Continuing Counter Reformation: Avery Dulles Sort of Historical Understanding

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Avery Dulles Sort of Historical Understanding

Avery Dulles decided in favor of Romanism with its history of mass murder and censorship just before the start of WW2, and he joins the Jesuit Order just after the war's end- that's some timing

From the Boston Globe article:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/12/cardinal_avery.html
Q. What drew you to Catholicism?

A. Perhaps it was the studies of the Reformation period. We had to read Luther and Calvin and the decrees of the Council and Trent and all those sorts of things, and I just found myself resonating with the Catholic positions in all those controversies, and also feeling that the culture of Europe was destroyed or ruptured by the Reformation in a way that was unfortunate. And then I discovered the Catholic Church as it existed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it was a very vital, vibrant thing. St. Paul's parish there - the liturgy was very well performed, and Sunday evening they were having benediction, they were all singing the hymns of Thomas Aquinas in Latin, and I said, `This is the church for me.'

Q. Your journey to Catholicism strikes me as having been more intellectual than spiritual.

A. I think that's probably true. I hope there was some spiritual aspect to it, but I've never had any great taste for what's called spirituality. I think it deals so much with emotions and feelings. I don't have many emotions or feelings. I tend to have ideas. I was interested in Catholicism ideally, intellectually. I was convinced that it was true. I was interested in truth.

From America's Hidden History

(excerpt) pp 8-9

Attacking before dawn on September 20, 1565, with the frenzy of holy warriors, the Spanish easily overwhelmed Fort Caroline. With information provided by a French turncoat, the battle-tested Spanish soldiers used ladders to quickly mount the fort's wooden walls. Inside the settlement, the sleeping Frenchmen -- most of them farmers or laborers rather then soldiers -- were caught off guard, convinced that no attack could possibly come in the midst of such a terrible storm. But they had fatally miscalculated. The veteran Spanish harquebusiers swept in on the night-short clad or naked Frenchmen, who leapt from their beds and grabbed futally for weapons. Their attempts to mount any real defense were hopeless. The battle lasted less than an hour.

Although some of the French defenders managed to escape the carnage, 132 soldiers and civilians were killed in the fighting in the small fort. The Spanish suffered no losses and only a single man was wounded. The forty or so French survivors fortunate enough to reach the safety of some boats anchored nearby watched helplessly as Spanish soldiers flicked the eyeballs of the French dead with the points of their daggers. The shaken survivors then scuttled one of their boats and sailed the other two back to France.

The handful of For Caroline's defenders who were not lucky to escape were quickly rounded up by the Spanish. About fifty women and children were also taken captive, later to be shipped to Puerto Rico.

The men were hanged without hesitation. Above the dead men, the victorious Admiral Menendez placed a sign reading "I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans." Renaming the captured French settlement San Mateo (St. Matthew) and its river San Juan (St. John), Menendez later reported to Spain's King Philip II that he had taken care of the "evil Lutheran sect."

A priest who accompanied the Spanish army as chaplain took special pleasure in recording the large number of "Lutheran" Bibles they had captured and destroyed, adding, "The greatest victory which I feel for this event is the victory which our Lord has given us so that his Holy Gospel may be planted and preached in these parts." Of Admiral Menendez, the chaplain wrote, "The fires and desire he has to serve Our Lord in throwing down and destroying this Lutheran sect, enemy of our Holy Catholic Faith, does not allow him to feel weary in his work."

Victims of the political and religious wars raging across Europe, the ill-fated inhabitants of Fort Caroline were not Lutherans at all. For the most part they were Huguenots, French Protestants who followed the teachings of John Calvin, the French born Protestant theologian.

And from its introduction at p xv:

The proverbial eight hundred pound gorilla sitting squarely in the center of this story of religion, or more precisely, centuries of bloodshed over beliefs. The degree to which religious conflict has driven America's history is a central theme threading through this book. Several of the stories illuminate one of history's most fundamental lessons: people fear what they do not understand- or what is different. That fear moves in tandem with the arrogant superiority that goes with the notion of possessing the exclusive "truth." This volatile mixture of fearful ignorance and righteous certitude allows one group to demonize and dehumanize another. And once you have accomplished that, it is much easier to hang people as heretics, burn them at the stake- or in ovens -- and fly jetliners into their buildings. Could any story be more relevant to our times?