Useful idiots

"the overthrow by means of revolutionary violence of structures which generate violence is not ipso facto the beginning of a just regime. A major fact of our time ought to evoke the reflection of all those who would sincerely work for the true liberation of their brothers: millions of our own contemporaries legitimately yearn to recover those basic freedoms of which they were deprived by totalitarian and atheistic regimes which came to power by violent and revolutionary means, precisely in the name of the liberation of the people. This shame of our time cannot be ignored: while claiming to bring them freedom, these regimes keep whole nations in conditions of servitude which are unworthy of mankind. Those who, perhaps inadvertently, make themselves accomplices of similar enslavements betray the very poor they mean to help [(Ii qui, fortasse inscii, consortes se reddunt eiusmodi subiugationum, pauperes decipiunt quibus inservire volunt)]."

     Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, and Alberto Bovone, Secretary, for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis nuntius, or Instructio de quibusdam rationibus «Theologiae Liberationis» (Instruction on certain aspects of the "theology of liberation") XI.10, 6 August 1984 (AAS 76 (1984):  876-909), italics mine.  I was put onto this by Edward Feser, All one in Christ:  a Catholic critique of racism and Critical Race Theory (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2022), 141.

Creation does not wait with eager longing for the extinction of man

"the hope of creation does not extend, for example, to the capacity of shaking off the human yoke one day.  It waits for man transfigured, man who has become the child of God.  This man gives back to creation its freedom, its dignity, its beauty.  Through him creation itself becomes divine. . . .  every creature is oriented toward the expectation of this event.  It is an infinite responsibility that is thus entrusted to humans—to be the accomplishment of every aspiration of earth and heaven."

     Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "On hope," trans. Esther Tillman, Communio:  international Catholic review 12, no. 1 (Summer 1985) =35, no. 2 (Summer 2008):  313 (301-315), citing H. Schlier.  According to Schlier/Ratzinger, "the one who subjected [creation] to [vanity] (Rom 8:20). . . . is Adam."  But if was the sin of Adam that thus subjected it, then how, precisely, was this done "in hope"?  For "the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope".  (On the other hand, can God be said to "hope"?)

"whoever does not give God, gives too little"

"Whoever does not give God gives too little [(chi non dà Dio, dà troppo poco)]; and whoever does not give God, whoever does not enable people to see God in the face of Christ, does not build anything up but rather, wastes human activity in false, ideological dogmatism, and so ultimately only destroys.
     "Don Giussani preserved the centrality of Christ and it was exactly in this way that he that he was able, by means of social works and needed services, to help mankind in this difficult world, where Christians bear an enormous and urgent responsibility for the poor."

     Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Funeral homily for Msgr. Luigi Giussani, Milan Cathedral, 24 February 2005, as translated by Communion and Liberation for Communio:  international Catholic review 31, no. 4 (Winter 2004):  685-687.  The Italian in which the homily was delivered is here.  The context:  "the temptation [in the face of the 'extreme poverty and misery' of Brazil] . . . to say, 'Just for the moment we will have to set Christ aside, set God aside, because there are more pressing needs.  First we have to change structures, fix the external things; first we must improve the earth, and after that we will be able to find heaven again.'"

From an idealism of essence to an idealism of existence

It is possible to "pass from an idealism of essence, opposing the soul to the body, to an idealism of existence, opposing freedom [(la liberte)] to nature, but it is always [still] a question of an idealism of a dualizing tendency.  [Formerly] one opposed the body to the soul, as the inessential to the essential.  From [Sartre and de Beauvoir] on it is nature that one opposes to freedom.  What is refused is still the natural, the most elementary of givens, the corporeal."

     François de Muizon, Homme et femme:  l’altérité fondatrice (Paris:  Éditions du Cerf, 2008), 45, as quoted by Agnès Villié, "La gender theory ou la négation de la différence sexuelle," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 110, no. 1 (Jan-Mar 2009):  67 (55-80), translation mine.
     But is it also indisputable that "indifference to the man-woman difference is . . . intrinsically tied to indifference to the man-God difference"? (198, from 72)

"one participates in humanity only by being a man or a woman"

"the human being in itself, unsexed [(en soi, asexué)], does not exist, because one participates in humanity only by being [a] man or [a] woman.  Sexual determination is therefore neither accidental nor secondary, but constitutive of every [(toute)] human person.  It is therefore decisive for the comprehension of its nature and of the fact that it was created in the image and likeness of God. . . ."

     Agnès Villié, "La gender theory ou la négation de la différence sexuelle," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 110, no. 1 (Jan-Mar 2009):  70 (55-80), translation mine.  This may be my only chance to note that it was sloppy of Villié to quote Heidegger as having claimed that "sexual difference is [the one thing to be thought through] in our time" (55), citing Irigaray.  No, that was Irigaray herself. 

The abscissa and the ordinate

"The difference of the sexes and the difference of the generations constitute the abscissa and the ordinate of every human being, the two fundamental givens which cannot be muddled up without there following from this a profound [(tout entier)] disintegration [(désorganisation)] of the human being. . . . .  [I]f such behaviors are not, as some are claiming explicitly, deviations, but variations, . . . then the very boundary between nature and culture must be re-defined."

     Marie Balmary, Le sacrifice interdit:  Freud et la Bible (Paris:  Grasset, 1985), 35, 559-582 [!], as quoted in  Agnès Villié, "La gender theory ou la négation de la différence sexuelle," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 110, no. 1 (Jan-Mar 2009):  69 (55-80), translation mine.  See also Villié, 75-76, 79 ("A society that loses a sense for the reality of the difference of the sexes and of the bond between the generations, from which [loss] it does not seem possible to be delivered without grave damage to humanity, tends to lose also freedom of thought").

Demon trum

"it should be made lawful for any magistrate to commit a confirmed and notorious trombone-player to the lunatic asylum, and to appoint a Receiver and Administrator of his property.  Books, tracts, and lectures on the evils of brass instruments should be employed to develop a healthy public sentiment, and the young should be induced to join societies pledged to total abstinence from brass in every form.  But there must be no delay.  The evil must be met by legal methods now. . . ."

     "The brass instrument habit," The New York times, 28 July 1880, p. 4.  I have also a complete scan of the original on file, but you can see a transcription of the whole at Musicology for Everyone.

"Stephen is not . . . to be supposed to have loved his enemies when he prayed for them, yet not to have loved them when he reproved them"

"Stephen is not . . . to be supposed to have loved [his] enemies when he prayed for them, yet not to have loved [them] when he reproved [them] by censuring their unbelief [(Neque . . . existimandus est Stephanus tunc inimicos dilexisse cum pro eis oraret, et non dilexisse cum eorum incredulitatem arguendo corriperet)]. Such a thing [(hoc)] would be unworthy of [(absit ab)] the soul of a martyr hastening to the palace of heaven.  For that holy charity kept to [(servavit)] a firm patience in prayer which held fast to [(tenuit)] a rigid censure in reproof. And lenity merited to be heard in prayer because [(ideo . . . quia)] without charity there was no severity-in-reproof.  And so [(ac per hoc)], whether by praying or by reproving, Blessed Stephen stocked up on [(reservavit)] charity, because he aimed via both methods [(utrobique)] at [(cogitavit)] the salvation of the errant, and the presence [(indicio)] of holy prayer was proof [(ostendit)] that th[e] rebuke [derived] not from animosity, but from love [(amoris)]."

     St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (462/468-527/533), Sermon 3.3 on St. Stephen the Protomartyr and the Conversion of St. Paul, translation, italics, and underscoring mine.  Latin from PL 65, col. 731A, not yet CCSL 91A (1968), ed. Fraipont, 905-909.

"This, surely, is the true life, my brothers!"

     "[3.] And so the love that brought Christ from heaven to earth raised Stephen from earth to heaven; shown first in the king [(Rege)], it later shone forth in his soldier [(milite)]. . . . Love was Stephen’s weapon [(armis)] by which he gained every battle, and so won the crown [(coronam)] signified by his name. His love of God kept him from yielding to the ferocious mob; his love for his neighbour made him pray for those who were stoning him. Love inspired him to reprove those who erred, to make them amend [(Per caritatem arguebat, ut corrigerentur)]; love led him to pray for those who stoned him, to save them from punishment. Strengthened by the power of his love, he overcame the raging cruelty of Saul and won his persecutor on earth as his companion in heaven [(et quem habuit in terra persecutorem, in coelo meruit habere consortem)]. In his holy and tireless love he longed to gain by prayer those whom he could not convert by admonition. . . .
     "[5.] . . . Now at last, Paul rejoices with Stephen, with Stephen he delights in the glory of Christ, with Stephen he exults, with Stephen he reigns [(Et ecce nunc Paulus cum Stephano laetatur, cum Stephano Christi claritate perfruitur, cum Stephano exsultat, cum Stephano regnat)]. Stephen went first, slain by the stones thrown by Paul [(trucidatus lapidibus Pauli)], but Paul followed after, helped by the prayer[s] of Stephen. [6.] This, surely, is the true life, my brothers, a life in which Paul feels no shame [(non confunditur)] because of Stephen’s death [(occisione)], and Stephen delights [(gratulatur)] in Paul’s companionship [(consortio)], for love fills them both with joy. It was Stephen’s love that prevailed over the cruelty of the mob, and it was Paul’s love that covered the multitude of his sins; it was love that won for both of them the kingdom of heaven.
     "Love, indeed, is the source of all good things; it is an impregnable defence, and the way that leads to heaven. He who walks in love can neither go astray nor be afraid: love guides him, protects him, and brings him to his journey’s end [(perducit)].
     "My brothers, Christ made love the stairway [(scalam)] that would enable all Christians to climb to heaven. Hold fast to it, therefore, in all sincerity, give one another practical proof of it, and by your progress in it, make your ascent together. . . ."

     St. Fulgentius of Ruspe (462/468-527/533), Sermon no. 3, secs. 3 and 5-6 on St. Stephen the Protomartyr and the Conversion of St. Paul, as translated for the Liturgy of the hours, but with ellipses re-inserted by me.  Latin from PL 65, cols. 729-732, not yet CCSL 91A (1968), ed. Fraipont, 905-909.  At some point I'm going to have to translate the whole thing.

In the first place Tradition?

"Our first plea and entreaty was that he [(Sébastien Châteillon/Sebastian Castellio)] should not rashly reject the age-long interpretation of the whole of the Church."

"Principio obtestati eum sumus, ut ne perpetuum universae ecclesiae consensum temere pro nihilo duceret."

Above all we begged him not rashly to consider as nothing the unbroken consensus of the universal church.

     John Calvin for the ministers of the church of Geneva, Letter no. 531 of early 1544 recommending Sébastien Châteillon/Sebastian Castellio (who had been denied admission to the Genevan company of pastors) for another (teaching?) post in Lausanne, as trans. G. R. Potter and M. Greengrass, eds., John Calvin, Documents of modern history (London:  1983), 101, as quoted in Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation:  a history (New York:  Viking, 2003), 235 =705n34.  This appears to me to be CO 11, col. 675 (674-676), above (translation mine).  Cf. Wulfert de Greef, The writings of John Calvin:  an introductory guide, trans. Lyle D. Bierma, expanded ed. (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox, 2008), 33-34.  At issue was "the unbroken consensus of the universal church" on the canonicity of the Song of Songs, and (for MacCulloch) what Trent would in a few years make of that.  Note, however, that I have not yet read this in the context of the letter or Calvin's theology as a whole!

"Are we selves or are we souls?"

Wiseblood Books

"We are engaged in a fight about the nature of man. What is in man? Either a self or a soul. Are we selves or are we souls? And that is the question that lies before us."

     Pierre Manent, "Who is Pierre Manent?," a conversation with Jonathan Silver, Mosaic, 15 December 2022.

"Ethics is [not] formally independent of the facts of human life and . . . human physiology."

The British Academy

"5. Ethics is formally independent of the facts of human life and, for example, human physiology."

     Elizabeth Anscombe, "Twenty opinions common among modern Anglo-American philosophers" (Rome, 7/12 April 1986), as reprinted in Faith in a hard ground:  essays on religion, philosophy, and ethics by G.E.M. Anscombe, ed. Mary Geach and Luke Gormally, St Andrews studies in philosophy and public affairs 11 (Exeter, UK; Charlottesville, VA:  Imprint Academic, 2008), .  Anscombe:  "there are a number of opinions which are inimical to Christianity which are very often found implicitly or explicitly among analytical philosophers.  A seriously believing Christian ought not, in my opinion, to hold any of them. . . .  In saying these opinions are inimical to the Christian religion I am not implying that they can only be judged false on that ground.  Each of them is a philosophical error and can be argued to be such on purely philosophical grounds."

"the most memorable thing Luther never said"

"He spelled out to the Emperor that without a conviction from 'scripture or plain reason (for I believe neither in Pope nor councils alone)', he could recant nothing.  It was such a momentous ending to his words that not long after his death, the first editor of his collected works, Georg Rörer, felt compelled to construct two tiny summary sentences in German, which have become the most memorable thing Luther never said:  'Here I stand; I can do no other.'"

     Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation:  a history (New York:  Viking, 2004), 127.  MacCulloch cites Eike Wolgast, Die Wittenberger Luther-Ausgabe:  zur überlieferungsgeschichte der Werke Luthers im 16. Jahrhundert (Nieuwkoop, 1971), col. 122.  But read also Thomas Kaufmann, "Luther auf dem Wormser Reichstag:  Person und publizistische Wirkung," in Hier stehe ich:  Gewissen und Protest – 1521–2021. Begleitband zur Landesausstellung 3. Juli bis 30. Dezember 2021, Museum der Stadt Worms im Andreasstift (Worms:  Worms Verlag, 2021), 280 (274–289; citation from Wikipedia).  Clearly, I am very far from done with this one!

The embolism (ἐμβολισμός) or Libera nos pre- and post-Vatican II

Extraordinary Form (1962)

Novus Ordo

Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils, past, present and to come; and by the intercession of the blessed and glorious ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and of the holy Apostles, Peter and Paul and of Andrew, and of all the Saints, mercifully grant peace in our days, that through the assistance of Thy mercy we may be always free from sin, and secure from all disturbance.  Through. Libera nos, quaesumus Domine, ab omnibus malis, praeteritis, praesentibus, et futuris:  et intercedente beata, et gloriosa semper Virgine Dei Genitrice Maria, cum beatis Apostolis tuis Petro et Paulo, atque Andrea, et omnibus Sanctis, da propitius pacem in diebus nostris:  ut ope misericordiae tuae adjuti, et a peccato simus semper liberi, et ab omni perturbatione securi.  Per.

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Libera nos, quaesumus Domine, ab omnibus malis, da propitius pacem in diebus nostris, ut, ope misericordiae tuae adiuti, et a peccato simus semper liberi et ab omni perturbatione secure:  exspectantes beatam spem et adventum Salvatoris nostri Iesu Christi.

     It's surely more complicated than this historically (ODCC4 cites only "Jungmann (1958 edn), 2: 352–63; Eng. tr., 2: 284–93"), but this one comparison, at least, is rather striking.

"[T]he revelation of God is possible only when accompanied by a revelation of what it means to be a human being. Revelation implies that the truth is not fully evident in either case."

      Catholic University of America Press description of Revelations of humanity:  anthropological dimensions of theological controversies (2022), by Richard Shenk, O.P.  I have not read any of these essays, though it would be nice to find words like these in the book itself.

In Christ Jesus there is neither male without female nor female without male?

Servants of God Cyprian and
Daphrose Rugamba (m. 7 April 1994)

"there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ· πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἷς ἐστε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ.

     Gal 3:28 RSV.

"in the Lord woman is not independent of man nor man of woman;"

οὔτε γυνὴ χωρὶς ἀνδρὸς οὔτε ἀνὴρ χωρὶς γυναικὸς ἐν κυρίῳ·

     1 Cor 11:11 RSV.

     I was put onto this by Bernd Wannenwetsch, "Old docetism—new moralism:  questioning a new direction in the homosexuality debate," Modern theology 16, no. 3 (July 2000):  357 (353-364), but have not reflected carefully upon these two passages (including the differences of vocabulary) in their respective contexts.  It should be noted that Wannenwetsch himself twice inadvertently substitutes "Christ" for "Lord" in 1 Cor 11:11 ("If we hear that 'in Christ the man is not without the woman and the woman is not without the man' (1 Cor. 11:11), we have not simply a Christian confirmation of a natural fact—males are typically attracted by females and vice versa; rather we have the pneumatological ('in Christ') revelation of God’s primal will against all possible misinterpretations of this 'natural fact'"), though there are no variant readings to that effect in NA28.

"When the Law drives you to the point of despair, let it drive you a little farther, let it drive you straight into the arms of Jesus who says: 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'"

      Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians 3:19, "The Law was added because of transgressions," as heavily paraphrased from 1937 by Theodore Graebner, who was willing to undertake the project proposed by P. J. Zondervan only if "permitted to make Luther talk American, 'streamline' him, so to speak— . . . make him talk as he would talk today to Americans."  The giveaway is the double clause "let it drive you a little farther, let it drive you straight into the arms of Jesus".  For here is how that same passage reads on pp. 315-316 of the far more reliable LW 26:

"Therefore we do not abolish the Law; but we show its true function and use, namely, that it is a most useful servant impelling us to Christ. After the Law has humbled, terrified, and completely crushed you, so that you are on the brink of despair, then see to it that you know how to use the Law correctly; for its function and use is not only to disclose the sin and wrath of God but also to drive us to Christ. None but the Holy Spirit is intent on this use of the Law or preaches the Gospel, because nothing but the Gospel says that God is present with those who are contrite in heart (Is. 57:15). 

"Therefore if you have been crushed by that hammer, do not use your contrition wrongly by burdening yourself with even more laws. Listen to Christ when He says (Matt. 11:28): 'Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' When the Law drives you this way, so that you despair of everything that is your own and seek help and solace from Christ, then it is being used correctly; and so, through the Gospel, it serves the cause of justification. This is the best and most perfect use of the Law."

"no longer . . . the cozy, comfortable middle-class world of the academy"

"it is hopelessly inadequate to reduce the issue to the pitting of one scriptural interpretation against another.  Revelation, unlike Scripture, is a threshold concept.  It is like crossing through a doorway into a whole new world that is not available to us until we get inside it and begin to explore it for ourselves.  To be sure, one has to identify a revelation.  To be sure, one has to interpret a revelation.  To be sure, one has to think through the application of divine revelation in new cultural or intellectual situations.  All these require the full mustering of all our cognitive capacities.  However, once one comes to see something as revelation, then one has to treat the revelation as knowledge.  One has to obey it, to hold tenaciously and even passionately to it, and in some instances to be prepared to die for it.
     "It is very easy to miss this point by retorting that when it comes to revelation the whole debate about the interpretation of revelation breaks out again.  As I have mentioned, of course, one has to interpret a revelation.  However, there is all the difference in the world in what is at stake once the issue is cast in terms of revelation.  One is no longer simply wrestling with a book or a set of texts.  One is wrestling with the word of God.  Sooner or later, whatever the complexity of interpretation, one has to fish or cut bait.  Either there is or there is not a revelation.  Either one has or has not gotten hold of it.  Once these issues are decided, one has crossed the threshold; and the call to treat the putative revelation as knowledge, to obey it, to be tenacious in holding to it, and to die for it kicks in immediately.  We are no longer living in the cozy, comfortable middle-class world of the academy.  We are dealing with the Word of God."

     William J. Abraham, "Chapter 1:  The Church’s teaching on sexuality:  a defense of the United Methodist Church’s Discipline on homosexuality," in Staying the course:  supporting the Church’s position on homosexuality, ed. Maxie D. Dunnam and H. Newton Malony (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2003), 24-25 (15-31).  Cf. his Crossing the threshold of divine revelation (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2006) and this.

"The defining mark of irreligion is 'sociologism'"

"To [agree with but then] invert Hegel [as Marx did] is to say that philosophy resolves itself not in understanding, but in action—in praxis. But in this case, God, being, nature, truth—all forms of transcendence—simply cease to matter. It is not that their non-existence has been demonstrated by argument; indeed, atheism rests on a negative act of faith, which Del Noce will later exploit for his alternative philosophical history. It is that reason itself has been so transformed by the conflation of thought and praxis that transcendence has become, strictly speaking, unthinkable. God is not a question that can be posed seriously from within this conception of 'reason.' What matters now is history: the past historical and material conditions that make all truth claims into an expression of ideology, and the future historical conditions that will be changed by human praxis, that is, by science and political action, whose 'truth' is verified by its effectiveness.
     "The decisive element of Marx’s atheism is inseparable, in other words, from his rejection of the 'philosophy of comprehension.' And Marxist atheism surpasses all previous forms because it passes into irreligion, which defeats religion not by argument but simply by erasing God and the religious dimension from thought and life. This is the decisive reason that man after Marx is destined to become fully bourgeois—in Del Noce’s later formulation, 'a man whose life is completely determined by the category of usefulness, so that he desecrates everything he thinks about.' The defining mark of irreligion is 'sociologism,' which reduces all pretense of metaphysical truth to historical conditions and social or psychological functions within the immanent field of power relations that define modern politics, carrying a world of metaphysical assumptions in train. Sociologism makes anonymous atheists of us all, and one can measure the scope of its triumph within Christianity itself by the extent to which the social sciences have replaced metaphysics in the Church’s manner of thinking."

     Michael Hanby, "Del Noce's moment," First things no. 327 (November 2022):  60 (59-63).

"it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich"

"In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich."

     Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter of 13 September 1943 to his parents Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Letters and papers from prison:  an abridged edition, new & greatly enlarged ed., ed. Eberhard Bethge & trans. Reginald Fuller, Frank Clarke, et al., as rev. John Bowden (New York:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1971), 109.

"In normal life one is often not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches life [(Dankbarkeit macht das Leben erst reich)].  One easily overestimates the importance of one's own acts and deeds, compared with what we become only through other people."

     Dietrich Bonhoeffer, letter of 13 September 1943 to his parents Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, Letters and papers from prison (Widerstand und Ergebung:  Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft), trans. , Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 8 (Fortress Press), 154 (2/57).

Injustice

"The law [of men] is unjust and inequitable.  Why have they chastised the woman and left the man unpunished?  The wife who has dishonored the bed of her husband is an adulteress, and the consequence of this are for her the harsh sanctions of the law; on the contrary, the husband who is unfaithful to his wife incurs no punishment.  I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve of this custom.  It is men who have legislated in this way; that is why this legislation is directed against the woman. . . . God does not act thus."

     St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390), Oration 37.6, as translated from the French of SC 318, 283-285, as reproduced in an article I read.

True freedom

"There is no [necessary] conflict between nature and culture, but [only] . . . a subtle interaction.  There are only two sexual identities, th[e two] that the man and the woman receive as a given from the [moment of] conception.  Culture [functions] as the invaluable auxiliary of nature, to the end that each might become what he really is. . . . [T]he human person [is] an integral whole [(un être harmonieux)] who must unfold in a harmonious fashion his whole life long out into what he [actually] is."

     Fr. Thomas le Taillandier de Gabory, O.P., "Gender:  laissez le 'sexe primer'!," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 116, no. 3 (July 2015):  125 (117-130), translation mine.  Fr. de Gabory, Ph.D. and S.Th.D., is also a doctor engaged in medical research.  From p. 121:

Above all, and this is the essential thing, there is a real plasticity of the brain.  This is a major discovery.  The brain is a dynamic organ of great plasticity. . . .  The brain is therefore a plastic organ, but it is in reality the [integrally] whole [human] being who is plastic.  Here science rejoins the [Christian] faith.  God always gives the person a chance to be converted.  Nothing is ever determined.  Man is never condemned to remain in evil.  It is thus that, until his last breath, [a] man can change; his brain and the whole of his entire being are supple, dynamic, plastic.

"the blessed, ever-virgin Mary, dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit"

Barbara Brocato

"O God, by whose will the blessed, ever-virgin Mary, dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, was on this day presented in the temple, we pray thee grant that through her pleading we may be found worthy to be ourselves presented in the temple of thy glory:  through our Lord . . . in the unity of the same Holy Spirit."

"Deus, qui beatam Mariam semper Virginem, Spiritus Sancti habitaculum, hodierna die in templo praesentari voluisti:  praesta, quaesumus, ut, eius intercessione, in templo gloriae tuae praesentari mereamur.  Per Dominum . . . in unitate eiusdem."

     Collect for the the Presentation of the BVM on 21 November, Tridentine missal.  This prayer was completely re-written after Vatican II, and now lacks the lovely phrase above, which echoes Eph 2:22 at least (for habitaculum occurs 48 times in the Vulgate):

Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners; but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone: in whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord.  In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit.

Ergo jam non estis hospites, et advenae: sed estis cives sanctorum, et domestici Dei, superaedificati super fundamentum apostolorum, et prophetarum, ipso summo angulari lapide Christo Jesu: in quo omnis aedificatio constructa crescit in templum sanctum in Domino, in quo et vos coaedificamini in habitaculum [(κατοικητήριον)] Dei in Spiritu.

Cf. Lk 1:35. 

"Christ in his mercy . . . did not wish to be alone as the Son"

"As for our being the brothers and sisters of Christ, we can understand this because although there is only one inheritance and Christ is the only Son, his mercy would not allow him to remain alone.  It was his wish that we too should be heirs of the Father, and co-heirs with himself."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 72A.8 (417/418), as trans. Liturgy of the hours for the Feast of the Presentation of the BVM.  WSA III/3, trans. Edmund Hill (1991), 288.  Latin from Miscellanea Agostiniana 1 (1930), 163 ll. 13-16 (155-164):

I can understand brothers, I can understand sisters; it's because there is one inheritance, and therefore Christ in his mercy, while being the only Son, did not wish to be alone as the Son, but wished us to be heirs of the Father, his own fellow heirs. That inheritance, you see, is such that it cannot be reduced in value by any number of co-heirs.

fratres intellego, sorores intellego: una est enim hereditas; et ideo Christi misericordia, qui, cum esset unicus, noluit esse solus, voluit nos esse Patri heredes, sibi coheredes.

Faith and reason in the Missale Romanum, or Two rather different collects for the feast of St. Albert the Great

Pre-Vatican II missal, as translated in 1949 by J. O'Connell & H. P. R. Finberg (The missal in Latin and English:  being the text of the Missale Romanum with English rubrics and a new translation (New York:  Sheed & Ward, 1949), 1271):

God, who didst make thy blessed bishop and doctor Albert truly great in setting divine faith above his own human wisdom [(in humana sapientia divinae fidei subjicienda, in subjecting human wisdom to divine faith)], we pray thee grant that by closely following the path of his teaching we may come to enjoy perfect enlightenment in heaven.  Through.

Current Roman missal:

O God, who made the Bishop Saint Albert great by his joining of human wisdom to divine faith [(in humana sapientia cum divina fide componenda, in putting human wisdom together with divine faith)], grant, we pray, that we may so adhere to the truths he taught, that through progress in learning we may come to a deeper knowledge and love of you.  Through.

The latter in Universalis:

God our Father, you endowed Saint Albert with the talent of combining human wisdom with divine faith.  Keep us true to his teachings that the advance of human knowledge may deepen our knowledge and love of you.  Grant this through.

The real Bellarmine on Chemnitz

"Martin Chemnitz is, in the Examen Concilii Tridentini, so rich in lies, that in four short sentences he is capable of encompassing five."

"Martinus Kemnitius in examine concilii tridentini, ita dives mendaciorum est, ut quatuor sententionlis, quinque mendacia comprehenderit [(will/may have included)]."

     Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, Disputationes de controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos 2 (1588) =Robert Cardinalis Bellarmini opera omnia 2 (Neapel, 1857), 10a, as quoted by Theodor Mahlmann in "Der zweite Martin der lutherischen Kirche:  zu einem Martin Chemnitz beigelegten Epitheton," in Rezeption und Reform: Festschrift für Hans Schneider (Darmstadt: Verlag der Hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichten Vereinigung, 2001), 122n97 (99-136).  Vol. 3 (1593) =vol. 3 (Neapel, 1857), 616b =vol. 4 (Paris, 1873), 481b:

Chemnitz is always, self-consistently [?], a calumniator, and mendacious.

Kemnitius semper est sui similis calumniator[,] et mendax.

Mahlmann thus destroys the notion, dear to a number of Lutheran theologians (in this case Johannes Fecht, writing no. 25 in 1725), that Chemnitz was greatly admired by his Catholic opponents; indeed that one of them was the very source of the epitheton "Si alter Martinus non venisset, primus non stetisset" (and variants):  "Yet [the later] Rehtmeyer’s version [('Ipsimet Pontificii ad hunc virum digitum intendentes dicere solent:  "Vos protestantes duos habuistis Martinos, si posterior non fuisset, prior non stetisset"' (Historiae ecclesiasticae inclytae urbis Brunsvigae pars III.  Oder:  Der brühmten Stadt Braunschweig Kirchen-Historie Dritter Theil (Braunschweig, 1710), 524))] is rightly called historically false.  Roman theologians never—[not] even 'with raised forefinger'—said what Rehtmeyer makes them say [(Dennoch ist Rehtmeyers Version genau genommen historisch falsch.  Römische Theologen hatten nie gesagt, was Rehtmeyer sie, sogar 'mit erhobenem Zeigefinger,' 'sagen' läßt)]" (123-124).  Etc.
     This does not make Bellarmine right or even fair, just Rehtmeyer and the Lutherans wrong on the reputation of their champion among his opponents, whether contemporary or otherwise, the one exception being, possibly, the unnamed but theologically sophisticated Cardinal sympathetic to Catholic reform fingered enigmatically by the Lutheran pastor Johannes Gasmer in 1588 (Mahlmann, 126, 101-104 (no. 3), and throughout, insofar as this was thought by the Lutherans to be Diego Payva de Andrade (103), Bellarmine, and so forth; cf. also the references to Bossuet (118-124), Du Pin (124 (no. 27) and 125 (no. 31)), etc.)

"purity of life is part of religion"

"Religious virtue is divided into two parts, into that which pertains to the Divine and that which pertains to right conduct (for purity of life is part of religion)."

Διχῆ δὲ τῆς κατ' εὐσέβειαν ἀρετῆς διῃρεμένης, εἴς τε τὸ θεῖον καὶ τὴν εἰς τὴν τοῦ ἤθους κατόρθωσιν (μέρος γὰρ εὐσεβείας καὶ ἡ τοῦ βίου καθαρότης ἐστί), . . .

     Gregory of Nyssa, The life of Moses 2.166, trans. Everett Ferguson and Abraham J. Malherbe (Gregory of Nyssa:  The life of Moses, Classics of Western spirituality (New York; Mahwah, NJ:  Paulist Press, 1978), 96).  The footnote at this point reads, "This fact was not commonly recognized by the Greeks of the pre-Christian centuries.  See A. D. Nock, Conversion (Oxford, 1933), pp. 215 ff." (179n206).  Greek from the 3rd rev. & corr. (1968) ed. of SC 1, 212, 214.  Cf. GNO 7.1, p. 88 ll. 5-7.

"Before those who stood by | thou wast my helper and didst deliver me"

ἔναντι τῶν παρεστηκότων ἐγένου βοηθὸς καὶ ἐλυτρώσω με

     Sir 51:2 RSV.  Or "in the presence of those who stood by".  51:2-3 NETS:  "against those who stand by | you have been a help, and you have redeemed me".

The sacraments as an education in the use of things temporal

Source

"Grant, O Lord, we pray, that, benefitting from participation in heavenly things, we may be helped by what you give in this present age and prepared for the gifts that are eternal.  Through."

"Fac nos, quaesumus, Domine, caelestium rerum frequentatione proficere, ut et temporalibus beneficis adiuvemur, et erudiamur aeternis.  Per."

Cause us, we pray, O Lord, [so] to profit from the frequentation of things celestial, that we may be both helped by benefits temporal, and educated in [benefits] eternal.  Through.

     Prayer after Communion, Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman Missal. 

Grace both prevenient and sequent

May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works.  Through.

     Collect for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman Missal.  According to Bruylants (Corpus orationum seems to have overlooked it), this one is present already in Paris, B. N. lat. 12048 (8th century, at 244.2) and others.

Tua nos, quaesumus, Domine, gratia semper et praeveniat et sequatur, ac bonis operibus iugiter praestet esse intentos.  Per.

My rendition:

May your grace, O Lord, we pray, always both precede and follow us, and keep [us] constantly intent upon good works.

The execrable translation of 1973, according to Fr. Z:

Lord, our help and guide, make your love the foundation of our lives. May our love for you express itself in our eagerness to do good for others.

A voluntary subjection

      "What is being referred to is that subjection about which the divine apostle spoke, when the Son subjects to the Father those who freely accept subjection [1 Cor 15:28].  This subjection will be voluntary, and through it the last enemy, death, will be destroyed.  That which is in our power, our free will, through which the power of corruption entered into us, will surrender voluntarily to God and will have mastery of itself because it had been taught to refrain from willing anything other than what God wills. . . .
     "Do not be disturbed by what I have said.  I have no intention of denying free will.  Rather I am speaking of a firm and steadfast disposition, a willing surrender [(θέσιν . . . τὴν κατὰ φύσιν παγίαν τε καὶ ἀμετάθετον, ἤγουν ἐκχώρησιν γνωμικὴν)], so that from the one from who we have received being [(τὸ εἶναι)] we long to receive being moved [(τὸ κινεῖσθαι)] as well."

     St. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7, trans. Blowers & Wilken (On the cosmic mystery of Jesus Christ:  selected writings from St Maximus the Confessor, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilkin, Popular patristics series 25 (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 51-52).  Greek from PG 91, col. 1076B.

"Time, in which we have found nothing to offer up to God, is lost for eternity"

      "Every offering has value only insofar as one snatches it away from one's own benefit and dedicates it to God through this self-conquest. One loves and gives precisely because one loves, and because one considers what is given as a good, as a treasure. Love of creatures must be subordinated to the love of God, whom one is pledged to love above all things.
     "Time, in which we have found nothing to offer up to God, is lost for eternity. If it is only the duties of our vocation that we fulfill with dedication to the will of God; if it is the sweat of our faces that, in resignation, we wipe from our brow without murmuring; if it is suffering, temptations, difficulties with our fellowmen—everything we can present to God as an offering and can, through them, become like Jesus his Son. Where the sacrifice is great and manifold, there, in the same proportion, is the hope of glory more deeply and more securely grounded in the heart of him who makes it."

     St. Francis Xavier Seelos (1819-1867), Letter, as translated for the Liturgy of the hours, 5 October, Archives of the Redemptorists of the Baltimore Province, (variously (?) translated and) published now, presumably, in Sincerely, Seelos:  the collected letters of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos, ed., trans., and introduced Carl Hoegerl, C.Ss.R. (New Orleans:  Seelos Center, 2008).

Aquinas in the first person

"Therefore, with trust in divine mercy, pursuing the task of a wise man, although this surpasses our own powers, our intention is to clarify, in our own small way, the truth which the Catholic faith professes, eliminating contrary errors.  [At this point St. Thomas speaks, as he very rarely does, in the first person:]  I do this so that I may make my own the words of Hilary:  I am mindful that I owe this to God as the greatest task of my life, that my every word and thought may speak of him."

"Assumpta igitur ex divina pietate fiducia sapientis officium prosequendi, quamvis proprias vires excedat, propositum nostrae intentionis est veritatem quam fides Catholica profitetur, pro nostro modulo manifestare, errores eliminando contrarios: ut enim verbis Hilarii utar, ego hoc vel praecipuum vitae meae officium debere me Deo conscius sum, ut eum omnis sermo meus et sensus loquatur."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles I.2[.2], as translated Fr. Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., "Introduction to the life and work of St. Thomas Aquinas," Angelicum Thomistic Institute 2022 Student Summer Seminar "Aquinas, Philosophy, & Contemporary Science," 3-6 July 2022, at c. 22:13.  The Latin from here, where the Shapcote (FEDP) translation (with my emendations) appears: 

"Therefore, assuming the office of the wise man with confidence from God’s loving kindness, although it surpasses our own powers, the purpose we have in view is, in our own weak way, to declare the truth which the Catholic faith professes, while weeding out contrary errors; for, in the words of Hilary [(for, in order that I might make my own the words of Hilary)], I acknowledge that I owe my life’s chief occupation to God [(I am conscious of this, that I owe the chief office of my life to God)], so that every word and every thought of mine may speak of him [(On the Trinity 1, 37 =PL 10, col. 48)]."

Trans. Pegis:

"And so, in the name of the divine Mercy, I have the confidence to embark upon the work of a wise man, even though this may surpass my powers, and I have set myself the task of making known, as far as my limited powers will allow, the truth that the Catholic faith professes, and of setting aside the errors that are opposed to it.  To use the words of Hilary:  'I am aware that I owe this to God as the chief duty of my life, that my every word and sense may speak of Him.'"

Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit

"Love alone, properly speaking, proves that the human person is in the image of the Creator, by making his self-determination submit to reason, not bending reason under it, and [by] persuading the inclination to follow nature and not in any way to be at variance with the logos of nature.  In this way we are all, as it were, one nature, so that we are able to have one inclination and one will with God and with one another, not having any discord with God or one another, whenever by the law of grace, through which by our inclination the law of nature is renewed [(whenever by the law of grace, through which we deliberately renew the law of nature)], we choose what is ultimate."

Αὔτη μόνη, κυρίως εἰπεῖν, κατ' εἰκόνα τοῦ Κτίσαντος τὸν ἄνθρωπον ὄντα παρίστησι, τῷ μὲν λόγῳ σοφῶς τὸ ἐφ' ἡμῖν ὑποτάσσουσα· τούτῳ δὲ τὸν λόγον οὐχ ὑποκλίνουσα· καὶ πείθουσα τὴν γνώμην κατὰ τὴν φύσιν πορεύεσθαι, μηδαμῶς πρὸς τὸν λόγον τῆς φύσεως στασιάζουσαν· καθ' ὃν ἄπαντες ὥσπερ μίαν φύσιν, οὕτω δὲ καὶ μίαν γνώμην καὶ θέλημα ἓν, θεῷ καὶ ἀλλήλοις ἔχειν δυνάμεθα, οὐδεμίαν πρὸς θεὸν καὶ ἀλλήλους διάστασιν ἔχοντες, ὅτ' ἂν τῷ νόμῳ τῆς χάριτος, δι' οὗ τὸν νόμον τῆς φύσεως γνωμικῶς ἀνακαινίζομεν, στοικεῖον προαιρούμεθα.

     Maximus the Confessor, Letter to John the Cubicularius On charity dated c. 626, trans. Louth and quoted in the Introduction to On the cosmic mystery of Jesus Christ:  selected writings on St. Maximus the Confessor, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken, Popular patristics series 25 (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 43, underscoring mine.  The Greek should be checked for errors-in-transcription against a more crisply printed copy of PG 91, col. 396C-D.  On ἀνακαινίζω see Heb 6:4 on renewal again to repentance, but also ἀνακαινόω at 2 Cor 4:16 and Col 3:10 (there are a few occurrences in the Septuagint as well (e.g. Ps 102 (103):5 and 103 (104):30)).

Hoisted on her own petard?

     "In these terms, the disenchantment of the world is a distinctly Protestant phenomenon.  So says [Peter] Berger:  'The Protestant believer no longer lives in a world ongoingly penetrated by sacred beings and forces' but in a world 'bereft of numinosity.'  By relegating religion from the public sphere of transcendental truths to the private one of voluntary associations, this process of disenchantment transformed religion into a private choice.  What this meant practically speaking was that religion was no longer 'second nature' and part of man's assumed culture.  Rather, it became just another option:  something to choose, or not.  The necessity of religious choice, then, meant that 'the pluralistic situation is, above all, a market situation.'
     "Berger’s is a stunning claim, and it’s worth pausing to consider its implications.  The process of [disenchantment or] secularization transforms religious institutions into what he calls 'marketing agencies' and religious traditions into 'consumer commodities.' . . .  Evacuated of a central teaching office or a shared liturgy, with a phenomenology void of the supernatural, evangelicalism is a religious consciousness that needed to market itself to private individuals who were no longer constrained to participate in religious activities.
     "Evangelicalism, therefore, has adopted private values that would appeal to the widest possible audience.  These values, however, have shifted historically. . . .  The values that are often associated with evangelicalism were not produced by evangelicals out of whole cloth; rather, they presented the best way to market a religion with any hope of surviving. . . . .
     "Although Du Mez’s [Jesus and John Wayne:  how white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation] reads as an apt description and indictment of [Evangelicalisms B’s] twists and turns, the private values and cultural norms that were easily marketed in 1990s America are [of course] no longer the ones being marketed today.  A shortcoming of Du Mez’s book is that she does not reflect on whether she, too, has taken part in a process of secularization whereby one’s religious beliefs must square with the concerns of the marketplace and, perhaps unintentionally, has become [herself] just another participant in the process of secularization Peter Berger describes.  Seen from this perspective, Jesus and John Wayne is an example of how quickly values change, and the alacrity with which purveyors of evangelical religion rush to market themselves accordingly.  They did not find the 'God, faith, and family' values problematic in the days of Evangelicalism B because such values weren’t problematic during that cultural period.  Du Mez identifies those religious artifacts marketed most avidly to evangelicals during Evangelicalism B, when religious identity reached the apogee of its mass-market appeal.  But she analyzes them through the lens of what I’m calling Evangelicalism C, the landscape we currently inhabit. . . .
     "When it comes to matters of gender, sexuality, and race, . . . Evangelicalism C stands apart from Evangelicalisms A and B.  Its emerging class of influencers is more affirming of sexual expression, more sensitive to matters of social justice, and at times acutely critical of the stands aging generations of evangelicals have taken on both.  Still, there remains a striking continuity that can be traced across the decades, a parade of salesmanship built on a view of the religious life, conceived through the lens of the home and consumer identities.  As Peter Berger writes, 'A sky empty of angels becomes open to the intervention of the astronomer and, eventually, of the astronaut.'  We are in a moment when sexuality, gender, and race have become the astronauts of the modern religious sphere. . . .
     "Many influencers and leaders prominent in the world of Evangelicalism C tend to reject the 'evangelical' label.  But in seeking to distance themselves from a previous movement and casting around for a new religious identity that better squares with their social concerns—one that correlates broadly with the culture of the day—such religious figures bear an uncanny, if unintended resemblance to their evangelical predecessors.  As inheritors of an increasingly secular religious landscape, they have been left with little choice than to market their religious beliefs and values to whoever will buy them.  The best way to do this is to adopt the preferences, values, and strategies of the surrounding culture.
     ". . . It is not simply that the movement resists easy definition.  It is, rather, that evangelicalism has been so buffeted by the waves of consumer trends, been so malleable and revisable for every cultural moment, that the movement cannot be meaningfully distinguished from a broader American religiosity.  The disturbing conclusion might just be that evangelicalism does not exist."

     Kirsten Sanders, "The evangelical question in the history of American religion," The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 24, no. 2 (Summer 2022):  59-60, 62-65 (56-65), underscoring mine.  There are some problems with this approach, for there have been profoundly counter-cultural evangelicals in every age of the movement, beginning well before 1904 and what Sanders calls Evangelicalism A.  And there have been and are (say) Catholics (Protestant Catholics) desperate to cut Catholicism down to the size of this very same Procrustean bed.  But Sanders does, in my view, a nice job of taking the likes of Du Mez (for I have not yet read Du Mez herself) to task for being guilty of the very same sorts of conformism for which they excoriate their predecessors.

Roots of the Great Awokening in the supposed anti-intellectualism of the Great Awakening?

Americas quarterly

      "For all of its supposed virtues, the Puritan clergy proved itself pusillanimous before the onslaught of the Great Awakening—the 'first moment of militant success' for American anti-intellectualism.  Hofstadter quotes Timothy Cutler, 'a rather prejudiced Anglican witness' to the ranting of a barnstorming preacher:

[Then] came one Tennent—a monster! impudent and noisy—and told them all they were damned, damned, damned!  This charmed them; and in the most dreadful winter I ever saw, people wallowed in snow, night and day, for the benefit of his beastly braying.

The contemporary inheritors of the legacy of the Puritan clergy—old-guard Ivy League-educated professors and Beltway courtiers—have put up even less of a fight for their brand of liberalism against insurgent moral movements emanating from the university.  The new dispensation ascendant in American political culture has sometimes been tagged with an epithet derived from the religious revival of the eighteenth century:  the 'Great Awokening.'  But today’s movement has no preachers, only consultants—the Elmer Gantrys de nos jours—of the likes of Robin D’Angelo, author of White Fragility.  Americans have clearly not changed much in the interim.  Many continue to take a slightly perverse enjoyment in being told they are damned or—through a kind of secularization of religious categories Hofstadter was always so perspicacious in tracking—racist."

     Nick Burns, “The tragedy of the American political tradition,” The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 24, no. 2 (Summer 2022):  52 (46-55).  I am of course well aware of the fact that Hofstadter is today somewhat controversial among professional Americanists (as, indeed, Burns himself soon points out), and that it might well be possible to absolve at least some representatives of the Great Awakening of anti-intellectualism.

A relic of a bygone era

Public Diplomacy Council

"these autocracies[, China and Russia,] are advancing in the methods of coercion, combining newfangled digital surveillance with old-fashioned terror and brutality.  Some of these methods require a strong stomach, but these regimes are convinced that with the proper 'narratives,' they will not have to deploy them, except in certain extreme cases.  This confidence rests firmly on the assumption that the narratives are state of the art, persuasive not as propaganda but as 'truth,' because as the world now understands, there is nothing much out there to challenge their 'leadership in the ideological sphere.'  Even the West, with its sentimental attachment to Reason and the Enlightenment, considers objective truth a relic of that bygone era."

Martha Bayles, "Vladimir and Volodymyr:  a pivotal moment in history," The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 24, no. 2 (Summer 2022):  44 (38-45).

"the womb of the virginal font"

Peter Trimming

"the heavenly Spirit, by the mysterious infusion of his light, gives fertility to [(fecundat)] the womb of the virginal font [(uirgineum fontis uterum, the virginal womb of the font)]. The Spirit brings forth as men belonging to heaven those whose earthly ancestry brought them forth as men belonging to the earth, and in a condition of wretchedness; he gives them the likeness of their Creator. Now that we are reborn, refashioned in the image of our Creator, we must fulfill what the Apostle commands: So, as we have worn the likeness of the man of earth, let us also wear the likeness of the man of heaven."

     St. Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 117.4 on 1 Cor 15:45-50, as trans. Liturgy of the hours.  =CCSL 24a, 711, ll. 48 ff. (of the sermon).  =PL 52, col. 521B (where virginei, which would modify fontis rather than uterum, does not appear among the varient readings in the apparatus to CCSL 24a).  The translation by Gans ((FC 17), 201) is more restrictive because less literal.  For "Mother" is not present precisely here:

"the heavenly Spirit by a mysterious injection of His light fecundates [(fecundat)] the womb of the virginal Mother [(uirgineum fontis uterum)]. He desired to bring forth as heavenly beings those whom an origin from an ancestral stock of earth had brought forth as earthy men, in a wretched state. He wanted to bring them to the likeness of their Creator. So, let us who have already been reborn, and reformed to the image of our Creator, fulfill what the Apostle commands.
     "'Therefore, even as we have borne the likeness of the earthy, let us bear also the likeness of the heavenly.'"