Some more Hymns

In my lonely quest to get better hymns in Catholic Churches, my thoughts on some Lenten and Easter hymns:

1. Where You There?




Probably my favorite Lenten Hymn

2. Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones. This hymn has been stuck in my head since Easter.

3. Ye Songs and Daughters. This is an easy hymn to sing and probably one of the oldest in the Catholic hymnals.

4. Alleluia, alleluia, Let the Holy Anthem Rise.

An Italian Holy Saturday (and some final thoughts on Lent)

So yes, again this Holy Saturday I ate the traditional Italian foods such as meat pie and macaroni pie, filled with eggs, cheese, meat etc.

I read something interesting recently regarding the Lenten fast. I always knew that in the old days, Catholics would refrain from meat, cheese and eggs for much of Lent, hence the reason Holy Saturday foods in Italian tradition were so filled with them. But why Lent itself? Obviously, some self sacrifice is good for you. But there may be practical reasons as well.

In pre-modern northern Europe, by February, food was starting to get scarce. No new foods would be harvested until spring of course, so the food from last fall needed to last longer. So Lent gave some religious meaning to the hungry season. And by spreading the burdens of the hunger, so that prince and peasant, priest and burger, felt the pangs together, it helped social cohesion.

It makes sense, but then again, I always find Catholicism eminently reasonable and practical.

Some Late Thoughts on Holy Week (Part 2)

On Monday, the Diocese of Brooklyn declared "A Day of Reconciliation." All churches stayed open late so Catholics could partake in the sacrament of Penance.

I called my wife as I left work to say I would be late, as I was "going to confession." Her first response was an accusatory "what did you do?"

Part of the problem is that we have made confession so difficult these days. Many churches offer it now only on limited days. Partly this is due to the change in Catholic society the past 4o years. As a child, my mother would take me to confession at least once a month. I admit now I do not go as often as I would like.

When I lived in Chicago, I would go more. Near my office was Saint Peter's in the Loop, a Franciscan church where one of the Friars was always available to hear confessions. One additional benefit was that the Franciscans were very easy on penance -- so long as you were kind to animals that is.

So why Confession? I get comments from non-Catholics at times not understanding the whole thing. They see it as some sort of institutionalized guilt trip. Partly this is due to Catholics ourselves not understanding it.

It is not about guilt but about forgiveness. God is Father after all. A stern but extremely loving father at that. He wants us to do right, but even if we do wrong, loves us so long as we are truly sorry. After all, when Jesus refused to order the adulterous woman stoned ("Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), He not only said "I do not condemn you" but also said "sin no more."

So we leave the confessional, saying an Act of Contrition promising to sin no more. But we do. For most of us those sins are minor. We say a few white lies here and there. We lose our temper with our spouses or children. We get too caught up in the ways of this world. But it is OK. Maybe it is the struggle that is important.

In the end it is all about redemption and forgiveness. So I tell this story I read once in Lord Norwich's history of the Byzantine Empire.

There once was a Byzantine Emperor named Romanus the First. Romanus was one of Byzantium's greatest emperors. He worked hard to protect his people. Leading a nation beset by enemies, he protected the empire's borders from attacked by the Arab, Turkish and Persian countries to his south, and Slavic nations to his north. He worked hard to protect the lands and property of the common workingmen from grasping aristocrats. He worked hard to expand commerce and trade. In short, he gave the Empire peace and prosperity.

But Romanus was troubled, for in reality he was a usurper. He elevated himself to co-emperor, married his children into the royal family, but ushered the rightful emperor off into obscurity. He mourned the many soldiers who died or were wounded fighting his wars. And Byzantium was not a democracy, so although he was fairly benevolent, he had, as Emperor, sent men to the dungeons to protect his throne.

His sons, realizing this and fearing for their future power, sent Romanus, to his relief, off to a monastic exile.

There, Romanus stripped his garments, knelt before the altar, and while his brother monks chants hymns of contrition, confessed his sins while another monk wrote each into a book. Romanus sent the book to another monastery, one know for its piety and asceticism and asked the monks to pray for him.

Romanus received a message back -- the pages of the book were empty.

Whether or not yo believe the monk was speaking literally (that a miracle had occurred) or metaphorically (which is how I read the story), I find this as the essence of the Sacrament. It is about forgiveness, not guilt.

Some late thoughts on Holy Week (Part 1)

I have been meaning to write a few thoughts about Holy Week, but have not gotten around to it until now. So here goes.

Palm Sunday -- Last year I gave some thoughts about the big issues of Palm Sunday. This year, as I sat there I thought about something else. Namely, my Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. A donkey is, after all, a somewhat ridiculous creature. But in that way, it was the perfect animal to transport the Lord into the city.

A donkey is not much like a horse. A horse is an animal of war and money and power. Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a horse would have been confirmation to many that he was about to restore Israel by force.

A donkey though is the animal of the hard working farmer or peaceful merchant. Armies may use donkeys as draft animals, but the ca;vary rides war horses.

In short, the horse is the animal of war, but the donkey is the animal of peace.

So it was fitting that Jesus entered the city as he did.

The Vatican and Evolution

I have been very dismissive of creationist and "intelligent design" advocacy. Personally, I think that both try to turn God from Supreme Creator into a hum-drum engineer. By requiring God to review the plans for the earthworm, I believe we reduce God.

The Vatican has gotten involved, though as usual the press tends to misunderstand it. About a 15 years ago, Pope John Paul II made some statements in support of evolution and the press acted as though this was a major change in Vatican policy. I noted to an evangelical friend that it is not really a change. The officially commentary on the Scripture had recognized evolution at least since the 1950s, and in fact the church had been OK with evolution before that.

Of course, there were some controversies, such as the Omega Point theory of Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, which argued that evolution was leading to man converging with God. But the controversy was with the endpoint so to speak, not the theory of evolution.

I saw this item on Little Green Footballs that the Vatican is having a conference on evolution and the intelligent design folks were kept out. Pope Benedict a few years ago got himself enmeshed in the intelligent design controversy, mostly because he probably did not understand how that term had become so loaded in the United States. Hopefully, this conference signals an end to the Vatican getting mixed up with intelligent design.

A Quote for Lent

“A church that doesn’t provoke any crisis, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a Word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’s skin, what kind of gospel is that? Preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed do not light up the world!” -- Oscar Romero, bishop and martyr. HT -- The Anchoress)

Ash Wednesday

In a civilization that has seemingly banished death, it is good to remind ourselves of our own mortality every now and then.

Exiles

Not long ago I asked -- where are the Catholic novelists? My cyber friend Bill [oops I meant Rodak] suggested that I check out Ron Hansen. His latest novel Exiles is about Gerard Manley Hopkins, the great Victorian Catholic poet. So I checked it out.

The novel really follows two stories. One is the fate of five German nuns, exiled during the Kulturkampf, who died when their ship taking them to American ran aground off England. The second story is of Hopkins struggles within the Jesuit order, a struggle mirrored by his attempt to write a poem about the maritime disaster . The resulting poem, "The Wreck of the Deutschland" is considered one of Hopkins best, but he paid a price. Like some many heroic and holy people, he suffered from the "Dark Night."

The novel is a Catholic one in that it examines the motivations of people for vocations. But it is not a theological novel in the spirit of Brideshead Revisited.

Pope Benedict and the Lefebvrist Puzzle

A minor uproar has arisen due to the lifting of excommunication of some of the leaders (bishops) of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). The press has been presenting this as a “reinstatement” of the bishops – even though it was merely a cancellation of the excommunications. The persons in question technically are not permitted to act as a bishop (or priest) and have no pastoral role. Whether or not they accept that or continue to hold themselves out as a bishop is another issue. And the remarks of one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, have turned a minor matter of church governance into an international incident.

The SSPX is schismatic. The press usually frames it as with respect to the Latin Mass (and ad orientum) but it is deeper than that. The SSPX has its origins in the discontent by some on the French Catholic right with the secularization of the French Republic. The impetus was opposition to Vatican II reforms to be sure, but the real genesis was a desire to return to the "throne and altar" Catholicism of the Old Regime. So the SSPX is as much a political organization as it is a religious one.

The excommunications took place in 1988 and were automatic as the result of Lefebvre consecrating four bishops (one of whom was Williamson). An Archbishop has the power to consecrate another bishop, but the consecration must be approved by the Vatican (which had told Lefebvre NOT to consecrate the four). So while the consecrations are valid in some respects, the Vatican does not permit the four to act as bishops. Lefebvre did it to ensure the SSPX would continue after his death. The Vatican bent over backward to keep SSPX inside the church. Pope John Paul II offered Lefebvre one new bishop of his choosing. In addition, the SSPX would have become a personal prelature of the church in a similar situation as Opus Dei. The organization would therefore have been permitted to continue its work but under the direct authority of the Pope. Considering the then strong and continuing opposition of many bishops to traditionalist Catholicism, it would have allowed SSPX to operate in dioceses were the hierarchy was hostile or indifferent.

Lefebvre refused and consecrated the bishops. By doing so, he engaged in a schismatic act for which the penalty was excommunication to him and all participants. This in turn led to the effective casting out of the SSPX from the Church.

Since the act, some other things have happened. One is that the SSPX in turn has fell into schism. Second, the Church has taken steps to help traditionalist Catholics stay within the church. These include:

• The founding of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter by a group of former SSPX priests
  
• The issuance of Ecclesia Dei in 1988 (issued in reaction to the consecrations) which directed bishops to allow the traditional Mass.
  
• The issuance of Summorum Pontificum in 2007, which essentially took the decision out of the hands of the bishops and into the hands of the parishes.
  

I was and remain quite happy that the Latin Mass is making something of a comeback, even though it will never replace the vernacular. But even this has not been enough for SSPX. For one thing, they still complain about the Missal – traditionalist Catholics in communion with the Church use the official 1962 Roman Missal. The SSPX demands use of the 1950 Missal (and offshoot of the SSPX uses an even older Missal). To a large extent the problem is political – the Catholic Church has moved away from a throne and altar philosophy while SSPX wants to go back there.

One good thing has been the fact that the church has been able to get ordinary traditionalist Catholics back into the church. Most of those who attended SSPX masses were not there because they had an interest in the philosophy of Joseph de Maistre but rather because they liked the devotions of the “old” Church. They now have a place to go. The hard core of the SSPX though will never be happy. The church continues to bend over backward to keep the SSPX in communion and all we get for it is biting. If you ever get into a conversation with a true believing SSPX member, every sentence contains the words “Satan”, “Jews”, or “Freemasons”. Despite the action, the SSPX still remains outside the Church.

Which brings us to Williamson. The guy is a loon. It is not just the Holocaust; he is also a 9/11 Truther, JFK conspiracist and God knows what else he really believes. But he has not been "reinstated" as bishop, he cannot celebrate Mass in a Catholic church, he has only had his excommunication revoked. While I understand the concerns raised by some in and outside the church, his loony beliefs have nothing to do with the cancelation of his excommunication. One irony is that the father of Archbishop Lefebvre died in a Nazi concentration camp during World War Two.

George Weigel in a Newsweek article discusses the Lefebvrist puzzle here.

A Quote I Like

"From silly devotions and from sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us." -- St. Teresa of Avila.

Where are the Catholic Novelists?

Having recently finished "Brideshead Revisited" I starting thinking about this question. Waugh was a convert, but Brideshead was first and foremost a theological novel. The novel is in many ways about the "twitch upon the thread" by which God recalls sinners to himself. Other great novelists also had their Catholicism reflected in their writings -- Chesterton, Greene, Flannery O'Connor. Even Betty Smith's novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is very conscious of the Catholicism of its author.

Are their any Catholic writers today that fill this gap? I am told that the work of Mary Higgins Clark is informed by her faith, but I have never read her (I am not into thrillers). Obviously, there are novelists who are Catholic. But are there any Catholic novelists today?

Pope Benedict on "The Apostles"

I just finished Pope Benedict's book on the Apostles. It is a wonderful little book.
The book itself is based on a series of papal audiences given in 2006 and 2007. So it is conversational, not scholarly (if this Pope could wrote anything that is not scholarly that is). Each of the subjects (and it goes beyond The Twelve to also discuss Paul and some of the early Church's co-workers) is presented in a way to make their life lesson relevant to today.

With the exception of Paul, who was an educated man, the Apostles mostly were what today we would call "blue collar" types. They were working men (and women too), ordinary people with ordinary concerns and lives. I think about that when I think about people like my Uncle Joey -- a big gruff tough guy who none the less would use a finger rosary to pray while driving. Like several of the Apostles, he also liked to fish. He never had it easy in life, yet he accepted the bad things and worked hard to persevere.

Holiness can be found in the most unlikely places.

Some Thoughts on Dying

Father Richard Neuhaus, editor of First Things, died today. I am a subscriber to First Things (which may seem a little strange as I neither consider myself a neoconservative nor a social conservative) and always turned to his column first whenever a new issue arrived. Father Neuhaus had once before been faced death and wrote this about it:

We are born to die. Not that death is the purpose of our being born, but we are born toward death, and in each of our lives the work of dying is already underway. The work of dying well is, in largest part, the work of living well.

Catholic prayer books often had prayers asking for "a good death." I think about my parents and how they faced their deaths. My father faced his disease and fought it hard. When I was asked by the deacon how I would describe how he faced his disease, I gave four words -- faith, hope, humor, and courage. He died at home, in bed, in his sleep.

My mother died one year to the day thereafter. In some ways she welcomed it, hoping to be with my father. The strength she exuded to all around her disappeared the day my father died. Her family and friends were not surprised when the end came. For her, it came after 3 months in a hospital room.

What does make a truly good death? For no matter what we do, how much tofu we eat or laps around Central Park we run, we all die. Most of us hope and believe that there is something on the other side of death. One prayer to Saint Joseph asks "drive away those enemies of my soul so I can end my life in peace."

So to have a good death, we should accept our fate that we will, someday die, and not lose heart before the end.

It's a Catholic Thing

That is the great thing about us Catholics, we never deviate from the rubrics of the laity. Child puking in your hand? Genuflect and make your way to the bathroom. Toddler have a flesh wound? Cross yourself and then continue with direct pressure. A plane crashed into the back of Church? Make your way to the nearest exit, bless yourself with Holy Water and then exit the Church.

From the Real Life Rosary Weblog (HT Happy Catholic)

Thoughts on Epiphany

Today was the feast of the Epiphany, though I like to call it "Three Kings". My mother used to insist that we keep our Christmas tree up until Epiphany (though she used the old fixed date of January 6, not the movable feast date we use today). When I lived in Washington, a Cajun friend used to head back to New Orleans to return with the King Cake.

In church this morning, I explained it to my children that on Epiphany we celebrate the first Christmas presents.

As the homilist this morning explained, the really funny thing is that Matthew's Gospel does not refer to three persons, and does not call them kings. Rather, they are an indeterminate number of "magi" or wise men. Little is given of who they were or where they came but the general "from the east." The gifts too are symbolic -- gold of Christ's kingship, incense of his priesthood, and myrrh for his death.

So Happy Epiphany!

A Quote I Like

"If I succeed I bless God. If I do not succeed I bless God, for then it will be right that I do not succeed." St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

What Catholics have lost

In my previous post I mentioned that I recently finished a book on the decline of Boston's Catholic culture. "The Faithful Departed" spends most of the book looking at the clerical abuse scandal and how its roots go back to the time the Catholic Church decided popularity and acceptance was more important than the Church's mission. For most of its existence the Catholic Church in America served a population that was primarily poor and marginalized. The Irish, German, Polish and Italian immigrants who formed the backbone of the church talked funny, wore strange clothes, worked awful jobs and lived apart from the Protestant majority. While American Catholicism still represents some of the poor and marginalized (for example, immigrants from Latin America), American Catholicism is now indistinguishable from the American mainstream. Pick a group of 100 non-Latino Catholics at random and they would look pretty much indistinguishable from 100 non-Catholics picked at random. We are no longer almost universally poor and ghettoized.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago as I stood in the old CYO room at one of the local churches. In the room were cases filled with very old trophies detailing the victories of basketball and bowling teams sponsored by the parish. Ancient black and white photos of the CYO participants adorned the walls. It was a throw back to a time when Catholics in America lived in a parallel world of their own creation with their own schools, clubs and organizations.

Catholic churches used to have their own banks. The Knights of Columbus had (and still have) special insurance products sold only to Catholics. My mother's church in Brooklyn, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, used to have a bowling alley in the basement. My father used to tell me that his church, Saint Cecilia, had special events every Saturday night for the parish teenagers. To attend, you had to show a card you received at catechism earlier that week (my father as an old man could still recite portions of the Baltimore Catechism whenever we would discuss matters spiritual, so I guess the lessens were pretty good). Even my cousins in Brooklyn used to hang out on the church steps with their friends.

That time seems long since gone. My neighborhood has something like six churches within walking distance of my house. But the old Irish/Italian working class that used to populate Park Slope is gone, replaced by a combination of bobos and, paradoxically, some immigrants. The immigrants are mostly Catholic and on a few occasions I have attended Spanish or bilingual Masses. There you can catch a glimpse of the old Catholic Brooklyn. But the immigrants are getting pushed out by new condominium development. The church buildings will remain. Some people will even attend Mass there. But the community will be gone.

Now, you can say that your church has a great community. They have coffee hours and diners and events for the kids. And that is true. But the centrality of the local Catholic parish is missing. That I fear is gone -- disappeared in the wake of clerical abuse scandals and the increasing assimilation and affluence of Catholics.

Thoughts on the (old) scandal

I recently finished a book about the decline of Boston's Catholic culture entitled "The Faithful Departed." Boston was once the center of American Catholicism. It still is probably the most Catholic city in America, at least in nominal terms. But Boston was rocked hard by the clerical sexual abuse scandal and has not recovered.

The author of the book, Philip F. Lawler, looks at the scandal from a very conservative Catholic position (there was a Philip Lawyer who was the Constitution Party's Senate candidate in Massachusetts in 2000 --if they are the same persons, that may give some context to Lawler's views). Lawler buys into the "Lavender Mafia" explanation of the scandal. As a former altar boy and lector, I never really bought that explanation.

But Lawler also views the scandal (and the continuing slide of Catholicism) to the desire of the Catholic hierarchy of America to be liked by America's elites. I think he may be onto something here. The scandal was handled not as an affront to religious belief or a moral issue, but rather a PR problem. It was managed as a corporation might manage a product defect. But the Catholic faith is not a product or a commodity to be sold.

Yet, despite the long rumblings of the scandal, the church seemed most worried about how the scandal would effect the public image of the church.

So in the end, the Church is horribly damaged, Catholics disheartened and the approval the hierarchy sought is no where to be found.

Brideshead Revisited

Back in October I noted a list of books I wanted to read before I die. I quickly finished the two Mario Vargas Llosa books I ordered and then got to work on Brideshead Revisited, by Englishman Evelyn Waugh. Waugh was a convert to Catholicism and like most who come to Catholicism as adults, he takes the faith extremely seriously. All too often, us cradle Catholics view the faith with too much complacency -- it is a nice cozy blanket that keeps us warm but we often never really think about it.

Waugh saw Brideshead as being a "theological" novel but while he obviously had a point, to limit readership to Catholics or committed Christians would be a mistake. The novel is often seen as a valedictory to prewar England, but even there you might be missing the point. For while Waugh looks unhappily at modern society -- "The Age of Hooper" he calls it contemptuously (after a rather ridiculous minor character), the pre-war aristocracy is not entirely looked upon with approval. Comic relief is often provided by "Boy Mulcaster," the heir apparent to an English title who comes across as the stereotypical upper class twit.

Rather, the novel is about redemption. Most of the characters are flawed persons, as we all are, and all try in their way to make right with themselves and with God. The imagery of this call is so perfect -- repeating Chesterton's line of the "twitch upon the thread." In the end, things do not turn out quite as everyone expected, yet the narrator realizes that it turned out well.

The novel, though is replete with humor, most of it revolving around drinking. But my favorite passage regards Rex Mottram, a rather disreputable character who decides to convert to Catholicism to marry into a noble family to further his political career. Mottram is extremely uninterested in Catholicism. When a priest asks Mottram if he has any questions regarding the faith, his reply is to ask the priest to tell him what he should believe. The intended bride's younger sister then gets hold of Mottram and fills his head with such silliness that Mottram believes, among other things, that there are sacred monkeys in the Vatican.

Maybe that is where Dan Brown got his ideas from!

Life in the Borough of Churches

Brooklyn is sometimes known as "the borough of churches" for obvious reasons. One nice thing about living in Brooklyn is that there are about 7 churches within easy walking distance from my home. As Alex is not in 1st grade yet, I can move around and go to whatever Mass is convenient. The diocese even has a website that allow you to find Mass times in your neighborhood.

I used the tool this morning (as usual) but unfortunately did not pay as much attention as I should have. And I ended up at a Spanish language Mass.

Luckily, the Missal was bilingual (and of course the order of Mass was the same) so I was able to follow what was going on. It was my first time at a Spanish Mass. Christian really liked the music and danced with every hymn (although I am not a fan of liturgical dance, I figure it is different for a 3 year old).