"a gauzy mercy without justice or truth"

"the idea of a gauzy mercy without justice or truth appears suspiciously self-serving for a Church that has so much to confess."

     Michael Hanby, "A false paradigm," First things no. 287 (November 2018):  19 (19-24).  Does Hanby consider this "gauzy mercy" distinctively Francis-can, by chance?  Well, yes:

It would perhaps be unfair to burden [the] progressive proponents [of this false paradigm] with the full weight of its Kuhnian meaning, just as it would be unfair to charge the pope with full responsibility for bringing this change about [(21, italics mine)].

SALVE, FESTA DIES

A moonset at sunrise by Tracie Hall

"'Does not a good man consider every day a festival?'  And a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are virtuous.  For the world is the most sacred and divine of temples, and the one most fitting for the gods.  Man is introduced into it by birth to be a spectator:  not of artificial, immobile statues, but of the perceptible images of intelligible essences [that the divine mind, says Plato, has revealed, images which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion:  images] such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers whose water always flows afresh, and the earth, which sends forth food for plants and animals alike.  A life which is a perfect revelation, and an initiation into these mysteries, should be filled with tranquility and joy."

     Plutarch, On tranquility of mind 20, 477C, in response to Diogenes, as translated in Pierre Hadot in Philosophy as a way of life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase (Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 1995), 98.  The ellipsis in Hadot I have filled in with the old Loeb translation by W. C. Helmbold.

'Does not a good man consider every day a festival?'  And a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are virtuous.  For the world is the most sacred and divine of temples, and the one most fitting for the gods [(ἱερὸν μὲν γὰρ ἁγιώτατον ὁ κόσμος ἐστὶ καὶ θεοπρεπέστατον)].  Man is introduced into it by birth to be a spectator [(θεατής)]:  not of artificial, immobile statues, but of the perceptible images of intelligible essences [that the divine mind, says Plato, has revealed, images which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion [(οὐ χειροκμήτων οὐδ' ἀκινήτων ἀγαλμάτων . . . , ἀλλ' οἷα νοῦς θεῖος αἰσθητὰ μιμήματα νοητῶν, . . . ἔμφυτον ἀρχὴν ζωῆς ἔχοντα καὶ κινήσεως ἔγηνεν)]:  images] such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers whose water always flows afresh, and the earth, which sends forth food for plants and animals alike.  A life which is a perfect revelation, and an initiation into these mysteries, should be filled with tranquility and joy [(ὧν τὸν βίον μύησιν ὄντα καὶ τελετὴν τελειοτάτην εὐθυμίας δεῖ μεστὸν εἶναι καὶ γήθους)].

The study of spirituality as spiritual discipline

Catholic Theological Union

"the [academic] study of spirituality is necessarily a self-implicating discipline.

     "In short, . . . the actual 'object' that spirituality studies [(namely, 'expressions of human meaning' 'constructed' by 'the human spirit fully in act', by 'human persons being, living, acting according to their fullest intrinsic potential', and 'thus, ultimately, in the fullness of interpersonal, communal, and mystical relationship')] cannot be approached except with the attitude like that of one who takes up a spiritual discipline. . . .  If the academic discipline of spirituality is to have any specificity, it must claim and clarify its character as [itself] a form of spiritual discipline.  Spirituality can be an academic discipline only insofar as it coheres with its deeper character as spiritual discipline.  Unless it is understood in clear relation to its real core, the academic study of spirituality will fragment across all other disciplines and lose any specificity."

     Mary Frohlich, “Spiritual discipline, discipline of spirituality:  revisiting questions of definition and method,” Spiritus:  a journal of Christian spirituality 1, no. 1 (Spring 2001):  75, 71 (65-78).  That focus on personal experience as mediated via human construction is suspect, but she does make an attempt to transcend this with those claims about other-directed relationship, including 'mystical relationship'.  Suspect, too, is that penultimate paragraph.  The study of spirituality as spiritual discipline sounds good, but this is unfortunately all too familiar (italics mine):

     Such a discipline of spirituality will, to be sure, be of a different character than the spiritual disciplines of former eras.  Rather than an obedient immersion in an institutional culture, it will require a high tolerance for aloneness, permanent quest, vulnerability, and 'things falling apart.'  It will presume a willingness to probe, experiment, and accept challenges to every element of one’s lived spirituality.  It will call for the repeated risk of dialogue with the sometimes unnerving range of interpretations applied to the phenomena of one’s own and others’ spiritual experiences.

"there is one Jesus Christ our Lord, who came by means of the whole economy".

"there is one Jesus Christ our Lord, who came by means of the whole economy and who has recapitulated all things in himself."

"et unus Christus Jesus Dominus noster, veniens per universam dispositionem, et omnia in semetipsum recapitulans."

     Irenaeus, Adv. haer. III.17.6, as translated on p. 127 of Rodrigo Polanco, "Balthasar and Irenaeus:  the total glorification of God and of man in God," Communio:  international Catholic review 36, no. 1 (Spring 2009):  116-137.  Dispositio does translate οἰκονομία (as does dispensatio), though there is no Greek on this page.  Greek > Latin; Latin > Greek.