas using CommonsHelper.
Gemeinfrei

reach the lost

Harlots in Rome? Sinful couples who can be saved by a marriage which the laws make difficult? Protestants? Hurons?

Sounds like St. Ignatius was perfectly on line with this part.

• St. Ignatius started a home for repenting prostitutes in Rome, under the protection of St. Mary Magdalene;
• when a couple not looked kindly on by parents risks a continued love affair without marriage, because the law of the land in France did not recognise the Council of Trent, in Place Royale, by Corneille, it's a Jesuit priest who, illegally according to France, but legally according to the Church, marries them;
• The priests in England were not just serving Catholics, but also trying to convert Protestants;
• St. Jean de Brébeuf

never downplay the importance of holiness

If you held up Luther, Calvin, St. Ignatius and St. Francis of Sales in a blind test to Michael Brown, I'm pretty sure he would clearly prefer the two Catholic saints.

The problem is, Michael Brown cannot be so unsavvy about authors and doctrines as to make a real blind test possible.

steer clear of doctrinal weirdness

While St. Ignatius of Loyola's criteria would differ highly from those of Michael Brown, as to decide what is doctrinal normality and what is doctrinal weirdness, this was to a very high degree a priority for him and for his order.

My Catholic Life! : Chapter Ten: Rules for Thinking with the Church
https://mycatholic.life/books/ignatius/part-one-background-of-saint-ignatius-and-lessons-from-the-spiritual-exercises/chapter-ten-rules-for-thinking-with-the-church/

keep the main thing the main thing

Jesuits were so willing to adapt when it came to subordinate things, they even got called out for syncretism in the question of Chinese Rites.

and so much more

For which I will give only one item, but an important one.

What did St. Ignatius of Loyola inherit from Devotio Moderna?

Well, part of it is to make everyday objects and situations remind one of God and of one's duties to God. The five vowels of Latin have their spiritual meanings (E "is crying - in Latin flet - for your sins" or U may have been feeling the pains of Jesus along with him, decades since I read that book). Those precise techniques are perhaps not the most used by Jesuits or Ignatian Exercises, but the idea is the same, telling Jesus : "All kinds of everything remind me of Thee" ...

I just called Michael Brown a "technical" Protestant, but isn't he an actual one? In Ecclesiology and in Sacramentology, alas, yes. But not in the items outlined in the above quote, or I wouldn't have quoted it. Now, when it comes to Ecclesiology and Sacramentology, usually, Holiness Churches, being usually Baptist, are further away from Catholicism than for instance Anglicans. But when it comes to personal holiness, it's actually Catholics who are in the middle, between Anglicans who claim you can be the beloved child of God while living a systematically sinful life, and between Michael Brown who wants every congregant to be on fire for Jesus 24 by 24. In Catholicism, being between both is a matter of recognising different levels, on the line of Matthew 13:8, if someone brings forth hundredfold fruit, he's obviously "good ground" but so is he who brings forth only thirtyfold.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Octave of the Immaculate Conception
15.XII.2023