Fallen Back Catholic

A Thought for Today

2011-11-10T10:28:00.002-05:00

I am not skilled to understand

What God has willed, what God has planned

I only know at His right hand
Stands one who is my Savior

The Sanctity of Human Life

2011-10-24T08:48:00.000-04:00

It's been a while. It's difficult to maintain the spirit, and I recognize that some of it was Father Pfeiffer at the BVM Priory, whose soul really was on fire with the love of God and the saving of souls. He infected everyone he met, and I was certainly ready to be infected. I just need to keep trying, and I guess that's all any of us can do!

I read something to day, though, that made me both laugh and cry. A quote from 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy: "Celebrate the 1995 repeal of the 55 mph federal speed limit by taking a liberal for an 80 mph spin through Texas and Utah—the highest speeds currently allowed anywhere in the United States, though of course there really should be no limits at all. As the wind blows through your hair, laughingly quote Ralph Nader who said at the time of the repeal, "History will never forgive Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life."

Naturally what got to me was Ralph's concern for "the sanctity of human life." Now, I grant, Ralph Nader's central issue isn't abortion, and he leans more in the direction of "leave it out of the public discourse" (with which idea I don't entirely disagree). But that anyone would call upon "the sanctity of human life," and NOT be also anti-abortion (or shall I say, pro-life) is simply idiotic on its face. You either respect human life or you don't.

Polar Thinking

2010-06-29T09:10:00.000-04:00

A brief dip into C.S. Lewis this morning, who never fails to get me thinking. He was talking about the relationship between the persons of the Father and the Son in the Trinity, and how we can't help thinking of them as two individual beings, though they are really one, yet distinct personalities - a mystery we can't really comprehend.

He went on to talk about our concept of "God is Love," and he said, "What we really mean is, Love is God." That is to say, God embodied love before creation, before there was anything to love.

That got me wondering, was the fall of the angels - the first rebellion against God - really the immanization (is there such a word?) of polarity? In a way, that would make sense - at one time, everything was one - everything was God, and all his creation was a part of Him. There were no polar opposites. Evil was just the polarity of good, but of course this doesn't explain how - or why - it came to be.

In a philosophical way, it's interesting. Men and women, sexual congress, results in new life. Magnetic poles attract, and we always wonder if happiness would feel as good if we didn't know how unhappiness felt.

Yet aren't we told that if matter and anti-matter ever come together, that would mean the utter destruction of everything?

No wonder people want to put such questions away, and leave them to others to think about, and feed us well-thought-out answers. They stretch the brain into uncomfortable positions!

A Big, Bothersome Question

2010-06-28T11:59:00.000-04:00

I had an argument with myself last night. It was over the question of whether the idea of God was reasonable.

I started to wonder about a story in which God really was the God of Abraham, that that God really did communicate with us first through the Jews, then through Jesus, and finally through Mohammad. That he finally just got angry with us and said, fine. You wouldn't believe my rules (the Jews), you wouldn't believe my forgiveness (Jesus), so now you either believe or else (the Muslims).

It's an interesting premise, if silly. But it does beg a bigger question: who is God? Why does he hide? Is it reasonable to think that he would communicate with us through a book (inspired writings) that are internally inconsistent and clothed in mystery and allusion? Isn't it sort of human to latch onto regular old objects and turn them into magical amulets, so why would we think there is anything any more special about the Bible than about any other old documents from a bygone age?

Then I got into the whole question of submission versus non-submission. This is a tough one. There is something both seductive, and impossible, about submitting. This notion has been explored on a variety of levels, and in many different ways (for example, Lina Wertmiller's Swept Away, a movie about sexual submission).

On the one hand, how infinitely comforting to simply turn one's life over to a higher power and say, "I can't do this. The unexpected always happens; issues and questions and life events are so huge I feel powerless in front of them. How much easier and safer to say, 'Whatever you want, God. I just put myself in your hands.'" Then you float on the water like a leaf, go where the waves take you, rest in the power that compels you.

But then human nature kicks in - for some of us more than others - and we say, "Hell, no. It's my life, my choices. God, if God exists, wants me to handle things - to take charge. This is my life, my one and only life, and the choices I make, the things that I do, are all there is. I don't want to submit, I'm an adult, and I take responsibility."

We're told on the one hand that we're being children if we simply submit and go with it. On the other, it's explained to us that when we refuse to submit, we're guilty of the sin of pride - the sin of our original parents.

I'm guessing that the answer is, as the Church has taught us, somewhere in the middle.

We are expected to own our lives; we are given the incredible power of free will. At the same time, we are expected to fight our human nature, and submit to the will of God. And the big, imponderable question is: if God's will were just all happy and positive and easy, it would be easy to submit. If it's that easy, it's not a challenge, and nothing has been proved by doing it.

The difficulty of all of this is why for me, and I suspect for many, faith is a matter of get up every day and try again. There will be good days and bad days and days when you think you're just going to quit. But you get up the next day and try again.

A Tale of Two Masses

2010-04-04T10:29:00.000-04:00

It's been a long while since I posted to this blog, but the marked difference in two services I attended this Holy Week motivated me to write.

On Thursday I went to the Maundy Thursday evening Mass at my traditional chapel. I got there early, but even with that the pews were packed, there was seating in all the aisles, and still people stood in the back. Little children and babies accompanied parents, even though there was no chance of being out before 9pm - yet other than an infant crying here and there, all the children were well-behaved.

The parishioners were dressed as for an evening out - suit and tie, women in nice dresses or suits, everyone on their best behavior. The statues on the altars were draped in purple, and the atmosphere in the sanctuary was quiet, solemn, and serious.

The Mass and washing of the feet, followed by a processional through the neighborhood as the reserved host was moved from the main altar tabernacle to a side altar, the music - everything was beautiful, serious, reverent, and done with care. We left the service feeling that we had been part of something special - and I know it's probably my imagination, but when the host was carried from the church, I felt the loss in a visceral way. That feeling of "fullness," of presence, was gone. This has always struck me when I enter the chapel - that there is a sense that you're not alone, that something fills the very air around you.

Move on to Easter vigil, which I attended at my sister's church. It's actually a very beautiful church; the statues, painting, woodwork - everything is lovely and elegant. Nothing could be further from the truth about the service itself.

Other than lilies on the altars, there was no sign that this was the Easter, Lenten, or penitential season. The statues were undraped, there were flowers on the altar. People arrived dressed in everything from jeans and parkas to capris and tight shirts to suits and dresses. Attendance was sparse, and few children under about 15 were visible.

Honestly, the beginning of the service was rather nice, if a tad pagan-needfire-esque. (If you have never seen this ritual, it's the modern notion of how our ancestors would sweep the hearth clean and light a new fire on the new year - supposedly Halloween. Participants make a ceremony out of re-lighting the fire.) The "assembly" followed the priests out to the yard where the pascal candle was marked and lit, and then they processed back into the darkened church. Each person had a small taper, which was lit, hand to hand, starting with the pascal candle. The priest gave a short speech - well, ok, he "chanted" it, but in modern English (if you can imagine singing a phrase like "this minister likes the idea of all these candles in the dark" without laughing). Eventually the lights came on, and for the next hour we were tortured with alternating "readings' conducted by a woman who really should not have tried (she simply could not imbue the readings with any meaning, and read in a kind of sing-song that became more annoying with each reading) - and who, after each reading, SAT on the steps to the pulpit, her sneakered feet peaking out and visible to all - and the execrable guitar-accompanied drippy songs, belted out at us by a couple of greying sandalistas in the choir loft.

After the seventh reading, I leaned over and asked my sister, "Is it ever going to stop? Did we do something bad and get sent to purgatory?"

The priest sang every word he said, including the consecration. I don't know if this invalidated it, but it sure seemed wrong.

After the whole spectacle was over, the priests thanked the choir for all their hard work; everybody clapped. The main priests thanked the assistant priests; everybody clapped. An assistant priest thanked the main priest and said, "Not every priest can sing like our own (so and so)." Everybody clapped, and some hooted and whistled.

We left.

Our conversation on the way home was not about Easter. It was not about how lovely the service was. It wasn't about Jesus, or our faith, or even mundane topics. It was about how horrible, horrifying, irreverent, silly, and self-serving the service had been. How very "not Catholic."

But of course, I reminded my family, anyone under 40 will have never known anything else - for them, this is the Faith.

It breaks my heart.

A Worm By Any Other Name

2010-03-05T10:41:00.000-05:00

I get a daily feed from the New Oxford Review, a traditional Catholic publication.

Admittedly, this publication has a very strong point of view: while it is traditionalist, it is also decidedly anti-SSPX. So it seems to walk a fine line between opposing many of the innovations within the post-Conciliar Church, and also opposing outright defiance of them.

Lately, there have been a number of headlines in my daily feed about scandals that reach the inner sanctums of the Vatican.

Now, this has long been the fodder of fiction - just read anything Dan Brown ever wrote. In his book, all puns intended, the Vatican is the one and only villain in the world, its tentacles reaching down and out and into the very fabric of the Universe.

But when the New Oxford Review passes along these headlines, it makes me cringe, and it makes me worry.

But then, traditionalist Catholics have been warning for a long time that there is a worm in the rose of the Church, and that that worm is closely related to the "pinking" of the seminaries in the sixties and seventies - perhaps even earlier. Whether this was a deliberate plot, or simply a sign of the times, I can attest to the fact that the nature of the priesthood changed. Now, granted, I would not have known, as a young child, whether my priest was gay or not. But I can assure you, there was no "funny business" going on in our parish. Our priests acted like priests, and were very much involved with the kids on a weekly, if not daily, basis.

In fact, the boys used to talk about their experience as altar boys, and there was never anything but bragging about how much they had learned, and complaints about how difficult it was. Being an altar boy was definitely something to be proud of, and I can also attest to the fact that the girls never felt jealous of it. We had our own thing, namely, the choir. Choir was its own challenge: we sang the Missa Cantata, and had to learn the Latin and the chants. And some girls got involved in decorating the altar with the seasonal changes.

Today, I personally know three gay priests. One, while clearly gay, also seems to be reverent and living a life dedicated to the church. The others - I'm not so sure. But I guess the point is, what are the odds that I, who am not particularly involved with the mainstream Church, would know three gay priests? If the numbers are accurate, 2% of the American population as a whole is gay. That would make the odds astronomical that I, who know about six priests altogether, would have encountered three gay priests. Three openly gay priests.

Let me back up a bit and say that I don't have an opinion about being gay. I have no idea why people are gay. But I also know that the "pedophile" scandal that rocked the Church and delighted anti-Catholics was not a "pedophile" problem at all; it was a gay euphebophile scandal. Older men with adolescent and young adult males. As compared to the population as a whole, fewer priests, predictably, were preying upon children (of either sex). For the most part, what was going on was priests initiating young boys into gay sex.

There is a whole other question of whether this is "wrong" in the bigger picture. What is indisputably true is that a) this is wrong from the standpoint of the Church, for a whole host of reasons; and b) it is not well-tolerated by the public as a whole.

We have a very conflicted view of this, and there has been an active campaign to try to make what was going on be about adults using children for sex, rather than it being about adult male priests getting involved, whether consenting or not, with pubescent boys. On the one hand, the PC position is that there is nothing "abnormal" about gay sex, and there is nothing abnormal about adolescent sex. We're not even sure how we feel about young female teachers having sex with their pubescent (male) pupils.

So, we want to be sure that what we're incensed about (publicly) is the adult-on-child nature of it.

A larger problem for Catholics is what appears to be an undeniable fact that the Vatican needs a good house-cleaning. This isn't the first time; it won't be the last. There have been periods of time when what's going on now would probably seem like blips on the radar rather than wholesale corruption. Somehow, the Church survived, righted itself, and continued on.

But it's also clearly the case that there are some pretty vile people deep in the heart of the power structure of the Church, and they need to be identified and weeded out. Sooner rather than later.

Magical Mass

2010-01-04T10:51:00.000-05:00

We have a new priest at our Chapel.

This is the first Mass he's offered that I've attended; he's an older man (in his late 60s, I would guess, based on some comments he made during the sermon), and at first I was a little disconcerted by the way he conducted the service.

He hurried through parts that some other priests usually performed with great ceremony (such as the censing of the altar); he did not wear the cope when performing the asperges; the choir sang the Kyrie, Gloria and Sanctus without the rest of us (though I doubt he had anything to do with this, it was a loss to me - the music was lovely, but it feels more like the typical modern Catholic "performance" Mass.

But when he got to the Consecration, his loud (and granted, electronically amplified) whisper had a magical quality to it that surprised me. Normally, there is little if any sound from the altar during the Consecration, except perhaps for the few words, "hoc est corpus meum," and the equivalent for the Consecration of the wine.

In this case, the entire prayer was whispered loudly, though not loudly enough to be made out word for word. It had an odd, magically invocational quality to it. I was not exactly sure what I thought: was the "magic" quality a good thing, or a bad thing?

I'm still not sure.

It's All Been Said

2009-06-09T07:30:00.000-04:00

It's so simple.

I had a hard time conceiving my second child. By the time I got pregnant, I walked on eggshells to make sure I didn't do anything to lose "the baby." Because I was trying, I knew I was pregnant from about the second week on, and I did everything possible to protect "the baby."

When I told people, they wanted to know when "the baby" was due. They would ask whether I wanted a boy or a girl, making the automatic assumption that it was a human.

Nobody asked me how my fetus (or parasite) was doing, or if I planned to "keep or kill."

I know there are horrible circumstances under which women can become pregnant; I know there are horrifying circumstances under which they can carry a child. But none of that changes the fact that it is a child that's in question.

What we are in effect saying is that because this human is small, helpless, and hidden, and because we have absolute power to do so, we can kill it with impunity. Worse, we are saying that a human becomes a human when we say so. (So much for "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights...)

This kind of thinking is so horribly, horribly wrong - why is it so hard for us to see how easily it can,once established, be used against us? Think selfishly, if nothing else. We don't want to be the small, helpless and hidden person (and most of us are, after all) who is dispensable. So we have to be sure we don't let anyone else be that person, either.

And the Point Is...

2009-05-01T08:18:00.000-04:00

The comment on my previous post deserves a full response.

First, a distinction needs to be made between people outside the Faith being able to attain heaven, and people who have rejected the Faith being able to attain heaven.

First of all, I don't know, nobody knows, exactly what God has in store for us. What we do know is what Jesus taught us.

It bothers me terribly that the words of Jesus have been cherry-picked; that Jesus himself has been co-opted; and that even his own representatives on earth (his priests) don't pass on what he taught faithfully.

The fact is, Jesus 1)said he had come to fulfill the Old Law (as in, put it away); 2) he said he was establishing a Church; 3) he said the only way to the Father was through him (not through Mohammad, not through Buddha, not through secular humanism); 4) he said that many would be called but few would be chosen (not everybody was gonig to make the grade). He also said some other revealing things, such as, you had to feel strongly about him - if you were "lukewarm" he would spit you out of his mouth. He said we should be prepared to sell all our possessions (give up the things of this world) and follow him. (Not follow a "good enough" path.)

I think if Jesus meant to tell us that it didn't matter which path we followed as long as we were good people, he would have said that. He said a lot of pointed and controversial things - controversial enough that his own people figured they'd better get rid of him because he was threatening all that they knew.

Jesus said a) he was God; b) he was the Messiah.

Ok. So, for my money, you either believe him, or you don't. If you believe him, then you've at the very least got to be Christian; ideally, you will be Catholic (if you believe that the Faith was passed down through the popes, bishops, and priests). The God of Mohammed is not the God of Christianity. The God of Christianity sent his SON to be our Redeemer. The God of Mohammed sent a prophet in the person of Jesus. Jesus brought a new and deeper understanding of God, in which the punitive Father was enhanced by the loving Son and the wise spirit. This has not happened in Islam, for example. And I don't even need to go into the other world religions to make it clear that their understanding of "God" it quite different from that of Christianity.

Now, I'm not saying that even the Catholic Church doesn't teach that someone who truly does not know about, or does not accept what the Church teaches can't get to heaven. I don't understand what the equation is there - what kind of behavior such a person has to exhibit, or what kind of "heaven" awaits him. (The Church is fully accepting of the idea of "mystery," after all.) I was never taught that someone who had never heard of Christ was doomed to hell. What I was taught that someone who believed and who chose to reject Jesus because the path was too hard, or the lure of the world too great, was putting himself in a danger of losing his soul.

So for me, the real issue is: do you believe what Jesus told us? As C. S Lewis has pointed out: either Jesus was crazy, a con man, or he really was the son of God. Take your pick.

But don't try to reinvent what he said, or what he asked us to do, because what he said, and what he asked, aren't to your liking. What's the point??

A Moral Nation

2009-04-30T09:41:00.000-04:00

As usually happens when I ready anything by C. S. Lewis, I was struck with an insight - oddly enough, about politics, our President, and the nature of Christianity.

Lewis, in Mere Christianity, is discussing "love your neighbor as yourself." This is, as he rightly points out, not an easy concept for humans to wrap their arms around - no pun intended.

Typically, Lewis puts it in order for me: he asks us to consider how we love ourselves. He reminds us that we don't necessarily "like" ourselves or our actions all the time; we can be harsh in our judgement of ourselves. We can be impatient with ourselves when we fail, and we can demand that we do better the "next time."

Too often, he says, Christians think that "loving one's neighbor" means being all warm and fuzzy toward him, approving him, almost feeling "infatuated" with him. And of course, we can't do this with most people.

Christ wasn't expecting us to be all cuddly with everyone we encounter. Just as he cautioned us, again and again, to keep try - to "sin no more" - there is no reason why we can't expect the same from our neighbors. Just as we judge our lapses and falls from grace, try to obtain forgiveness (from God and ourselves), and try again - this is how we should be "loving" our neighbor as we "love" ourselves.

This got me to thinking about Obama's policy of non-judgemental interaction - bowing to the Saudi King, for example - as opposed to having moral standards that we live by, and while we may have to accept other standards as "real," this does not mean we have to accept them as "moral." We can and we should judge them as not meeting our standards.

"Judge" has become such a bad word. But in fact, we judge every day of our lives: we choose this restaurant over that; this brand of shoes over another; Winesap apples are better than Delicious. By our standards, one things fails to measure up to another.

So, we do not believe that stoning adulterers is appropriate. On the other hand, we can also believe that adultery is wrong - we can judge it wrong, without going all the way to stoning. We can acknowledge in a public arena that we disapprove of this behavior, and our relationship with anyone who indulges in it will be tempered by that behavior.

I had an argument with my sister and niece some years ago, when I was still off in exploratory mode. It was the typical intellectual elite versus fundamental Christian dispute: I said that any person who was honestly trying to live by his principles, his religion, was worthy of salvation; my niece argued that one religion was not as good as another. A religion that nodded to, for example, infibulation, was simply misguided, wrong, and not worthy of the same respect as Christianity.

Well, it could be argued that a lot of bad things have been done in the name of Christianity. Gays would argue that fundamental Christianity persecutes them, for example. And what about (pulling a few chestnuts out) The Inquisition or The Crusades?

The difference, I was reminded, is that Christianity does not recommend that gays be castrated in the name of purity. It simply suggests that they not act on their impulses, and that to do so is simply a sin like many others. While adultery may be a sin according to Christian morals, the punishment recommended is not stoning. (In fact, wasn't the heart of Christ's message, "I forgive you, I came here to die for you so that you could be forgiven, now go and don't do this again?"

That's a vastly different message from "We condemn you for this, we will now bury you up to your neck in the ground and throw stones at you."

How about the bad things done in the name of Christianity - Catholicism in particular? What about the Inquisition? While it's impossible to clear the Church's name where events like these are concerned, the more important point is: was the Church acting according to Christian principles when these things were done? Of course not.

These events were the result of an unhappy marriage between the Church and monarchies - a thing that the United States, at least, has been at pains to correct for. Even Catholics, who desire the Kingship of Christ, don't presume to want the Kingship of the Pope, for example. We know that's probably not a safe thing, as, much as he is the Vicar of Christ, and his representative on earth, he is still human, and is only "infallible" when speaking on matters of faith and morals, not when speaking on matters of politics and commerce.

So, getting back to "loving our neighbors," and our moral standards as both Christians, and as citizens of the United States: Obama's brand of tolerance is like my old, and I now think misguided notion that all paths to God are equal. The United States has to stand for decent, moral, humane behavior (we can get into torture another time). We may not always live up to our own standard, but we've got to try. (Just as, individually, we may not always live up to our own standards but we must judge both ourselves and our neighbors when we fall short - and we must expect the same behavior of both ourselves and our neighbors.)

A Fullness in God's House

2009-04-14T09:59:00.000-04:00

I realize that what I'm about to relate in this post is completely subjective, but here goes.

When I entered my Church on Good Friday I was struck by its emptiness. I know that this is at least in part because all the accoutrements of the altar are gone - the altar cloths, the candles, the reliquaries, the flowers. But it's more than that. There is a spiritual emptiness, as well.

Father instructed us in the seven last words, and between each instruction, we prayed. I was also struck by how much these prayers felt like the praying at the Protestant services I had attended from time to time. The praying itself was sincere - the sense of the presence of God was missing.

I went to Mass at my sister's NO church on Easter Sunday. And I was struck again, in a church decorated to the nines, and full of people, how empty that church was, as well. With the applause, with the people running up and down the aisles, with the guitar music (yes, guitar music) and hand shaking and Father singing a pop song while he consecrated (I think) the host, the church still felt empty.

I realize that I run the risk of fooling myself with this "feeling" thing.

I can only honestly say that when I enter our shabby little Church, there is a feeling of "fullness," which C.S. Lewis so perfectly describes in the Space Trilogy when he talks about how the main character feels in the presense of the Eldil (angels). I could no more run and shout, or applaud, or call across the room to a friend (all things I see in NO churches) that I could pull out a sandwich and eat it. My sense of "other" is far too great. Is this conditioned reflex? I don't know...

In a way, perhaps, it doesn't matter. Perhaps what matters is being open to the numinous. If little children are taught to behave with great deference in Church - to whisper, to genuflect, to pray quietly - then perhaps these very acts open our hearts to the presence of God, and then we can feel it more acutely. And if we just go about our ordinary business, while God is still there, and while yes, we should feel the presence of God in all that we do, perhaps we are not experiencing it as fully as we might.

And after all, isn't this what Sunday is all about? God is with us everyday, in everything that we do. Sunday Mass is setting aside time devoted utterly to Him, and as such, He is with us in a special way. It is a time when we should be doing something outside our ordinary routines.

I can't help but grieve again for all that the Church lost when it chose to give in to the pressures of the world.

A Beautiful Image for Holy Week

2009-04-10T11:16:00.003-04:00

Thanks to culturewarnotes

Mere Anarchy

2009-04-09T08:06:00.000-04:00

I read this feedback on a website this morning. The specific reference was to Tony Blair's taking the Pope to task for his "archaic" stance on homosexuality.

"This is why the bible should only be considered as an average novel, not literal instructions on how to live your life. What is immoral should be assessed by the values of the day and not be prescribed by an archaic book. To survive, we must modernise."

What's dangerous about this thinking is twofold:
1) all things "modern" become the next generation's "archaic."
2) simply adopting something "modern" is no guarantee that it will be better.

If we go down the road of "whatever, as long as it's new," we fail to grasp the concept of entropy. What is it the poet says?

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

- William Butler Yeats, from The Second Coming

Systems tend toward chaos. Society has persevered simply because some human do cling to "the old ways," and demand moral behavior that is not relative, but absolute. It is in the dynamic tension between the inevitible pull toward chaos, and this human tendency to absolutism (given by God?) that our survival subsists.

Read This!

2009-04-06T08:41:00.001-04:00

Such a good post here.

2009-04-03T16:31:00.002-04:00

Spiritual Muscle Building

2009-04-03T10:08:00.003-04:00

On Sundays, after Mass, our pastor holds Catechism class for adults. It's a wonderful addition to the day.

This past Sunday, he talked about defeating bad habits, and practicing virtue. He said you can do this in steps: first, get rid of the mortal sins. Then, the venial sins. Next attack the bad habits, and finally, start seeking out virtuous behavior.

I have to admit I never thought about it this way before - it's a bit like planning to run a marathon when you're not even running yet. Where to start? By walking each day, of course.

He even suggested keeping a notebook in your pocket, and when you catch yourself doing something you shouldn't and don't want to be doing, you mark it down. Keep track of the type and nature of the fault. A picture begins to emerge.

Another priest addressed the enumeration of sins in the confessional. I have to admit I had also never really understood why we are supposed to say what we did and how many times we did it. The how many times, I now see, is a clue to how ingrained this behavior is in our personalities, in our day to day lives. Of course we all lie. But do I lie ten or twenty times a day, or ten to twenty times per month?

I've said before, but I reiterate here: Thank God for these men who devote their lives to the salvation of our souls.

And it also got me thinking how our Church needs so much to return to this kind of pastoral care - really helping us find ways to be better people on a daily basis.

When I was about 10 or so, it struck me very forcefully that we modern humans are very comfortable with the idea of building our minds (school, study, books, etc.), and our bodies (workouts, running, gyms), but we gloss over and neglect our spiritual selves. We understand that learning and physical training will demand an element of discipline and pain: getting out and starting that run is not going to feel "good." Yes, I'll feel better after, but not for the first 6 or so minutes. Why do we expect that training our souls is going to be any different?

An even bigger question: why have we completely abandoned the idea that our spirits even need to be disciplined? We seem to shy away from that idea - or even reject it with hostile vehemence. The "do you own thing" of my childhood became "you're perfect as you are," and finally, "you are God," as if you were perfect and all powerful spiritually just the way you are.

It strikes me this is kind of absurd, and even dangerous. We know that our bodies will decline and become ill if we don't discipline them (watch what we eat, get exercise, etc.). We know that our minds will slow down if we don't keep them active (reading, practicing music, even playing games). Why would we presume to think that third leg of our selves is any less in need of a good workout?

I realized that the Catholic Church, with it's "medieval" practices of fasting, abstinence, Confession, penance, etc., was actually on to something. When I deny myself something, however small, I'm taking control of my spiritual self - I'm building my spiritual vocabulary, my soul's muscles. These small acts build up; eventually I can take on greater challenges. And the payoff is when something truly big comes up: I'm tempted to cheat on my taxes or my spouse, for example. Because I have practiced saying no, because I have taken the time and suffered the pain of spiritual muscle building... maybe I can reach deep and actually avoid this temptation.

The World's Ten Worst

2009-03-22T07:18:00.002-04:00

Just an observation:

In today's Parade Magazine, the worlds ten worst dictators are named.

None of them are Christian; certainly none are Catholic.

But if you read the press recently, you'd swear the Pope was on that list.

A Note to a Friend

2009-03-19T08:09:00.000-04:00

I wrote this to a friend when he worried that his fearful complaints had sounded a little crazy:

What else can we do but sit helplessly by and watch these clowns flounder miserably in their incredible ineptitude?

But seriously, I blame Bush & Co. as well as, perhaps more so, the thieves and scoundrels in Congress, for paving the way for this to happen.

If we can't learn to be responsible and exhibit a fragment of decency and honesty, then we'll, as they say, "reap the whirlwind." If businesses cannot police themselves, then they've in effect opened their doors for the government to rush in - as it's salivating to do, and has now done.

I don't care so much for me, though I feel a tad miserable at heading into my last act impoverished and uncertain, but I think about my kids and grandchildren, and wonder how on earth they're going to cope? What kind of a world are we handing off?

We eviscerated our Church because we were too selfish to want to obey its rules and we were so young and tasteless we didn't even know what incredible beauty it once offered; we've turned politics into glamor contests among jejeune poseurs; we've allowed government to regulate every aspect of our lives so that we can't even go sledding without a helmet and a permit; we've emasculated our culture - and let men remain children most of their lives, while women have become humorless, androgynous, angry harpies; we lie to our children routinely in school, teaching them not the truth but whatever nonsense is being spewed this year by the Ministry of Truth.

It's discouraging to say the least - and all we can do is rant a little to people who see it, too.

And I guess we can pray. One of the reasons I so treasure my little parish is that is really is like stepping back in time. The liturgy is intact. Our priests are tough and don't let you get away with anything - including caling them "Father Joe." I watched a nun go up the aisle to a child who was misbehaving and settle him down quickly. Boys are boys, girls are girls, and great respect is paid to the difference.

I don't think that everything from the past is "better" automatically. In order to thrive, every institution has to move and change as needed. So I'm sure the Church needed to address some issues at the time of VII. I do think that ecumenism needed to be addressed for the simple reason that life put us in touch with many more people than the average person came in contact with in 1850. Divorce had become a major problem for people who were now more routinely marrying out of the faith. If priests were getting lazy and sloppy in the way they offered Mass, or in instructing their congregations, then that needed to be looked at.

But what we got was another Protestant Reformation. Some day, long after you and I are gone, they'll have a name for this - when, I hope, the Church and society have recovered some sense (but usually it takes some kind of calamity for that to happen).

But in the meantime, I just complain (to relieve the pain), and pray (to hope for a better tomorrow).

A Rambling Rant

2009-03-11T10:09:00.001-04:00

I stumbled across an article by Lisa Sowle Cahill recently.

I'd never heard of her before, but she is a self-described "Catholic Feminist." (Yes, the quotes around this term mean I think this is a contradiction in terms.)

In this particular article, she was expressing dismay over the fact that many priests had taken to the pulpit (ok, they stood at a lectern...) and let their parishioners know that voting for a pro-abortion candidate was a sin in the eyes of the Church.

She took the position that abortion was just one issue among many, and that Catholics had to vote their consciences, and that support for life took many forms in light of "Catholic social justice" teachings, blah, blah.

The article was published in the National Catholic Reporter. What distressed me most in reading this article wasn't her opinions, sadly misinformed and selfish as I think them to be. It was the posts that followed that made me feel downright sad and confounded.

From people who classify themselves as Catholic came assorted comments about how "Nobody knows when 'ensoulment' occurs, therefore, it's ok to abort." (I couldn't resist, I wrote a rebuttal comment asking - if you don't know, then why would you ever take the chance that you missed it by a day and actually killed an 'ensouled' child rather than an 'unensouled' human being in utero?) Another writer insisted that "viability" was the determiner for when it is ok to abort. And I couldn't help but state the obvious - 100 years ago, viability was a vastly different thing from what it is today. And viability varies enormously from developing child to developing child. My huge and well-developed son might have survived on his own at 22 weeks; my more delicate daughter might not have survived at 25 weeks.

Then you have to ask the question: what about medical intervention? Neonatal care has advanced enormously, enabling children who, 100 years ago, would inevitably have died, to survive, thrive, and grow up healthy. Why is one child, born at 20 week and wanted the object of care, prayer, and enormous outlays of money and effort; a child aborted at 20 weeks is biomedical waste? Why is the first child a human being (with the rights of a human - if I were to burst into the neonatal care nursery and shoot this child, I'd be accused of murder) and the second child just tissue with no rights?

Does anybody but me see the pitiful, terrifying irony in all this?

This - the illogic of it all - was disturbing enough.

But the fact that these so-called "Catholics" were so vehement, so dismissive, so sure of themselves, about how it matters more to "care for the living mothers and children" than to protect the unborn. How sure they were of themselves about "Catholics have always been told to behave according to their consciences" (what they neglect, of course, is the part about "well-formed consciences," that is to say, consciences that are the result of knowing, understanding, and accepting the teaching of the Church).

I wonder who these people are, where they came from, and why do they claim to be part of the Catholic Church?

But then, I feel the same way when I read some of the passionate and ugly controversy surrounding the liturgy.

The so-called "extraordinary form" of the Mass - the Tridentine Latin Mass - was the normative Mass for hundreds of years. As others have pointed out, it was the liturgy that inspired and consoled many, many saints. It was a form of liturgy that developed in a direct arc from the Apostles. This is not to say that it is identical to what the first Christians did. Of course not. They were also hiding beneath the streets of Rome, or sequestered out of sight in caves.

But that's another article - my point here is the uninformed and ugly debate that goes on about it. Many Catholics in their 40s today don't even understand the older liturgy - and, failing to understand it, can't see how rich, beautiful, and full of the story of our Faith it is. But they insist - as I pointed out in a previous post about a woman complaining about the return of the "I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof" prayer - that "their" Mass is being degraded; "their" Church is being compromised.

Again I want to know: who are these people? Who taught them? Where did this new Catholicism come from? Since when is it ok for a Catholic to support abortion, in any form whatsoever? When did Catholics lose their love of saints, icons, devotions, (as the aforementioned "Catholic Feminist" writer put it, "magic formulas"), sacred space, Christ as King... I could go on and on.

Moreover, what's going to happen to the Church? How can the forces of tradition and the forces of neo-Catholicism ever be reconciled?

Pope Benedict is moving wisely - small step by small step, or as Father Zuhlsdorf (What Does the Prayer Really Say blog) says, "brick by brick." But even his small steps toward a restored, enriched Catholicism are being met with resistence and criticism.

When I'm confronted by this stuff, my first reaction is to debate it - to argue, to "prove" my case, to sit down and write an empassioned blog entry. And then I am overwhelmed by grief and helplessness. I feel as though the damage is too great, the split too profound, the change in belief too basic for these opposing forces to ever find common ground.

What next? I can only say I am glad that the Holy Spirit has guided us toward the Pope we now have. Surely this means something...

Inquisition Redux?

2009-03-02T10:19:00.000-05:00

(I also posted this on my main blog: The Emperor's New Clothes.)
Now, this really scares me:

"Williamson apologized for his remarks Thursday. But he did not say his comments had been erroneous, or that he no longer believed them.

He had denied 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and maintained that no Jew was gassed.

The Vatican on Feb. 4 said Williamson must "absolutely and unequivocally distance himself" from his remarks if he wants to be admitted as a prelate in the church."

The reference, of course, is to the SSPX Bishop Williamson, who was foolish enough to answer questions about his attitudes toward the Holocaust during a television interview.

Of course, the history of the Holocaust has absolutely nothing to do with his work as a priest. While some are trying to suggest that his read of history demonstrates that he is anti-Semitic, and that that is somehow going against his Church and its teachings, in point of fact, he is free to hold all manner of private opinions about history, art, music, food, etc., and not be in violation of his duties as a Catholic priest.

He was ordered to make a public apology, which he did.

This was not enough.

So here's what bothers me: we are ordering someone to say he believes something he does not believe. He does not believe the Holocaust took place. Why is an admission that it happened the only acceptable thing for him to say?

I assume it did, but here's a confession: I wasn't there. I don't know. I am told that it did by reputable historians, though it is true that nobody has a verifiable count for how many people perished. But likewise, I was not there for the Inquisition. I am told that it took place, even though there is a great deal of dispute over how many people were killed, how and why. I assume I am being told the truth. I wasn't there for the Crusades, and while I have been told that it was an aggressive move by the Church on the middle east, recent historians have disputed that, and suggested that it was not as one-sided a dispute as we have been led to believe.

My point is this: history, as we know, is written by the victors. Often, things are written in the light most favorable to those victors. Much later, we may revise that history in what we assume is a more honest fashion, but in truth, that revision may be as faulty as the original because it is written through yet another distorting prism. History is constantly being rewritten, questioned, poked at and prodded to evaluate it in the light of new ideas, attitudes, and discoveries. Historians know full well that what has been written into the history books is not necessarily what "really" happened.

I'm not suggesting that the Holocaust didn't happen. I believe it did, and it is a shameful chapter in human history. What I am defending the is the right of historians, professional and amateur, for whatever motivation, to re-examine the record as often, and as apparently foolishly as they wish. It is our obligation as free people to revisit history, to question the record, and to try to get the facts straight. So while we may not like the motivations for, or the outcome of, such an investigation, we should never forbid it.

Back to Williamson: How is forcing this man to make a public recantation any different from what was done to Galileo - a thing for which the Church has been castigated for hundreds of years? We say, "Oh, because Galileo was right!" But nobody - or at least, very few - knew that at the time. The evil was not what was said, but that he was forced to acknowledge something as true that he did not believe. Therefore, he was being forced to lie, publicly (which of course, Williamson is going to have a problem with as a Catholic priest) in order to save his skin.

Talk about the Inquisition! Aren't these the very tactics of that august body - let's just put you on the rack and torture you until you admit that you did something you didn't, or that you believe something you don't.

Williamson made a public apology for causing a scandal and embarassing his Church. That's as far as it needs to go. You can still think he's a crank for his beliefs, but unless we want to succumb to rule by the Thought Police, that ought to be enough.

Your God, My God, His or Her God

2009-02-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

I was reading an article today about Nancy Pelosi and the Great Abortion Confrontation, in which Nancy has supposedly been chastised by both the Pope and her Bishop about her outspoken support of killing babies in utero.

I was struck by this phrase: "that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god."

What exactly is "her God?"

I know we use the phrase, "My God," when we pray. But I think this usage claims association - it is a statement of affiliation, acceptance.

But this "her god" - oh, and note the lower case G on the "god." This really means, "one view of god among many that this particular woman claims ownership of."

Ok, that may be the case. But if Nancy is a Catholic, then she has a view of God (capital G) which is transcendant, and which she should also believe is the true understanding of God as He has revealed Himself to us.

So she's either saying there are many gods of equal value, or many personal interpretations of this vague numinous thingie, and what it wants from us is totally dependent on what any individual wants that to be - that is, "god" is really just a construct of each individual, having no will of its own. That's pretty much the prevailing secular notion of "god" as a relic of our primitive and superstitious past, isn't it? "God" is sort of a quaint Lares and Penates good luck charm whose friendly assistance we invoke when we're in trouble. (I always shudder when I hear news folks say, "Our prayers go out to so and so, to whom something bad just happened." Huh? Our prayers go out "for" so and so, perhaps... but certainly not "to!")

I can only hope that the Church continues to be steadfast in its vocal corrections of these so-called "Catholics" who choose to pontificate in public on matters they clearly don't understand - or worse, willfully mis-state.

Christian Economy

2009-02-17T15:16:00.000-05:00

"If there were such a society (ruled by Christian principles) in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious imprssion. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, "advanced," but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fasthioned - perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. You will find this again and again about anything that is really Christian: every one is attracted by bits of it and wants to pick out those bits and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further; and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity."
C. S. Lewis

Dumb Bloggers

2009-02-09T15:33:00.016-05:00

Here's a post from a "Catholic" blog that made me want to laugh/cry/spit up, simultaneously:

"

Great idea! Or not.

Oh boy. Just what the U.S. Catholic Church needs: one more apparently arbitrary change that directly affects lay members who are already on the brink of alienation.

Some of the changes they did adopt are minor, but in other cases Catholics will have to learn longer and more awkward versions of familiar prayers. For example, instead of saying, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you," in the prayer before Communion, they will say, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof."

Call me nutty (and I know many of you do -- it's OK; the feeling is probably mutual!), but the new translation seems to lose a lot of the meaning inherent in the old one. "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you" is broad enough that it could be taken to mean "into my heart," which is how I always thought of it. "Under my roof" adds jarring literalism that distracts from the intensely personal moment of "Yes, please, come in." Oh well. It's not my problem now. My sympathies are with those of you who will have to put up with it."

I'm going to be completely un-Christian here and say: what a dolt!

Here are the fruits of VII, folks - a CINO who has no idea why the words of the Mass were written as they were, how the liturgy has been mangled, denuded of meaning, and crippled in its ability to instruct, and who then magnifies her ignorance by posting it for all to see! She claims to be a "journalist," but made no effort to discover why that particular change in wording was being made - does the question "WHY?" never cross the mind of a professional "reporter??"

As one commenter finally pointed out, the original wording came from a Gospel in which a Centurion, seeking a healing, said to Christ, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof..." The words were lifted as written in the Gospel, and used in the prayer at Communion to express the deep faith of the man who originally said them. The faith that Jesus himself called out as the sort of faith we need in order to attain heaven. The whole point of repeating the words is to call to mind the Gospel and all of its meaning... not whatever made-up meaning the blogger chose to give it.

Which, of course, is/was/will be the danger of VII - that Catholics no longer understand the richness of their religion. They no longer know it, forget believe it.

Catholic-and-Water

2009-02-09T10:22:00.023-05:00

I went to an "EF" Mass on Sunday.

This is the Mass offered by the diocese to placate traditionalists.

There had, previously, been a small parish that practiced a traditional form of liturgy. It was a busy, vibrant little group - with a large choir struggling manfully to learn the Gregorian chant, devout regular parishioners, and even extra-curricular activities.

The diocese closed it down.

It was replaced with a "regular" Sunday Mass - at 4pm - in the basilica.

It's a low Mass. It's said on the main altar, behind the NO table, which obscures most of what the priest and servers are doing. The church, being extremely large, seems empty, and the parishioners are not quite sure what the postures are for them, and because they are spread out through a very large space, they are even more awkward and uncertain.

(There are five altars in this church - why don't they simply offer the Mass at one of the side altars, providing a more intimate feel, and allowing the priest to be seen, without trying to look through the "table?")

Why, for that matter, don't they offer a High Mass? It's Sunday, it's the main EF Mass of the day. The congregation could then sing the responses, and feel more a part of the Mass. The chant is not all that difficult to learn.

And then there was the sermon. I admit it - I sinned in my thoughts as I listened. It was not a sermon, it was a feel-good statement that "God is good and loves us, all of us, each and every one of us, no matter who we are or what we do."

Huh?

The gospel was the story of the householder who hires workers throughout the day, and at the end of the day, pays them all the same wage. The guys who worked throughout the day were not happy that they weren't paid a premium when they learned that the ones who worked only 1 hour got full pay. The householder says, that was the deal when you signed on.

The parable is about the fact that God will reward us all equally - with heaven - no matter when we sign up. And it goes on to say that "many are called, but few are chosen."

So the message really isn't about "God loves us all no matter who we are," it's about God's reward is what it is - eternal salvation - no matter when we come to it. And moreover, it's about the fact that while salvation is available to us all, "few" of us will actually find it. Wow! How different that is from the touchy-feely message of today - the "protestantized" message of universal, once and for all, salvation.

The Catholic Church always taught that Jesus' sacrifice was renewed again and again at the Mass, and that even after our baptism (the initial washing away of original sin) our salvation was not complete. We had to continue to earn it with our good life and our adherence to the Church. This is a very different message from what is being modeled now, and what is taught in Protestantism.

I'm not here to say what is "right." I'm just noting what I see going on - and what we were told at the EF Mass on Sunday.

I guess this is in part what the SSPX and others have been trying to say: it's not just the liturgy, though that is a huge part of what has happened. It's the other teachings, which have strayed far from what they had been. So even though there is an EF Mass available (however inconveniently, and however badly executed), it is still a watered-down version of Catholicism that is being taught.

Anti What?

2009-02-09T10:18:00.005-05:00

I'm having an interesting email "conversation" with a friend about the recent doings re: the SSPX. He commented that he had a problem with the apparent anti-Semitism in the SSPX. Here is what I wrote him:

Here's a question for you - what do you believe happens at the Consecration? I don't mean what we're taught... I mean, what do you really, really believe? It's not a trick question or anything... I am seriously just curious.

I think part of the problem with the anti-Semitism is that the truth is the Catholic Church was what we would now call "anti-Semitic" for a long time. Not in a vicious way, but there really was an attitude of, "Oh, the poor, benighted Jews. Bad things will continue to happen to them if they don't convert."

I remember that we were always to be a tad suspicious of anyone non-Catholic. Protestants were kind of like our slightly dumb cousins from the hills... or perhaps more appropriately, our girl cousin who ran off and married a dumb guy from the hills. She was family, but she had shamed us. Jews were "other," more like a branch of the same species from which we had diverged a long time ago because we wanted to move along with evolution and they didn't. But if we were not to participate in Protestant religious ceremonies, we were certainly not to participate in Jewish ones!

I understood that the issue wasn't that these were bad people - they were good people with the wrong information. We had two obligations where they were concerned from a religious point of view: convert them if you can, and do not be converted BY them. So all in all, you as a lay person are better off not spending a lot of time in spiritual conversation with them. * More on that later * I think that as little kids, the idea of "just stay away" was because little kids can get their heads full of ideas for which they have little frame of reference. As we get older and are more comfortable in who we are - and frankly, as our thinking has been more shaped, it becomes safer to engage with other ideas.

I think there are two things the SSPX has trouble with, and I think that the interpretation of these things is "anti-Semitism." One is what I've stated above - the SSPX still holds to the old Catholic notion, the pre-ecumenical notion, that if it is dangerous to have too many deep discussions with people of other faiths, it is even more dangerous to say, "This religion, that one, what difference does it make?" (If that is so, then why be anything at all? That's not a challenging question, it's actually something I've spent a lot of time wrestling with.) The other thing they object to is what they call "modernism," which is actually something all priests of Lefebre's and even Fellay's era took an oath against. (They were required to as part of their seminary training.) Lefebre took it seriously. It said that we had this body of belief that was solid and for the most part unchanging, passed along from the Apostles who got it straight from Christ. It was not to be tampered with - "Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely." (You can Google Anti-Modernist Oath and read the whole thing if you haven't already. I might even have taken it for all I remember...)

So anyway... Lefebre said, what can I do? I swore an oath, how do I go back on that and now say that all religions are equally valid paths to God, and other things that VII is leading toward?

So he and the SSPX continued to teach that the Jews were wrong to reject Jesus, and that the Protestants were wrong to break away from the Church, and that we should probably not spend a lot of time in philosophical conversation with them, because if they had erred in not accepting the Church, then who can we blame but Satan?

So then you have this tangle of a goofball like Williamson, who actually does say a lot of crazy things (but of course, you also have a goofball like Mahoney who has dancing girls perform in front of him while he sits on a throne.... check out the photos). We take his personal goofy notions (that the Holocaust was not as severe as is made out - he never "denied" it, btw, he just said it wasn't that many people who were killed in gas chambers) and we merge them with the old Church teaching that we, as Catholics, believe that the Jews and the Protestants and so on are wrong, and the whole picture adds up to "anti-Semitism."

I am no SSPX scholar - I just attend the Mass there because it is reverent and beautiful. But I do know that in the years that I've gone to Mass there, I have never heard a word from anyone anti-Jew or anti-Pope. The Pope is prayed for at every Benediction - "Tu es petra, etc." And the only time the Jews are mentioned is in readings from the Bible and when they are prayed for.

* On a personal note, I have to say that I think there is something to my mom's old dictum "Marry a Catholic." A fully "modern" woman, I was sure that religion didn't matter - that you could marry anyone and it wouldn't matter. My experience has taught me that I was dead wrong about that. I married a Jewish man, and I can only tell you that his world view was 180 degrees opposite from mine. Some of it was him, personally, I'm sure, but I also think that a lot of it was the way he was raised - with what values and attitudes. And our association did not make me a better person, but dragged me down into a mode of life that was nothing I am proud of. He was comfortable with it - I was not!

I think this is what the Church, what my mom, were trying to tell me. I had been raised, for better or worse, to believe that humans are corruptible, and that we have to try all the time to do good, to be conscious of God, and to be alert to the pulls of what we can call Satan or our worse natures. He thought that anything he wanted, whenever and wherever he wanted it was ok, as long as you a) didn't get caught and b) it didn't effect you materially (therefore, for example, the reason you didn't have sex with a 16 year old was because if you got caught you'd be in terrible trouble and would not be able to earn a good living... it was not about the harm done to the kid, or the existential "wrongness" of the deed, it was about the harm done to you). This thinking was so utterly different from mine, and as I said, my association with him didn't make him a better person (and honestly I did try... not in a religious sense, but in a personal sense), it made me a worse person.

So I think there was a good reason why the Church tried to keep its people somewhat insular. It's hard to resist the pulls of the world. It's hard to say no to yourself. It's frankly hard to believe that there is a God, and that Jesus Christ is His incarnation, and that we have a direct contact with him.

So the question is - is it better for us to open the doors to all kinds of ideas, or is it better for us to focus on what we believe?

You and I would say open the doors - because that's what we were taught in school - that it is narrow-minded and ignorant to not look with an open mind at all ideas. Part of me is pulled very strongly to that. But... I had 9 years of old-fashioned parochial school. I had a foundation. I had something I could compare all the new ideas to. I did lose my faith in the process of all that examination - but the pull of it was somewhere in there. The idea of it was always there as something against which to contrast all the new thinking. Nothing I found in all my exploration came anywhere close to the peace and focus and frankly, value to my own way of life that I have found in the Catholic Church. And nothing else ever gave me the experience of the numinous like the Catholic Church.

SSPX Excommuniations Lifted, But Bishop Williamson is Still Not Honest

2009-01-26T11:09:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, January 24, 2009, Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops, deo gratias.

And the press was chock full of Bishop Williamson's holocaust denial.

This is such a great example of how the press simply does not understand - not Catholicism, not anything.

What Bishop Williamson thinks about the holocaust has absolutely nothing to do with his position in the Church, and his ability to offer the sacraments. It is stupid, ill-informed, foolish, and does not do honor to his office of Bishop. But it has nothing to do with the Pope's lifting of the excommunications.

In effect, the Pope is saying that as the old liturgy was never "abrogated," that is to say, it was never forbidden and never replaced, these priests continuing to offer it, and to insist upon it being offered, was not "wrong," and was certainly not an excommunicable offense.

He is not suggesting that everything any of them ever said is right, is not sinful, is not worthy of reproach, and doesn't make him look like a fool. He is simply saying they have done nothing worthy of excommunication.

A murderer is not necessarily excommunicated.

Bishop Williamson is a liar. Lying is not an excommunicable offense.

Would that the press would understand this, and concentrate on why the excommunications were lifted, and treat the holocaust story as a separate issue.

The Priestly Tradition

2009-01-05T10:18:00.000-05:00

Reading an entry in What Does the Prayer Really Say blog. It's about lay people administering blessings, and whether it is appropriate for them to do so, particularly during the distribution of Holy Communion.

Of course, in my traditional Mass, there is no question of this - only the priests distribute Communion.

The comments following the post were most interesting. While most people were opposed to the idea of lay people imitating priests and giving blessings, Father Z went a step further and reminded us that Communion was probably not the place to be giving blessings, though it has become common for small children to be blessed if they come up with their parents. (In my church, Father will bless little ones who come to the altar rail with mom and dad.)

One wag wrote, "TJM, so when a layman asks a blessing of God, He plugs his ears and yells “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU”? Just checking."

Of course, it's a good point. Surely God doesn't ignore anyone who asks a blessing on anyone else.

But that's not really the point. The point is the degradation of the office of the priest.

Like it or not, Catholicism is a priestly religion. Priests act as intercessors to God. In the case of Catholicism, they act "in persona Christi," (I think I've spelled that right!). That is, "in the person of Christ" for the rest of the people. They offer the sacrifice of the Mass, in the name of the people assembled. We come out of a tradition that consecrated certain people (priests) to the service of God. We have tabernacles - literal dwelling places for the Lord - in our Churches. We have sacraments, which only priests are qualified to administer except in the most grave and extraordinary circumstances (imminent death, for example). And even then, a lay person cannot absolve sin.

I'm not exactly sure why there is a desire on the part of modern Catholics to get rid of the priesthood.

Maybe "priest" smacks of "ancient and therefore unenlightened." Certainly among many of the "educated," priests are always villains. I had a conversation with a man the other night, and he was castigating the Catholic priesthood for its horrible predatory ways. I tried the best I could to defend not the actions of the sinning priests, but the priesthood in general. But in essence, he was really suggesting that people become priests to gain an unnatural power over the rest of us, and this "abuse of children" is just symptomatic of that.

How could I explain the gratefulness I feel when I watch the priests in our Church hear Confessions for an hour, then celebrate Mass, deliver a 40-minute, well-thought-out sermon (I can tell you as an actor, this requires a tremendous amount of energy!), then teach a Catechism class, then travel and hour to another mission church to go to it all again. And this is just Sunday. They have given up all the comforts of home, wife, children, in order to help save my soul. They have dedicated themselves to the service of God, and to my welfare. They are special. They can do special things that the rest of us cannot do by virtue of this dedication. It is, in my view, small compensation for all they have given up - but then, I'm not a priest. For these men, I am sure, to be able to hold the Blessed Sacrament in their hands, to be able to "make" it so, is more than enough for all that they have to sacrifice. It is their calling in life.

Why have the Catholic faithful become so self-centered, so self-important, that we can't live with this?

For God So Loved the World

2009-01-01T18:10:00.001-05:00

Trying to be God-centered in this world is very difficult; I also find that some people talk about it, but don't really mean it - it is almost like a badge they like to wear without having earned it. One of the things that C. S. Lewis stresses is the sternness of Christianity, the manliness of it - it is not a religion for wimps, even though modern man has made it seem that way, including much of the Catholic Church. I am lucky enough to attend the old Mass, but even at the new mass I find it all about how wonderful we are and how much God loves us - but loves us in a gooey, sweetie-pie way. And I think... wait a second! This is a God who humbled himself by assuming our form, and then dying a horrible, humiliating death, because we were so wretched in our behavior, and doomed otherwise. If a dad ran into a burning house and pulled out his child and died of horrible burns himself, we would not think, awww, how sweet! We would think, what a brave and loving father! What a wonderful man! (The new mass doesn't even refer to it being a "sacrifice" but stresses the "meal" aspect of it, as if this were not a great and terrible thing we were witnessing, but just having a Happy Meal!)

For that reason, I loved Lewis' Narnia books - Aslan (the Christ figure) was strong, and noble, a true teacher. He loved his friends, and they loved him desperately, but it was always with respect and the knowledge that he could destroy them in a moment...

And he demands them to be strong and bold, not wishy-washy and soft. I just finished reading Goodbye, Good Men, about the crisis in vocations in the Church, and while the thought is not new (to me, or to many), it was re-inforced in reading it: the Church has been feminized out of all proportion.

The Faith as I knew it as a child was not a Faith for the faint of heart. It required discipline, self-sacrifice, self-awareness, difficult challenges (you really were expected to be celibate until marriage, for example, or for life if you chose a religious life), and plenty of time devoted to God, services, prayer, and practicing your religion. (Today, for example, our sermon was an hour - an hour - long! I mentioned to someone recently how long our sermons are - usually 30-40 minutes, and he said, "I wouldn't like that." Awww.) Fasting, abstaining, penance, financial deprivation, personal sacrifice - these things were expected of a Catholic.

Now, it's all about me, how I feel, my "community," sharing a meal of love and brotherhood, standing rather than kneeling (it is both uncomfortable and beneath my "dignity" to kneel - come on, guys, this is GOD we're talking about!), my personal fulfillment (I'm a woman and I want to be a priest, and I don't care what Jesus did, or about 2000 years of tradition... I want to be a priest, so I can wear vestments and stand up on the altar, rather than be "second best!").

I remember reading The Nun's Story when I was a child. It was one of my favorite books, because I wanted to be a nun, and it described in great detail what the life of a sister was all about. I read this book probably 40 times, all told.

In one particular episode, Sister Luke (our heroine), who is a very good medical student (she is studying to be a nurse), is asked to fail her examinations. She is asked to do this because another sister has become jealous of her skill and intelligence. The Mother Superior feels that Sister Luke's act of self-mortification will be good both for Sister Luke's pride, and for the other sister's spiritual crisis.

Sister Luke feels that this is a waste, and that she is more valuable to the Church if she passes her exams and goes to the missions as a nurse. She compromises by doing less well than she is capable of doing so that the other nun outscores her, but not so badly that she fails.

I struggled with that request. Could I have so humiliated myself? I doubt it. But the old Church, and God, would not hesitate to ask us for these kinds of sacrifices. We were expected to "man up" and do it.

Today, in our long, long sermon, Father said, we should be joyful when God sends us trouble. He sends it to us for our good - he is the author of troubles. We should say thank you, and see these as opportunities to grow, and to have something we can offer God to demonstrate our friendship and willingness to bow to his will.

How many times have I said in recent months, "I submit to your will, just show me what it is." And perhaps He is showing me what it is, I just don't like what I see... so I keep waiting for it to be something else. Something not so painful for me.

Yes, God is about love - and there is a tender quality to God's love. But it is also very much the love of a father - and while mothers nurture and love unconditionally, father's love was, at least in the old view of things, based upon conditions. Dad expected us to perform: he set standards, and we tried to live up to them.

He was the one who, no matter how many times we fell off our bike, would pick us up, set us back up on the seat, and say, "Try again."

And most of the time, we did. And sooner or later, we learned to ride the bike.

Not New But Relevant

2008-12-25T15:11:00.000-05:00

I am reading a series of essays by James Hitchcock, about the Church in the 70s and 80s. For all that they were reactions to Vatican II (which took place during the 60s), they might have been written yesterday.

One essay about abortion, "Abortion and the Moral Revolution," is particularly interesting.

Hitchcock observes, " THe new orthodoxy (the new popular opinion) fits closely with the reality of class conflict, already discussed, in that this orthodoxy is essentially located in what has often been called the "new class" - those persons who regard themselves as enlightened and emancipated in their opinions and who are maximally receptive of new ideas. In essence these people believe that moral belief, although necessary to society, is also dangerous because of the passions it arouses. Publicly they espouse the idea of relativism and equal toleration of all opinions, in order to dampen possible outbreaks of moral passions of which they disapprove. In practice, however, they concede to themselves the sole right o have moral passions, the sole right to mount moral crusades. Moral passion is treated as a dangerous substance which must in effect be licensed."

As anyone who has ever expressed a non-PC opinion derived from a moral conviction knows, the writer is right on target here. This is particularly the case with abortion. But the writer goes on to discuss anti-abortion feelings and the political scene. This really struck home for me:

"Since the late 1960s there has been talk of a "conscience constituency": in American politics, meaning an element among voters which shuns traditional party loyalties and traditional considerations of economic self-interest in favor of political behavior based on the perceived moral importance of particular issues. These are issues - war, racism, poverty, ecology, the "Third World" - which ordinary politics either takes little interest in or seeks to avoid, precisely because they are emotional and divisive.

"The intense hatred which many "new politics" people have for the antiabortion movement stems form their feeling that the kind of people who are opposed to abortion, especially if they are demonstrably religious, have no right engaging in moral crusades. Such crusading is permissible only if directed toward subjects which have been certified as genuine issues of conscience. Conceiving themselves as authentic keepers of the public conscience, such people are rendered angry and frightened at the prospect of others - the wrong kind of people - claiming the authority of conscience for their own concerns.

"Those "single-issue" voters who have allowed their political loyalties to be guided solely by considerations involving, say, war or the Equal Rights Amendment, are commonly admired, within the "conscience constituency," for their purity, even if their single-mindedness is sometimes thought a bit short-sighted. Those who cast their ballots solely on the question of abortion, however, are accused of being dangerous fanatics and threats to the democratic system, the remedy for such a threat being a renewed sense of party loyalty, in which antiabortion voters would not hold politicians accountable for betraying them."

In this most recent election, I was pretty up-front about my inability to support Obama first and foremost because of his position on abortion. I had one very telling discussion with a man who, when questioned, agreed that late-term abortion was tantamount to murder. He agreed that if Obama supported it, he would have a problem with that. Even though Obama supported it verbally, and even though he promised to rescind the ban of partial-birth abortions as soon as he attained office, this man insisted that because Obama did not cast an actual vote (he politically voted "present" rather than go on record), he could not find Obama guilty of supporting murder.

Moreover, this man, and others, insisted that I was being dumb, irresponsible, and, as the article mentions, short-sighted by voting a single issue: abortion.

My answer? A respect for human life - a belief that human life is somehow more valuable than anything else on earth, and that it should always be protected - is central to all our other understanding of life, politics, culture, art - simply put, a valuing of human life is central to everything we do, are, stand for, and are likely to become. This is not to say that issues of war and ecology are not important - they are. But, particularly in the case of war, they are important for one reason: they are harmful to human life.

We might argue that our responsibility to manage the ecology transcends human life, and so it does. Still, absent human life, many of the most powerful destructive forces in the universe and on this planet - fires, volcanoes, tidal waves, comets, novas, and so on - would continue to kill, to change ecologies, and to punish innocent animal life, without our expert help.

But as to all the rest - I still maintain that if we truly respect human life above all, most of the depredations we so fear and loathe - murder, greed, theft, torture, war, and so on - would, if not disappear, be minimalized, without the need for political intervention.

Chicken? Or Egg?

2008-12-16T09:25:00.000-05:00

It occurred to me a while ago that perhaps the reason there are so many Christ-like stories in world mythology is that we were designed to "recognize" that story - because it is the truth.

At Mass on Sunday another thought struck me - perhaps the odd fact that we must eat to survive is linked to our spiritual need to consume the body and blood of Christ. Why weren't we created to manufacture our food from the sunlight, air, and perhaps minerals from the soil the way plants do? Why this necessity to keep consuming plant and animal life? Many think it odd that Christians, Catholics in particular, "eat" their Savior. But maybe it's just all of a piece.

Interestingly, in Mere Christianity, which I am reading now (slowly - there is so much to think about!), C. S. Lewis points out that God did, indeed, choose to create us as creatures who must eat to survive, and must have sex to procreate. He might have made many other choices, but these are the ones He chose. That is simply the way it is.

So I can't help wondering if we (perhaps I should say, social and other scientists) persist in looking at things backwards: we don't discount the Christ story because it has been told in other cultures, but in fact we recognize the thread of human truth in it; we don't discount the Christian notion of Holy Communion as bizarre and superstitious but rather we see the perfect symmetry of our need to consume to live - both spiritually and physically. What other method might God have chosen in order to demonstrate to us our need for Him as the sustenance of our spiritual lives?

Icons

2008-11-24T09:26:00.000-05:00

I had a new friend, and I went to meet his family.

The family were Catholic. So, nominally at the time, was I. Their house was full of icons: a cross on the wall, a statue of the Blessed Mother, an Infant of Prague stood in one bedroom.

Inwardly, I scoffed.

I had been trained to do this, but didn't realize it at the time. I was smart, educated, worldly. I read books, studied philosophy. This kind of thing - this "iconolotry" - was for peasants. Clearly, these people had a peasant strain in them.

Boy, was I wrong. Certainly not for the first time, and surely not for the last.

Of course, you have to be willing to submit yourself - without assurance, science, or proof positive - to a belief that there is something more to our existence than live, scramble for food, procreate (maybe), die, and disappear forever. But having once submitted, it isn't over. The submission, the surrender, is continual. It must be done again, and again. It's like love. Real love, of course, not "falling" in love. It must be done again and again, in the face of doubt, despair, anger, pain and sorrow. And while it's never quite as difficult as the first time (the submission), it never gets easy.

Icons, a particularly Catholic thing, are nothing more than signposts. They are like little arrows scratched on trees in the woods, assuring you that you're on the right path back home.

I recall one night driving from Geneva to Dijon. The road was rural, the night was dark, and we had no idea of where we really were. We drove along in the dark, hoping we were headed in the right direction. With welcome relief, we finally came upon a road sign with the welcoming arrow and kilometre measure. I can't tell you what a happy sight that simple sign looming in the headlights was.

Touching a rosary in your pocket, seeing a statue on your bedside table, or a little cross on the wall as you leave your house in the morning is the same sort of sensation. It's just a reminder that you're on a path headed somewhere, and that you haven't lost your way. It's a chance to refocus, to set your mind again on God, make that little act of surrender. Just for one more day.

Sinful Vote?

2008-11-17T14:05:00.000-05:00

During the announcements at Sunday's Mass, our priest stood on the pulpit and explained to us that if we had voted for Obama in the recent election, we should go to Confession before we tried to receive Communion - he was unequivocal about the fact that by voting for a man who outspokenly defended and endorsed abortion (at any and all stages) we were committing a mortal sin. I was surprised, but I can only say that I am profoundly grateful that some of our priests and even some of the American bishops have found the courage to be forthright about our obligations as Catholics.

I just don't understand how anybody, Catholic or not, can think that unless we respect human life - at whatever stage - anything else matters.

Love and Kindness

2008-10-20T09:30:00.002-04:00

I am listening to a book that compares the life and works of Sigmund Freud (atheist and father of psychoanalysis) and C. S. Lewis (Catholic apologist and noted author and scholar).

There is much more to say about the comparison, but I was struck by a discussion of C. S. Lewis' confrontation of grief (when his wife, Joy, passed away) and his eventual understanding of pain, life, and God.

I hope that I can do this justice in recollection:

God made the universe, and us creatures. As the Bible puts it, He "so" made the world - that is, He also created the laws that govern it. (In the Narnia books, as the White Witch and Aslan confront one another, they *must* adhere to the laws that govern even the magic.) And while God is omnipotent, there are things, as Lewis points out, that even God cannot do, such as answer nonsense questions. And in general, God does not interfere with the laws of the universe that He has created.

Wishing for us, his creatures, to choose to love and serve Him, God gave us free will, thus introducing the possibility of "un-good" into the universe. "Un-good," or evil, is choosing not to do the will of God.

Above all, God wishes to love us - that's why He created us. But He wants to love creatures that are worthy of that love. Now here is an interesting problem - modern culture tells us that unconditional love is the ideal. That is, "I love you just the way you are." And to an extent, that is true. If you love someone, you are supposed to love him without trying to change him.

But that is not the same thing as love which demands the best from the beloved - the perfection of the beloved. If I love you, and I see you gaining weight rapidly, I am concerned for your health and wish you to stop this. Or if I see you drinking excessively, I might interfere. And in both cases, certainly in the latter, if your behavior persisted I might withdraw my love - or at the very least the expression of it - if you could not stop the behavior.

Lewis points out that there is a difference between the human notion of "kindness" and the Godly idea of Love. Anyone who has contemplated the problem of human suffering and pain cannot have escaped the question: "How could a loving God permit such a thing? If God is truly all-powerful and all-good, why would He let His creatures suffer so?" I used to ask this question in terms of my own parenthood - "I would not let my children suffer like this, how can God?"

Lewis says that what we are experiencing is kindness, not love. Love, he says, is "more splendid and more stern." Love wishes to perfect the beloved. Love demands that the beloved be the best he can be - thus a parent who is being kind to his child might give way to his fear of the dentist, but a parent who loved his child would insist that he go and deal with the fear and pain.

So in our daily lives, we will experience pain and suffering, and we use this as a means of perfecting ourselves. We find the reason for it, or we endure it. The Catholic Church (at least, when I was a child) suggested that you "offer up" your suffering to the suffering Christ - Jesus suffered profoundly, and His human nature even cried out to God in despair as He hung on the cross.

So in our own lives we urge those we love to be their best selves, and we do nothing to interfere with them becoming their best selves. We do not use kindness as an excuse to fail in our love for them.

Nancy Pelosi: Hypocrit of the House

2008-08-29T08:47:00.004-04:00

I'm both horrified and gratified. Horrified that Nancy Pelosi made such a stupid remark to Tom Brokaw on August 24th's Meet the PressI. I don't really need to to into the details, as it's been played repeatedly, and discussed repeatedly.

But I'm also gratified that it happened, for selfish reasons.

1. I was right in a post I made to this blog during the Pope's visit to the U.S. when I said that the behavior of Catholic politicians was tantamount to Henry VIII demanding that the Church bow to him. Catholic politicians are now stating "Church doctrine," which is not Church doctrine at all (in the first place), and is not their purview (in the second place).

2. The dispute is out in the open. Prior to this, most people who don't know what the Church teaches could be led astray with comments like Pelosi's.

3. The Bishops have actually had the strength of character and faith to actually confront her!

Now I only hope that they will go further and outright condemn this kind of c***.

Actually, I don't argue the abortion case on the strength of the human being having a "soul." I argue it on the strength that human beings are exceptional, self-aware creatures, and if we start categorizing them as "wanted" or "unwanted," how far are we from Nazi Germany?

I don't support the death penalty, either, but not so much because of the "worthy of life" argument. I think if someone has committed a truly heinous act (killing a little child, for example), they've pretty much made themselves unworthy to be among the rest of us. On the other hand, I don't want to give that kind of power to state. If we let the state decide who has the right to live and who should die... well, Nazi Germany again.

I think there is plenty of argument against abortion without bringing religion into it - and it's probably counter-productive when it is brought in, because then it is too easy for pro-abortion folks to dismiss the position.

Now, Pelosi has a point - the Church I grew up in did counsel us that we all have a free will and a conscience - it was hoped that this was a "Catholic" conscience, which would guide us along Catholic principles. So, if we were starving and had no money, would it be a major sin to take an apple? Probably not - but this would be an area for one's conscience. If I killed my child (at whatever state of development) is not a matter of my conscience deciding the right or wrong of the matter. This is a mortal sin, by any measure, in the Catholic Church.

I stopped practicing the Faith many years ago because I couldn't justify what I was expected to do, and I couldn't live up to it. I felt it would be hypocritcal to attend Mass and the Sacraments if I was not able to at least try to live up to the rest of the program.

Nancy Pelosi should do the same.

A New Catholic Blog

2008-08-12T12:23:00.000-04:00

I've decided to create this new blog to give full attention to issue to do with matters catholic and Catholic. The Church had been a huge part of my life growing up, but thanks to Vatican II and more particularly the aftermath, I was disaffected for a long time. Thanks to the unswerving dedication of the SSPX (about which much more to come!), it again is a huge part of my life, Deo gratias!

Italian Lady at a Latin Mass

2008-08-12T12:22:00.000-04:00

First Published: Monday, July 21, 2008

This Sunday at Mass I sat next to an elderly woman who was clearly Italian. During some portions of the Mass, she read from an Italian devotions booklet. However, when the congregation read or sang responses (Et cum spiritu tuo, etc.), she joined in, clearly understanding where we were in the Mass.

I write this as a good laugh on all the NO people who insist that "in the bad old days" there were so many "little old ladies" in the pews, reciting their rosaries, and not understanding what was going on in the Mass.

I also write this to reinforce the idea that for someone who does not understand the local language, having Mass in Latin can be a real grace - it can be one place where you will always feel at home, and understand what is happening.

The Multicultural Church

2008-08-12T12:21:00.001-04:00

First Published: Thursday, May 15, 2008

I found this on the "New Liturgical Movement" blog. It is about how the traditional Catholic Church's chant and plainsong was so much more multicultural than the new, vernacular, modern, "inclusive" Church. Multicultural in that all members of the Church had the same experience, could speak the same "language," worshiped with the same words, and felt at home in Church wherever they went. The Church transcended cultural differences, it did not pander to them.

The fact is, the Church was founded in Israel under Roman rule. It grew up and flourished under Rome and in Europe. That it spoke Latin, and built churches that reflected European culture was apparently as it was ordained. Jesus did not found his church in the Sahara, or the Orient, or the Americas. But church members were expected to take this church, this experience of the numinous, and spread it to the world - and for better or worse, that included the language, the vestments, the rituals, and the architecture. Well, here, this blogger says it better:

Multiculturalism. The other day I met a priest from Uganda who was visiting the United States for the first time, and the topic quickly turned to music. He sang a Kyrie and I picked up on it, then I sang a Sanctus and he knew that one too. We then turned to propers and sang some of those. It was an instant connection of two completely different worlds. There is no other music that is capable of engendering that type of total global unity. The Catholic Church is a universal Church and we need universal liturgical forms that reflect that.

It is easy to tell the difference between fake multiculturalism and the real thing. The fake kind ends up being patronizing of other cultures, a disguised form of elitist imperialism in which we conjure up what we imagine what the foreign peoples of the world—aggregating their class interests—might desire. The real form deals with reality, and the reality in Catholic music for the world is that chant is the great unifying force. And by the way, this applies to issues of age as well. It is the music that unites the generations.

Nancy Pelosi to Slap the Holy Father!

2008-08-12T12:19:00.000-04:00

First Published: Thursday, April 17, 2008

I've been watching - and really enjoying - Showtime's The Tudors series on Sunday nights. We all know that Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, establishing himself as Head of the Church in England. We know that he did this for ostensibly personal reasons - he wanted to divorce and remarry (repeatedly). But there was a climate of religious rebellion in Europe at the time that went far beyond Henry's willful actions.

Watching this series, I am caught up in the intrigues, the politics, and the power plays that lived behind the scenes, both on the side of the Church, and the various nationalities involved in what would later be known as The Protestant Reformation.

And then I happened to read an article this morning about how Nancy Pelosi and other wayward "Catholics" intend to humiliate the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, and the Church, by presenting themselves to receive Holy Communion when he offers Mass in Washington, D.C. Here's the story:

"Benedict's stance on abortion and Communion has been painful for elected officials who inhabit the troubled zone where Catholicism and their political beliefs intersect.

Pelosi was one of 48 Catholic lawmakers — some who support and some who oppose abortion rights — who signed a letter in 2004 complaining about statements by "some members of the Catholic hierarchy."

"If Catholic legislators are scorned and held out for ridicule by Church leaders on the basis of a single issue, the Church will lose strong advocates on a wide range of issues that relate to the core of important Catholic social teaching," they wrote. "Moreover, criticism of us on a matter that is essentially one of personal morality will deter other Catholics from entering politics, and in the long run the Church will suffer." (So in other words, if Catholic legislators are asked to live up to the rules of their religion, they will quit the Church? And if they want to avoid the scorn and ridicule, all they need do is not show up for Holy Communion!)

None of the Catholic lawmakers interviewed Wednesday said they hesitated to attend Thursday's celebration of Mass. This event, they said, is about bigger themes and values, such as hope and compassion."

And it dawned on me that I am watching a power play no less enormous than Henry's when he demanded that the clergy of England swear fealty to him, above their oath of allegiance to the Church. They caved. The question is, what will Benedict do?

The Epistle for This Sunday

2008-08-12T12:16:00.000-04:00

First Published: Sunday, December 30, 2007

The Epistle for this Sunday (the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas) brought an idea into focus for me.

The Epistle reads this way: Brethren: As long as the heir is a child, he differs in no way from a slave, though he is the master of all; but he is under guardians and stewards until the time set by his father. So we too, when we were children, were enslaved under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under teh Law, that we might receive tee adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba, Father." So that he is no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, an heir also through God."

The message made me think of a plot line for a sci-fi story, in which evolution and God's creation were indeed one; God chose a point in the evolution of man to imbue him with his Godlike qualities, and as man has grown and developed his mind and his faculties over time, he is being brought closer and closer to his own divinity.

Well, in fact, it is no sci-fi at all - whether in that way exactly, or in another, whether we were created perfect and fell away, or created imperfect with the job of moving forward, we are here to become better and better in all ways so that one day we can be worthy of the presence of God.

7/7/07

2008-08-12T12:14:00.000-04:00

First Published: Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The long-awaited Motu Proprio of Benedict XVI has been released, and I think it is just the beginning of what will likely be a recovery for the Catholic Church.

Bear with me on this: one of my big problems with Liberalism (progressivism) is there is no stopping point. Joseph Bottum put it very well when he said his turn toward Conservatism came because he reached a place (abortion) beyond which he could not go. If you examine most of the arguments for Progressivism, it's clear that there are no stopping points.

If the definition of "marriage" s not a man and a woman creating a family, but is a (lifetime) commitment between two people who love one another, then why not a man and his daughter, a woman and her sister? Why bother to sanction the state at all?

If the definition of human is not the human being at every stage of development from conception to death, but is "worthwhile" or "happy" or "productive" or "able to live on its own," then we can discuss the continued life of old people, retarded people, people who have lost their limbs, Alzheimer's patients.

As usual, the progressives want to open the doors as they see fit, not as the doors are likely to be opened once the limits are removed. Yes to Gay for marriage. No to fathers and daughters. At least for now. Yes to aborting human fetuses,no to routinely offing the wheel-chair bound. For now.

So with the Catholic Church. The idea behind Vatican II was ostensibly to "open the window" and let the bracing air of modernity into an ancient and yes, in some ways, creaky institution. But as Benedict clearly knows, once under way, the changes became their own excuse. The Church, essentially, disappeared. There were no real differences between the post VII Church and most Protestant sects. Argue though they will that there is still "the Real Presence" in the Eucharist, the behavior of the "people of God" at Sunday Mass would suggest that these people thought otherwise: if you really believed that was Jesus in the Host, would you be showing up for Mass looking like you just rolled out of bed? Would you bolt out the door still chewing the Host? If you really believed the Church was God's authority on earth, would you go to Mass at Easter, but then talk in favor of abortion?

It's not easy to be a Catholic. I abandoned the Church following VII, and when I later found a traditional Church and felt as though I wanted to return, I wrestled for a long time with my willingness to try to be at Mass every single Sunday, to go to Confession, to change my open attitudes toward relationships, what movies to see, and so on. It's a commitment, a way of approaching life. And it sounds like Benedict is going to ask that we work a little harder at it than we have been.

We've Got "The Cookies"

2008-08-12T12:12:00.000-04:00

First Published: Monday, January 22, 2007

I was emailing with a friend recently, who, like me, returned to the Church after many years absent, and a life of spiritual inquiry. He said he felt that many religions had value, but that Catholicism - Roman Catholicism - was for him because it had "the cookies." That is, The Eucharist.

I actually didn't even really react to that. When I was a child, had I heard someone refer to Holy Communion as "the cookies," I would have been horrified. We were even afraid, as children, to let our teeth touch the communion wafer, as we feared harming the body of Christ. We crossed ourselves when we passed a church, knowing that Jesus was physically present in there. Now, it's "the cookies." And sad to say, it may even BE cookies.

Anyway, we were going back and forth about the NO vs. Traditional Mass, until he cut the conversation short as no longer of any real value. He was happy with "his" version of the Mass. He acknowledged that all Masses are not the same any longer, and that many abuses occur, many NO masses are pretty irreverent, even goofy, but that has no effect on him, because the NO mass at his particular parish is reverent enough, and includes some traditional gestures.

Again, so trained am I to accept such statements that I didn't react to that, either. But the more I thought about it, and the more I considered the many posts I find on various forums discussing the state of the liturgy in the Church, the more I realized that what he was, in effect, saying, is exactly why I object to the changes in the church.

As a child - my last real extended experience with the Church - I attended Mass in several places. My home parish, a little Carmelite chapel near my home, at a church near my mom's birthplace, and a few others. One church may have been more elaborate than the next, one priest a little more formal, or a little louder. By the time I came up in Catholicism, some organic changes to make the Mass more accessible had already been made - the congregation said many of the responses out loud, in Latin. We also sang much of the responses, such as the Agnus Dei, the Gloria, the Credo, the Kyrie. We certainly knew what was going on, and we participated fully (that is the topic of another post!). The main thing is, Mass, no matter where it was held, was the same Mass. I always knew where I was (at a Catholic church); I always knew what was going on (the Mass); I always knew where I was in the Mass; and I always understood the ground rules for being there and being Catholic (that I could not receive Communion, for example, unless I was free from mortal sin, and had fasted for three hours).

Now, you get what you get. "Mass" can be a relatively benign affair, with some hint of the old Catholic ceremony. Or, it can be like the service at my current "home" parish (though that is not where I attend), a basically Protestant service, with a crowd of performers on the altar in jeans and sneakers, and often as not, a slide show for a sermon.

I realized, however, with my friend's comment, that his mass was ok, and therefore, he saw no reason to be concerned over the whole NO vs. Traditional discussion, that is the heart of the problem.

In the old Church, the Mass was the Mass - the same for all. Wherever you went, you had access to the real, true, nearly changeless Mass. If you traveled to Germany, it was still the Mass - and there were plenty of churches, and plenty of Masses for the faithful. Now, Masses are a relatively rare commodity, and some can be downright painful to attend - perhaps even leading one into the occasion of sin with their lack of piety, and offensiveness.

If I were lucky, I might be in a parish like my mom's, where the priest, though openly gay, is reverent, and can conduct a good ceremony. While the Mass is not my idea of a Mass, still, I could probably bear it and be, as many NO Catholics insist we must be, "obedient" to the Holy See. But I don't have access to that gentle a Mass where I live. I can only choose between bad and worse.

But that's not the point. I shouldn't HAVE to. The very fact that the service conducted can be so completely different from one place to another - benign at best, outrageous at worst - is testimony to the failing of the changes inspired by Vatican II. Surely no one ever intended that I would not be able to find a Mass that didn't hurt me to attend - literally bring tears to my eyes, or cause terrible anger and frustration. Surely they never meant to turn the Mass - however much some of them may have felt it was "old-fashioned" and inaccessible - into a sideshow, or bad high school play. (Have you seen the "Punk Priest," seen his get up and listened to his "sermons? Do that before you judge.)

And one Catholic should not be dismissing the pain of another because he's got "the cookies," and the other does not. The pain felt by Traditional Catholics at the destruction of a Mass beloved to them, and that endured for 1500 years, should not be dismissed because it "doesn't effect" another Catholic. Just as the church of 1950 did need to examine the life led by its faithful, and take into consideration the word they were forced to live in when defining some of its alterable rules, and to be sympathetic with their pain, to do a better job of educating them and thereby helping them understand the Mass, the Church today should not be ignoring and making light of what the Traditional faithful are experiencing.

At least, that's not the Catholic behavior I was taught as a child. Has the church changed SO much?

The Empirical and the Divine

2008-08-12T12:07:00.000-04:00

First Published: Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I am an ecumenical reader (and now, podcast listener). I try to make sure I am hearing all sides of a story. It's easy to read the things we agree with, and cheer inwardly at our own good sense - "look, this published writer agrees with me!" - and it is much harder to read, and even give points to, The Other Side.

Recently, I listened to two podcasts: one on Catholicism (which, with all its "faith traditions" and "Liturgies of the Word" and "charisms" sounds an awful lot different than the Catholicism I grew up with), and one from the Center for Inquiry (the podcast is called Point of Inquiry), a pro-science, anti-religion think tank affiliated with the University of Buffalo.

Neither was surprising. The particular Point of Inquiry I listened to was an interview with Ann Druyan, wife of Carl Sagan. A self-professed agnostic, she was nevertheless full of "awe" and "wonder" at the profundity of creation, and expressed a desire to "know what life was all about" before she died.

The Catholic podcast, on the other hand, was painstaking in its attempts to demonstrate, by empiricism, what "God wanted us to do," and what "God's purpose" was for us - even how God wanted us to chat with Him.

Interesting.

The scientists want science to effect us like religion - wonder, amazement, humility, and awe in the face of the expansiveness and constant surprizes of creation. And the religious want us to reasonably and through research come to the conclusion that this, not that is God, because it can be proven.

I laughed as I listened to the scientists insist that science was always open to new and extreme ideas - oh, really? tell that to Louis Pasteur. Scientists demand that we believe Science has the answers to all human problems - suspiciously like God, isn't it? And the odd thing is, the more we learn, scientifically, the more we realize how much we simply don't know, and how wrong we have been in past declarations.

I laughed, likewise, as I listened to the religious podcast try to set limits on God by trying to define Him - to profess to "know" what He was all about. Yes, if we believe that there has been revelation, we can say we "know" certain things. But how can we be so absolutely sure we have it all figured out? Isn't God a lot greater than that? How do we wrap our feeble little minds around eternity, for example, or free will? Some thing we simply have to resort to Faith to accept.

I have never understood why science and God can't co-exist peacefully. If anything, it seems the divide is ever wider, and ever more stridently expressed by adherents of one or the other. It seems to me that, whether the Universe was made for man's delight and entertainment, or whether we are simply another small part of it, there still has to have been some Prime Mover. No matter how many mysteries Science unravels, there will always be the twin mysteries of the first moment, and more profoundly, WHY? These are things that mortal man, fixed as he is in Time, will probably never be able to understand. We can only hope that at some point in our existences, whether they are one or many, we will have advanced enough beyond our human limitations to begin to comprehend. And for that, we need God.

I have also never understood why atheists/agnostics resent our need to characterize God in ways that we can understand, or our need to express organized humility in the face of the profound. I doubt that God really cares if we say the Rosary - and perhaps God really did ask that we do so, understanding that human beings like pattern and repetition, and that our minds will be more open to His presence as we meditate - but I sincerely doubt that the Rosary is for him. That does not make it a bad thing to do. And because we humans are wayward creatures, who needs rewards and punishments to keep us keeping on, is there anything necessarily wrong with the Catholic Church urging us to say the Rosary?

In the final analysis, I think religious people are more tolerant of atheistic scientists than the other way around. The more than science discovers, the more amazing we learn God must be to have created all this. Just because we can understand a phenomenon does not make it any less wondrous - or any less likely to have originated in the mind of God.

Nor should believing that God is responsible for all this deter us from trying to understand it. Note, I say "understand," and not "alter" or "control." With great power, as Spiderman tells us, comes great responsibility. It is our belief in God and our attempts to understand God's purpose, that set limits for us - not in our understanding, but in our use of the wonderful things we discover.

I watched an old episode of The X-Files last night - Ice - in which a mystery creature is turned up in an ice core. The creature infects human hosts and causes them to become violent, ultimately destructive. Mulder wants to study the creature. But since it kills, Scully wants to destroy it so that it can't infect the population. The age-old face-off between science and ethics. Should we have developed nuclear power? We won't know until we learn one day if nuclear power may save us from freezing in the dark.

Mankind's greatest hope is in the wisdom of men of science informed by strong, dare I say it, religious beliefs. Discoveries of the world, the universe, around us, governed by a respect for that creation and its laws and purposes, is the only way we can survive. And I think that ultimately, God does want us to survive.

More Confirmation

2008-08-12T12:04:00.000-04:00

First published: Friday, April 28, 2006

A confirmation I recently attended brought back to me in full force the question I keep asking: if people didn't like/reverence/believe in the Catholic Church the way it was for 1500 years, why didn't they just leave? Why was it necessary to destroy it from within?

The Protestant Reformation was supposed to have accomplished what seems to have been the objectives of the Post Vatican II desecrations: make the church simpler, vernacular, congregation-centered and personal. Why couldn't the disgruntled just join one of the already numerous and varied Protestant sects if this was the type of religious experience being sought?

Two possibilities come to mind: avarice (the Church has a lot of money and property), and sheer ego gratification. "I don't have to change, YOU have to change."

But, to return to the Confirmation. The church in which it was held is a lovely old building, a spacious gothic-style structure with beautiful stained-glass windows, carved, polished wooden pews, and what must have once been an inspiring sanctuary. Now, of course, the High Altar is gone, the altar rail is gone, the pulpit is missing. At the focal point of the altar is a chair. The Tabernacle had been move to the side - it was a strange looking, plain metal box with a little rust on the hinges.

I had to assume that the "communion table" contained some relics, as everyone made a great show out of bowing to it (or to the chair in which the Bishop sat?). No one bothered to bow to the consecrated Host, supposedly the living presence of Jesus Christ, sitting forlornly in the Tabernacle off to the side. In fact, when the confirmation candidates came up to present the "universal intentions", they completed their speeches, with bows to the communion table and/or the Bishop, and then lined up in front of the Tabernacle, with their backs to it, and nary a bow, let alone a genuflection, to God Himself. It actually made me feel sad to see Christ so pushed aside, so neglected, so ignored.

I was a bit horrified by the clothing worn to the Confirmation. Allowing for styles, it was still disconcerting to see people in flip-flops, jeans, capris, way-too-tight, way-too-short skirts, and low-cut, tight shirts. I'm not opposed in theory to scanty dressing - on the beach, in a club, in the park. But it just seems wrong somehow to show up that way for a solemn, not to say sacramental rite.

I don't think it was just for purposes of ceremony that the kids were all in graduation gowns - I think it was a choice made to cover up the possibilities.

Communion, of course, was taken standing, in the hand, and I saw more than one person returning from receiving it chewing. Again, I don't suppose there is anything wrong with that - it just seems terribly irreverent.

Finally, when the Confirmation was complete, the congregation remained in the "hall," chatting, laughing, backs to the altar and to the Tabernacle, taking pictures and exchanging gifts.

And I guess that brings me to the crux of my distress. I left the Church when I was not much older than these kids because it seemed I went to Mass one Sunday and it was Mass as I had always known it, and I came back the following week and someone had taken my Church. But it wasn't just the outward symbols and grace and beauty and tradition of my Church. It was all the things I had been taught to believe were fitting and proper, even, in some cases, matters of what was and was not sinful.

The Church was a harsh mistress, and I did not always want to do what I was told was right. As a teenager at the time, I did not want to abide by the rules of proper sexual behavior. I never thought abortion was right, but I also thought that birth control was a serious social issue. And I didn't really object when a Saturday afternoon service sufficed for a Sunday obligation. I was justly horrified as I learned about errors and sins of the Church in times past, and even not so far past.

But I really did not want it to change.

It's rather like being a kid vis a vis a parent. From about age two on, a child tests and torments his parents. He questions, goads, tempts, antagonizes, and frustrates their best attempts to establish limits, instill a sense of right and wrong, and provide guideposts for living a decent life. While the child may fuss, fume, even outright rebel, the last thing the child really wants is for Mom and Dad to admit they were wrong, abandon all the rules, and let the child do just about as it wishes.

Imagine the horror of a child returning home from school one day to find all the furniture replaced by office furniture, Dad upstairs canoodling loudly with the male neighbor and the door open, Mom out "somewhere," a note on the refrigerator saying "Help yourself," and the TV on The Playboy Channel.

For some children it might seem at first like fantasy land, but for most kids, it would be a nightmare from which there is no awaking.

So it is, I think, for many Catholics.

Yes, we disobeyed and chafed under the seemingly gratuitous rules. No, we didn't like it when our friends said we were superstitious and ignorant. Yes, it was distressing to learn (as all children must) that our Mother Church had made terrible mistakes, and done terrible harm at times. But we also found comfort and strength in the sameness - the solid, unchanging, stalwart, reliable sameness of Mass each week. We were grateful for its unswerving dignity - we really didn't want to see our moms in mini-skirts, did we? - for its adherence to the precepts and rules (nothing is more disconcerting than being told something is absolutely wrong, and then in the next breath learning that, actually, maybe it is ok), and for its staunch belief that it was in communion with the real presence of Jesus Christ (and if that is so, why is the Christ the King sitting - Like Prince Charles? - off to the side while the congregation celebrates and preens itself with readings, sing-alongs, and hand shakes?).

But it is more than tradition, beauty, and the norms that have been lost in the changes to the Church.

Again using the metaphor of parents and children, it isn't much fun to be the parent. It's difficult to take a stand, and declare that this is ok in our home, and that is not. It's a burden to try to behave as you wish your children to behave. It's embarassing when you do make blunders to admit that you broke your own rules and that it was a mistake, or worse. It's not easy to stay with your spouse, to get the kids up on Sunday morning for church, to keep the house clean and maintain a job. It's a pain to wake up in the middle of the night and change a wet bed; it's worse than a pain to deal with the aftermath of a teenager's automobile accident.

But our children want and need us to do all of this. When we try to become their friends rather than their parents, they end up with no parents.

Today, it seems that the Church wants to be a kid, too. After all, it's a lot more fun. It's fun to create your own rules according to the demands of your life (you want to have sex with your boyfriend, so not only premarital sex but birth control must be ok with God; you are gay, so it must be fine with God to have gay relations; you are sick of your spouse, so divorce without cause can't be that wrong), it's fun to write the liturgy (I've always liked Goth music, so wouldn't it be cool to have a Goth Mass?), it's fun to be the center of attention (I want to stand on the altar and read from the Bible!!).

The "old" Church made you behave, dress appropriately, be "clean," and abide by the rules of the family. But it was also there for me no matter what I did, it made me feel fresh and new after I'd confessed a mistake, it assured me that my path was right and true when I was doubtful, and it conducted itself in a way I wished to emulate.

I speak for myself, and probably for some other Catholics as well, when I say that I very much miss that strict, adult, safe, protective, and loving Church of my childhood.

Some numbers on Catholicism

2008-08-12T12:01:00.001-04:00

First published: Monday, April 17, 2006

The reason I've become so interested in the state of the Catholic Church is that I recently found a small church that offers a traditional Latin Mass.

So? Well, for years I just wasn't interested in being a Catholic anymore. You have to understand, I was born Catholic, and attended parochial school for 9 years. I loved my school, was was a devoted little Catholic - I had some visions of being a nun at one point - and remained faithful even through those tough high school years.

But by 1969, when I was in college, and things started to fall apart in the church, I was feeling pretty betrayed, and of course it was a vulnerable time for religiosity anyway (both in terms of my age, and the era).

So, I stopped going to church and for the most part, did not return until I found what had been missing.

It's easy to dismiss my disappointments as mostly cosmetic. Ok, they changed the altar to face the congregation. Ok, they stopped the Latin Mass. They took all the beautiful music and shelved it. No more bells, incense, candles. Even the Host was moved to the side and downplayed. The priest was as likely to wear sandals as a chasuble. In fact, everything beautiful, mystical, spiritual and God-directed had disappeared. And yes, I definitely felt it on an aesthetic level.

But it was far more than that. It was a total change in orientation, and complete about-shift in meaning. And I have been gratified lately, as I read and learn more and more about the disaster than was Vatican II, to learn that my instinctive reactions to these changes is reflected in the more educated views of many who write on this subject.

When I was young, the Mass was oriented toward God. It was an unbloody sacrifice, re-enacted and offer TO God, of His Son, who died for us so that our sins could be forgiven. As such, it was offered, appropriately, toward the altar, toward God. We all stood behind the priest as he, in his role of Christ on earth, presided at the sacrifice. Ok, that all made sense to me. Since it was a re-enactment of an ancient rite, it seemed appropriate that it not be offered in common, every day language, or costume, or style. It should be "other." Moreover, it always seemed to me that in setting religion apart from everyday life, making it beautiful and terrible and powerful, the Church was on to something.

Part of it, of course, was that that was the nature of Catholicism. Religion was about the after life - not about this one. It was not about good deeds, it was about faith. And repentence. But more than that, the ceremony, the style, they prayers, the language - they all pulled you out of yourself, and into another realm. (Funny, it's ok to chant mantras in Hindi to invoke another state of mind, but we frown upon the same formula when reciting the Rosary.)

So for me, Mass had been a short vacation from my everyday life, and brief trip into the numinous - a glimpse of something more, something other than this day to day life.

I was recently at a Novus Ordo Mass. And it was everything, and less, than I remembered. And I remembered why I stopped attending church. The priest did not speak til more than halfway through the "celebration." The church itself was bare and bright. The prayers were not Catholic - or at least, not especially so. Any Protestant church congregation might have said them. There is no particular reverence for the host. There are subtle shifts in wording that render the meaning something other than what I recall. (Especially the sops to angry feminists who insist that God is not a father but androgynous.) The music is execrable. Oddly, every single person on the stage (I can't even call it an altar) with the celebrant was a woman. All in all, I had the feeling I was attending a not-very-good local theatre musical. Bad acting, bad singing, cheesey costumes, and a spare-parts set. How sad.

In fact, a Catholic "leader" recently wrote about the church and verified my worst fears: it is his belief that Christianity is about good works, political involvement, activism. It is not about actively converting souls, but about do-goodism. (Which I am not denigrating, it is very important to do good - I jsut always believed the church was more concerned about the health of the soul than of the body.) The focus is on the congregation, not on God. The priest is playing to the people, not to the Kingdom of Heaven. The mass is a communion on with Jesus, but with one another.

Statistically, the resuls are disastrous. The number of Catholic priests has fallen from 58,000 to 45,000. By 2020 there will be 31,000 and half will be over the age of 70. In 1965, 1,575 new priests were ordained, but in 2002, the number fell to 450. At present, some 3,000 parishes are without priests. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians fell from 49,999 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. Since 1965 two thirds of seminaries opened have closed their doors. (A look at the reasons for the steep decline of priests will come later in this article.) The number of Catholic nuns, 180,000 in 1965, has fallen by 60 percent. Since the close of Vatican II the number of teaching nuns has fallen 94 percent. Their resolute obedience to orthodoxy and recognition of their vital role in educating Catholics has been replaced by mostly lay people, some of whom are not even Catholic. When one sees a nun today, if one even recognizes a nun, the impression one is more likely to get is that of a professional businesswoman. About half the Catholic high schools open in 1965 have closed. Almost half of the 4.5 million students in those schools in the mid-1960s are gone. A great treasure has been lost. Now, only 10 percent of lay religious teachers accept the Church's teaching on contraception, 53 percent think a Catholic woman can get an abortion and remain a good Catholic, 65 percent say Catholics have the right to divorce and remarry, and a New York poll reported that 70 percent of Catholics aged 18 to 54 believe that the Holy Eucharist is just a "symbolic reminder" of Jesus. Only one in four Catholics attends Mass on Sunday today, while in 1958 three out of every four Catholics did so.

Random Thoughts on Conservatism and Catholicism

2008-08-12T11:59:00.000-04:00

This won't be a long post, it's more of a question that I can't help ask, even though I am not crazy about the answer I usually reach: how can conservatism possibly work in a world already gone "on?"

There is a reverence for the idea of "moving on" in our society. "He has moved on" is said as a mark of great honor and respect when talking about someone who has suffered a loss, or who has made a mistake, or who has been an utter idiot.

But it is also shorthand for the idea that it is better to "move on" that to stay fixed.

There was a time when fixedness of purpose, when "sticking to your guns," when consistency, fortitude, strength of purpose, firm belief, all that sort of thing, were the "right" way to go.

Not so now. John Kerry was actually honored for being bendable. His constant (at least that was constant about him) shifts were seen as mental sophistication - nuance was the word, as I recall. He was not a "shifty sidewinder," he was a nuanced, worldly sophisticate to George Bush's stubborn, inflexible doofus.

I was at a Traditional Roman Catholic Latin Rite Mass the other day, and while I was enjoying the beauty, and the tradition, and the link to history - the brief glimpse into the Medieval World - I was also struck by the fact that the Church, as an entity, has "moved on." The Liturgy has changed, the tradition has been lost, the meaning has been wiped away, and the "other guys" are in charge of the institution. You don't "go back" from there. The only real answer is something akin to schism. Perhaps the Church will be willing to accomodate traditional Catholics, but unless they separate entirely, they will never again be the common voice of the church.

Reading the website of my (geographic) parish, it does not even seem familiar to me. If I were to stumble across it, not knowing what it was and lacking a title that claimed it was Catholic, I would be convinced that this was a protestant church, possibly Episcopal. But I would certainly not mistake it for what I had always believed to be Catholic. But it is these people who are now running the Church - not "my" people.

I was in a religious items store in Olean recently, and I asked the female clerk if they carried Latin Missals. She said they did not, but that they could be obtained. I mentioned that I attended a Latin Mass. She looked skeptical and asked me if it was the one in Bradford (PA). I said no, and she said, good, because they do not accept the pope, they are excommunicated. She then went on to say that it was a good thing the Mass had changed; it was a good thing that one mass featured a rock band and another a folk group. "Different strokes," she said, nodding wisely.

This runs so contrary to my feelings growing up as a Catholic. When I set foot in a Catholic Church as a child, I was reaching back in time - perhaps not so far as to Jesus and the disciples themselves, but certainly to the first millenium of the church. I was touching tradition, seeing rites that had stood firm against time and alteration. The inside of a church was a comforting zone of sameness, of consistency in a mad world, of steadfastness of purpose and belief in the face of all uncertainty and doubt.

Now, I enter a church and I cannot find that light burning above the altar that reminded me I was in the presence of God. I cannot find the beautiful, if romantic, images of the saints that reminded me, again, of individuals who did dedicate their lives to God. When I see a priest or nun, I am not sure they are a priest or nun... I had always assumed the "costume" was to set this individual apart as having dedicated his or her life to the service of God. Now, these folks are really social workers, dedicated to the service of man. This is not a small shift.

Yes, a priest was a "shepherd to his flock," but more importantly, he was a conduit to God. As a person dedicated body and soul to the numinous, he set himself apart from the rest of us, and his job, or at least so I always believed, was to turn our thoughts away from our day to day lives and toward our spiritual lives, our life with God. He was not so much concerned with us as neighbors and "clients" as he was with us as souls and sinners.

Again, one of the reasons I felt a comfort and safety in the Catholic Church was that here, I was a child. Here I could abandon my own "control" of life, of making the decisions and calling the shots and taking the helm, and become, as Jesus suggested, "as a little child." Not in the sense of being irresponsible, but in the sense of giving this control up to the authority of the church and the mercy of God. Even if bad things happened to me, I could trust that it was as it was supposed to be, and the purpose would eventually become clear. (It always has.)

I do not get this feeling in the Novo church. The congregation runs the church. I would not be surprised to learn that rather than a Bishop appointing a priest to serve in a given parish, the parishoners were to start interviewing and hiring as they do in Protestant congregations. At a recent Novus Ordo mass, I was stunned to find that fully 2/3 of the mass was over before the priest spoke so much as a word. It seemed more like a really badly written and acted amateur theatrical put on by the Neighborhood Playhouse than like a mass.

But, that's me. And I don't want to move on. I want to conserve... I want to hold on to the old beauty, pageantry, mystery, dignity. But the church has moved on, and while some few of us may continue to go to the Latin Mass, and may continue to pretend we can maintain the "old ways," as Thomas Wolfe told us, "You can never go home again."