Ambrose Little

From St. James (3:5b-12): How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water. — This applies equally to what we post on X, perhaps more so than what we might say in person, given the words remain as a permanent witness to the world. Think twice. Pray more, before you post, especially when angry. 🙏🏻

Adding this to my Claude right now! jola.dev/posts/how-to-s…

This is the kind of code AI thinks is OK. It's not based on local patterns in our codebase, I assure you.

I guess St. Irenaeus would be called a modernist and blasphemer. I was, for explaining this. It’s not a little ironic that those who pose as “traditionalists” often understand so little of Tradition—or the nature of Tradition itself. It’s not a stack of documents, much less a subset that you’ve cherry picked to support your druthers. It’s a living handing on of the Faith that must be received with humility in and with the Church, inseparable from the living Magisterium.

Yes, St. Thomas puts religion under the virtue of justice, which I alluded to above. There’s no question God is owed our worship. The question is what is the end—the purpose—of it. What is it *for*? It is certainly offered _to_ God, but is it _for_ God? St. Irenaeus enlightens us (Adv. Haer. IV. 18, 6): “For God, who stands in need of nothing, takes our good works to Himself for this purpose, that He may grant us a recompense of His own good things… As, therefore, He does not stand in need of these [services], yet does desire that we should render them for our own benefit, lest we be unfruitful; so did the Word give to the people that very precept as to the making of oblations, although He stood in no need of them, that they might learn to serve God: thus is it, therefore, also His will that we, too, should offer a gift at the altar, frequently and without intermission.” newadvent.org/fathers/010341… Of interest also, he addresses why Cain was not pleasing, in the same chapter: “For at the beginning God had respect to the gifts of Abel, because he offered with single-mindedness and righteousness; but He had no respect unto the offering of Cain, because his heart was divided with envy and malice.” It’s less about the material quality of gifts and more about our attachment and preference for such things—the problem is a divided heart that only grudgingly performs the acts and withholds the best *because of disordered attachment to it*. The theme remains—God desires our hearts, pure and undivided. And not for His sake but ours. We see a similar theme in the story of the widow’s mite. Her paltry offering could hardly be considered “the best” by material standards. But it was the best because of her undivided generosity of heart. There’s some danger in becoming too preoccupied even with offering what we think of as the best—the finest vestments, the most richly appointed altar, the most beautiful architecture, the most lovely music, the most well pronounced and enunciated Latin (I have seen this overweening concern first hand). These things are good in themselves, but they can also become distractions, engendering a divided heart that insists on these affective embellishments, causing persons to become more interested in them than in true worship from the heart, and leading them to look down upon the simpler offerings of others. I’ve observed this often here and elsewhere, including on this post—presuming that what the folks in the video were offering is not “the best” because it’s not as high fallutin and fancy. There’s some real prejudice at play here I fear. Pope Francis, God rest his soul, very often tried to teach against such attachments both in word and example. It’s not that we absolutely should not or cannot have fancy liturgies, but they sure can become a stumbling block for many: a source of pride and vanity, undue attachment to worldly goods and aesthetic titillation, judgmentalism, slander, and detraction, and, as we’ve seen repeatedly, discord and disobedience in the Church. One of the most insidious tactics of the Devil is to twist piety into sin, because people easily can be led to believe themselves to be righteous when they couldn’t be further from it. We must ever be on guard against this.

@software_dad @IncredPapist_ I think what OP would reply is, God doesn’t need our worship, but He is owed it. So in a sense, yes it’s for Him. Cain’s sacrifice was pleasing to him but not to God, because it didn’t represent the best, and God is entitled to the best.

This is another odd claim often made by trads—that other rites and forms are only about pleasing the people and not about worshipping God. They cannot see the obvious parallels, namely that their preference for the prior form of the Latin mass **pleases them**. They like the aesthetics. They believe that it helps them to worship God better. Maybe it does—for them. But it’s still an aesthetic preference and appeal. The whole of the mass is **for humans**. God doesn’t need our worship. God doesn’t need the sacraments. WE do. The mass is for our benefit, not God’s. He wants us to worship Him for our benefit. The sacraments exist for our benefit. God condescends to us in the form of bread and wine for our benefit, not His. And all the ritual, the words, the vestments, the incense, the architecture, the gathering together in community, the music, and yes the Eucharist itself are for us, to help us to worship. So any argument made that the prior form is better inherently relies on a notion that it is better **for us**. When Scripture speaks of worship that pleases God, it’s always worship done sincerely from the heart. Christ said “in spirit and in truth.” The form of the mass He gave us are the words of consecration. Beyond that, not much was prescribed—except that we approach worthily, with faith and in communion with the Church. He didn’t give us the 1962 missal. In fact Christians have been worshipping God for millennia in other rites and forms. Many many saints came prior to the Tridentine, including all the Apostles, the Fathers, the desert fathers, and so many more giants of the faith. To implicitly suggest their worship was deficient because it wasn’t the Tridentine rite is ludicrous on its face. The whole project of trying to claim the Tridentine form is objectively superior to all others fails from the start because of this. It’s just not sustainable unless you have prior commitments or are already very sympathetic to that particular form. This doesn’t mean that our ritual is meaningless or should be subject to whims and fancies of individuals, either. The liturgy is our common worship and ought to be regulated for our common good and to prevent abuse. But we should be careful to not conflate our preferences and cultural comfort and preconceptions for objective truth.

You need to zoom out and actually understand and ponder who God is. Scripture and our theology clearly teach us that He doesn’t need our worship. Everything we do doesn’t add a single thing to Him. So it’s not for Him. It doesn’t benefit Him. He needs no benefit, nor can He be in any way improved. Even our worship, which is rightly only directed to Him, is for our benefit. It helps is grow in holiness. It helps us become less attached to worldly goods and selfish desires. God grants us this good out of His perfect beneficence—that even when we do something that in justice we ought to do for that reason alone, He still brings us good out of it. He doesn’t desire worship for His own sake—as if our not worshiping in some way lessens Him (thinking that would truly be blasphemy). He has so ordered things that even our worship is ordered for our good. Look beyond the superficial. Go deeper.

@software_dad Saying the mass is for us rather than God is blasphemous. The point is to glorify God.

@BoldlyCatholic *pro Trump family 😉

This is irrational. It’s delusion.

Accurate. It’s also why many say it’s fine to not review it (at all). Most individual human devs will not produce maintainable, scalable, or extensible code. It takes a lot of practice and skill—more than just “does it meet the basic functional requirements?”

@xthemasterand I hope to one day visit! Thanks for sharing.

@software_dad Ambrose of Milan and two earlier martyrs with difficult to remember Roman names!

Ngl I cried

Reading St Ambrose's funeral oration for his brother, and there's a reference to the schismatic Lucifer of Cagliari who, out of excess zeal for Nicene orthodoxy, refused to accept repentant Arian bishops, and went into schism from Rome in defiance. Nothing new under the sun.

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This example of rose colored glasses thinking is but one of so very many (this happens to be circulating right now)—namely what this post is replying to, that is, the notion that in the old days having a universal liturgical language meant everyone was more unified: x.com/pkwanashie/sta… I’m not about to relitigate every claim here, but I’ll touch on a few. As I said, I’ve dealt with these same uncritically regurgitated claims for a quarter century now—I’m out of patience and interest. But I assure you that every such claim relies on the kind of cherry picking I mentioned, or suffers from one or more other fallacies/relies on motivated, biased thinking. Perhaps the most egregious one is the assertion that the Church as a whole was holier under the old form. Any person with even a passing interest in our history can find that it’s a ridiculous claim—and one that in no way can be proven without limiting to some real hard cherry picking. I actually have a BA in history and studied Church history in school—as well as on my journey to the Faith, so I have a clearer view of this than most. Another related one is that the old form somehow prevented error or increased overall adherence to the Faith. But this is easily seen false by the mere fact that Modernism itself (properly understood) arose and took enough ground in the Church to induce papal condemnation and correction. And if you don’t like VII—the old form produced it! The supposed bad actors there were raised and formed in the putative much better version of our faith practice. Basic logic shows the more-faithful claim to be untenable. Not to mention, we have no comparable measure from those times to the kinds of polls folks like to cite as evidence of decline. It’s just wishful thinking. The loss of faith/priests is more readily explained by the general secularization of our culture—every faith has seen similar losses. It has nothing to do with the form of the mass. Correlation does not imply causation. We have no control, no way to actually compare how the Church would have fared differently without VII and the “post-conciliar Church.” We’re talking about maximum levels of complexity—a global Church, billions of people, thousands of cultures, across decades, with tons of social and technological change. Trying to assign a singular cause to the changes in Church life during this period is just wholly and completely untenable—especially trying to assign it to something like the form of the mass. It takes a very strong kind of motivated thinking to give credence to that claim. I’m not asking anyone to take my word much less argue with me specifically—just do your own critical thinking and research outside of what the SSPX and their ideological allies serve up on their platters. Actually look for the many, many published responses and answers already out there and give them a fair shake. And do a lot of prayer and self examination; honestly consider the fruits of what the traditionalist mindset tends towards. Is it more spiritual pride? More judgmentalism? Is it disobedience, disrespect, and disregard towards our pastors—always assuming we know better? Is it anger and outrage? Is it abusive treatment of “normies”? Is it slander and detraction? Is it inner peace and joy, or more their opposites? Is it brotherly affection towards fellow Catholics or scorn and condemnation? These are but a few of the kinds of things I’ve seen be rampant among those who identify as “traditionalist.” It’s certainly not limited to them, but it’s super common—and I found not a little of it in myself when I was more in that camp. And just to be painfully clear, this is my last reply on this thread. I have a rule to not get sucked into rabbit holes on social media. I’ll pray for you; please pray for me! 🙏🏻

@software_dad "and especially a very limited and rose colored glasses view of Catholic life and practice before VII." Like what? Any examples?

I’ve been interacting with “traditionalists” since 2000. This fallacy of hasty generalization suffuses basically all of their criticism of the current state of things and is the “evidence” they use to justify their sinful behavior—slander, detraction, sowing discord among the brethren, and often being quite nasty and abusive in their language. I was initially taken in by their critiques as a young Catholic convert. I ended up at an FSSP parish for a while back then due to that (even then I could see the SSPX were off). But as I gained more experience in the Faith and with Catholics in real life, being a member of numerous normal parishes, visiting many in my work travels, interacting with more and more online, and just generally maturing as a person, it became clear to me that their critiques are largely hollow and fallacious. It’s easy to fall for it, even more so these days with the bubble effect that social media creates—and the literal industry behind so-called traditionalism, but it’s all based on this cherry picking of the bad in normal Catholic practice, the good in contemporary “traditional” Catholic practice, and especially a very limited and rose colored glasses view of Catholic life and practice before VII. Question it if you’re sympathetic. Did deeper. Apply rigorous critical thinking to their claims. Don’t be taken in by the veneer of orthodoxy. The SSPX as of late have clearly shown they’ve departed, but most trad critics err seriously with regard to the papal office and the role of the living Magisterium in general. Be open minded and clear eyed—don’t just stay in that bubble. And don’t fall for false dichotomies. There can be genuine areas in the Church that need reform—there always have been and will be, but that is no indictment of the whole. It’s not either the Church here earth is perfect or the Church is apostate. Reality is a lot messier, and it always has been, even before VII. We’re a bunch of flawed humans, so be gracious, generous, and merciful with each other. 🙏🏻

Remarkable that Satan has long been so hell bent on attacking the primacy of the successor of Peter. It’s almost as if unity in Christ and humility practiced through religious submission of intellect and will matter a lot for advancement in holiness. Indeed, these are virtues he desperately wants to destroy, and to do so he inflames intellectual and spiritual pride and with it refusal to submit—just like he refused in his rebellion against God. Don’t imitate the Devil. Rather, imitate the saints.

@CatholicSat It’s normal. NBD. Language has always been a natural way that people group together.

I’m not so sure about this. My old Parish ended up being divided between English, Portuguese, Spanish and Vietnamese communities, each attended Mass in their own language never interacting with other people of the Parish outside the language cliques. Not very healthy.

In the old days, we just had segregated communities. The Polish part of town had a Polish parish. The Italian had Italian, and so on. Even with Latin mass. Language and culture are somewhat insular intrinsically. NBD, we are all members of the Body of Christ. Our unity is in Him in charity under one head.

Im a fan of having Mass in your native language, but it gets really tricky when you try to be a bilingual community. I've never really seen it done well, it's just two parallel communities sharing one space.

“Let your door stand open to receive him, unlock your soul to him, offer him a welcome in your mind, and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the joy of grace.” -St. Ambrose

They are excommunicate. The mercy with them is to show them the error of their ways by cutting off. Faithful Catholics should respect the decree of the Holy See in this matter. That said if a lay individual from that community who does not formally adhere to their schism wants to have a sincere conversation with me, I am open. Beyond that, I have prayed and will continue to pray for their repentance and return to the Church.

@software_dad Be gracious then to the SSPX. Practice what you preach.

I am also not impressed by "hey look, model can rewrite X in Y" challenges. That's like the most predictable problem to solve. Is it useful? For sure, sometimes. Is it indicative of overall capability? Not really, no.