a child born to wicked parents owes them every bit of respect due to parents...including a broad modicum of obedience...excepting commands that ...contradict divine positive law"
- or the law of the land (human positive law) or the law of human nature. Or commands that exceed the natural authority of parents. For instance, if I were to marry a fourty year old maid (to take an instance which is not the case), I might be obeying my father, who might have a kind of modern hysteria about pedophilia, but I would be doing so against my inclinations to marry in a way that gives hope for children, and in ordering me to do so, he would exceed his rights according to divine, natural or positive, or human positive law.
[Main subject of the discussion, but digressive here:]So, Abe Lincoln had no right to impose on anyone to celebrate the arrival of the Mayflower (and as Chesterton said, English would have the right to celebrate its departure), but Catholic Bishops having with Leo XIII (condemner of Americanism) ruled that Thanksgiving is not equivalent to "Mayflower Day" - a day to be shunned if ever it were so named - it is quiet licit to celebrate Thanksgiving, and I think one should. It is also a reminder to Prots that if even the state can institute a day of public Thanksgiving, year after year, the Christian Church can do so which preceded the US of A.
"the child born in a Roman province was born under roman law"
- not quite, he was certainly born under Roman Administration, but not automatically under Roman Law. Or rather a mere provincial was born under the administration but not the law, a citizen under the law but not the administration. Our Lord was thus under Roman Administration, as his fosterfather showed when registering for taxes in Bethlehem, but St Paul was under Roman law and could not be crucified, only beheaded.
"The base of your studies should be the encyclicals of the Popes and also the books of Archbishop Lefebvre, which are very precise summaries and explanations of the Popes' teaching. Be careful of all theories which may distract you or lead you away from this teaching, and look to the priests for guidance and help in understanding; formation is their direct responsibility."
- No, formation of intellect is the intellectual's direct responsibility. The one formation which is the direct responsibility of priests is formation of conscience, in admonitions in confession, and formation of faith and conscience in sermons and catechism. But asking your priest to direct your studies is up to you, no priest has any right to class you as an heretic or to refuse you the sacraments because you study on your own and do your own formation.
Also, the priest could be, and the priests in St Nicolas du Chardonnet are in ascertained fact deficient in parts of social morality. There is a field where they have done great deeds, reminding of Mirari Vos, but when it comes to the rights of the poor, they are sometimes simply led by their noses by modernist administrators. And, quite obviously, they are impoverishing this here writer by treating my blogs as forming part of those "all theories which may distract you or lead you away from this teaching". Their attitude seems to be: if Hans-Georg agrees with us, he is superfluous, and we have expressed it better, if he does not, he is not Catholic and should not be read. As a result my blogs are not read by the one public that might appreciate them.
Because Modernist Catholics are against them due to my Creationism and Geocentrism, Jews have again and again been given access and obviously "forgotten" - because I am a Christian and on top of that a Catholic, claiming there is a visible Church succeeding the older Israel and they are not its visible successors, Muslims are put off by the fact that I compare Mahomet to Joseph Smith, Mormons are not quite thrilled by my comparing Joseph Smith to Mahomet, Orthodox dislike my defense of filioque and my defense of St Robert Bellarmine against the calumnies of a Paul Ballaster - ex-Franciscan, defrocked, died stabbed by a Catholic as Greek Orthodox archbishop of Mexico city and both Americas - nor are they too fond of my defending Cardinal Stepinac, besides they are cosntantly asking themselves whether it is proper "for a monk" - I am not a monk - or "a prophet" - I am not a prophet - to ask for money.
So, St Nicolas du Chardonnet and similar advising formation only under a priest's advice and priests disadvising from my blogs, that is a bad stab in the back to my livelihood as a writer and essayist. If they condemned part of its contents, they would have to do so publically, and therefore publically acknowledge, if not my doctrine, at least the fact that I expressed it. They do not want that. They prefer, up to now, backstabbing. And if they told you what you say, they are erecting a principle which is not true. Of course, priests may have indirect responsibility for formation, like Cardinal Newman said in his "Idea of a Catholic University". That is another thing.
A typical example of their attitude to me, in St Nicolas du Chardonnet is the way they pray for me. Now, a few months ago, I was writing to Mgr. Williamson saying "I am a writer, I want to be paid for my writing, do not block me, do not pray for God's providence to block me" and he obviously took it as meaning "I want to be a writer in the future" since next hour, day or week I found on the internet a course of writing. Or on how to improve writing.
Now, the past weeks I had the pleasure to read the Chardonnet. One thing that Fr. Chautard said was that jobs are getting more and more tied up to large companies, so getting a real meaningful job is less and less possible and therefore less important as a consideration for finding your work. He also stated that being an internet technician - "informaticien" - is a not very noble calling. I wrote him a letter in which I stated, again, that I am writing on the internet, and reminded him of fact that as much as a text can go from paid format on paper to free format on internet (like Bibles online), likewise can they go the other way, from the free form on internet to the payable form on paper. He must have taken that as an obstination in wnating to be an internet technician, for if not, and if he did not pray for that, how do you explain I found right today this video:
Lecture 1A | MIT 6.001 Structure and Interpretation, 1986
That was, however, not a complete waste of my time. The thing about black box abstraction is that there is no such thing as an algorithm for turning electronic or chemic processes into understanding or for that matter any other kind of experience. There is an algorithm for turning simple understandings into chains of complex understaning so that the result is as sure as the simple understandings themselves, and that algorithm is called logic. But there is no such thing as an algorithm for turning non-experience into experience or non-understanding into understanding, non-cognitive into cognitive. A good thing to know. A good thing to write about.
Of course, "computer logic" is making an algorithm for signs to echo the algorithms of logic. It is in no wise any thing that makes computers understand anything whatsoever.
And that includes language. That is the profound reason why computer translations suck.
But sometimes having people pray for you according to their misunderstandings can be painful. I guess that week when I was thinking time after time of sodomitic acts that disgusted me was Fr Beauvais praying that I might get duly disgusted at sodomy. As if I were a homosexual. Which I am not. I am neither homosexual, nor homoliberal. But in St Nicolas I can be passed off as either, or could till recently, due to priests refusing to take direct note of what I write them or same priests insisting on reinterpreting it, as if I were unable to express my real needs and intentions correctly in a text not needing reinterpretation.
I suppose such praying for me instead of talking to me is a result of taking Mgr Williamsons advice "some people you can not discuss with, only love and pray for". For a man who was habitually naked and dirty and throwing imself in fire and water, I would agree. But for a man trying to have his blog articles reprinted as essay collections or his music scores played before paying audience, I think that is not an applicable advice. Any more than for 12 guys not washing their hands before every meal or picking wheat ears on saturdays.
Not that I compare myself to the Apostles in holiness of vocation, of course.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou library
of Beaubourg*/Paris
26-XI-2011
*It is in the gay district, but I go to the library to write on computers, not to make trysts with gay men. Actually the library would probably not be the best place in all Beaubourg to do so. It is much more a studentish, even to some extent a young Muslim and Immigrant studentish thing.