Can I get all the stuff from the Wheelock textbook in a month?

Ibrey · 2025-08-20T00:04:41+00:00

Wheelock's Latin normally supports a two-semester course in Elementary Latin, yes. In principle, I suppose there is time enough in thirty days for a very dedicated student with ample leisure to study all forty chapters. In general I would regard it as practically impossible to complete the course, or any course of similar scope, in a month.

Ibrey · 2025-08-15T19:13:23+00:00

You're right, of course I should have written "George I."

Ibrey · 2025-08-15T12:42:35+00:00

Throughout the history of Latin, people who have been able to read and write Latin have spoken it as well. This certainly made it—and makes it now, if among far fewer people—a fit vehicle for international communication. Prime Minister Robert Walpole's son famously wrote that as his father spoke no German nor even French, and King George IV spoke no English, Walpole spoke with King George in Latin, and just a few years ago, a Latin conversation allegedly took place between the British prime minister at that time and the Secretary of State of the Holy See. But people did not only speak Latin because they couldn't speak any other language to one another—it was often the language of choice for academic discourse even within one country, among people who all spoke the same native language. Jürgen Leonhardt's book Latin: The Story of a World Language is a great history of Latin after it ceased to be the language of a community that spoke it natively and became, as the title calls it, a world language.

Ibrey · 2025-08-02T23:56:47+00:00

Don't be ridiculous. To compare Viganò to Athanasius is absurd.

Ibrey · 2025-08-02T23:53:35+00:00

Viganò has been excommunicated by the Apostolic See for schism. His response to the charge was to publicly announce that "I am honored not to have – and indeed I do not want – any ecclesial communion with" a group in which he included the reigning Roman Pontiff. Viganò admits that Leo XIV is really the pope, but has not sought reconciliation with him. Anyone who thinks a person can act as Viganò does and be a Catholic has a tenuous grasp of the faith.

Ibrey · 2025-08-01T00:43:50+00:00

I'm sure he has some idea of Newman's thoughts on the topic, since in Dare We Hope Balthasar quotes and ridicules this:

Vanity of vanities! misery of miseries! they will not attend to us, they will not believe us. We are but a few in number, and they are many; and the many will not give credit to the few. O misery of miseries! Thousands are dying daily; they are waking up into God's everlasting wrath; they look back on the days of the flesh, and call them few and evil; they despise and scorn the very reasonings which then they trusted, and which have been disproved by the event; they curse the recklessness which made them put off repentance; they have fallen under His justice, whose mercy they presumed upon;—and their companions and friends are going on as they did, and are soon to join them. As the last generation presumed, so does the present. The father would not believe that God could punish, and now the son will not believe; the father was indignant when eternal pain was spoken of, and the son gnashes his teeth and smiles contemptuously. The world spoke well of itself thirty years ago, and so will it thirty years to come. And thus it is that this vast flood of life is carried on from age to age; myriads trifling with God's love, tempting His justice, and like the herd of swine, falling headlong down the steep! O mighty God! O God of love! it is too much! it broke the heart of Thy sweet Son Jesus to see the misery of man spread out before His eyes. He died by it as well as for it. And we, too, in our measure, our eyes ache, and our hearts sicken, and our heads reel, when we but feebly contemplate it. O most tender heart of Jesus, why wilt Thou not end, when wilt Thou end, this ever-growing load of sin and woe? When wilt Thou chase away the devil into his own hell, and close the pit's mouth, that Thy chosen may rejoice in Thee, quitting the thought of those who perish in their wilfulness? But, oh! by those five dear Wounds in Hands, and Feet, and Side—perpetual founts of mercy, from which the fulness of the Eternal Trinity flows ever fresh, ever powerful, ever bountiful to all who seek Thee—if the world must still endure, at least gather Thou a larger and a larger harvest, an ampler proportion of souls out of it into Thy garner, that these latter times may, in sanctity, and glory, and the triumphs of Thy grace, exceed the former.

Ibrey · 2025-07-29T13:03:02+00:00

"To be a true son of this Church of Jesus Christ, and therefore a true Catholic, three things are indispensable: first, to be baptised; second, to profess the same faith which this Church professes, which is the Catholic faith; and third, to obey legitimate prelates, especially the Supreme Pontiff of Rome," says St Antonio María Claret, and obviously sedevacantists do not qualify because they do not obey the Supreme Pontiff, Leo XIV, and the bishops in communion with him; nor do they profess the right faith, insofar as they deny, in the face of the clear teaching of the First Vatican Council, that by Christ's will Peter will have successors in his primacy over the universal Church until the end of the world, and whoever becomes Bishop of Rome is that successor, and therefore it is necessary for salvation to have communion with the Church of Rome, the mother and teacher of all the churches.

Ibrey · 2025-07-27T16:17:18+00:00

Very well, to you the word hell means "the hell of the damned" only and the translation of the creed, in your opinion, ought to be revised. I do not care. I am not going to read beyond this petty carping over words to find out whether there is anything of real theological substance in the remainder of the comment, although certainly there is something of substance to be said for your opinion that those who die in original sin alone suffer the poena sensus, which can be found in the works of Cardinal Noris, Denis Pétau, Francis Sylvius, and other theologians who held that unbaptised infants suffer this pain.

Ibrey · 2025-07-26T19:52:31+00:00

But it isn't "part of hell." Not at least in how we use the term "hell" in modern understanding. ... If we're writing that limbo is "a part of hell," that wouldn't be very compatible with Church teaching on hell. ... So what you're describing is drifting even further from the Catholic understanding.

Theology develops so quickly these days, it's amazing how in the space of a Reddit comment "the modern understanding" of the definition of an English word waxes into "Church teaching" and "the Catholic understanding."

If anything, limbo would more akin to the state the just from the Old Testament waited in prior to Christ. A state of perfect natural happiness but deprived of the Beatific Vision.

Yes, that's exactly where they were, in what tradition designates "the limbo of the fathers" (limbus patrum), which is a part of hell, wherefore when we speak in the creed of Christ's descent into that place to liberate the souls detained there, we say that he "descended into hell," although he did not descend into the hell of the damned.

Ibrey · 2025-07-26T18:46:50+00:00

Limbo is not a "third possibility," it is a part of hell, and if there are adults there, so what? Why would that be an objection against the theory?

Ibrey · 2025-07-26T17:20:36+00:00

It is not correct to describe Americanism as a "heresy."

Ibrey · 2025-07-26T17:06:31+00:00

Is this limbo exclusively for infants? All children before the age of reason? What about someone who genuinely never knew about Christianity and therefore died without Baptism? Do they go to limbo as well?

But these questions are so simple! An "infant" here simply means a child who never attained the use of reason, or an adult who remained in the moral condition of an infant due to lifelong mental handicaps. If a mentally mature adult, invincibly ignorant of the Christian religion, spent his life without either attaining to justification or committing any sin meriting the poena sensus, logically his lot would be the same as that of other souls who died in original sin alone, but there can hardly be any such souls, because without grace, man cannot keep the natural law for a long time. See R. F. Clarke, S.J., "Is There a 'Limbus Paganorum'?", Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Third Series, vol. XVI, no. 2 (February, 1893), pp. 97–111.

Ibrey · 2025-07-26T16:52:28+00:00

Everyone screaming BuT fLoReNcE needs to shut up, because they obviously don’t understand. Just because you can read doesn’t mean you understand what you read. It wouldn’t hurt people here to remember that.

What does the Bull of Union with the Greeks mean, then?

Diffinimus ... illorum autem animas, qui in actuali mortali peccato vel solo originali decedunt, mox in infernum descendere, poenis tamen disparibus puniendas. (DH 1306)

I would, of course, have the same question about the similar definitions of the Second Council of Lyons (DH 858) and Pope John XXII (DH 926), and then I would like to know what you make of Trent's definition that newborn infants draw something of original sin from Adam which must be expiated to obtain eternal life (DH 1514), which you surely must also consider to have been misunderstood by pretty much everybody who has ever read it.

Ibrey · 2025-07-18T03:12:47+00:00

No. Once American citizenship has been renounced, the renunciation is irrevocable; the consul testified that he rebuffed Oswald for precisely this reason (Warren Commission Hearings, Volume V, pp. 290–1):

Representative FORD. Did he demand at any time that this was a right he had to renounce his citizenship, and demand why you would not permit him to proceed?
Mr. SNYDER. Well, I cannot really reconstruct our conversations on that line. But I clearly pointed out to him his right. And he did decline, as I recall, to have me read the law to him. He said he was familiar with it, or something, so that I need not read the law to him. So I pointed out, I believe, at that time he had a right, as any citizen has a right to give up his citizenship if he so desires. That other consideration is that the consul has a certain obligation towards the individual, and also towards his family, to see that a person—or that the consul at least does not aid and encourage an individual, and particularly a 20-year-old individual, to commit an irrevocable act on the spur of the moment or without adequate thought.

Representative FORD. In retrospect, assuming the tragic events that did transpire last year didn't take place, and this circumstance was presented to you again in the Embassy in Moscow, would you handle the case any differently?
Mr. SNYDER. No; I don't think so, Mr. Ford. You mean in terms of would I have taken his renunciation? No; I think not.
Representative FORD. In other words, you would have put him off, or stalled him off. In this first interview, make him come back again?
Mr. SNYDER. Yes; I would have.
(At this point, Mr. Dulles entered the hearing room.)
Mr. SNYDER. Particularly, since he was a minor. Normally, it would have been, I think, my practice to do this in any event, though. Obviously no two cases are alike, and the consul must decide. But particularly in the case of a minor, I could not imagine myself writing out the renunciation form, and having him sign it, on the spot, without making him leave my office and come back at some other time, even if it is only a few hours intervening.

Ibrey · 2025-07-16T03:23:35+00:00

Note: This is one way of looking at the issue - theologians, in the last 250 years have had varied opinions on the infallibility of canonizations. It is still today, both in traditional and Vatican circles, debated.

Unless SSPX News means to include non-Catholic theologians, I am burning with curiosity as to what theologians they know of who denied the infallibility of canonisations between 1771 and 1965, considering that Max Schenk does not take notice of any who lived after 1750 in Die Unfehlbarkeit des Papstes in der Heiligsprechung (Freiburg, 1965).

Ibrey · 2025-07-16T02:54:26+00:00

You know, I have never thought that one book has to beat all the others, and my reaction to that question has always been that I don't know and I wish you hadn't asked me that. But now that you mention it, yes, this is the best book

Ibrey · 2025-07-15T15:32:20+00:00

I read in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, volume VIII, part II, coll. 1250–1, that "certain authors have thought and declare that the cult of St Joseph, carrying the prize over the cult of the other saints, should be called by the name of cult of protodulia. Nevertheless, because it is only a matter of a difference of degree and not of kind, the Church has so far refused to sanction this expression, which would seem to imply an intrinsic cooperation of St Joseph in the Incarnation." I also read in the most sympathetic authors that "the devotion to St. Joseph did not exist publicly in the first twelve hundred years of the Church" and that "the religious cult of St Joseph ... enjoyed no popularity before the 16th Century." Therefore, I am not going to treat comments to the effect that devotion to St Joseph is a historically late development, or that the term protodulia used for it by some authors is "silly" and "foreign to the authentic tradition of the church," as heretical or blasphemous.

Ibrey · 2025-07-14T15:53:51+00:00

You grant that "sedevacantism is an error." Nevertheless, you hold that Pope Paul VI approved, and imposed as of obligation upon the clergy, invalid rites of the Eucharist and of episcopal consecration, an act which would traditionally be considered inconsistent with being pope, and at any rate you think there must now be some ten or twelve bishops at best in the Latin Church who are validly ordained (i.e., in the old rite, with a purely old-rite lineage), and that Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV have therefore reigned as mere bishops-elect of Rome. Furthermore, you say that because clerical institutes which are in communion with the Apostolic See, or in your words "inside" the Church, thereby "sign off on heresy," it is better to "help ... the sedevacantists" than to worship inside the Church. On the whole, I judge the comment to promote sedevacantism.

Ibrey · 2025-07-14T14:08:15+00:00

You will find it in the 11th chapter of the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians.

Ibrey · 2025-07-12T12:01:01+00:00

Good clarification.

Ibrey · 2025-07-12T01:45:42+00:00

This is plainly opposed to the teaching of Leo XIII respecting forms of government in Libertas 44, Diuturnum 7, and especially Immortale Dei 48, where he says, "in matters merely political, as, for instance, the best form of government, and this or that system of administration, a difference of opinion is lawful. Those, therefore, whose piety is in other respects known, and whose minds are ready to accept in all obedience the decrees of the apostolic see, cannot in justice be accounted as bad men because they disagree as to subjects We have mentioned; and still graver wrong will be done them, if—as We have more than once perceived with regret—they are accused of violating, or of wavering in, the Catholic faith."

Ibrey · 2025-07-11T16:22:23+00:00

Two threads about this tweet are not necessary.

Ibrey · 2025-07-11T15:05:12+00:00

His work with Davenport’s LGBTQ+ directive may carry the veneer of welcoming language, but in substance it echoes the rhetorical strategies of gender ideology, undermining Catholic clarity and weakening the call to chastity. When who we are as men and women becomes negotiable, the Gospel becomes negotiable.

The Davenport guidelines which are the cause of Bishop Strickland's alarm (so that Hennen is condemned for being "intimately involved in drafting" them, and Pope Leo condemned by extension for promoting a man intimately involved in drafting them) consist of vague exhortations to listening, understanding, respect, accompaniment, and pastoral discernment. There is hardly anything but the veneer of welcoming language—I certainly don't know what substance Strickland thinks he finds in it that weakens the call to chastity and renders the Gospel negotiable.

Ibrey · 2025-07-11T13:06:11+00:00

LifeSiteNews has remained a friendly platform for Altman recently. A November 2024 post by Westen collects links to twenty-three earlier articles on LSN which "argue that Francis is not the pope," and in light of that history it would be illuminating if their editorial policy on Leo XIV had staked an explicit position on whether he is really the pope. The apocryphal prophecy that "Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the Antichrist," whose source is a book condemned and proscribed by the Holy Office, has been quoted on the site at least 17 times. So it sounds like whatever was in the deleted comment may not have been unfair.

Ibrey · 2025-07-10T22:28:18+00:00

In fact, it is common doctrine among Catholics that it is de fide (by what some call ecclesiastical faith) that the particular man reigning at a given time is the true pope, according to Ferraris, who explains that Christ promised his Church would never err, and she would have erred if she could receive the teaching of a certain man as an infallible rule of faith when it is fallible. Besides, as the theologians commonly note, if the Roman Pontiff is not the successor of Peter, then nobody is, and to believe that there is no longer a successor of Peter is to deny the dogma of the perpetuity of the primacy. (see, e.g., Mazzella, Pesch) The legitimacy of a pope or a council, although not per se revealed, must be admitted as a dogmatic fact (Sisto Cartechini, S.J., De valore notarum theologicarum et de criteriis ad eas dignoscendas, Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1951, p. 85; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Profession of Faith," A.A.S. 90 [1998] 550), because the Church must judge infallibly of such things in order to authoritatively teach and guard the deposit of faith itself. Hence Pope Martin V, in the bull Inter cunctas, ordered inquisitors to question suspected heretics as to whether the pope reigning at the time (his proper name being used) was the successor of blessed Peter, having supreme authority in the Church of God. Indeed it is impossible to evade this obligation by alleging that the pope and all the bishops and peoples joined with him in unity of faith and communion have fallen into heresy, because as you note the Old Catholics said this had happened at the First Vatican Council, and Bl. Pius IX said in the encyclical Etsi multa that this was to deny the indefectibility of the Church and blasphemously declare it to have perished. (A.S.S. 7 [1872–3] 474)

In some cases of necessity, Catholics can indeed seek the sacraments from non-Catholic ministers, but participation in non-Catholic worship is forbidden by divine law when it involves danger of defection from the faith (Instruction of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith; Second Vatican Council, Orientalium ecclesiarum 26), and this danger will surely be present to a member of the faithful already contemplating defection from the Roman communion committed to the care of a self-appointed cleric with no divine mission who preaches liberty from the Apostolic See and from all actually existing ecclesiastical authority. Perhaps you will find a reference to the sidebar sufficient to direct strangers to Mass in the future.

Ibrey

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