This Is It

 It's been six years. 

My small mission church, a part of the SSPX, moved, and between that and a family member needing regular visits that entailed whole weekends, I lost my routine of Mass. I think I also became discouraged that the Church would ever be what it had been in any large sense - but that's a problem for my conscience, not the Church. My dad reminded me over and over: the Church is the Church, the people will be more or less faithful at times.

Since then, I have found some comfort in a Resistance group, dedicated to finding and maintaining what the Church stood for in its most positive way. 

Meantime, it occurred to me recently that a dedication to St. Joseph might be a good focus, especially in these times, and especially at an, ahem, advanced age. He is a figure often overlooked - the one standing stoically by at the Nativity, the one leading the donkey bearing the pregnant Mary, the silent partner (we presume) at the wedding feast of Cana, and missing altogether at the Crucifixion. But evidently, he was there, not calling attention to himself, not writing a swashbuckling story, but simply doing what he was asked to do. And it must have been hard. Like most young men, he probably wanted a "normal" family, a wife, some children. He didn't ask to be chosen, and at the time could have easily rejected what he was called to do. 

At some point in our lives we realize that this is it: I'm "here." This is what it is going to be. How'm I doing?

I keep a little statue of St. Joseph ( a tiny one, to be precise) on a shelf in the kitchen. When I go to get something to prepare dinner, I see it, and it reminds me to just make the best dinner I can. This is it.

The Truth, The Whole Truth... or Shut Up?

It's been a long, long time, but an email reminded me that I should be keeping up with this blog.

Besides, a recent event - and a rather sad one - made me think again of the old Catholic belief that at least part of what marriage is about is to get one another to heaven - and I realized that I had something I needed to share.

A friend and I, discussing the sad event, were going back and forth about the benefit of "total honesty" in a marriage. Ok, you get the drift of "the event," by now!

I know that this concept of being completely honest with one another in a marriage enjoyed a lot of popularity for a while. And I know that, as Catholics, honesty is demanded of us.

But I was reminded of a trick my mom, a very Catholic lady, used to employ. When someone would call and my dad didn't want to take the call, she would politely say that he was not available. Or if someone asked her how she liked something she didn't, she would find a way of not being cruel and not lying at the same time.

I was reminded of that as we discussed the "right" thing to do in this case.

After all, in marriage as in any other relationship, too much information can be deadly, just as can too little.

What, after all, do we owe one another? The truth, surely, when nothing else will accomplish the same purpose. Careful truth, perhaps, when the full truth will serve nothing but what is gained in the confessional - a baring of our conscience?

I am reminded of St. Thomas More, and the delightful play, A Man for All Seasons, when Thomas plays cat-and-mouse with the English crown, who would have him admit his guilt and thereby condemn himself to death, and his family to a life without him, disgraced by the name of traitor. Thomas attempts to sidestep - to be truthful, if not honest - or is it the other way around? He is honest by his conscience and by the law; but careful in how much of the truth, and to what end, he bares his soul.

He cannot tell Henry that he supports his marital game-playing. This would be to go against his Catholic obligation, and his belief that divorce, under the circumstances, would be wrong and sinful.

He can, however, serve God in the "tangle of his mind," that is to say, play the game to the greater good. Henry will do what Henry will do - Thomas is clear that he is not going to talk his old friend out of his path. Thomas can, however, try to protect his family from ruin and save himself from the chopping block. He does this, until, his back against the wall and his immortal soul in the palm of his hand, he must admit before man and God that Henry's path is wrong.

So I wondered - if a person in a marriage slips, and does not intend to do so again - has that person an obligation to confess all, and in so doing perhaps assuage his guilt (the role of the Confessional?) or to stay still and protect the innocent? Of course it's a calculated risk: will the offended party feel more or less anger should the truth ever come out? Somehow I believe that a penitent spouse who has lived spotlessly ever since will be forgiven. Now, if it's a pattern of offenses, that's another story...

But, harking back to that idea that we, as Catholics, are supposed to try to get one another to heaven. In this case, what is most likely to help bring our spouse - not ourselves - to a heavenly reward? Silence, I think. Silence, Confession, penitence, reformation, and a sincere effort to make the marriage work for both parties. Recognition that perhaps your sin is a signal that something is wrong, and, knowing that, an effort to make things better.

It's a difficult call, to be sure. But that was what the fine old art of Examination of Conscience was all about. A skill that needs to be resurrected.

Me and Evelyn Waugh

I've just ordered a book, A Bitter Trial, about Evelyn Waugh's struggle to remain faithful after Vatican II knocked the stuffing out of the Catholic tradition. I couldn't agree more, nor could I have expressed my feelings more perfectly.

"Every attendance at Mass," he wrote, "leaves me without comfort or edification." Further, "I find the new liturgy a temptation against Faith, Hope and Charity but I shall never, pray God, apostatize." Shortly before he died, he wrote, "The Vatican Council has knocked the guts out of me... I have not yet soaked myself in petrol and gone up in flames, but I now cling to the Faith doggedly without joy. Church-going is pure duty parade."

This so well expresses how I feel when I attend a Novus Ordo Mass! While I feel joy, comfort, edification, peace, and a fullness and nearness to God at the traditional Mass, I feel a temptation to sneer and find fault and doubt when I attend the Novus Ordo liturgy. I know I should not do it; I know it is wrong-headed and prideful. And I know I should be grateful to God that I have been given the gift of a traditional Mass close by me which I can attend when I am at home.

But one of the great joys of my childhood was that no matter where I was, I could always find a Catholic Mass, and it was always the same, and it was always beautiful and predictable and comforting and true. Now, I never know what I'm going to find - it all depends on the parish's self-proclaimed "liturgists."

At least, in reading Waugh's words, I find comfort in knowing I'm not alone in my feelings, and that greater minds than my own have been subject to the same temptations.

I have been attending Mass, even when not at home, and participating - with however heavy a heart. There must be a reason for all this, as God always has a purpose.

I'm Still Whining

Just cruising around some favorite Trad Catholic blogs; one was addressing the "shock and awe" nature of the changes made to the liturgy, and I'd have to agree. The changes were swift, sudden, and shocking.

Now that Pope Benedict XVI is moving glacially back toward a more profound and literal translation of the Mass, it's interesting to see/hear what some churches have adopted and what some have not. A couple of recent examples:

I attended Palm Sunday Mass with a friend at an NO church. All the statues were, as far as I could tell, undraped. I asked about this, and it was pointed out that there was, indeed, a purple drape on everything, just  not covering the statue - the drape was loosely tossed around the figure. So, what is the point? Isn't the point of the drape the symbolic death and mourning? But anyway. In this particular Mass, the priest did read the Lord I am not worthy wording according to the re-translation; the congregation falteringly responded with "and with your spirit" as opposed to "and also with you." And the priest spoke the words of the consecration "for you and for many" and opposed to "all." There were also three altar servers (all girls, all sloppy); six Eucharistic Ministers (they don't even bother with the Extraordinary any more, do they?), a lector, and a cantor.

Easter Sunday was at my mom's NO church. The congregation was about half and half on the "and also with you" response. The church was, as always, beautifully decorated. The choir was, is horrible too un-Christian of me?  Father did not recite the new "Lord I am not worthy" prayer, and he spoke an "alternate" consecration (that one, I have to admit, deeply bothers me). Oh, and just as an aside: nobody sang at all; about half the people held hands and did the orans posture during the Pater.

In both cases above, "participation" was limited to responses ("We pray to the Lord," and so on), which, of course, were always part of all Masses for as long as I can remember.

It occurred to me, and I mentioned it to my mom, that one of the reasons given for the liturgical "renewal" of the 60s was that people sat in Mass and "said their beads" because they couldn't understand the Mass and couldn't follow the (very clear) Missals or Mass Cards supplied in every pew. I was only about 12 or 13 when they started messing with the Mass, and I already knew it by heart. How hard could it be to understand? I was given a Missal at my First Communion. We were instructed in the parts of the Mass during religious instruction. I'm not sure what went on in other parishes, and I have been told my experience was "unusual," so I can't say one way or the other. But the whole idea, I was told, was that the Mass was to be made more comprehensible, more participatory.

In my little Traditional chapel, everyone participates in the Mass, and I've mentioned on this blog before. We sing, we perform the Credo, Gloria, Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, as well as the opening and closing hymns. The choir "performs" only the sung readings, such as the Introit, or the Gradual, and the priest alone sings the Epistle and Gospel, as well as the Pater Noster and the main parts of the Mass. But looking around me, I don't get the feeling anyone feels left out. Granted, we're a self-selected bunch: we're there because we specifically love the Mass.

But I've had this discussion with a friend who is more in favor of the NO Mass than I am; he insists that my experience with the Mass as a child was unusual. I keep wondering, if it could happen at my ordinary parish in Buffalo, NY, why not throughout the church? Wouldn't it have been better to try teaching the great legacy of the Mass first, and really instructing Catholics in their faith, rather than going straight to dismantling a 1500 year old ceremony? Each word, each gesture of the Traditional Mass had layers of meaning - and once you understood them, each time you saw them you were filled with all the layers; you didn't have to think about them, they were there, like pulling out a Christmas ornament brings back not just one Christmas, but all Christmasses you have enjoyed over the years.

Physical Defects: Always Troubling to my Faith

I happened across a post on an odd website today, stumbling across it for no particular reason. One poster on this same forum made it clear that "God doesn't micromanage," but I will also acknowledge that for me, as a Catholic trying to make sense of it all, this was a blessing:

"John 9:2
And his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?
John 9:3
Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him."

Why I had never found that particular quote in the Bible before I don't know, but I am grateful that it was brought to my attention. My brother was born with cerebral palsy, and was profoundly retarded, and it has troubled me all my life why God would allow the height of His creation to be so sadly "imperfect." Interesting, my family always contended that Mike wasn't our burden, but our blessing, and we felt sure that his soul was already saintlike. For whatever reason he had to endure his earthly life with limitations - and in doing so, brought so very much to all of us in terms of love, and compassion, and understanding, and yes, joy.

We have become so unhappily despairing in our view of life: if it's not just the way we want it, to hell with it - and maybe that's exactly right.

I'm still not totally clear if our family was right in the way that we dealt with Mike's situation. I can only imagine that Jesus was telling us all that God reminds us of His presence and our fall in both the perfection, and perfectly imperfect of His works.

Rick Santorum Throws Up

I had an interesting conversation with a friend last night.

He's a Catholic.

He didn't know Rick Santorum is a Catholic.

He didn't understand why Rick Santorum had objected to Jack Kennedy's famous "I won't be a Catholic President" speech.

Wow.

I had to back way up and go through the whole history of Catholics in the U.S.; Catholics being first subject to God (and the Church) and then to the United States as citizens; Catholics understanding Christ's teaching of "render unto Caesar," and being able to distinguish your duties as a citizen from being asked to do what the Church considers immoral and sinful (abortion); and Kennedy's going one step too far, though granted, understandably, given the anti-Catholic sentiment that was still pervasive in 1960, in his speech about how he could and would govern as a citizen first, and a Catholic - well, not as a Catholic at all.

Yes, at the time, there was a fear (and there is a whole backstory of the Masons vs. the Church that gets lost in the weeds of conspiracy theory and fact, and I won't even go into it here, because, frankly, I have no idea which is fact and which is craziness) that a Catholic would take marching orders from Rome, and would try to make the United States a "Catholic" country, an arm of the Vatican.

We can see this now as pretty silly, but at the time there were still many who were convinced that would be the case, and they were absolutely sure that we could never elect a Catholic president. Kennedy had  to make that speech, but in many Catholic's (certainly in Rick Santorum's) minds, he went just a little too far in distancing himself from his faith. All he really had to do was say that it would not be his intention, nor was it the intention of Rome, to turn the U.S. into a papal state. That he could and would govern as a citizen of the United States. He might have stopped there.

Rick Santorum freely admits that as a man he is informed by his Catholic conscience, and there is nothing wrong with that per se. We are all informed by the lives we have led, the principles we hold, our beliefs, our education, where we grew up and when, our faith (if we have one), even our ethnicity. It's all part of the person we are at any moment in time. Absolutely, something can come along and change our minds - a good argument, a new event, a discovery, a book, deeper thinking into a subject.

Rick Santorum wasn't saying anything wrong when he said he would govern as a man informed by his Catholic faith (and hence, would be opposed to abortion and the death penalty, among other things), but he went just a little too far in the whole "sick to my stomach" thing. If you don't know what hyperbole is, Santorum's statements in this case are a good example.

However, I was nevertheless amazed to learn that a well-educated man, a Catholic, a voter, could know so little about who's saying what, the belief systems of our candidates, and even the now-famous 1960 Kennedy speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston.

A Thought for Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

Thanks to culturewarnotes

Mere Anarchy

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!

Such a good post here.