Unfortunately, I've been sick with a flu/cold this week, so I'm feeling behind in most areas of life. I was able to get a video published today, so thank God for that. I'd love to see this Locals community be a venue where you guys can share more intimate (and perhaps critical) feedback about the content that I'm producing. YouTube is overwhelming with comments, but this affords us an opportunity to have more productive interactions. At any rate, here's the newest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoZogFGJ4K4
We're coming up on the final stretch of Lent and I find myself apprehensive about the shift from fasting to feasting. In practice, I've never been very good at feasting well. Joseph Pieper argues that leisure is our most important activity in life, but it's so hard to live out in a world consumed by work followed by shallow distraction. I'm contemplating retaining some of the things I've given up this Lent as I've seen so much fruit from their exclusion that I'm not really interested in bringing them back. Is anyone else experiencing this suggestion in your spiritual discernment?
In other news, I was able to interview Fr. Robert Spitzer, but we very quickly ran out of time which was a learning experience for me. It feels like every interview I do has some important lesson for me to learn. Hopefully those lessons will be reflected in future interviews. I'm looking forward to publishing it soon. He's remarkably knowledgable, and obviously intelligent.
Lastly, a few pieces that caught my eye this week include an incisive article by Phil Lawler who I almost always entirely agree with. https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/pope-francis-doctor-law/
I've heard lots of people are upset about some website promoting "recovery from traditionalism". It was a reminder of how peaceful life is when you aren't immersed in the controversies of Twitter and elsewhere.
And I'm looking forward to catching this conversation between Jordan Petersen and Bishop Barron. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd6iCSQep8E
I pray that as you approach Holy Week, your faith will be strengthened as we immerse ourselves in the Passion of our Lord!
Brian Holdsworth
In military tradition, reinforcements are those called up to support the front-line soldiers. In architecture, reinforcements provide support to a weak area. Today, the Church is struggling to its mission to teach and evangelize. I would never consider myself a first pick to do this work, but desperate time seems to necessitate that people like you and I fill in. Here we can support each other as we aim to renew the Church and evangelize the culture.
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Brian Holdsworth@brianholdsworth
June 18, 2024
C.S. Lewis Wisdom for the Day
I was listening to C.S. Lewis' masterpiece, the Abolition of Man on my run this morning. I've read this book a couple times but I always get something new out of it and this time, a line stood out to me boldly.
"A hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."
This insight portrays so many experiences I've had with my attempts to dialogue with skeptics and non-Christians about what is true. They often have few skills for rational argumentation, let alone discernment, but in an attempt to protect themselves from views that are contrary to their own, they often hide behind stubborn and hardened hearts. This is why ridicule comes so natural to so many popular atheist commentators.
Lewis' insight appears within the context of a criticism of the direction he perceives in education as he dismantles a poorly conceived schoolbook that had been sent to him for review. He laments that in a book that is supposed to be about grammar, the lessons have instead smuggled in amateur philosophy. The pupil is then led astray in his philosophical thinking while never getting a proper lesson in grammar.
He compares this to a philosophy of education that insists that the objective is to debunk bad sentiments in the mind of students without ever replacing such sentiments with tools for discerning what is good and true. The result is a mind deprived of truth and so desperate to satiate itself on anything meaningful, that it becomes easy prey for the propagandist when he appears.
Such lessons harden a pupil against sentiments of the heart, but deprive him of any faculties to think productively about what is true. Thus, Lewis' statement rings again:
"For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head.”
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What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
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Animals without fur
I'm probably over thinking this, but animals without their fur/feathers look really ugly. But we don't for some reason. It's almost like we don't quite fit into the natural world just by looking at us. Like we're aliens in a strange world.
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Aliens and Christianity
I'm publishing a video later today about aliens, UFOs, and whether their presence compromises Christian doctrine. But before I do, I'd love to get your hottest takes on that question.
Evidence of the Filioque in Today's Gospel
In today's gospel (Jn 17:1-11), Jesus says that everything the Father has is his. This is a simple scriptural proof of the Filioque (the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son). If the Holy Spirit is not sent by and does not proceed from the Son, as he does the Father, then Christ's statement in this scripture is false.
Our understanding of the Trinity depends on the insistence that all three persons are co-equal—they are all fully God. They are distinguished not by essence or degree, but by their relations of origin: the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; he does not beget himself. As Jesus says in John 17, "all that is yours is mine," indicating full shared divinity, except what distinguishes him personally as Son. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one principle, which is what the Church affirms in the Filioque clause.
Vatican II, the Final Stretch of Lent, and What's Caught My Attention
