Catholic Sensibility

Jennifer at Twisted Physics offers a very fun Carnival of Space #109. She refers to my pretty pictures from last week as Space Porn. Just don’t tell MM at VoxNova; it might skew his graphs.

I urge you to check out this video from the Japanese lunar orbiter Kaguya/Selene. HDTV from space. Far more exciting and fulfilling than silly porn. Doesn’t it make you want to go to the moon?

Why celebrations of the Word? Here’s what the rite has to say in section 82:

82. The special celebrations of the word of God arranged for the benefit of the catechumens have as their main purpose:

1. to implant in their hearts the teachings they are receiving: for example, the morality characteristic of the New Testament, the forgiving of injuries and insults, a sense of sin and repentance, the duties Christians must carry out in the world;

2. to give them instruction and experience in the different aspects and ways of prayer; 

3. to explain to them the signs, celebrations, and seasons of the liturgy;

4. to prepare them gradually to enter the worship assembly of the entire community.

Commentary:

I like the emphasis on morality as a process of the heart, not of the mind. I suppose the “instruction” of the second purpose is more aligned with apprenticeship than didactic lecture. Although homilies of these word services could be more explicit about aspects of the liturgy. These word services should also include more than just the Scriptures and homily–signs of the liturgy would include regular aspects such as candles and incense and some sacramentals, as well as feast-specific experiences.

Any thoughts on your part?

I’m mildly surprised at how much traction Michael Jackson’s death is getting in the Catholic blogosphere. Via David Gibson, there’s this piece up at First Things today. I think there’s something less of the comparison between Lady (of the Tramp)/St Guinefort, and more to the profit-driven engine of the contemporary media. Conservative Catholics don’t get off scot-free in this.

If I may make a more apt comparison, I think Pope Pius XII is a better fit for the Jackson glove. The WWII pope has his own legions of followers and detractors, each trying to out-shout the other to make their point.

Commenting on Michael Jackson as some sort of saint requires us to examine how we really deal with celebrities. Let’s be honest and say that the modern culture might even be more obsessed with discrediting celebrities and outing them as objects of derision. Did this start in earnest with President Nixon? With his enemies lists, and with the delicious nightly unveiling of the congressional Watergate hearings? My dad watched them like a soap opera. Each subsequent political mini-generation seemed to up the temperature, and conservatives were surely no dissenters from escalation.

Even more, Americans seem to rejoice in the rehabilitation of politicians from Nixon to Bill Clinton. Consider also such jailed notables as Martha Stewart. Is Mike Vick not far behind? It seems there’s a curious cult wanting to elevate saints, watch them trip and fall, then cheer again as they are restored to a (hopefully) chagrined greatness. As the Culture War accelerates in the face of Republican political humiliation, we see it on both sides of the ideological divide: a rallying around the heroes, Obama and Palin, and no spared effort to embarrass or humiliate them, or, failing that, their loyal followers.

It seems to me the current culture is more about anti-saints, and Jackson is no different. Stardom in his young life was followed by weirdness and scandal, and now in death, by adulation again. Yet there are those who want to continue the cycle of hero/failure even now. Maybe the Romans were on to something in bringing these messes to a dignified conclusion: de mortuis nil nisi bonum

Let’s give a bit of perspective on these posts. Last week we finished the section 75-80, which describes how to conduct a catechumenate. That followed the Rite of Acceptance liturgy (48-74) in which unbaptized newcomers to the faith enter the Church as catechumens.

Ahead (this week) in sections 81-89, we’ll have all text, no rubrics or rituals, to tell us how to conduct the most important liturgies of the catechumenate period, celebrations of the Word of G0d.

81. During the period of the catechumenate there should be celebrations of the word of God that accord with the liturgical season and that contribute to the instruction of the catechumens and the needs of the community. These celebrations of the word are: first, celebrations held specifically for the catechumens; second, participation in the liturgy of the word at the Sunday Mass; third, celebrations held in connection with catechetical instruction.

This is interesting. The rite presumes that liturgies of the word will be held in connection with catechetical sessions. For most American parishes, that would be a weeknight. What nearly every parish does provide is an invitation and expectation that catechumens will attend Sunday Mass. The usual practice there is to break open the word after dismissal, while the baptized community celebrates the Eucharist.

The rite seems to imply that on some occasions, the faith community celebrates liturgies of the word for the benefit of both the community and the newcomers, and without (necessarily) an explicit attachment to the catechetical session or to the pattern of Sunday worship. These celebrations seem to be given top priority above other forms. I know of no parishes doing this–not even my own. What would such celebrations look like? RCIA 85-89 give a model, and these will be discussed in an upcoming post. The purpose of these liturgies will be covered in sections 82-83. Offer your own speculation, but I’ll end with one of my own, because “liturgical season” jumps out at me.

I wonder if the intent here is, in large part, to introduce the catechumens to the rhythms of the liturgical year. I would surmise that such gatherings of catechumens and community introduce the primary seasons, such as Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Eastertime. Gatherings also could coincide with major feasts such as Epiphany, Pentecost, and the holy days of obligation. A third consideration would be the prime solemnities of the liturgical year: All Souls, Annunciation, Sts. Peter and Paul. A fourth possibility would be the major divisions of the Gospel narrative in ordinary time. An example of the latter would be a session anticipating or breaking open the Bread of Life discourse from John 6 that we’ll be reading in August.

Additional thoughts on this?

My friend Jack Smith takes a valiant turn at defending his bishop, Robert Finn of Kansas City-St Joseph, from the question posed by (among others) America:

What moral responsibility do activists and church leaders bear to prevent moral and political criticism on both sides of the abortion divide from escalating into hate speech?

Jack concedes his own blog headline, “We Are At War,” didn’t quite match the bishop’s keynote title, “Warriors for the Victory of Life.” I mention on Jack’s Catholic Key blog that I find the terminology of warfare problematic. As a pacifist, I certainly object to it on principle. But additionally, it adopts the political ploy of playing to the “base.” It’s not much different from warm-feely messages delivered to the self-satisfied. And to be sure, there are times when people are dispirited and crestfallen and need a pep rally to bolster their own energies for the task ahead. A more effective message to the pro-life “base” would be, in my opinion, a serious self-examination from top to bottom. Do individual pro-lifers present the best example, as the Church insists believers always should? When we have erred, are we not challenged to examine consciences, confess wrong, and amend behavior? And when we are confronted with political failure, as the pro-life movement itself judges the elections of 2006 and 2008, isn’t it time to reexamine strategies and tactics? The GOP mainstream seems to be repeating the same old messages, only louder and longer, and their political foes seem pleased to give them ample rope to hang themselves. The president is clearly an able politician (even if he is inexperienced) and maintains a posture above the fray. Too bad pro-life leaders, especially bishops, haven’t managed the same.

Jack goes a little overboard with this:

This week’s Current Comment editorial in America disgraces the paper and the Society. It is vicious calumny in service to wicked ends.

No, I think the question raised in the editorial is apt: do bishops have responsibilities, given the current climate of fracture in the Church, and the reality of political disenfranchisement by conservatives who have been in ascendancy for the past twenty-eight years? I would be very interested to read Bishop Finn’s response to the question. Even if one is trying to rally disheartened followers, and knowing that dozens of blogs and web sites will link and selectively quote your talk, does he have additional responsibility not to incite anger, disunity, and aggression?

I stated on the “We Are At War” post that the whole of the bishop’s talk  must be read. It does have its own context. Yet my friend Jack doesn’t seem willing to grant a similar context to admittedly strong words from “America, NCR, and Commonweal,” not to mention other Catholics who are honestly questioning the whole situation in the Church and society at large. He runs off the rails a bit by lassoing criticism of a bishop into an enemy-of-my-enemy meme via President Obama. The conclusion of his post:

So why would the editors at America, NCR, and Commonweal, who all got on this anti-bishop bandwagon, attempt to associate Bishop Finn and by extension other outspoken bishops and the pro-life movement as a whole with murder and truly incendiary speech and threats? Why would they seek to make those who have consistently at personal cost defended human life, the enemies of life?

Is it because the ultimate strategy for them to “Sing a New Church Into Being,” is to alienate the Faithful from their Shepherds? Is it because the defenders of life have criticized their master? They will muster any excuse for him, praise him immodestly for actions he has not taken, and destroy the reputations of any who dissent from him.

That is not the way a Christian works for the Risen Lord. But their master is not Risen. He resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And serving a man this way is idolatry.

The problem and challenge with the blogging medium is the instantaneous nature mixed with the lack of editors (colleagues) and the inevitable errors we bring to our writing means our web sites will usually run the gamut of quite good to truly bad. I think this is one of my friend’s worst posts on an otherwise laudable blogging effort. And I can appreciate his loyalty to Bishop Finn, not only as his boss, but as his diocesan pastor.

Bishops are criticized all the time. If indeed we’re talking bandwagons, we’re not talking about one or a few. This wagon trail would extend to Rome and back–and it probably always has.

I think the critical Catholic media are asking apt questions of the bishops. Many of us see inconsistencies, and those of us not close to the political arm of the pro-life movement may have the perspective lacking from within. It is the duty of a pastor to serve unity, and if unity is served by sitting people of different opinions together and soliciting their input and reconciliation, so be it. The task of promoting life in the political sphere is that of the lay person, not the bishop. When bishops get mixed up about their job description, they should be called to an accounting of it.

In trying to cast this criticism as an arm of the pro-president effort is to misread what the Republicans and moral conservatives have been doing for three decades and trying to read it into one’s political adversaries. So sure, there are Democrats who are active Catholic editors and writers and leaders. But not quite so many as there are Republicans identified with the pro-life/anti-abortion effort.

My open suggestion to Jack would be to have Bishop Finn address these concerns: How does a bishop concern himself with unity at a time when Catholics find themselves fracturing over politics? If one can recognize that the cultural setting is particularly partisan, and that even the threat of violence from within hangs over society, is the imagery of “war” and “warriors” appropriate? Do bishops today realize their followers will pull whatever they like from net-published talks and documents and use them for their own ends? Does any of this affect what a bishop says and how he might say it?

For those coming late to this series, I refer you to my previous two posts in the series, here, on finding good wedding musicians, and here, on what you can expect from good wedding musicians.

When I meet with an engaged couple, I’m prepared to spend as much time as needed to get the musical choices done right. An engaged couple might be very picky about music–that’s fine. I’ve spent as much as time as four hours over two meetings and a few phone calls to get music planned to everyone’s satisfaction. Of course, a musician might (and probably should) charge for extra consultation time. It’s worth it. My personal sense is that up to two hours is reasonable, though my personal median is thirty minutes to an hour.

On the other hand, some couples have just told me to choose what music I think is most appropriate. That works for me, too.

I can’t tell you every church musician will be as accommodating as I. I can just tell you what to expect if you meet with me. I write down the basic information about your wedding: date, time, and place. I ask about the number in the wedding party, and how the parents are getting seated. I need to know if the wedding is at a Mass or if it will be celebrated with just the Liturgy of the Word.

My policy is to talk about the music for the Mass first. I will expect that the psalm, alleluia, and Eucharistic acclamations will be sung by people present inclined to join in them as they would at a Sunday Mass. In fact, I will tell you the model for the best wedding liturgy is a lively and vibrant Sunday liturgy. The best weddings build from that foundation.

I will discuss vocal selections for after the entrance of the couple–many priests and liturgists urge a congregational hymn there. I don’t disagree with the emphasis. It should be something most people in the pew might sing: a familiar church tune. I don’t find Communion time is a spot I’m prepared to go to bat for the congregation unless I know the wedding guests will largely like to sing.

I tend to avoid suggesting “fill music” for unity candle or the sign of peace. (Though the wedding I’m playing for today has both options–but no Mass.)

Any songs that miss the “cut” for Mass might get moved to the prelude time.

Sometimes I’ll play samples of processional music, and the top two choices get slotted for the entrance of the wedding party and its departure. Sometimes a third piece of music is suggested for the wedding party–separate from the music for the bride. My current pastor denies this request. But I don’t see a real problem with it. I do prefer the option of singing a congregational song after the opening procession–when the people can be expected to sing.

I suggest secular songs be moved to the reception, and I give a nuanced explanation that the rites at church, including the prelude music, form a spiritual and religious whole. Guests at a church wedding likely expect the sacred element to be enhanced. We would all be surprised with an altar call at a wedding reception. Likewise, the wedding ceremony, even without the celebration of the Eucharist, is intended to be a time of prayer and worship.  The music should point to that reality.

I’m willing to listen to a justification for a particular piece of music I don’t think is appropriate. If the couple can’t convince me, the pastor will usually settle the matter. I do urge them to go to the priest prepared to give a theological/religious argument. If the song has romantic significance, make it the first dance at the wedding reception. If a spiritual case can be made, many pastors and music directors I know are willing to hear your argument.

Not surprisingly, it’s the impressive cathedral church for the city that bears the name of the Apostle to the Gentiles. A CNS story gives some details for the latest US national shrine, announced two weeks ago. The original piece is in the Catholic Spirit, the archdiocese’s print organ. Msgr. Anthony Sherman of the US Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship:

This was a church that, even by its design and architecture, revealed the life of St. Paul and the challenges of his ministry and his preaching and proclamation. We’re hoping that … this shrine in particular might be an impetus for evangelization, that people will get the spirit of St. Paul and begin to want to try and reach out and proclaim the message of Christ.

Father Joseph Johnson, cathedral rector, shed a bit of light on the application process. (Yes, one must fill out an application form, receive a visiting bishop-representative from the USCCB, and provide all sorts of information on the site.) These days, a national shrine must be able to accommodate national pilgrimages.

My mom used to run parish trips to shrines in Québec: Montreal, de-Beaupré, and Trois-Rivières. In our Italian Catholic parish, St Joseph, as you might imagine, had a substantial and prayerful following. Some years, Mom packed three busloads–and we were just one parish. I’ve been on the travel end of these pilgrimages: people are very devoted to these saints. I wonder about the fervor for Saint Paul. Has it really surged during this special year? If so, the Cathedral of St Paul is well-equipped to handle substantial numbers of visitors. I believe the nave of the church seats close to 3,000.

Father Johnson said the cathedral began the application process when the pope first announced in June 2007 that the church would observe a year of St. Paul beginning the following June. The priest said he felt the cathedral had a particular responsibility to heed the jubilee year’s call to greater devotion to St. Paul.

He also thinks the national shrine designation honors the vision of the cathedral’s founder, Father Lucien Galtier, the first priest to establish a parish in the area in 1840. Because of his devotion to the saint, he named the log chapel he built after St. Paul, which led to the name of the city.

“Father Galtier looked to the person of Paul when he arrived in this wilderness, and it’s interesting that now the universal church has said we’re all going to do that,” Father Johnson said.

To develop the human and spiritual connections to Saint Paul and the shrine, they’ve established the Archconfraternity of the Apostle Paul. ($15 annual dues) There’s a fivefold aspect to this apostolate:

• Greater devotion to St. Paul and his intercession.
• Study of and reflection on the Pauline epistles in the New Testament.
• Practice of corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
• Commitment to evangelization, especially in everyday encounters
• Connection with the spiritual life at the National Shrine of the Apostle Paul.

In preparing my liturgy presentations this past week, I noticed in Sing to the Lord a reiteration of the notion that liturgy is intended to produce certain fruits in the believers who worship. Section 9 reads, “Charity, justice, and evangelization are thus the normal consequences of liturgical celebration.” Can the same principle be applied to the apostolates of devotion and prayer? It seems the archconfraternity is on that track with points three and four, above.

Any comments, especially from people in the Twin Cities, or connected with the cathedral parish?

Equinox at Saturn is only a few weeks away. Shadows cast on the rings are getting lots of press. Many images and some video are up at the Cassini site, including this (above) capture of the shadow of small irregular-shaped moon Epimetheus crossing the rings of Saturn. Shadows of large moon Tethys, small moon Pan, small moon Pandora, and large moon Mimas (in color) are also interesting to see.

The most amazing shadows are those of Daphnis and the rise it gets out of nearby ring boundaries. Check out the link with the one below, as well as here and here. The image below includes a few background stars, including that bright spot, upper right, in the rings.

A Daphnis video is here. Given that the little moon in its gap (the Keeler Gap is about 26 miles wide) is itself about five miles in diameter, and if one assumes the moon is squarely on the ring plane (not above or below it), and the longest of the ripple shadows is about two-thirds the length of the moon’s shadow, the wave heights on the edges of the Keeler Gap might approach a mile-and-a-half, about my commuting distance to work. I like to think about these images and what the scene would be like close-up. It’s interesting to ponder the scale we see in these visuals. The Keeler Gap, for example, is about the distance from one end of a typical Iowa county to another.

You might imagine the sight from the surface of Daphnis would be pretty impressive. And because you’re out in near-Saturn space, indeed it might–big golden Saturn would be part of the backdrop. But I’m thinking the best views are the ones we’re getting from Cassini, from thousands of miles away.

From the moon, yes, you would have a thirteen-mile vantage point for the ring edges. The full wave looks to me to be about 200 miles long, and about the same distance away from Daphnis, so it would stretch off in the distance, up-and down-orbit. I was thinking about running a very long tether from the moon, trailing Daphnis by a few hundred miles. Even then the wave height from the middle of the Keeler Gap would only span a spacesuit’s fist at arm’s length. My sense is you would only see the one wave, so it would be a very gradual curve. Remember: a mile high, but two-hundred miles long. On a sheet of paper, that translates to a millimeter-high ripple. On a tarp-covered baseball diamond, it would be like a forgotten bat–the pitcher’s mound would be way too big.

Zooming in closer could be trouble. There might be a lot of random debris hear the ring edges. Even though it all looks pretty neat from Cassini, a house-sized boulder could do some serious harm to a little spaceship–and objects that size aren’t being resolved by the Cassini images of the rings.

You might wonder: what if we could just hover above the rings, say from fifty miles above the crests and buzz the waves as we pleased? Unless you want to invest in and spend a lot of rocket fuel, no can do. Remember these rings are not like clouds on a planet. Each ring particle from a speck of ice or dust to the stadium-sized boulders and in between are in themselves, moons orbiting the planet. If you were fifty miles above the ring waves, one-quarter trip around Saturn–and less than four hours later–you would find yourself plunging through the ring plane, surrounded by whatever mess Daphnis kicks up.

If I were going to Saturn, plant me on a moon. I’d want to steer clear of the rings–until I know more about what it’s like close up in there.

I’ll leave off this post with a nice color piece of Saturn. The rings cast their own shadow on the planet, plus you can see the blob of the shadow of Mimas. It had just slipped off the rings when this image was captured.

Fr Austin, aka The Concord Pastor, asked me about posting some of my presentations from the Loras College Liturgical Music Conference. My role in the event was actually quite small. The noted liturgist Kevin Seasoltz gave a marvelous talk Wednesday unpacking the notion of aesthetics in liturgy, and developing a really profound application of the Three Judgments. Other speakers, as you can see in the link, tackled the qualities of artistry, transparency, ritual, freedom, tradition, and innovation as they apply to Catholic liturgy and its music. It was all good. I enjoyed the side talks, the dinners, and the wrestling with applications with the attendees and speakers.

My role was to lead two breakout sessions on the theology of choir and assembly. And since I have so much material (I prepared enough for about four to six hours), some of it untouched, yes, I will post some re-formed essays on the topics.

In preparing for the conference, I read through Sing to the Lord, the US bishops’ document on liturgical music. I read it through a few times. I found much surprising and good. Some surprising and weak. But it’s a rich mine for starting the discussion. And I say “starting,” because I think the real work of applying its principles has barely begun. It’s one reason why I still have an inner chuckle at the “reform of the reform” movement. There’s quite enough to reform in the liturgy itself without quibbling over twenty, thirty, and fifty years ago, and whether or not the right fork in the road was taken. The liturgy is here and now, with us, and that is what needs attention.

In the coming days, I hope to elaborate a bit on these topics:

Progressive Solemnity (a few posts, but the original ideas will address how progressive solemnity can and should be applied to the entire Catholic sacramental system, not just the Sunday Eucharist and the liturgical year)
Ministry and Volunteers: What’s the Difference?
Silence
Formation of Music Ministers

Maybe a few other topics. Rather than tackle SttL in an orderly/thorough way as I have other Vatican and USCCB documents, I might instead look at principles worth discussing and pulling in documentation from Vatican II and the other liturgy documents. If that sounds like a good plan, feel free to suggest any other topics.

Generally speaking, I’m happy to ponder any liturgical or musical subject within my competence. My e-mail address is in the sidebar.

(This is Neil) As I promised our frequent and much appreciated commenter Liam, I’m posting here on narratives of Western Civilization. (Sorry about the title.) More specifically, I’d like to use a recent article (link is to abstract) by the Anglican theologian Owen C. Thomas to identify two narratives – a secular narrative A and a more “Protestant” narrative B, respectively – that many of my readers will find both familiar, and, I trust, problematic. I realize that this talk of “narratives” might seem recondite. But our identification of the present context of the church usually depends upon some narrative of “how things came to be this way.” Furthermore, whenever we speak of “modernity” or the “modern” world – whether positively or negatively, and with or without great erudition, we usually do have a particular narrative in mind. Thus, like it or not, narratives …  

I should note that we can speak of problematic Catholic declension narratives of Western Civilization, recognizable, perhaps, by the spotlights on nominalism, supposed Protestant individualism, and other such culprits. But, here, following Owen Thomas, we will just speak of narratives A and B. Narrative C might eventually have its day, but not today.

First, then, narrative A. Reverend Thomas encountered this narrative (he calls it “the academy narrative”) while studying with the philosopher John Herman Randall, Jr., at Columbia University in the late 1940s. Narrative A begins in the Golden Age of Athens, between the sixth to fourth centuries, BCE. This is a “Golden Age” because philosophy (Socrates, Aristotle), history (Herodotus, Thucydides), literature (Pindar, the tragedians, Aristophanes), science (Aristotle again), and democracy are all born. But, eventually, there is what the Oxford classicist Gilbert Murray termed a “failure of nerve,” namely, the “rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of self-confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in normal human effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation; an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to God.” Narrative A follows the judgment of Petrarch that, before 1340, the West experienced a nine hundred year “Dark Age.”

After nine hundred years of night, during the Renaissance, classical antiquity was finally reborn. We see once again, Randall writes, “an increasing interest in human life as it can be lived upon earth … and without necessary reference to any other destiny in the beyond or the hereafter.” Randall goes on to say about the Renaissance, “All this meant, of course, a revolt from the Christian ethic: in place of love, joy in the exercise of man’s God-given powers; in place of faith, it became more and more clear, the fearless quest of the intellect.” The western world finds its nerve again. But this Renaissance is not merely the rebirth of classical antiquity; it is the birth of the modern world. The Renaissance matures in the Enlightenment, which is distinguished by the idea of progress – the main figures in the Enlightenment, Randall says, “hoped for a veritable millennium.” And, if we turn from Randall’s The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age (rev. ed., 1940) to Crane Brinton’s Ideas and Men: The Story of Western Thought (1950), we read, “This eighteenth-century view of life, though modified in the last two centuries, is still at bottom our view of life, especially in the United States.”

Thus, we see the outline of narrative A. Its secularity is clear and unavoidable.

Second, we have narrative B. Owen Thomas learned this narrative from Paul Tillich. Here we begin before the sixth century, BCE, and well east of Greece. We begin with the eighth century Hebrew prophets, who spoke of God above gods, the creator of a world that is “very good” – a world that includes bodies, sexuality, individuality and community. This God called Israel to be a light to the nations, condemned its injustice, and, through Amos, proclaimed, “I spurn your feasts, I take no pleasure in your solemnities … [L]et justice surge like water, and goodness like an unfailing stream” (5:21, 24). Jesus is the Incarnation of God and intensifies the Hebrew Bible’s critique of injustice and idolatry in his own critique of Pharisaic hypocrisy and legalism.

But, just like narrative A passed into a centuries-long Dark Age, narrative B also has its times of shadows. As Christianity moved into the Hellenistic world, it was reinterpreted in Platonic categories. This Platonic Christianity, it is said, can be seen in Clement, Origen, Augustine, Eastern Orthodox thought and Aquinas, and was only somewhat banished in Protestant thought. The biblical God, according to Owen Thomas’ summary, is here confused with the “divine, nameless, ineffable, impersonal One,” and the world is seen as a “hierarchy of levels of being stretching from the divine down through the spiritual, the psychic, the organic to the inorganic.” Humanity is a microcosm and our highest level is also divine. We are called to recover this divine nature and reunite with the ineffable, impersonal One by escaping through asceticism from the drag of our lower levels. Physicality and community become meaningless, unreal. The fall of Adam becomes the sad story of the defiled body placing the soul in exile – concupiscence ruins contemplation. The influence of Middle Platonism, says, narrative B, is not a good thing at all.

The anti-Platonic proponents of narrative B claim that narrative A’s diagnosis of a “failure of nerve” does not apply to biblical Christianity, only to the Platonic Christianity described in the paragraph above.

Narrative B, then, sees the Renaissance as positive, but essentially Christian. Paul Tillich, in his 1961 lectures on the Renaissance at Harvard University, claimed that the Renaissance was not a recovery of classical antiquity, but neglected Christian doctrines – the medieval and Greek negative attitudes towards reality were replaced with a renewed understanding of creation (especially the imago Dei), incarnation, and the resurrection of the body. Tillich noted that there is no doctrine of creation in Greek thought, not even in Plato’s Demiurge, and no possibility of seeing the world, embodied and finite, as good. (In this context, Owen Thomas mentions the Anglican Archbishop William Temple’s oft-quoted remark, made in his 1934 Nature, Man and God, that “Christianity … is the most avowedly materialist of all the great religions.”)

Furthermore, the proponents of narrative B also see the idea of progress as coming from Christianity. Platonism, they say, sees time as a circle; history is no more than eternal return. On the other hand, the hope of Israel for a Messiah was the hope for something new. And, then, in the medieval period, as Albert T. Mollegen (a longtime professor at Virginia Theological Seminary) writes, “In Joachim [of Fiore] and his followers was born the idea of progress, a radically new idea that, apart from the prophetic religious tradition, had never existed on the face of the earth before.”

Even secularity itself, we read in narrative B, comes from Christianity. Didn’t Christianity, since only God could be seen as holy, oppose idolatry? Wasn’t Polycarp told to look at his fellow Christians and say, “Away with the atheists”?  Narrative B would make us ask about modern science: Wasn’t it biblical religion that taught us to study nature through observation, not some sort of impossible deduction from the divine nature? Didn’t, as Robert Merton taught us, the Puritans support modern science? Here Owen Thomas quotes the exiled Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev:

It is impossible to build railways, invent the telegraph or telephone, while living in fear of the demons. Thus, for man to be able to treat nature like a mechanism, it is necessary for the demonic inspiration of nature and man’s communion with it to have died out in human consciousness. The mechanical conception of the world was to lead to a revolt against Christianity, but it was itself the spiritual result of the Christian act of liberating man from elemental nature and its demons.

And what of democracy? Narrative B locates its development within radical Protestantism. Thus, the historian R.H. Tawney: “The foundation of democracy is the sense of spiritual independence, which serves the individual to stand alone against the powers of this world … and it is probable that democracy owes more to Nonconformity than to any other single movement.” (Here, interestingly, Thomas quotes the Catholic historian Christopher Dawson’s claim that the “first appearance of genuine democracy in the modern world” occurred in England, under the aegis of Calvinism and Anabaptist and independent sects.)

But narrative B is not necessarily optimistic. To be sure, the distinguishing characteristics of modernity have been the fruits of Christian doctrines, but modern men and women do not understand this lineage, because they have taken Platonic Christianity to be authentic Christianity. Thus, they have sought to leave Christianity behind altogether. And, this, narrative B suggests, has and will have disastrous consequences. Here Thomas quotes Dawson again, along with Arnold Toynbee, and Auden’s “For the Time Being,” alongside St Paul’s threat of the “wrath of God” against those who exchange “the glory of the immortal God for images resembling moral man or birds or animals or reptiles.”

Narrative B, especially in its reading of the poisonous effects of Middle Platonism throughout most of Christian history, seems to be a decidedly Protestant narrative. (Thomas finds this narrative persuasive.)

The question for us, here, is whether we see the influences of narrative A and/or narrative B around us today. And, if so, how do we respond to them?

I’ll be off to a conference at Loras College in Dubuque for the next three days. I’ve been engaged to lead two topic sessions on the “Theology of Choirs and the Liturgical Assembly,” as lensed through the USCCB document Sing to the Lord. Session 1 will cover the congregation and choir at Sunday Mass. Session 2 will look at other sacraments and issues outside of the liturgy, again with an eye to the choir and liturgical assembly.

Even if I locate internet access at the college, I’ll probably lay low from the blog for a few days. Immersion in the environment, early bedtimes, playing some music, connecting with archdiocesan colleagues: that has great appeal. Neil has two excellent posts below, and even if we go fallow here at Catholic Sensibility the next few days, I can recommend you check the archives for Neil’s other articles. The series on RCIA will resume next week.

I have a wedding this Saturday, the usual liturgical duties this weekend, plus an article due to one of my editors on Tuesday. You might be spared my commentary for several days.

So PBS won’t accept any new religious programming. This is something of a lament, but perhaps less so than it appears. Where do Catholic shut-ins view televised liturgy? It’s been a discussion at my new parish, as we’ve relied for years not on PBS, but on cable public access. Adding to the discussion is our outdated and failing video equipment. Among some, the thinking is that we could upgrade to digital video on Saturday night, burn a few dvd’s, and send any of them out with Sunday Communion ministers to the sick. One could head off directly to cable access on Monday.

Our pastoral associate doesn’t think that bringing dvd’s to the elderly is such a big deal. We could afford to buy a $25 dvd player and install it for anyone who needed one, she thinks. Our pastor is concerned it might be a problem, and that the current proposal to switch to digital video won’t be completely without road bumps.

I consider the problem of the cable company airing Sunday liturgies a week late. Or sometimes later. This isn’t an ideal situation. For our parish, we’ll also have the easy capability to throw up Sunday Mass on the web site, and people can watch as they wish–even the faraway readers of this web site.

Mass on television: I wonder if it will become mostly obsolete. Not tomorrow, but in twenty or thirty years, likely, don’t you think?

(This is Neil) In his current column, Father John Breck provides an eleventh excerpt from Archimandrite Lev Gillet’s Amour Sans Limites, originally published in 1971 under the name of “A Monk of the Eastern Church.” I’ve provided excerpts of his earlier excerpts – here are links to parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.

I very much liked the sudden role reversal here (I’ve placed the key sentence in bold):

At times a person or group of persons can take the form of a closed city. We would like to approach them and take up with them a genuinely loving relationship. But the city has shut its gates against us.

What then can we do? Mount an assault against the ramparts? Certainly not. We need, rather, to circle the walls of the fortress several times, seven times, even seventy-seven times, and to do so in silence. We need to circle those walls with a quiet and respectful attitude, without troubling ourselves over the rocks and insults that might be cast at us. Above all, in making this movement, we need to carry with us the Ark of the Covenant, the sign of our covenantal relationship with the Lord of Love. That is, we need to bear and to offer everything within us that is the most sacred and the most generous.

This we need to do until the moment when the Lord of Love tells us, “Now I have placed this person into your hands. I have broken down the wall of separation. I give this person to you, as I give you to that person.”

It may be that we will come to the end of our life without ever seeing the other person respond to our love. Yet in a sense we will even then be victorious. For by “attacking” those who willingly isolate themselves, and by doing so with Love, we cause our own walls to tumble in ruins.

Haven’t I in fact barricaded myself against Love? The hostile fortress is first of all myself!

The walls of an enclosed city were not built in a day. They required years to construct. Day after day I have added stone upon stone, in order to build up an ever-higher wall of self-centeredness. I have isolated myself by a double wall of protection. First, by the wall of my words and destructive acts, visible to everyone. Then there is the invisible rampart that is far more insidious, which consists of my thoughts compulsively focused on myself.

The strongholds we have constructed have nevertheless been attacked. Who has assaulted the closed city that exists within each of us? It’s other people. It’s Love.

(This is Neil) The March 2009 issue of Cross Currents has the transcription of part of a taped conference recorded by Thomas Merton “during the last years of his life while he was living as a hermit.”  The entire taped conference was entitled “On Prayer,” and this partial transcription – made, I should note, by Ernest Daniel Carrere, OSCO – is called “Prayer and Identity.” I’ll provide three short excerpts. I don’t think that they require a lengthy introduction. (The Romano Guardini book that Merton mentions is Pascal for Our Time.)

To be in a fallen state is to be in a state where one’s heart is double, self-contradictory. Even though we’re baptized, and even though we are nourished with the bread of life, we maintain this state of ambiguity in spite of ourselves, at least psychologically. We can’t get out of it altogether; we have to be saints before we are through with that, and even the saints aren’t through with it. We also have to accept this fallenness and ambiguity of our love and of our hearts.

We come to prayer with ambiguous hearts, and we have in ourselves the same doubts as other people to some extent. We are not safely walled off from the world in a little religious universe where everything is secure. Our faith is not secure in the modern world, not that the modern world attacks our faith but that we are simply modern people and therefore ambiguous, and therefore, we tend to doubt. We don’t have the simple, direct faith that people of another, less complicated, age were able to have, and we don’t have to have that simple, direct faith. We are bound to have a certain element of doubt in our lives because we are ambiguous people, and it is simplicity to recognize this and not to pretend that we are totally out of it. Of course some are more simple and less complicated than others. You don’t have a duty to be ambiguous. I’m not saying that your whole life has to become that of playing the role of an ambiguous, doubting person; but with the sincerity that we have in our own hearts, we must respond to God in prayer.

It is God who calls us to prayer. So prayer, first of all, is a response to a call from God, a personal call from God, and I think we should look at it that way even though we don’t feel like praying. Let’s admit that very often we don’t feel like praying and that there are a lot of other things we’d rather do than pray.

…

Guardini says that if the heart yields to the call, then something happens to it: for the first time appears the genuine center. The genuine center, the counterpart of the divine center that is calling, for the first time awakens – the genuine God-intended self, the real self. So what we are aiming for in prayer – right now I’m talking especially of meditative prayer – is this awakening of a genuine center, an authentic personal center that is the counterpart to the divine center that is calling. They are both within us, and yet we don’t find them by introspection. Introspection is usually not helpful for prayer.

In this opening up and acceptance of God’s call in our genuine center, our depth, Guardini says, the mystery of that absolute initiative by which God reveals himself gives light, touches the bottom of the heart so effectively that it unbinds itself, opens, and recovers sight and freedom. So, a further development in our life of prayer is this interior opening up, this unbinding of the inner self at the touch of God, to recover sight and above all to recover freedom.

…

Of course here we come to the problem of the new consciousness of modern man, which is such a great problem because it is our problem to a great extent. We all have this problem of modern man for whom, as they say, God is dead. Of course that can mean all kinds of things. It may mean just that modern man is unable to conceive God in any way and remains inarticulate before him. [Then there is] the so-called self-withholding of God that somebody has spoken of: that modern man is inevitably in a position where God withholds himself from modern man. But is this true? This is no dogma of faith; this is no axiom. We know that God does not withhold himself; but people who are too influenced by what other people are saying are soon going to be running around saying God is simply inaccessible to any of us: what’s the use of trying to pray, what’s the use of anything like this; we must find God in some totally different way – because he withholds himself we have no access to him, and so forth. This is not true; it just simply is not true, and we as Christians realize that even though we may at times have moments of great dryness and desolation and so forth and so forth, it doesn’t mean a thing. God does not withhold himself from his children. We have received his Spirit; we live in Christ. Does God withhold himself? He gives us the Body and Blood of his Son. What do you mean, withholds himself? We don’t need feelings of consolation to realize that God gives himself.

To confuse God’s giving of himself with feelings of consolation, that’s –well, it’s an old-time mistake; we know that’s delusive. But we have to realize that God is an infinitely higher reality than we are, and  when a higher reality meets a lower one, Guardini says, this occurs in such a way that the higher reality appears questionable from the point of view of the lower reality, so we instinctively doubt God. It’s understood that we are creatures of doubt, but doubt and faith in a certain way can coexist in the same person – not real theological doubt but questioning, self-questioning above all. We must not confuse our self-questioning with our questioning of God, our self-doubt with our doubt of God. We come to God in prayer with a great deal of doubt of ourselves, a great deal of doubt of our own authenticity, and we should because we’re not totally authentic, but that should not become also a doubt of God.

Nevertheless, when we do come face to face with him we find that he is questionable from our point of view, until faith breaks through and, by his gift, that question is resolved: not by our figuring, not by our reasoning, not by our reading, and not by somebody else telling us, but simply by God resolving the difficulty.

You might think they have nothing in common, but Pope Benedict and Eminem have something in common. Now they both have record deals with Geffen. The pope and some priests will record music and prayers for a Christmas release.

A rep from the recording company:

Everyone thought it was a wind up when we got a call from the Vatican. But it was the Pope’s representative inviting us to Rome. Two senior managers flew out. The Pope wasn’t there in person, sadly. But we didn’t hesitate to offer His Holiness a deal.

Some thoughts:

The days of recording companies are probably passing, if not nearly passed. The pope could gather a few musical priests any time he wanted to, record music and make it available on the web for download. It would completely bypass the corporate masters of Eminem, etc., and there’s no reason to think downloads wouldn’t be in the tens of millions with very little publicity. As it is, this is a peach of a deal for Geffen. No wonder they didn’t hesitate to offer the pope a deal. Minimal outlay (if any) for publicity, and guaranteed profit for The Man.

Getting the Church out of the 16th century shouldn’t mean an extended layover in the 20th. The pope’s representatives should steer the Holy Father straight to the 21st.