#Larry chapp

[apesoformythoughts]

“As a Catholic, all things being equal, I owe the Pope the benefit of the doubt. And I did that for about six years with Pope Francis. But we are way beyond that now and all things are not equal. The Pope is not a heretic. He is the real Pope. But therein lies a deeper problem. The real problem. And the problem as I see it is more subtle and more dangerous than debates over things like the change in the teaching on the death penalty or the repression of the Latin Mass or even that famous footnote in Amoris Laetitia. The problem is that precisely while remaining within the boundaries of orthodoxy Pope Francis has subtly redefined the Church’s terms of engagement with the modern world. And it is in that shift that I think the gravest danger resides.”

— Larry Chapp: “The Falsification of the Good - Part One: Pope Francis and the Question Begging Nature of Accusations of Heresy”

[francesderwent]

“God exists, God is infinitely good, there is evil. What we do with that third piece is critical, and not to over-analyze it, but to simply say, we know one thing: that God has not exempted Himself from the implications of that evil. He has entered into that evil, and descended into it, and suffered through it. So ours is not an absentee landlord god. The tenement in which we live might have rats and roaches, but God is living there, too.”

—Larry Chapp, Living in a Sacramental Cosmos, The Benedictine Dialogues

[laus-deo]

Larry Chapp sobre el Sínodo: «Algo está fundamentalmente mal y en contradicción con el Vaticano II»

El teólogo estadounidense Larry Chapp ha escrito un artículo en el que usa un juego de palabras que hace referencia al famoso dicho «Nerón tocaba la lira mientras Roma ardía», adaptándolo al contexto de la sinodalidad en la Iglesia Católica. Leer más… »

[azspot]

David Bentley Hart interviewed by Larry Chapp

[divinemercymeditation]

(Im)mortals and Misfits - Catholic Herald

(Im)mortals and Misfits – Catholic Herald

Old letters with used stamps are displayed at the Van Dieten Postzegelveilingen in Capelle aan den IJssel, Netherlands, on 27 September, 2008.(Koen van Weel/AFP via Getty Images)   Editor’s note: This essay first appeared in the pages of Chapter House on 18 September 2020, and has been lightly edited for time references. Death teaches us that we are no mere mortals.By Larry Chapp Late last summer…

[mechagalaxy]

Sten Hugo Hiller - 627184: Mecha Combat #1112 -September 3352 Rhinoplasty Chrono

(By Sten Hugo Hiller - 627184)

Mountain Climbing Mecha Combat #1112

Brought to you by ANN

Highlighting the September 3352 Rhinoplasty Chrono

As we Commanders have become more or less acustomed to, as soon as the raiding hordes appeared the Gaming authorities decreed that we should have a low tonnage Mech specific Chrono.

The Mech chosen for that honor was this time the 35 ton Keradon. It was the only legal model one could use. No sidekicks this time.

-Unless you were fighting on K11 that is. On that top it was just a standard unlimited Chrono.

For me, the chosen model was a mixed blessing. As the only Keradon I had was Fido (long story how it got its name, and not relevant) I could by just easing fido into my main still be quite effective in the raid, but how would I fare in the Chrono?

The only way to find out was to sign up, and a short while later the top was claimed. It semed most opponents had few if any Keradons.

Just as I thought so, I was blown off the top by Luc Lachance from the Brotherhood Blackwatch. He had an almost fully developed Keradon, but it had still not gotten its second cockpit.

A harder opponent showed up as the top was reclaimed.

Brian Wilson of the Smurf patrol had a quartet of Keradons, and while they were quite a way from being fully developed, 4-1 odds are hard to beat.

The weapon loadout were changed to have as many W-F weapons as possible, and while he was a hard case, I managed to stay on the top nearly as much as him.

Then disaster struck. My friends who had guarded my back through the war said their time was up and were heading for home

Frantic calls for help and scouring the countryside for guards eventually got me first one dozen helpers, later expanded into a bit over two full dozens. That was barely enough to let me beat Brian about one time in five tries.

But the RNG gods was pretty much on my side. Time after time I grabbed the top for a few scant minutes, or in many cases just a handful of Seconds. But that was usally when the snapshots were taken, so the scores were pretty evenly matched.

As we entered the last scorerounds, Brian must have fallen asleep for a bit, because my forces stayed unmolested on the top for 10 continious scorerounds.

Of course he returned a bit later and started kicking butt again, but the respite had given me a score advantage he would be hard pressed to overcome. I managed to hold the top one more scoreround, and luckily none other disturbed our duel. It ended a bit early as well, so my score was barely sufficient to beat him.

I had also managed to get enough footage to determine the highest scorers in this event had been:

Div 1 381+ (24 Commanders): Sherriff Leary Wretham, Warlock (+13780)

2: Jeff Haas

3: Daniel Scott

4: Stuart Myshrall

5: Gary Muenzel

6: Ben Rail

7: Don Davis

8: roward

9: Dan Ross

10: Larry Vandervort

Div 2 -380 (19 Commanders): Christine Mainer, Spirit of Bunny (+9980)

Div 3 -245 (7 Commanders): Colin Toenjes, Heroes (+21420)

Div 4 -203 (18 Commanders): Sten Hugo Hiller, Star League (+620)

Div 5 -161 (21 Commanders): Eric Astronomicon Finley, Heroes Support (+1330)

Div 6 -118 (13 Commanders): Grego, Phoenix (+30280)

Div 7 -91 (28 Commanders): Robert Pawulski, Ronins (+14620)

Div 8 -67 (18 Commanders): Fredo Gustavo, Black Star Bandits (+11310)

Div 9 -47 (18 Commanders): RacerX_, Jagdstaffel 2 (+1560)

Div 10 -29 (14 Commanders): Iain Bryce, *R.V.* (+4500)

Div 11 -18 (17 Commanders): Map Chapp, I.N.A. (+18690)

Only ten Medals, three Golds, four Silvers and three Bronzes, were given to Commanders who at the end of the event had what looked like pure Keradon formations.

Total Contestants: 197

Total medals claimed: 154 (of 165 possible)

Perhaps due to the raid, or possibly because a lack of Keradons, the number of contestants who showed up was fifty-five lower than in the Point Mech we had just after the war.

Also, the imbalance between the tops was pretty severe, and the curse of K3 was back with a vengeance. a total of eleven Bronzes from three ended unclaimed and were returned for resmelting.

The highest score achieved in this event was on K11 where Map Chapp of the Indo Nusa Alliance managed to get a score of 116 250 by staying on the top for 93 scorerounds. The biggest difference to the runner-up was on K6 where Grego of Phoenix had a score advantage of 30 280.

Lowest score needed for a medal was also on K6, 12860 was enough to get a Bronze there.

Five Commanders won by a margin in excess of 12 000 but we also had a trio of Golds decided by less than 3000, one of them by a mere 620 difference such a close call might well be atributed to an early signup.

Given the closeness on at least some of the tops, it is perhaps interesting to look at the differences between the medal tiers in this event:

..Silver to Bronze....Bronze to nothing

Div 1 ...…..740......………..1145

Div 2 ......7600...…............1820

Div 3 ....19750...….........…..N/A

Div 4 ....10040...…............2980

Div 5 ....20240...….........…..540

Div 6 ......1920...….........…..N/A

Div 7 ......3450...…..............540

Div 8 ......8480...…............1340

Div 9 ......6200...…............2900

Div 10 ….9920...….........…..N/A

Div 11 ….2240...….........…..500

Some pretty solid walls for the Silvers, but one of the Silvers and three of the eight contested Bronzes were decided by less than a 1000 point difference. That might well be a difference caused by who signed up first, and shows that when it comes to Chrono`s, one should sign up first, get the formation right later.

This was one of the none events. None of the clans got more than one Gold, none of the unaligned Commanders won a Gold, and none of the last events winners got a follow-up Gold

Upcoming event: Weighty.

This event is for Mechs massing 80 tons or less

[livetrendynews]

via Live Trendy News

[apesoformythoughts]

‘What is most sad about the Pope's comments here is that it does not surprise us anymore. He avoids saying that all religions are "equal" paths to God but he does not really need to. It is implied in his comparison of religions with languages. Christ just gives us a different "grammar" for how we come to God than what one sees in the grammar of Islam. Just as French gives us a different grammar and vocabulary from Spanish for the act of communicating, so too here. But almost as sad as the fact that this comment does not shock us coming from the Pope, is that fact that it is just so theologically shallow. This goes well beyond a radically inclusive christology and into the domain of a sociologically naive assertion of the equality of religions. As if there is this reified thingy called "religion" that are all basically doing the same thing. But such notions of an essentialized definition of religion are a pure invention of the Enlightenment. Rightly critiqued by most scholars in the field of the sociology and history of religion.’

— Larry Chapp

[apesoformythoughts]

“But as you may have gathered by now, my own view is that Pope Francis has not taught formal heresy in a magisterial way despite what many claim. I understand that he has said some troubling things and those things are not to be taken lightly, but in the end everything he has said can be ‘spun’ in an orthodox direction no matter how many rubber-man linguistic and theological contortions one has to engage in [order] to be able to do so. That in itself is problematic since, as I have said before, the purpose of the Petrine ministry is to unify the Church by clarifying matters that are in dispute, whereas Pope Francis, true to his word, has ‘made a mess’ and muddied the waters instead. This, in my view, does not make him a false pope or a heretical pope. But it does make him a deeply flawed Pope who does not seem to understand the proper role of the Petrine Office. In short, I do not think he is a heretical Pope, but I do think he is a Pope with many deficits. And the Church has had Popes with deficits before.”

— Larry Chapp: “The Falsification of the Good - Part One: Pope Francis and the Question Begging Nature of Accusations of Heresy”

[apesoformythoughts]

“The central claim of this book is that as modern Western Christians our cultural situation has flushed us out of our neutral corner and forced us to choose for or against the Gospel. Furthermore, this moment of decision will only become ever more pronounced going forward, as our culture descends further and further into the happy nihilism of late capitalist bourgeois decadence. Indeed, the culture will laugh and then frown at the very notion that a supernatural provocation has broken into time and history demanding a decision from us. However, modernity, for all its talk of freedom, has no real use for it, and certainly assigns it no great importance beyond its usefulness for picking out sexual partners and/or choosing an anchovy pizza over a shawarma sandwich.”

— Larry Chapp: Confession of a Catholic Worker

[apesoformythoughts]

«John Paul II referred to modernity as the promoter of a “culture of death” and, when he said that, we all knew what he meant. We felt it and lived it as moderns. We therefore knew that he “got it” and understood what we were up against. The same was true for Pope Benedict, whose constant refrain about “the dictatorship of relativism” and the “eclipse of God” indicated that he perfectly well understood the neuralgic point at the intersection of modernity and the Church […]

But now we have a pope who does not understand. He does not “get it” and he does not “have our backs.” And worse than that, he seems to have made Catholics of the JPII/Benedict sort into villains and thrown us under the bus as just so many “ideologically rigid backwardists.” He seems to be waging the intra-ecclesial battles of 1955 while ignoring the altogether different situation of 2023.»

— Dr. Larry Chapp: “The Pope and the Monster of Modernity”

[apesoformythoughts]

«One of the added bonuses of visiting the Abbey [of the Genesee] was that the monks were on retreat and the retreat master was Fr. Simeon from the Trappist abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. Fr. Simeon’s original name is Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis—a name that will be familiar to anyone who has read his masterful, multi-volume work on the Gospel of Matthew […] We were blessed with the opportunity to speak with Fr. Simeon for a couple of hours on Saturday afternoon in the sunny lounge area in the lobby of the main Abbey. What a joy to speak to a man whose life is a wonderful demonstration of how God often writes straight with crooked lines! Erasmo had joined a Trappist monastery in Georgia in the mid-sixties, but in his youthful naivete could not negotiate that vocational choice in the midst of the craziness of the post-Vatican II tsunami. So he left, got his doctorate at Emory, got married and had children. Along the way he developed professional connections with Hans Urs von Balthasar and a dynamic young Jesuit by the name of Fr. Joseph Fessio who was starting up this strange new venture called “Ignatius Press.” Erasmo became one of the primary early translators of Balthasar’s works into English as anyone who has read Balthasar in English will know. Indeed, at one point he had Balthasar in his home for dinner, at the behest of Fr. Fessio, during one of Balthasar’s rare visits to the United States. One has to understand what a vicarious joy this engenders in me. Think for one second what elation would be in the soul of Garrigou Lagrange had he had the opportunity to dine with Aquinas. Can you imagine the table talk? “So, Thomas, who is correct on the nature and grace issue? Me, or de Lubac?” The “respondeo” and “sed contra” would resonate in Garigou’s mind for a lifetime and beyond.

Eventually, Erasmo’s marriage dissolved after which he was granted an annulment and he joined the Trappists once again and was ordained a priest in 2013. I too have been “married” before and went through the annulment process and am now in a much more profound sacramental and vocational reality with my marriage to my wife Carrie, who also has a Ph.D. in theology and who is both my strongest supporter and my deepest and most trenchant critic. And so, both Erasmo’s life and my own gives vivid testimony to the fact that “second chances” are nothing of the sort, and represent in reality the Christian’s gradual deepening of his or her sense of vocational “mission.” Nothing that came before is wasted. Nothing was a “Mulligan” as they say of errant golf shots among friends. Regrets over poor decisions in our youth are a waste of time and are spiritually destructive. You are who you are because of the path you took, missteps and all, and all of it is why you are where you are right now, in the place you stand, and in the world you now inhabit. In other words, in the spiritual life, we are all nomads like Abraham, awaiting God’s call. George Weigel once told me and my colleague Rodney Howsare over a round of good Scotches after he gave a lecture at DeSales, that Pope John Paul never lived his life looking in the rear view mirror. The Gospel beckons us ever forward and once we put our hand to its plow “looking back” is no longer an option.»

— Larry Chapp: “Some Meditations on my Trip to the Abbey of the Genesee: Quo Vadis?”

[apesoformythoughts]

“What we need now are saints who can struggle and kick against the crushing weight of modernity’s immanent frame filled with Charles Taylor’s buffered selves. And we must do this by returning over and over again to the trough of the Church’s spiritual heritage in her mystics, theological doctors, sacraments, and ascetical prayer disciplines. Because nobody in Rome is riding to our rescue these days. And perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps it reminds us that all along these are the things to which we should attend if we are to stand at the barricades awaiting modernity’s hidden, furtive monster.”

— Larry Chapp: “The Pope and the Monster of Modernity”

[apesoformythoughts]

“The difficulty involved here is that we feel very deeply an abiding sense that something has changed and that the monster we face is not one terrible in tooth and claw, but a more subtle beast unlike any seen before. It refuses open combat lest it valorize our resistance—indeed, lest it also valorize the very concept of crisis as such and therefore of any sense of ‘justification’ in our resistance. The resistance therefore comes to be seen by most as something clownish and cartoonish, the wild gesticulations of an overwrought apocalypticist drunk on tales of the coming desolation, followed by an eschatological denouement. Borrowed sword in hand, and with an ill-fitting suit of armor pilloried from an old castle that is now a B&B, the resister stands alone in the street at the barricades waiting for an enemy who does not come. He looks like a pathetic fool. And perhaps he is.”

— Larry Chapp: “The Pope and the Monster of Modernity”