Several blogs are reporting this story, originally from La Stampa, announcing that the Pope has cancelled the annual Vatican Pop Christmas concert. Frankly, I didn’t know it existed, but bravo all the same. This is an excellent occasion to recall how privileged we are, musically at least, to have as Pope the man who delivered this lecture on Liturgy and Music.

Our faithful correspondent, Joseph Six Pack, has graced us with a report on the state of the Church in Ankara, Turkey. I’m afraid, my dear readers, that the situation there is not good:

This was our second Sunday to the Vatican Embassy – the Turk’s will not allow the Vatican to call it a Nunciature.

The diplomatic clergy assigned to the embassy refuse any pastoral duties, so a young German Jesuit studying for his doctorate at one of the local universities celebrates Mass. The parish council president tells me that the diplomat-clergy are trying to get the Sunday Mass offering discontinued altogether. Supposedly Pope Benedict is visiting Ankara this Fall?

There are about 100 people in attendance. A mix of folks from around the globe. Some diplomats from Catholic countries. Today I sat next to a refugee from Palestine. This is the only Catholic Mass in Ankara. Also, there are no Orthodox or Byzantine liturgies. This is the only game in town for anyone that wants to fulfill their Sunday obligation.

The photo shows that the chapel is in-the-round, with stadium seating, so we all look down at the sanctuary. The young altar server in cassock and surplice in the background holding the crucifix is the DAUGHTER of an African diplomat.

The only blatant liturgical violation is the encouragement of self-intinction during Communion.

Otherwise it’s standard Nervous Disorder fare: welcoming with applause and clapping for new families; holding hands during the Our Father; protestant/charismatic music.

We’ve seen a lot worse, so in a way were grateful. It’s a cross to be bared and hopefully purgatory time to be burned off while we await our return to the St. Phillipine Duschene Latin Mass Community.

The Jesuit who says the Mass has been very generous (by Novus Ordo standards) so far with hearing confessions. He heard mine before mass last week and my wife’s after Mass today. For a penance, he likes to assign biblical readings – fine enough. He wants you to pick from the readings of the day. My wife asked for the 2nd Reading (“Wives be subordinate to your husbands”). He resisted at first saying “that was written 2000 years ago and doesn’t apply to our culture today.”

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I’ve come to the last chapter of Cardinal Wiseman’s Recollections of the Last Four Popes. The second to last chapter of the book is dedicated, not to Gregory XVI, but to a man whom Gregory made first Prefect of Propaganda and then Cardinal librarian, Angelo Mai. I don’t know which is the more brilliant, Mai, or the dazzling way in which Wiseman writes about him. Working first at the Ambrosian Library in Milan (chiefly endowed by Frederick Cardinal Borromeo, nephew of the inimitable St. Charles Borromeo) and then at the Vatican’s own library, Angelo Mai found long lost texts by reading palimpsests. Wiseman:

He found in the Milanese library an unexplored mine. No doubt its manuscripts had been catalogued, perhaps described, and that accurately. But those who had preceded him had only cultivated the upper soil in this literary field. They had not discovered the exuberantly precious “royalties” which lay hidden beneath the surface. Under the letter of the writing there slumbered a spirit which had long lain there spell-bound, awaiting a master-magician to free it: a spirit of poetry sometimes, sometimes of eloquence; a Muse of history, a genius of philosophy, a sprite of merest unsubstantial elegance.

Mai is most famous for his discovery of Cicero’s De Re Publica; but the list of his publications and original finds could go on for pages. Throughout Europe, all recognized his scholarly ability and the brilliance of his discoveries. Cardinal Wiseman knew him personally and so, unlike many of the trite summaries of Mai’s life which can be found on the internet, Wiseman can relate something of his personal habits; Mai was an holy ecclesiastic besides being a brilliant scholar.

His habits were most simple and temperate. He rose very early, and after Mass sat down to his books before six, and studied the whole morning, with the interruption of a light meal. . . . He rarely went into society, except for a few minutes, where courteous duty imperatively demanded it. A solitary drive, which I have sometimes counted it an honour to deprive of that epithet, perhaps a short walk, was almost all the robbery that he permitted recreation to make from his domestic converse at home, with that chaste wisdom that had early captivated his heart. Soon after dusk his servants were dismissed, his outer door was inexorably bolted, and alone with his codices he was lavish of his midnight oil, protracting his studies to an unknown hour.

Wiseman’s prose is almost too much for me, “which I have sometimes counted it an honour to deprive of that epithet”! Where did he learn to write like that?!

These verses were written by Mai and can be found on his monument in his titular church of St. Anastasia – if any enterprising soul sees this post and happens to be in Rome, we’d be happy to have a picture of it!

Qui doctis vigilans studiis mea tempora trivi,
Bergomatum soboles, Angelus, hic jaceo.
Purpureum mihi syrma dedit rubrumque galerum
Roma, sed empyreum das mihi, CHRISTE, polum.
Te exspectans, longos potui tolerare labores;
Nunc mihi sit tecum dulcis et alta quies!

I like that use of “terere” at the end of the first line to give it an alliterative finish, besides being a common signification of the word in good prose, and which seems particularly apt here on a funeral monument. At first I wondered what that “Angelus” was all about, but then I realized, “Hey, that’s his name!”

Wisemen then applies to Mai some poetry from Ausonius; Wiseman calls it an amalgamation and adaptation of two eulogies by Ausonius – but I can’t find the original text online, so I don’t know, besides the initial words, what is Wiseman’s adaptation and what Ausonius’ original. At any rate, it fits Mai perfectly and is loftly praise for a man whom Wiseman greatly admired. (Wiseman strongly disagrees with the characterization expressed in the lines one finds at the end of the Catholic Encyclopedia article about Mai, wherever they came from.)

Angele Mai, studiose, memor, celer, ignoratis
Assidue in libris, nec nisi operta legens;
Exesas tineis opicasque evolvere chartas
Major quam promptis cura tibi in studiis.
Aurea mens, vox suada tibi, tum sermo quietus:
Nec cunctator eras, nec properante sono.
Pulchra senecta, nitens habitus, procul ira dolusque,
Et placidae vitae congrua meta tibi.

Wiseman concludes of Mai: “Well might Niebuhr say of him, that he was ‘a man divinely granted to our age, to whom no one citizen or stranger, – to use the words of Ennius, – will be able to repay the fruit of his labors.’”

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Reggie was himself on Thursday afternoon in South Bend, and this made for one very entertaining presentation about the undying importance of Latin studies, even and especially entertaining for those who otherwise had little familiarity with the subject. Speaking for my family, my parents, grandparents, and my brother, who made the trip with me to South Bend, they had a very good time and Reggie made quite an impression on them. As my mother said, as much as one may relate about him, one has to see him in person to believe it.

The talk was held in Notre Dame’s Law School and the crowd who came to see Reggie was large enough that we had to remove from a lecture hall, of modest size, to the court room, slightly larger, one floor up; even there, there were not enough places for people to sit. My family and I had come all the way from East Lansing; my friend, Iacobus (not the inimitable Iacobus of this blog) came from Iowa City; I talked to a priest who had come from Chicago; I talked to a Chemistry professor who had come over from Valparaiso (my alma mater); and then, of course, there were any number of people from Notre Dame and St. Mary’s, etc. Reggie drew quite an audience, though I imagine that, by and large, it was Catholic, if the number of men in clericals was proportionate to the laity in the group.

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As our resident “expert” on the rightward fringe, I’ll forward this depressing development from Christ or Chaos making the rounds on Angelqueen:

Am I saying that Benedict XVI is not the pope? Well, I will repeat what I have been saying for the past few months: it is my belief that some future pope will indeed decide negatively about the legitimacy of the conciliar popes and that those who have already made a determination in this regard will be proved correct. Do I lean to the acceptance of the sedevacantist thesis? Once again, as I have said repeatedly and consistently, yes. The Pope, he is the Vicar of Christ and the Success of Saint Peter, the visible head of the true Church on earth, cannot be an enemy of souls, can he? He cannot be indifferent to the plight of the salvation of souls. It is clear to me that conciliarism is a counterfeit of Catholicism and has devastated souls.

Of course, if you’ve been reading what the doctor has had to say the last few months, you won’t be too surprised. When said sedevacantist recently came to visit Mary, Mother of God, the SSPX chapel in Syracuse, right after his first declarations of heresy, some of us Cornellians thought about attending, just to see the man in action. But I wonder if he’ll soon be banned from the SSPX speaking circuit too. It seems Gerry Matatics has had to put up with quite a deal of suffering himself.

I’ve heard it said that these sad tales point to the danger of trying to carry out full-time apostolic work on your own, and particularly in the married state. The Christian freed from obedience to a superior, a rule, and his Christian brethren is especially imperiled amid the confusions of the conciliar crisis. I’ve also heard it said, with somewhat more controversial an air, that if men forsake their duty to support financially their families for an apostolate it is no wonder that right evangelical fervor turns to brooding and error.

Just a reminder for all those in and around South Bend: Reggie will be speaking there today at 4:30PM. My family and I are about to hit the road.

Fr. Reginald Foster, O.C.D., will be speaking in South Bend, at Notre Dame’s Law School, Room 120, 4:30PM, on the following topic:

If you’re at all interested in Latin, I highly encourage your attendance. Reginaldus is guaranteed to be an interesting, even entertaining, speaker. He may say some things which offend traditional (and traditionalist) sensibilities; he may use some coarse language; but he will most certainly excite in his audience a love for and a desire to preserve this language.

For those of you who don’t already know, Fr. Foster (he prefers to be called Reggie or Reginaldus – some people compromise and call him Fr. Reggie) is one of the Latin secretaries, working in the Secretariat of State, for the Vatican. During the summer, he teaches a world famous eight week course in all things Latin, in a little school room across the street from his residence, the Teresianum. I expect any number of alumni in attendence at this upcoming talk.

The great thing about Reggie’s approach to Latin is that it is not limited to some period of time or to some supposedly pure style found in the most polished pieces of Cicero. No, for Reggie, Latin lives through all ages, and his love embraces both the classics as well as the Fathers, the medieval period, and up until today. And this is an exciting approach because once you realize that a thorough knowledge of Latin is your key to opening up the wisdom, beauty, and knowledge in the literature of all these periods, you can’t wait to get started; you can’t wait to begin, and you have to give it your best shot, for how could you live without being able to savor the sounds and the particular senses with which so many magnificent minds clothed their thoughts?

I imagine that the talk at Notre Dame will run over some of these ideas and will probably inspire a few, who haven’t already been, to make the pilgrimage to Rome next summer for aestiva Romae latinitas.

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It is with some trepidation that I approach, for the first time in many months, what might be considered a “woman’s issue.” Last spring I more or less resigned from my informal position as this blog’s women’s issues editor, finding that such topics tended to provoke a small amount of intelligent discussion and a large amount of frenzied, unreasoned (even, dare I say it, unchivalrous!) vitriol poured down upon me personally. In part this is my own fault; I like to use personal anecdotes to illustrate my points, and so naturally readers conclude that my personal life is the main topic of discussion. In this thread, I will avoid making reference to personal experience, and in exchange I will ask our readers please not to take this thread as an invitation to chastise me publicly. If you truly feel it your Christian duty to scold or enlighten me about my personal deficiencies, I invite you to send your thoughts to fraternalcorrection@yahoo.com. I may not answer your email, but I’ll see it. In this public forum, please keep your comments civil, and directed to the discussion at hand. Those who disregard this request will find their posts deleted without comment.

But now, I really think some intelligent discussion is needed on the subject of women’s education. Bishop Williamson’s missive on this topic has been recognized by most of our contributors and guests as thoroughly silly, and by bothering to write a respectable reply, I may be giving it too much credit. But at least two among us have quite seriously declared themselves to be much in sympathy with his “sentiments”, and this disturbs me. I find the Bishop’s words pernicious on several levels, particularly if they are finding sympathetic ears. They make a mockery of natural law arguments (one can hardly blame contemporary philosophers for refusing to take teleology seriously, if this is their paradigm!), they encourage husbands and fathers to disregard the genuine spiritual needs of their wives and daughters, and they confuse women by teaching them to identify a natural and wholesome desire as disordered and sinful.

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There was an interesting piece in the July 17th issue of Barron’s about so-called “faith-based” mutual funds. The basic idea of such a fund is that the fund screens the companies in which they invest on considerations over and above financial grounds, namely, moral considerations. The only reason I saw this article is because Ave Maria Funds sent it out as a part of a mailing because the article speaks favorably of Ave Maria’s family of funds.

The principle of such a fund seems to be sound, morally speaking, and these funds have found a good number of investors. We don’t want our money working for abortion mills and pornography, right? Well, these would be among some of the criteria which a faith-based fund uses in deciding about companies worthy of investment. And, really, when one has the option to invest in a morally responsible way, why wouldn’t one do it?

Of course, one could always worry about a kind of slippery slope in these money matters. Should I refuse to buy products, such a mouth wash, from a company which also makes contraceptives? Given the way money and corporations are intertwined in America, I don’t see how one could avoid benefiting, if only indirectly, companies whose policies or products are morally objectionable. The reductio ad absurdum would then go, ergo, I needn’t worry about where my savings goes either or by what companies’ growth it benefits.

But I don’t think that this is a good objection. At the very least, we ought to start by investing in companies that aren’t up to bad things, especially when those things are out there for all to know and we have clear choices.

I got a kick out of the various criteria which the funds discussed in the Barron’s piece use in discerning morally responsible investments. There is the Mennonite Mutual Aid Praxis funds; their criteria, “a holistic screen, based on six broad guidelines”, such as global justice, responsible management, and environmental stewardship. Since I spontaneously vomit when I hear the catch phrase, “global justice,” this would not be a fund for me. The article goes on to say of this family of funds: “Although they eliminate alcohol, tobacco and gambling stocks, the funds don’t screen for Planned Parenthood contributions, and their abortion prohibition is limited to companies that make drugs used to induce abortions.” So the Quakers (or their money managers) are cool with abortion; different folks, different strokes.

The first “faith-based fund” I knew about was the so-called Timothy Plan, named after some verses from an epistle of the same name. Here’s the low-down on them: “They don’t screen out polluters, but nixed are businesses that contribute to Planned Parenthood or are linked to abortion, pornography, ‘anti-family’ entertainment, alcohol, tobacco, gambling or homosexuality. But ‘we are not homophobes,’ says Arthur Ally, who notes that, unlike many other faith-based funds, his don’t exclude businesses that offer health-care benefits to same-sex partners.”

Maybe someone can explain that one to me, because I don’t quite see it. They’re against businesses which are linked to “homosexuality” but they’re not homophobes, mind you, and they’re all for same-sex partner benefits. Supposedly, this family of funds is based on “fundamentalist Christian beliefs”, but I ain’t never see anything about benefits for same-sex partners in the Bible – I don’t know about you. Looks like typical protestant silliness.

This third family of funds is rather entertaining, at least what a spokesman had to say about its investing policy. I had no idea that there is a family of funds based on Islamic religious thinking and based in this country, as far as I can tell. Barron’s says that it, along with the Ave Maria funds, are the two notable performers in the category of faith-based funds. Here’s the story with Amana:

Manager Nicholas Kaiser (the fund’s only non-Islamic director) says their prohibitions cover about half of the 4,100 U.S. and foreign companies large enough to warrant consideration. “One Islamic scholar told me he didn’t think we should invest in companies that had debt,” says Kaiser. “So we screened that S&P 500 and found 35 companies that met that criterion. Another said he didn’t like companies with a lot of cash, because it probably meant they were loaning it out and getting interest. I ran another screen and said, Okay guys, we’re down to zero.’” The fund now allows up to a 30% debt-to-equity ratio, based on a 12-month moving average.

Ah, I pine for the glory days of Islamic intellectual life; today they’re telling people to invest in companies with no debt and no cash. Brilliant! It took the one non-Mohammedan on the board to help them out of that one. Still, apparently they’re doing well for themselves.

Now the Ave Maria family of funds is both Catholic and doing well. Cardinal Maida sits on the board. The screening policy is to exclude companies involved in “abortion and pornography and those that contribute to Planned Parenthood or offer employees nonmarital-partner benefits. . . . The abortion restriction is broad, applying to any store that dispenses, or any company that makes, birth control pills, which the advisory board considers a form of abortion.”

I have my meagre monies with the Ave Maria funds. The only sad thing about the business is that they’re such a neo-con, neo-order operation, with that goofball Monaghan, of the Ave Maria universities, as one of their principal investors and board members. Still, perhaps that’s what those folks do best, manage the money, and they provide a good service to the rest of us who want to save/invest money without supporting abortion, pornography, and sodomites.

I know that money can be a sensitive business, but I do think that Catholics, whether they have a lot or a little, ought to think about where their money is going, especially when they can have some control over the matter in the way that these funds make possible. I don’t know if there are other Catholic fund familes out there, but I’d recommend throwing in your lot with Ave Maria before going in with the Musselmen, even if they’re doing well, too. : )

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The title of this post comes from the words of Psalm 45:11, “vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus exaltabor in gentibus exaltabor in terra”; Joseph Pieper places these words at the beginning of his essay on leisure as the basis of culture. Pope Benedict XVI seems to have been thinking along the lines of this verse during this past Sunday’s Angelus address, in which he “cautioned against constant activism, saying that an excessively busy schedule can lead to ‘hardness of heart.’”

An “excessively busy schedule” isn’t quite the point, though, as much as is the need for and the primacy of prayer and contemplation in our daily lives. The report from CWNews continues:

The temptation to lose perspective is particularly dangerous for those who serve the Church, the Holy Father said. He stressed that the “primacy of prayer and contemplation” must be maintained, especially by those who feel the pull of “important and complex missions of service to the Church.”

This reminded me of the Prologue in Thomas Merton’s The Ascent to Truth (1951). Merton writes and quotes from Pius XII’s Menti Nostrae: “It is certainly not possible, or even desirable, that every Christian should leave the world and enter a Trappist monastery. Nevertheless, the sudden interest of Americans in the contemplative life seems to prove one thing quite clearly: that contemplation, asceticism, mental prayer, and unworldliness are elements that most need to be rediscovered by Christians of our time. There is little danger that we will neglect apostolic labour and exterior activity. Pope Pius XII in a recent Exhortation drew attention to the fact that external activity had perhaps been overstressed in some quarters, and reminded Catholics that their personal sanctity and union with Christ in a deep interior life were the most important things of all. His Holiness writes:

We cannot abstain from expressing our pre-occupation and our anxiety for those who on account of the special circumstances of the moment have become so engulfed in the vortex of external activity that they neglect the chief duty [of the Christian], his own sanctification. We have already stated publicly in writing that those who presume that the world can be saved by what has been rightly called “the heresy of action” must be made to exercise better judgment.

The exhortation actually says “of the priest”, but the point is the same, only Pius XII is emphasizing the need for priests especially to give priority to the interior life.

Ah, the good old days, when the pontiffs could say things like “must be made to exercise better judgment.” I’m pretty sure doing that would violate a clause in Dignitatis Humanae, but maybe John Boy can help me on that one.

At any rate, since Merton drew my attention to Menti Nostrae of Pius XII, I haven’t forgotten about that “heresy of action.” Doubtless, my friends can tell you that I’ve never particularly evinced symptoms of this heresy in my own life, but being free from it, I’m able to condemn it with all the more acuity in others. (That was said tongue in cheek, in case my readers have missed the sarcasm.)

Finally, a few words on this same point from The Sinner’s Guide by the Venerable Louis of Granada:

It is also the duty of prudence to introduce moderation into all our works, even the holiest, and to preserve us from exhausting the spirit by indiscreet labor. . . . Our exterior labors should never cause us to lose sight of interior duties, nor should devotion to our neighbor make us forget what we owe to God. If the Apostles, who possessed such abundant grace, deemed it expedient to renounce the care of temporal things in order to devote themselves to the great work of preaching and other spiritual functions, it is presumption in us to suppose that we have strength and virtue capable of undertaking many arduous labors at one time.

From the Acts of the Apostles, the passage to which Venerable Louis alludes:

Then the twelve calling together the multitude of the disciples, said: It is not reasonable that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.

So, my friends, beware the Heresy of Action! One might even say that the Cornell Society for a Good Time was founded for the explicit purpose of combating a nasty strain of this heresy which had grown up among the good Catholic children at Cornell University. Far be it from our noble president, Ambrosius, to let any heresy go unextirpated and straight away, our Society came into existence. I don’t know how many we were able to save, but some entered the Church, some drank for the first time with us, some were forced to listen to us discuss poetry, a very polished air piano was played and so forth.

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On the evening before Pentecost Monday in Chartres, we had a distant view of the cathedral along the horizon. This was after we had crested a slight ridge and those who knew what to look for had espied the spires. They yet appeared impossibly distant and in no way did we seem to be walking straight towards them, but immediately we were off in another direction for what was, for me, another agonizing hour before we reached the night’s camp.

But when we first saw the spires, someone remarked: “Yes, this is like unto how it will feel for the soul in purgatory when he first catches sight, in the distance, of the Pearly Gates.” Though as a logical truth, the pain I was experiencing that day did not, nor could it, surpass all the temporal pains of this life, as St. Thomas, following St. Augustine, maintains is the intensity of the pain in Purgatory, yet I was certainly in the mood to think of purgatory and the saying stuck in my head.

And as I’ve thought it about it again recently and as I was thinking about the pilgrimage to Auriesville next month, the liking for that particular image grew upon me. We all like to speculate, I suppose, about the conditions which we will experience when the soul is no longer joined to the body. Nor was Cardinal Newman, I dare say, immune to this speculative impulse, and he has left for us a lovely poetical treatment of the subject, of the soul at death and immediately after, in the work entitled “The Dream of Gerontius” (1865). I blended ideas I remembered from this poem with this man’s saying on the way to Chartres as a way of imaging to myself the nature of one’s submission to the pains of Purgatory.

Consider these lines from the end of the poem – the Soul is speaking:

Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,—
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne’er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its Sole Peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love:—
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day.

And what I think we have in a pilgrimage is something voluntarily undertaken; so the Soul sings, “Take me away . . . let me be . . . Take me away, / That sooner I may rise” and it looks as though the Soul moves towards Purgatory with an eagerness to undergo what must be undergone in order to reach the Beatific Vision.

St. Thomas quotes St. Augstine as saying that “This fire of Purgatory will be more severe than any pain that can be felt, seen, or conceived in this world”, which is a terrifying prospect, I think, since given my dossier, if I’m saved at all, I’m in line for a good dose of that cleansing fire. This prospect is mitigated, however, if one considers that then it is something which one will embrace, eagerly, even that one will hold oneself in the fire until the work is done.

Yet I realized in reading from the Summa that one must be careful about this view. “Are the pains of Purgatory undertaken volunatarily?” and St. Thomas answers, “Well, we must distinguish some different senses of ‘voluntary’ if we are to answer that question properly.” This is what he writes:

A thing is said to be voluntary in two ways. First, by an absolute act of the will; and thus no punishment is voluntary, because the very notion of punishment is that it be contrary to the will. Secondly, a thing is said to be voluntary by a conditional act of the will: thus cautery is voluntary for the sake of regaining health. Hence a punishment may be voluntary in two ways. First, because by being punished we obtain some good, and thus the will itself undertakes a punishment, as instanced in satisfaction, or when a man accepts a punishment gladly, and would not have it not to be, as in the case of martyrdom. Secondly, when, although we gain no good by the punishment, we cannot obtain a good without being punished, as in the case of natural death: and then the will does not undertake the punishment, and would be delivered from it; but it submits to it, and in this respect the punishment is said to be voluntary. In this latter sense the punishment of Purgatory is said to be voluntary.

(If someone knows where the Latin of this passage can be found online, would that person please link to it? It’s not available at Enrique Alarcon’s site.)

Now a pilgrimage is clearly a “satisfaction”, though mine to Chartres felt more like a martyrdom, but that’s just because I’m a girly man, as my fellow pilgrims can tell you. In either case, one has a voluntary punishment (CAW) (by conditional act of the will) of the first type, call it Type A. An example of the Type B voluntary punishment (CAW) is when one submits to natural death. The punishment of Purgatory is a Type B voluntary punishment (CAW).

It now appears to me that I was mistaken in conceiving of Purgatory along the lines of Type A (CAW), just on Thomas’ authority. But I don’t quite understand the difference in the examples which Thomas provides, say between undergoing martyrdom (Type A) and dying a natural death (Type B). I had thought that we often talk of submitting to our deaths, however they happen, as a meritorious expiation of our sins. Why would we want to undergo a satisfaction or martyrdom any more than a natural death? That is, it seems that the same reasons which would compel us and excite us even to take a pilgrimage or, in an extreme case, follow St. Francis to a sure death at the hand of the Mohammedans would also be good reasons to submit happily to the circumstances of a natural death.

You might even think, right, that if we do the former penances happily and willingly, a fortiori we would undertake those normal, as it were, duties of in the lot of man with calm and cheerful resignation.

Perhaps Thomas wishes to say that in satisfactions and martyrdom, the very acts (and in the doing of them) increase in us virtue and perfect our natures; but a natural death, coming as a matter of course, doesn’t, in itself, add anything to our virtue. Or, again, if one never were to die, like St. Elijah or Enoch, this would be an unmitigatedly good thing; just as never going through Purgatory would also be a good thing. Whereas to be martyred adds glory and virtue, and would even be a positive addition to an otherwise spotless life.

I don’t know if this conception – the Type B (CAW) – allows one to preserve the idea I got from my fellow pilgrim’s words. Thomas explicitly says that Purgatory is, stemming from a conditional act of the will, voluntary, but not in the same way that a satisfaction is voluntary. But I do think I can see how to understand Newman’s poetry in light of Thomas’ theology.

Now let the golden prison ope its gates,
Making sweet music, as each fold revolves
Upon its ready hinge. And ye, great powers,
Angels of Purgatory, receive from me
My charge, a precious soul, until the day,
When, from all bond and forfeiture released,
I shall reclaim it for the courts of light.

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