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It rarely gets as good as this. Last night, on a flight from Detroit to Ithaca, I wound up sitting next to an academic who identified himself as a sworn enemy of the Faith, and who wanted to discuss it with me! It was as if Divine Providence had seen my “Wanted: Atheists” post from a month or so ago, and obliged by sending a juicy one right to me.
Archive for January, 2007
Polytheists and Atheists
Feast of St. Francis de Sales
Sports, banquets, parties, fine clothes, and stage comedies are all things that, considered in themselves, are by no means evil. They are indifferent acts and therefore they can be neither good or bad. At the same time such things are always dangerous and to have an affection for them is still more dangerous. Hence, Philothea, I hold that although it is licit to engage in sports, dance, wear fine clothes, attend harmless comedies, and enjoy banquets, to have a strong liking for such things is not only opposed to devotion but also extremely harmful and dangerous. It is not evil to do such things, but it is evil to be attached to them. It is a pity to sow such vain and foolish affections in our heart’s soil. They usurp the place of worthwhile interests and hinder the sap of our soul from being used for good inclinations.
– St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life
Nihil vero tam damnosum bonis moribus quam in aliquo spectaculo desidere; tunc enim per voluptatem facilius vitia subrepunt.
– Seneca, Epistulae Morales, 7
A Litany to Light and Life
This note is intended for the exclusive delectation of those of us here at Cornell (or once here), who know of Sage Chapel and its non-sectarian Sunday morning services. Of course, it may bring a smile to the faces of others as well. The name “non-sectarian” is deceiving: trust me, this group is one very special bunch of loonies with their own ideology. I can’t imagine that Sage Chapel has a regular Sunday morning “congregation”; rather, I suppose that the size of the gathered “faithful” varies with the hipness of the person leading the “meditation”, i.e. sermon. On that note, I should also point out that this Sunday - in case any of you were interested - is the “special annual jazz service”; the “Postlude”, so-called, is “Take the A Train” by Duke Ellington. I think that they would be better off with some of Mozart’s compositions for the Masons, which I am enjoying listening to as I type this post. It’s kinda jazzy in its way.
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Duties of the Catholic State in Regard to Religion
I recently read a little pamphlet, last published in 1993 by Angelus Press, entitled the Duties of the Catholic State in Regard to Religion, a lecture by Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani. The translation from Italian was done by the Rev. Fr. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp. and first printed in 1953. Fr. Fahey explains the occasion of the lecture in the Translator’s Foreword:
On March 2, 1953, the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome celebrated the fourteenth anniversary of Pope Pius XII’s election to the Supreme Pontificate. . . . After the address of homage in Latin to His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, read by the Right Reverend Rector of the University, and the address of welcome in Italian to the distinguished gathering, delivered by the same, the Schola Cantorum of the Roman Seminary sang the Ave Maria of Da Vittoria. His Eminence, Cardinal Ottaviani, then gave his eagerly awaited lecture on “Church and State: Some Present-day Problems in the light of Pope Pius XII’s Teaching.” It is this Lecture, published later in pamplet form by the Pontifical Lateran University, which, by the kind permission of His Eminence, I now have the honor of presenting to readers of English. I am certain that in doing so I am rendering a great service to those who would otherwise be deprived of its luminous exposition of Catholic doctrine. . . .
Luminous exposition, indeed! and not, of course, the type of thing one is liable to read hot off the press of the Pontifical Lateran University today. From the opening paragraphs:
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Abortion in America
In light of the recent anniversary, I thought our readers might be interested in this article from Human Life Review. George McKenna tracks the attitudes taken towards abortion by the major American political parties, and asks the perplexing question: how did the Democrats become America’s pro-abortion party? As McKenna points out, it’s not what one might have expected in the 1960’s, when the Democrats counted the great majority of Catholics among their voters, and trumpeted the defense of the weak as their primary agenda. Republicans, the historically anti-Catholic and pro-middle class party, flirted with abortion at a time when a young Ted Kennedy was declaring it morally repugnant. And yet, just a few years later, the Democrats were adding a plank to their platform declaring a “universal right” for women to procure an abortion, while Republicans were recasting themselves as the defenders of life. What happened?
A Catholic Pilgrim in Turkey
Our fearless traddie reporter, sojourning in Mohammedan lands, relates the story of an even more fearless Catholic come from France to Turkey, and thence to the Holy Land.
After Mass this Sunday, at the Jesuit chapel located in the old French chancellery in Ankara, I was eager to talk with a young man whom I easily identified as a traditional Catholic - they tend to stand out at most Masses these days, even here in Turkey.
His name is Armel. He is 28 and has 10 brothers and sisters, including one who is a priest in the FSSP and another brother who is considering the priesthood. Early last year in June 2006, Armel resigned his commission as a captain in the French infantry. One month later, in July, he began a pilgrimage on foot from France to Jerusalem. He had spent Christmas in Istanbul and had recently arrived in Ankara. Armel stayed in our home Monday - and departed Ankara Tuesday morning after morning Mass, continuing his journey across the cold winter mountains of eastern Turkey, and then, God willing, into Syria, Lebanon, and finally Palestine.
Jan. 21: St. AGNES, Virgin & Martyr
St Agnes’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.
Conscience: Accurate or Precise?
Though no profound insights are necessarily contained in them, I always like finding new metaphorical expressions for various moral or philosophical distinctions. They serve as useful mental shorthands, and can sometimes remind us to take the distinction seriously. Last night, when sampling an Opus Dei evening of reflection in our new town, one of the two speakers offered the following analogy, which occasioned this post: the distinction between following one’s conscience and having a well-formed conscience is like the distinction between having a precise and an accurate clock. A conscience that is not attuned to the true moral law is no more useful than an ill-set clock, no matter how closely — how authentically, if you will — it is followed.
As I warned, no profound insight here. And maybe I like the analogy because, as a physicist, the distinction between accuracy (trueness-to-reality) and precision (theoretical limit to accuracy or fineness of measurement scale) is a professional obsession. But in any event, I hope you find it useful, too.
Sung Requiem Mass for King Louis XVI: This Saturday in NYC
I’ve just been told that there will be a sung Traditional Requiem Mass for the repose of the soul of King Louis XVI, the last King of France before the Revolution, at Our Lady of Good Counsel in New York City (located on East 90th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Ave; the closest subway stop is 86th and Lexington on the 6 train). The Mass will be at 1pm this Saturday, January 20th. If you are in the New York area, how can you not attend? I wish that I could be there!
Get Help
An email discussion of the newest serial-killer flick to hit the theatres got me thinking again about the topic of mental illness. It’s really just the most morbidly fascinating tip of an iceberg of questions about how to reconcile psychology with a moral philosophy that holds human beings responsible for at least some of what they do. But, since it is the most morbidly fascinating bit, I’ll go ahead and say something about it.
Bearing with Ourselves
I was reading today from a little book that I bought from Sophia Press a few months back, containing letters written by St. Francis de Sales to various people under his spiritual direction. I knew very little about St. Francis de Sales before buying this book, but I very quickly came to love him. He has a gentle and patient wisdom that is exactly right for a spiritual director, and his words are uplifting in way that reminds me of St. Therese of Lisieux. His tender concern for the souls of his correspondents (most of whom are laypeople) reassures us that we are all, without exception, of interest to God. But at the same time, he tries at every opportunity to relax those neuroses that turn piety, penance and scrupulosity into sources of pride and petty vanity. We are warned not to become too despondent about our imperfections, since they are expected of fallen beings; and yet, we must not become apathetic either, because every day affords us small and humble opportunities to draw closer to God.
A Catholic Environmentalism?
I went and saw the movie Happy Feet a week or so ago. If anyone was thinking of seeing it and hasn’t yet, this is my advice: go for first hour or so, and then leave. I’m quite serious. It starts out as a charming and innocent children’s story. In a sort of cartoon spin-off of March of the Penguins it features a society of emperor penguins in which singing is most the prized skill. The hero of the film is a penguin with a tin ear but a talent for dancing, and the first hour features a classic ugly duckling plot which, however cliche its basic form, is developed in cute and amusing ways.
But halfway through, our dancing friend persuades his peers to embrace his waltzing ways, and brings them back prancing to the larger penguin community. The movie now takes a dramatic and unexpected turn. The elders (thin, knarled, beady-eyed penguins reminiscent of Mr. Burns) declare the dancing to be “impious” and blame the young dancer for the shortage of food that the region has recently been suffering. The “Great Penguin”, they declare, will not bless the community with fish unless the upstart youngsters follow the old ways… and consequently our hero is banished. He sets off to find out what really happened to the fish, and the rest of the film is an environmentalist tract peppered with ludicrously transparent jabs at religious authority.
Catholic retirement: a suggestion
Maybe I’m a little young to be worrying about this, but visiting relatives over Christmas always gets me thinking about how people spend their post-retirement years. Most people seem to have quite a lot of them these days. If you’re in good health, those years can be quite pleasant for people who have enough money and a slate of hobbies or activities that they enjoy. People who live to a very advanced age, however, are less and less likely to be able to live an active sort of life. Western cultures are having a very difficult time figuring out what to do with their elderly citizens.
In some cultures, the old are given great respect and much care. Uzbek culture is like this, and older people are more or less permitted to become household tyrants, ordering everyone around and taking the best of everything for themselves. I can’t say that this model was entirely pleasing to me. Obviously, it can be quite burdensome on young people to be forced to answer to their elders’ every whim, and young brides especially are often treated more like slaves than like family members. We Americans tended to feel quite resentful on behalf of the young wives who, even when heavily pregnant, would be running to and fro doing chores and waiting on everyone while the rest of the family sat around drinking tea. Quite honestly, I was never sure that the arrangement was entirely healthy for the older people either. People of any age can become quite repulsive when societal taboos against rudeness and selfishness are lifted. Some resist that temptation, of course, but some don’t, and bossing people around for several years didn’t seem to me like an ideal way to prepare to meet one’s Maker.
Prayers for Vatican II
This summer, in the week before our marriage, Catharina Senensis and I accompanied a priest friend of ours to the fascinating warehouses of a church salvager who calls himself The Ecclesiologist. This is where all those statues and altar rails and marble pulpits go when the spirit of Vatican II reaches some unfortunate parish. Anyway, Jason, the owner of the business — a rather scatterbrained but friendly and generous fellow — gave us the run of his warehouse while our friend shopped for his new church building. We found a treasure trove of old Catholic books and dinged up statues and crucifixes, all of which Jason gave us gratis, no doubt counting the value of a couple of dozen falling apart books as less than the major pieces our friend was agreeing to buy. In one of these books, a 1962 book of Altar Prayers, we found a cache of old prayer cards once used by a St. Michael’s parish in Connecticut. Several of these were devoted to praying for the Second Vatican Council, and are a rather melancholy reminder of the hopes of the faithful in those days for that Council. I’ve scanned a couple of these cards for the edification and entertainment of our readers. Enjoy!
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Where Are Your Children?
I was reading the other day that a law has just been enacted in Germany to allow women to take an entire year off with two-thirds of their normal pay, following the birth of a child. This rather incredible measure is one of many that European countries have enacted in recent years, in an effort to beg and cajole their citizens into having offspring. So far the results have been pretty abysmal. Fewer babies were born in Germany in the last year than in the final year of WWII, when the country was war-torn and many of the men killed or absent from home. This trend can be seen all across the continent. European society has simply lost the will to reproduce itself.
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,