pontificator

I must be a real dolt. I’m afraid I do not a button labelled HTML in the upper right.

I am looking at the article in question right now in the WordPress editor (“Write Post”). Here are the first paragraphs of the article, ending with the paragraph that contains the first < blockquote > tag:

<b>by Alvin Kimel</b>

Rod Dreher’s recent announcement that he is seriously considering leaving Catholicism and entering into the communion of the Orthodox Church is receiving great attention in the blogosphere. Michael Liccione observes that Dreher is giving voice to what a number of Catholics and non-Catholics think: “If the Catholic Church is who and what she says she is, then why is she so messed up?” He concludes that lack of holiness is the single “most effective argument <i>against</i> the truth of the Catholic faith.”

I have to register my partial disagreement with Michael. In my judgment the existence of suffering is the single most powerful argument against the truth of the Catholic faith. It is suffering that tempts me to disbelief, not the scandals of the Church. If God the Holy Trinity truly exists, then how can there be so much terrible suffering and destruction in the world? Where is God? How can he permit it? Can the gospel be true when the good and loving creator of the universe allows the slaughter of tens of thousands in Rwanda and the Sudan?

Somehow those of us who believe find that we still believe, must believe, despite the horrific reality of suffering and destruction in God’s good universe.

But what about the evil that is present in the Church, committed by the Church? Does not this evil witness equally against the truth of the gospel? Perhaps. I can understand someone refusing to believe the truth of the Christian faith because of the unholiness of Christians. The Christian faith makes remarkable claims about Christian life. Christians are supposed to be a people who have died and risen with Christ and are reborn in the Spirit. They are supposed to be a people who have been given a new heart for God and who delight in obeying his will. They are supposed to be ontologically different. How then is it possible that Christians are so often as morally compromised as their secular neighbors? This is a true scandal to the world and an obstacle to faith. Yet we who believe find that we still believe, must believe, despite the sinfulness of our fellow Christians and despite our own personal sinfulness and moral failures.

Who of us have not betrayed our faith and brought scandal upon the Church of Jesus Christ? Who of us will not stand before the Holy God at the Great Assize with blood on our hands? Who of us are not guilty of driving away neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and family from the Church and the faith of Christ? We rightly expect the clerics of the Church to exhibit exemplary holiness and fidelity; but are we truly surprised, should we be surprised, when we find that these men are as weak and iniquitous as we ourselves? As Johann Adam Möhler observed, the Church’s priests and bishops do not fall from the skies: “she must take them out of the description of men that the age can furnish.”

I do not intend by these comments to minimize the evil and criminality of those priests who have sexually abused boys and girls entrusted to their care and of the bishops who protected and enabled them. Moral outrage, protest, and reform of the Church is the only proper response to these crimes.

I do not deny that a believer might lose his faith in light of these crimes. Faith is a mystery, as is the loss of faith. But the wise counsel of St Francis de Sales is surely appropriate here:

Those who commit scandals are guilty of the spiritual equivalent of murder by destroying other people’s faith in God by their terrible example…. But I’m here among you to prevent something far worse for you. While those who give scandal are guilty of the spiritual equivalent of murder, those who take scandal—who allow scandals to destroy their faith—are guilty of spiritual suicide!

Rightly did Dorothy L. Sayers state that the eternal Son of God has endured three great humiliations in his rescue of humanity: the Incarnation, the Cross, <i>and the Church</i>.

Here is the validation errors page for this article:
https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcatholica.pontifications.net%2F%3Fp%3D1659&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline

Does anyone see anything here that would be causing the validation errors, or should I simply ignore them at this point?

Thanks!

But the text of my article doesn’t contain the < p > tag at any point–at least I didn’t add it and I can’t see it when I edit the article.

I appear to have given the wrong URL for the validator’s error list of my site. Here’s the correct one:

https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcatholica.pontifications.net%2F

Oops. I got my terminology wrong. I thought the whitelist referred to the list that catches posts for moderation. When I refer to the blacklist I am referring to the nuke list.

I’ll go through the moderation list and delete any small words and see what happens. Thanks.

Does this plug-in give me the ability to show the full-text of each article of the month instead of a summary?

bump

bump

I just wanted to report to the developers that the problem that I noted above, which is caused by the presence of a forward slash at the end of the URL, happens even when archived posts are opened. I noticed the problem today when I looked at a post that I had written six months ago. I had to go in and redit it, eliminating the forward slash, in order to fix it.

I don’t have a button in either mode either.

Bump

I figured out the problem! It was the concluding backslash in the URL. I deleted it (https://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus) and now the link works properly.

oops, the first link obviously should read:
[a href=https://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus/]

Here is the link to the blog article:

https://pontifications.classicalanglican.net/?p=736

To help you further, here is the text with code <b>before</b> I clicked on publish. I have substituted brackets for the other symbol (whatever it’s called):

In any case, J. Budziszewski is a very interesting and incisive writer. He is professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas, as well as the popular [https://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus/]”Ask Theophilus”[/a] columns.

In this 2003 [a href=https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/125/22.0.html]Christianity Today interview[/a], Dr. Budziszewski speaks of his conversion from atheism to evangelical Christian faith.

<b>After</b> clicking “publish” I get the following:

In any case, J. Budziszewski is a very interesting and incisive writer. He is professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas, as well as the popular [a href=https://www.boundless.org/departments/theophilus/]”Ask Theophilus” columns.

In this 2003 [a href=https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/125/22.0.html]Christianity Today interview[/a], Dr. Budziszewski speaks of his conversion from atheism to evangelical Christian faith.

I’ll leave the blog article as is for a while, but I’ll need to correct it, by deleting the “Ask Theophilus” link, fairly soon. When I delete the “Ask Theophilus” link, everything else works just fine, including all the other links in the article.

1) Yes, the “correct invalid next XHTML” is checked.

2) Yes, I type in the actual code myself. In this case, I tried writing it several times. I would publish the letter without it, and then tried re-editing it, with the code. Same problem.

3) As far as I can tell, no other posts have been affected.

4) Yes. In fact, what you see above was copied directly from the post, before and after hitting the “publish” button.

Thanks, mac. One more question: Should I type in “terminator-sales” or “terminator-sales.com”? Any disadvantages one way or the other?