Yup.

Blah blah blah.

The same aesthetic "disorientation" of form decried in cinema, for example, was influential in other supernally beautiful works that we might forget like Dreyer's "La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc".

How beautiful were the forms that preceded World War I if World War I flowed from them?

Et cet.

We won't be fooled again! said the dwarfs.

Time to renew your membership at the HFC, Liam.

Quiet is becoming hard to find. As a lifelong exercise junkie, I am familiar with gyms. I have given up on them and bought my own equipment to use at home. Why? I couldn't stand the constant noise. It seems that rock music is played at high volumes at every gym. Maybe it is supposed to be motivational. It motivated me right out the door.

Now about that local folk group that does the "contemporary" mass. Those folks are all in their 50+ years by now, and there is nothing contemporary about them. But they surely do love amplification. Maybe the exposure to that music over the years has damaged their hearing. Some have not realized that music performed badly sounds even worse when amplified.

He's obviously never been to an Ordinary Form Mass where they sang chant and traditional hymns. Where I am involved, there is a combination of chants from the GR, GS, SEP, BFW, a wide variety of hymns of various styles, sacred polyphony as well as simpler harmonised settings of various texts, and our motets whilst primarily in Latin, are also often found in English, French and German. (We've sung a few Bach Chorales in recent times.)

If you turn up to the average suburban parish, you're likely to find an unrelenting program of St Louis Jesuits, played poorly on guitars, sung out of tune and quite often all put together by clergy who have little to now understanding of liturgy.

Re the first line of the quoted blog passage: The Church does not teach and has never taught that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is "an historical fact," because if it were, then there would be no need whatsoever for the gift of faith.

The four Gospels present the empty tomb as fact, but such can be (and was in Apostolic times) dismissed by the unbeliever with a simple: "Someone stole the body."

Jesus rose from the dead, in a physical body.
This is a fact.

Jesus did not rise from the dead.
This is also a fact.

Only one of those is a true fact.

The Church cannot issue a teaching on whether one or the other is a fact- the Church not being the final arbiter on the use of language and meaning.

But the Church definitely teaches which one of those facts is, actually, a true statement.

My belief in the truthiness of one or the other is informed by my faith.
But the actuality of the matter - the truth itself - is not in any way shaped by my belief.

(It theoretically could be shaped by my personal knowledge, but I did not get a chance to observe the resurrection directly and, moreover, the human scale of the physical body of Jesus most likely precludes quantum effects.)

Are you trying to suggest that the Catholic Church does not teach that the physical Resurrection of Christ is a true, factual, actual thing that really, actually happened?

(Thanks Ben. It's been at least 10 years since I read the CCC for more than a minute of reference material. I remember being surprised at how "liberal" [in the classical sense of that word] Church teaching actually was compared to caricatures of fundamentalism rampant in anti-Catholic media. A great number of things surprised me, so I feel like I would remember being surprised by anything remotely like what Fr. RK is suggesting. But maybe I am grossly misunderstanding what he's getting it.)

I wasn't sure what part of the writer's expression Fr. was disputing: "historical", or "fact", or what. Of course the Resurrection is something we believe by the divine virtue of faith, and not on the basis of unaided reason (historical methods) alone.

IF ONLY THERE WERE!

Think about what Jesus did with wine - instantly made the best wine.

If Jesus were to make a Smartphone it would never run out of battery-life, would never need to be updated, would always have a signal, and would definitely be a DROID.

Adam and Ben,

Here's another pertinent resource, an address of Blessed John Paul II:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19890301en.html

Sorry, Adam, but "physical" "true" "factual" and "actual" are not synonymous. The Resurrection of Christ is true, but as a statement of faith, not as historically provable fact.

The only factual evidence I know of which contributes to my belief in the Resurrection is the empty tomb. (My daily personal experience of my Risen Savior cannot be verified as demonstrable fact. Some may say that I - along with other believers who make similar claims to having experienced the Risen Christ - are simply delusional, as are the NT writers, for that matter.) There were no eyewitnesses to the Resurrection of Christ, no photos taken. In that sense, it is not an historically verified and verifiable "fact."

I am aware that some scholars argue that there are more historical facts for the resurrection of Christ than the empty tomb. I admit that I have not kept abreast of writings in this vain, but I do not think that whether or not there are more such historical facts impacts positively or negatively on my firm belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Finally, I do not believe in the Resurrection of Christ simply because NT writers held that belief. Without my personal relationship with Christ, the witness of NT writers would not be sufficient to preserve me in my belief.

Catholic faith doesn't bind Catholic historians to accept the historical evidence for the Resurrection (which is surely not entirely lacking) as sufficient according to their canons of historical inference : in that respect, the Resurrection is not historical. Also (as Bl. John Paul II states per the above) the meaning and the consequences of the Resurrection are not purely historical either -- they are more, there is a wider dimension that the historical.

But what worries me about saying "it is not a fact", "is it not historical" is that this leaves open the implication that resurrection is some kind of myth, pious and helpful story, traditional tale, private consolation, etc. The only point of saying it is not "historical" is to say, it's more than just history, more than an event which inspires us, it's the Fact that confirms the meaning of all other facts.

I was taught (perhaps wrongly... it was a public school) that a "fact" was a statement that could (at least in theory) be verified as true or false. As opposed to an opinion.

Alas, I was taught something entirely different, in a public school. And I checked definitions before I posted to see if I might have been in error. Sorry if you disagree with me and what I take to be the prevailing viewpoint on the definition of "fact."

I learned the same that Adam did re: the difference between fact and opinion.

The "empty tomb" is approximately as "historical" as the physical resurrection. There is no verifiable historical evidence, in the secular academic sense, for either one.

This. Exactly this. The only accounts we have of the empty tomb come from exactly the same sources that witness Jesus, alive, after his crucifixion. Why one is dismissible and the other isn't?

It should just be noted that the game is not *entirely* a manipulative game. It's something of a tool we ourselves use to determine what is factual in what ancient writers presented as if it were factual; our modern understandings of history are not how ancient writers tended to understand history.

The gravamen of your complaint is more that modern history is materialist in metaphysics and skeptical in its epistemology: it says it cannot affirm the factualness of supernatural events. You are right to call out the illogical three-card-monty game of turning an inability to affirm into a denial. But, other than that, I welcome the epistemological humility of the modern historical method, properly done, which many do. (I have to say that religious studies, however, is an area where it is often NOT properly done. Yes, I am looking at you, Elaine Pagels, among others....)

(For Adam I include the DR version)

How'd you know?

How'd you know?

Because I'm me.;-)

There are things about the modern historical method that can improve upon more customary historical methods.

For example, paying attention to the the first witnesses to the empty tomb being women, and how that would likely have been received by audiences contemporary to the first oral tradition and then how that bears on credibility for audiences in the future.