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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.
Archive for August, 2006
Christmas Pop goes Pop
From Ankara, Turkey
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.”
Angelo Cardinal Mai
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.’”
Notre Dame Warmly Welcomed Foster
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.
Droleskey follows Matatics off deep end
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.
Reggie to be in South Bend Today
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:
Is Latin Really Dead?
Why the Academy and the Church Should Preserve the Latin Language
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.
A Rebuttal
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.
Catholic Investing
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. : )
Vacate et Videte
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.
The Pilgrim Way of Purgatory
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.
Best of Bishop Williamson
By request I have compiled a small list of passages culled from the letters of Bishop Williamson found in the Angelus. I have selected the passages according to no other rule but my own amusement. Keep in mind that I very much respect the Bishop for speaking so plainly, and very often I agree with him. In many of these cases, however, either his ideas or his arguments are just a little bit silly.
Taken from Girls at University:
“From which, one must question what kind of queenship can be exercised by Novus Ordo theologians, even conservative. Normally, “conservative” Catholics who have left Tradition are in bad faith, so will be bad teachers, while those who have never known Tradition will be ignorant, and so bad teachers. Both will make a point of “rescuing” a damsel in”schismatic” or “excommunicated” distress. Therefore a Traditional girl putting herself under “conservative” teachers will, to keep her Faith, require a special effort to resist the menfolk whom God designed (and her parents paid) her to follow. She will then be voluntarily so setting her true Catholic Faith against her true feminine nature that one or the other is almost bound to suffer.”
Taken from Girls at University:
“That girls should not be in universities flows from the nature of universities and from the nature of girls: true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls.”
Taken from The Suburban Way of Life goes against Nature:
“The suburbs undo the father by taking the virility out of bread-winning. No longer is his manhood at a premium by his muscles handling the horses to plough the fields, which mother’s muscles could never do. Instead it is at a discount by his working-week being spent in an overheated office pushing papers at underdressed secretaries. As for mother, the suburbs take the integrity out of her home-making. Washing for the family yesteryear at the village-well, she could talk with other real wives about real husbands and children, but now the isolation of her luxurious home and the leisure provided by her washing-machine drive her, if she stays in her man-less home, to fulfill her need for family interest by watching the notoriously popular and improper soap-operas on television. As for suburban associations, reality has been emptied out of them by industry and electronics. The chemical food and synthetic clothing arrive by the ton at the local shopping-mall in massive motorized trucks, while the entertainment is disgorged trouble-free in the home on a series of magic lanterns, each more unclean than the last. If no real need associates men together, how can their associations still be real? Needs cannot be artificially fabricated to be real.”
Taken from Ideas on a “concentration camp” to attack problems of modern youth:
“However, there is a major difficulty. Where do we find a master for the camp? As a colleague said, he must be a combination of Socrates, General Patton and Michael Jackson! Socrates for the ancient wisdom, General Patton for the camp discipline and leadership, Michael Jackson for the ability to get through to young men of today, who can be something of a breed apart. Does anybody know of such a man? In my imagination he is a Catholic widower, ex-military, presently side-lined, withering from frustration at being unable to do any real teaching, who would love to have access to a mini-dozen red-blooded Americans to teach them for the love of Christ a dose of reality, regardless of what he or they would do the year after. To heaven with career, resumes or, since I have Scottish blood, salary!”
Taken from Three Years to the Millennium:
“Q: But what about souls on their way out of the Novus Ordo? May they not attend the Indult Mass?
A: You are right. What neo-modernist Rome designed as half-way houses into the Novus Ordo can serve as half-way houses out of it. Thus for someone in the mud at the bottom of a well, a niche in the wall half-way up is half-way to the sunlight, but for somebody out in the sunlight that same niche is half-way down to the mud. Anybody in the sunlight of the Tridentine Mass untrammelled by neo-modernist Rome needs his head examined if he climbs down to the niche of the Indult Mass, half-way down to the mud of the Novus Ordo.”
Taken from The derailing of Buchanan’s presidential campaign
“If only it was not so! If only I could be on good terms both with God and with the mainstream! How much easier life would be! What a nice picture! A huge speaker on each corner of my party-raft drifting downstream blasts out that the hills are alive with the sound of music — my friends and I smell an increasingly unpleasant stench of sewage in the water, and ahead of us, is that the thunder we hear of a great waterfall? My friends, turn up the speakers! Sprinkle more smell-killer! The party is to go on for ever!
Dear Catholics! The one thing we must not do is let anyone around hear from us, or see from our example, that religion can be pushed into a nice sweet little compartment from where it pours forth its sentimental perfume upon a way of life damned by God and doomed to destruction! To stand up to that way of life may cost us more than blood, sweat, toil, and tears, but such may be the cost of getting to Heaven.”
Taken from The need to shun religious fellowship even with ‘conservative’ Catholics:
“Then where is there a problem? Answer: seminarians being taught and learning to believe the fullness of Catholic doctrine are coming into possession of a treasure beyond price, that Faith without which it is impossible to please God and so to get to heaven. Now it is true that anybody taking part in a public Rosary March must have some Catholic Faith at least, and that all such people should benefit from contact with seminarians being armed with the fullness of Faith. However, the risk is that few such people may grasp the importance of the fullness of integral Catholic doctrine, and so the seminarians could be exposed to a kind of temptation of “TRADECUMENISM”: let all of us who believe in the Rosary just get together, and all will be well; let all of us who love the Mother of God concentrate on the things that unite us and not dwell on the things that divide us, after all we are all Catholics, are we not?”
Taken from Women’s trousers are an assault upon woman’s womanhood:
“Clothing divided for the legs obviously liberates the mobile lower half of the body for a number of activities for which clothing undivided like a skirt is relatively cumbersome.”
Taken from Private revelation and the message of Garabandal:
“There are various objections to the authenticity of the apparitions of Our Lady at Garabandal which I will not go into now, although I am sure they can all be answered without great difficulty. The official Church has made no final pronunciation upon Garabandal, as it has made upon Fatima to approve or upon Medjugorje to disapprove. The Society of St. Pius X has no official position either. For myself, I believe in it. All I have tried to do above is to make the case that if anyone has difficulty in fitting together in his head the insane facts of the modern world and the sane truth of his Catholic Faith, the lady of Garabandal provides an admirable solution. And if one day she were proved beyond doubt not to have been Our Lady, our Faith in public Revelation would not be shaken one bit, we should merely have to renounce one set of stepping-stones towards it. Meanwhile may Our Lady accept as homage offered to her this presentation of the triple prophecy of Garabandal. Our only intention has been to serve her and help her save souls. For more information, write to P.O. Box 606, Lindenhurst, NY 11757, U.S.A.”
Taken from Can Society Catholics withstand Catholicism without the Cross?:
“Let me take one case of this chaos, featured in many a Confirmation sermon this year, to try to help Catholics to grasp what a gigantic drama is playing out around them, because even most Catholics seem to think (or wish) themselves to be still living in the world of “The Sound of Music”! That world is gone, gone forever, as it deserved!
The case was apparently all over the media here in the U.S.A. several months ago. My knowledge of it is essentially confined to one long newspaper article sent to me by a friend, but the main outlines are clear. A 34-year-old schoolmistress from Washington State, married with four children between the ages of 4 and 13, entered into a relationship with a boy in her sixth grade class (age 11 or 12?), by whom she then had a baby girl. Tried and convicted for the offence against a minor, she was sentenced to jail for eight years, but the sentence was suspended because her “sweet and bubbly” personality must have seemed to everybody to be out of place in the “slammer”. However, no sooner was she out than she made herself pregnant by the same boy for the second time, whereupon her judge threw her back into jail to serve the rest of her sentence!
The article prints an attractive colour picture of her in court at the moment of her original sentencing: her pretty little chin perched on her folded hands, looking no older than a teenager herself, she looks wistfully across the courtroom, as though to say, “Why cannot these people understand true love?” For indeed, one of the quotations attributed to her by the article runs, “I have found true love at last.” Can anyone doubt she has watched “The Sound of Music” 20 or 50 times? Not I.
“Oh, come on your Excellency! Get off movies, and leave that movie alone!” Dear friends, gladly, if only movies would get off Catholics and Catholics would leave that movie alone! But I have here under my hand a glossy “1998 Catholic Family and School Videos” catalogue, from a reputable conservative Catholic organization out of Colorado, which advertises one smiling, glamorous, sentimental, “uplifting” movie after another, page after page. Where is the blood? Where is the Cross? Where is the sacrifice?
Movies are unreal. Catholicism is for real. Catholic movies, unless they are strict documentaries, are virtually a contradiction in terms. Yet movies occupy the front, center, and back of most Catholics’ hearts and minds, at least here in the U.S.A.! This is the drama of our poor schoolmistress who - you guessed - is one of seven children from a strongly conservative Catholic home! She was born in 1962. What did her home lack in those supposedly wonderful days, that she is now completely detached from reality? Catholics must ask themselves!”
And, finally, taken from the Final Letter of the good Bishop before his departure from the United States is his farewell poem :
So, dear friends, after one and twenty years
I leave the United States, with many tears
At sixty-three, I’ve given what I can,
It’s time to yield my place to a younger man.
When I came here, I came with heavy heart,
And now with equal sadness I depart.
For when I came, I did not want to leave
Where I had been before. So now I grieve.
To quit the scene of one third of my life,
Laden with priestly toil and happy strife.
Yet clearly I remember, when I came,
To three companions on the aeroplane
I said “I shall in the U.S.A. have fun!”
And that proved true. So now my time is done,
I might expect the same fun where I go,
Except - America’s unique, and so
The fun-ny third of my career must end,
As to a serious land my way I wend.
My friends may shed a tear, but not my foes
Who think my leaving terminates their woes.
But let them not exult! “I SHALL RETURN”
As Bishop, to ordain and to confirm!
So if the liberals dare to rise again
I’ll thunder, growl, and strike with might and main!
No let me hear of women growing S-L-A-C-K,
Or instantaneously I will be back!!
And if they’re S-L-A-C-K-I-N-G off when I am dead,
My ghost will come to haunt them, fierce and dread!
Meanwhile, dear U.S. ladies, girls, God bless
Your being so docile with your feminine dress!
Never have men so need women true!
In Europe they could learn a thing or two
From Yankee gals, in gracious dresses dressed!
Well done! - by your own children you’ll be blessed
Who learn what is a mother - NOT A MAN!
Alas, it’s difficult to make a plan
For future Newsletters. They hardly fit
In countries lacking ripe old Yankee…wit!
But trust that I support you from afar.
Men, be good fathers. In the house you are
By God’s design the head. Do not wimp out!
Not only women are meant to be devout!
Be full of God, and lead against the world -
By Catholic men the Devil must be hurled
Back into hell! Pray hard! Pain’s on the way
With shrieks and howls of grief, nor is that day
Far off. Then gird your loins, be strong, stand tall -
Tomorrow has no room for spirits small.
Flee electronics. Stay with real life.
Give time, love and attention to your wife.
Forget “The Sound of Music”, silly stuff
Of which the world has had more than enough.
So ends the last Newsletter I shall write.
Soon I must fly far south into the night.
Ah, my dear friends! - I feel like I could cry!
SO LONG! FAREWELL! AUF WIEDERSEHEN! GOOD-BYE!
Me Discedere Caesar Iubet
Who among the hierarchy could write this today? It was during the reign of Gregory XVI that Fr. Nicholas Wiseman, until that time Rector of the English College, educated and ordained priest in Rome, a resident there for 22 years, was created a bishop and sent to be coadjutor to “the venerable Bishop Walsh” in Wolverhampton, England. His departure from Rome is the reason he gives for being unable to provide further personal reflections on lives of the pontiffs at Rome, for Wiseman lived out the rest of his days in England. He writes:
It was a sorrowful evening, at the beginning of autumn, when, after a residence in Rome prolonged through twenty-two years, till affection clung to every old stone there, like the moss that grew into it, this strong but tender tie was cut, and much of future happiness had to be invested in the mournful recollections of the post.
And this is what impresses me - could he have found a more apposite passage to quote? - he appends the following quotation, unidentified of course, for any educated reader of his would have recognized it (I used Google):
Cum subit illius tristissima noctis imago,
___Quae mihi supremum tempus in Urbe fuit,
Cum repeto noctem qua tot mihi cara reliqui,
___Labitur ex oculis nunc quoque gutta meis.
It’s too beautiful. A few lines after the ones quoted, we learn that Ovid has been ordered to leave the City by order of Caesar; and it is the Pope who has commanded Wiseman. Though not natural citizens of Rome, like Ovid, how many, like Wiseman, have become her sons by adoption, for the sake of the Church? Happly, they can never be truly exiled from Her simply by removing from the City, for one of the Faith carries Rome everywhere he goes in his heart.
11th Annual Auriesville Pilgrimage for Restoration
I received in the mail yesterday notification about the 11th annual North American Pilgrimage for Restoration, September 27-30, 2006. This year’s pilgrimage is dedicated to restoring true devotion to Mary, Mother of Divine Love. For those of you unfamiliar with the Auriesville Pilgrimage, it is modelled on the pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres, a trek of sixty some miles in three days. The climax of the Auriesville Pilgrimage is the Shrine of the North American martyrs near Auriesville, NY. The Auriesville Pilgrimage is actually 72 miles in total length, though a fourth day is alloted to walk the final seven miles from the Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, Lily of the Mohawks, in Fonda, NY to the Shrine of the North American martyrs.
Last fall, Iacobus, Clara, Franciscus et Iosephus participated, to our great delight, in the final day of the pilgrimage, Saturday, which is the most popular or, perhaps I should say, populated, day of the event. Since many people at that time year are working or are in school or are simply unable to undertake the whole trek by themselves or with children in tow, they go just for the seven miles on Saturday. We were graced with beautiful, sublime weather last year; I walked the whole way in a suit (don’t worry, this isn’t the required dress) and I was quite comfortable.
The pilgrimage concludes with a solemn high Mass at the Shrine of the North American martyrs - last year, offered by Fr. Thomas Longua, FSSP, whom we were most happy to have to Cornell in the previous spring. The shrine itself struck me distinctly, far more, I would say, than did Chartres Cathedral. For the at the Shrine of the North American martyrs, one stands on the very ground where these heroic Jesuits were tortured and killed in the most barbaric fashion. It is forever the ground that they consecrated by their blood in order to bring souls to the true Faith. Moreover, my awareness of the place was heightened by a book which I had read in the previous spring, The Jesuit Martyrs of North America (1925) by the Rev. John J. Wynne, S.J. The book is primarily relevant quotations from the letters, in French and Latin, which the Jesuit missionaries sent back to their Superiors in France.
So with some sense for what these men saw and felt in this part of upstate New York, hundreds of years ago, one approaches the site where some of them died most horribly with all the more emotion. This, coupled with the fact that the site itself, wooded and on a rise, looks out over the Mohawk river valley, which, on a clear day, is spectacularly beautiful during the fall.
I highly encourage taking part in the pilgrimage; the registration information, for either Saturday or for the whole of the hike, is available on the website. The Cornell Society for a Good Time hasn’t yet made specific plans for this event, but with this post, I do hope to raise the question for my friends’ consideration.
A Priest Chosen to be Pope
How many of you knew that Gregory XVI was the last pontiff to come from a religious order? In fact, he was a monk of the Camaldolese, a branch of the Benedictine family. On account of his talents and learning, he had been transferred to the Roman monastery of the Camaldolese, early in his life, and, just before the time of his election, he had risen as high as the prefect of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide. It was as the former head of this dicastery that he addressed these words to Nicholas Wiseman, at that time, still the Rector of the English College at Rome:
“You must now revise your own proofs. I fear I shall not have much time in future to correct them.”
Such were the first words which I heard from the mouth of Gregory XVI. They were preceded by a kind exclamation of recognition, and followed by a hearty blessing, as I knelt before him in the narrow passage leading from the private papal apartments. It was only a few days after his accession. The new Pope alluded to an act of singular kindness on his part. He had desired me to expand an essay and publish it as a little work in Italian; on a subject in which, as Prefect of Propaganda, he took an interest. . . . At any rate, that short interview proved to me that Gregory’s elevation to the Sovereign Pontificate had not altered that amiability and simplicity of character which I had already so often experienced.
Too often, I’m afraid, one hears bad things said of Gregory XVI, that he was backward, that he bungled the affairs of the State, and so on. But before you listen to these opinions, which I’m beginning to suspect were disseminated by rather interested scholars than not, you should consider the words of Cardinal Wiseman, who was there in Rome at the time, who speaks as a Catholilc, and not as a liberal gleeful applauding the diminution of the Pope’s God-given temporal sovereignty.
But I had had no idea that Gregory was a religious; Wiseman writes: “On becoming a Cardinal, a religious preserves the color of his habit. That of the Camaldolese being white, Gregory XVI never changed the color of his robes, but wore the same as a monk, a cardinal, and pope.” This is most interesting; of course we know that this is how the Pope has the white cassock today, on account of a certain religious, Michele Ghisleri, of sainted memory, never having surrendered his Dominican habit. But we’d know more about this business of habits and dress, I imagine, if Cardinal Cappellari had been a Benedictine, say, with a black habit.
Though this conjecture of mine is somewhat belied by the fact that Pius VII, with whom Wiseman begins his book of reflections, was a Benedictine. Yet Wiseman says nothing about Pius VII wearing black, if he did at all. Perhaps Pius VII did, though in the paintings we have, he appears in some kind of choir dress. Shown here is a painting which Wiseman praises greatly as being a faithful representation of Barnabas Chiaramonti; more famous still is Jacques Louis David’s portrait of Pius VII - I’m sure you’d recognize it right away - but it is this painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence which Wiseman notes for our especial attention. It was one a series of portraits which Sir Thomas did all over Europe to document the principle characters and the state actors at the Congress of Vienna.
Is this custom preserved today - obviously, the pope could do what he wants - but I mean, among cardinals, do they always retain their religious habit? We don’t see Cardinal Bertone in the habit of a Salesian, do we? I know that I’ve seen pictures of Cardinal O’Malley in a Franciscan habit, though I also believe that I’ve seen him in the regular choir dress of a cardinal.
Even more interesting, perhaps, is that Cardinal Cappellari was not a bishop when he was chosen to be pope by his fellow cardinals! That is very cool, I think. He was but a priest, and he was chosen to be pope. Sadly, I believe that current canon law requires one to be at least a bishop before they can be made cardinal; though, of course, as usual, the Holy Father could reverse this law, even in but one instance, whenever he wanted.
Wiseman relates:
On the Feast of the Purification, February 2nd, 1831, an end was put to the conclave by [Cappellari’s] election to the Supreme Pontificate, by the name of Gregory. The ceremony of his coronation, which took place on the 6th, was enhanced by his consecration as Bishop, at the High Altar of St. Peter’s. This function served clearly to exhibit the concurrence in his person of two different orders of ecclesiastical power. From the moment of his acceptance of the Papal dignity, he was Supreme Head of the Church, could decree, rule, name or depose bishops, and exercise every duty of pontifical jurisdiction. But he could not ordain, nor consecrate, till he had himself received the imposition of hands from other bishops, inferior to himself, and holding under and from him their Sees and jurisdiction.
On a previous occasion, when Clement XIV was named Pope, he received episcopal consecration separately from his coronation. Gregory united the two functions; but following a still older precedent, departed from ordinary forms.
In the Roman Pontifical, the rite prescribed for episcopal consecration is interwoven with the Mass, during which the new Bishop occupies a very subordinate place till the end, when he is enthroned, and pronounces his first episcopal benediction. Here the entire rite preceded the Mass, which was sung in the usual form by the new Pope. Like every other bishop, he recited, kneeling before the altar, and in presence of his clergy, the Profession of Faith, the bond here which united the Head with the Body, instead of being, as ordinarily, the link which binds a member to the Head.
The Hills are Alive, with the…
I’ve been threatening to delve into this highly controversial issue for a long time. And I know that bringing up any of the letters of His Excellency Bishop Williamson is about as popular as, well, as his little number on Girls at University, or, Emancipation’s Mess of Pottage (still the greatest title I’ve ever seen ;) ). But there is one subject so serious, so completely necessary to our lives, that I have to speak up.
I need to come out against Bishop Williamson’s The Problem with the Sound of Music.
This burning issue was recalled to my attention when I recently, in Kentucky, spent a night enjoying an outdoor production of this musical with my parents. I understand that amongst the contributors to this blog I am probably alone in my appreciation of musical theatre, and Iosephus certainly chides me about it. But I think, whether you enjoy that sort of thing or not, that there is an interesting discussion to be had. Let me also say that, while I am sometimes skeptical of the things His Excellency puts in his letters, I think the discussion warranted and worthy of attention. Where he fails, however, is in the sadly shallow content His Excellence actually puts to the page.
For those who might not have seen the musical, or the movie, or have seen either but do not know the true story, let me lay out the basic plot. In the musical, Sister Maria is a novice at the Nonnberg Benedictine Convent in Salzburg, Austria, whose free-spirited ways and jovial nature make her a particularly poor candidate. The Abbess, sensing this incompatibility, sends her away to serve as governess to Captain Von Trapp and his seven children. Over the course of the play she falls in love with him. With the blessing of the Abbess, she forsakes the religious life to marry the Captain and, along the way, joins her new family as touring troupe of folk singers.
In real life a number of things were different - or just went untold by the musical. For one, Maria Augusta Kutschera grew up an atheist in a family of socialists. One day in college, she went to a local church, intending to hear a concert. Instead, God called out to her, through the sermon of famed Jesuit preacher, Fr. Kronseder, and she eventually decided to enter a convent. However, missing the outdoor air of her youth, she soon became ill and was sent as governess to one of Captain Von Trapp’s daughters, who was sick at the time with rheumatic fever. The next glaring fact left out by the movie is that, while Maria encouraged the family into greater musical efforts, it was rather the Family Chaplain, Fr. Franz Wasner who instructed them in the finer points of musicality, and finally brought them as a group into the public eye. That overview should suffice for what I have to say, but if you want to know more, a number of books are available that tell more about their life story here.
Now, let’s get down to why Bishop Williamson calls this “soul-rotting slush“. Well, it’s apparent right off that he doesn’t like anything about the movie. Why, in this particularly endearing passage, he sounds like Rex Reed on an off day. It’s so precious, I just have to include it all.
Fortunately the Mother Superior is also nice (of course, at least in 1965. Today she would be a child abuser), so she and the other nuns are very understanding and let Julie Andrews go, to try out being governess of a tyrannical widower’s unruly children who have (of course) chased away several governesses before her. What shall she do? Have no fear! The Power of Positive Thinking (of course) - she sings a gutsy little number along the lines, “…I have confidence in sunshine, I have confidence in rain… besides which you see, I have confidence in me”. Bravo.Sure enough, once inside the door she gives a dazzling demonstration of the superiority of liberty and equality over stuffy old Austrian ways! Immediately undermining - in front of the children - the Captain’s tyrannical discipline over them, she proceeds to win their hearts (of course) by a combination of being their friend, taking their side, making them sing and have fun, all this without a trace of motherliness and all the time looking as cute as a kitten. She even looks cute when she prays, in fact who would not pray when it makes you look so specially cute?
Of course the stern Captain is soon won over by his domain being turned into a gigantic play-pen, so he breaks out in that favourite Austrian number Edelweiss, whereupon they all burst into song because the family has been re-built on the liberty-equality model. By now Julie Andrews is looking goofy around the Captain (of course), so there is a ball, and they dance (of course), and dancing reveals more of her charms (of course), whereupon the Captain also looks goofy around her (of course).
But enter now the villains! Firstly a glamorous Baroness previously engaged to be married to the Captain, who schemes to get Julie Andrews out of the way, back to the Convent (but didn’t you know, “The path of true love never did run smooth”?). Secondly, villain of villains, a - a - a NAZI! (Original sin? - never heard of it! Isn’t all sin Nazi sin?)
Pan back to the Convent for a heart-warming feminine dialogue: Mother: “You’re unhappy”. J.A.: “I’m confused”. Mother: “Are you in love?” J.A.: “Oh, I don’t know.” Mother: “Go back to him”. Him is of course delighted when she returns, so there is a duet of swooning, spooning and crooning by - guess what! - moonlight! “But will the children approve of our marrying?” Of course! Shiny white wedding dress (of course), wedding bells all over the place and a lovely ceremony (of course), to be spoiled only by the brutal re-appearance of the nasty Nazi - the Captain must report for duty to the Third Reich!
The family tries to sneak away. The nasty Nazi spots them, so now they all break out into singing Edelweiss. The nasty Nazi is foiled when the family escape to the convent (where else?), but drama rolls as the nasty Nazis close in on the convent. (But didn’t you know, “Life is not just a bed of roses”?) The Captain is heroic (of course), but the dastardly villains are only foiled for good when their car is incapacitated by the nuns turned into mechanics (of course), and the last shots show the “family” climbing a mountain path to get out of the Third Reich, amidst hills which are once more - go on, don’t tell me you couldn’t guess! — “alive with the sound of music”. How truly heart - warming.
Well, the good Bishop has made fun of the plot, and the genre, and showed himself quite the wit in the process. But how much of this snide commentary is worthwhile? For one, the Nazi bits are real, and though Williamson may not be pleased by a story with baddies so cliche, I hardly think we can fault the movie for it. He also makes fun of the stupid songs - but what musical doesn’t have them? Next, he suggests repeatedly that Maria acts poorly in her position. She doesn’t have any “motherliness”. She makes the house a “play-pen”. Amid these less substantive claims, he does point out the one scene which always makes me cringe: when Maria refuses to answer to a whistle. Not only does it tickle me in just the wrong way, but disobedience in front of the children is nothing but wrong. Still, we know that Maria is impulsive, and somewhat untameable, so it fits with her character. While a modern audience might be blind to the minor flaws apparent in Maria, a Catholic viewer ought to see them.
Of course, she is also the impetus for a return to Faith in the family. We see her remind the family to say a meal time blessing. We see her reign in the troublemaking of the children. The more Catholic elements are left out, but we know who and what she is. In my mind, her conduct is the least of the problems with this movie. The worst action on her part, perhaps, is the classic Hollywood gazing and kiss-off - which, by the way, Williamson coins epicly as “looking goofy”.
However, let’s move on to the real problem with the Sound of Music: its questionable vision of the religious life, and how it portrays Maria’s vocational story. But wait! Bishop Williamson has finished with the plot. He’s moved on to making fun of the pretty actors, calling the marriage a sham, and demeaning Miss Andrews as that “canine” woman.
I understand his bitterness - I’m not so keen on make-up either. But you’d think, that in a letter written by one of the last four Bishops who guard the unsullied Faith, there would be some discussion of this central issue which is so confusing in modern Catholicism. Does Maria make the right choice? Is she led astray by her obvious passion for this worldly man? And is the story in itself, of a novice leaving a Convent for a man, entirely wholesome? I know it happens very often, and one must be where one needs to be in life, but isn’t it a dangerous thing, to tell so gleefully the tale of a lost vocation?
The first time I read this letter I couldn’t believe my eyes. What I thought was the most singularly soul-slushing rot (or was that soul-rotting slush?) in the musical, when the Mother Abbess says that the Abbey walls were not meant “to hide from our problems”, is completely ignored by a traditionalist out to savage the play. And then, to make things worse, she immediately sings the worst song of the lot, “Climb Every Mountain.” Come on! Improper romance and young lust? Why the Abbey walls were practically invented to hide from that particular problem. Instead, with rosy cheeks, the Abbess sends naive Maria off to battle her foe without, without, it seems, any concern over this girl’s vocation.
Anyways, that was one of the things I always thought about during the musical, which I’ve loved from my youth. Then, as I said, I saw it the other night. You see, we were in Kentucky, and I saw the girl who played Maria, a Baptist likelier than not, kneel to make the sign of the cross before her nightly prayers like one unused to the project. Several rows beside me sat a group of young Muhammedan ladies. On the stage were the children, making one of the greatest cases I’ve ever seen for large families. That is, they were being cute, and that sort of tactic is notoriously hard to defend against.
The analogy that popped into my head, not too surprisingly, involved the Trappist monks I had seen earlier in the day. In trying to condense my feelings towards them, as I hinted at in an earlier post, I became uncertain. Here are monks living a life of sacrifice that dwarfs my own. I may not like, exactly, what they say to retreatants, or what books they have in their bookstore, but they have given their lives entirely to God. This sort of thing, to judge by the Marian statues which greet the eye on every lawn in Trappist, KY, means something to the world. Even though they might be heretics, smitten by a certain disorder of the nervous system, they hold onto their habits, and to their vows, and God works through that witness. Likewise, I saw in those singing nuns, who prayed the Gloria Patri with rather more Romanism than your average real Catholic can summon, and in that glorious and fruitful Catholic family, finding joy in each other and in song, a witness that even Hollywood did not wash entirely away. In that time in history when the events took place, most of the world was under assault by forces seeking to demolish families like theirs. Today, I think, even Catholics are prone to look at the theatrical example, shorn though it is of many Catholic bits, and see something which the world has convinced them cannot exist. Meanwhile for those without the Faith at all, God is reaching out to them in these vestigial glimpses of cowls and bedside prayers.
I think on the whole, that I would probably agree with Bishop Williamson, at least in essence. The Sound of Music is a problematic movie, and a problematic play. Yet, in many instances, its charms and seducements, smarmy though they may be to some, point to good and proper family virtues, which are especially elevating to the modern who has lost all sense of family. Moreover - and this is the part that stuck out to me recently - it takes just a little bit of Catholicism to make a difference, in an age when we see none at all.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,