Steven Riddle: August 2003 Archives

Please Remember the Following in Your Prayers

Dylan: who is struggling to get well and who is threatened with being overcome.
Christine and Gordon: who desperately need a job at this time.
Franklin and Katherine: who need both employment and help discerning God's merciful presence in their lives.
For all those who hurt emotionally and physically.

Most especially for those both living and dead who are so unknown to humanity they have no one to pray for them. Pray that while living they might receive God's grace, God's love through their fellow human beings, and once dead they might be received into the merciful and loving arms of the Father.

Awed and Amazed

Here the houses are pink and light blue and light green and yellow and coral and every shade of the rainbow with almost no brick. And each of these many houses is made of reformed earth, blocks assembled of all manner of material and held together with a paste made of other rocks. And outside each of these houses the plants are plants from all of time. Sago palm, not a palm at all, but a cycad--a plant of Jurassic vintage, essentially unchanged from the times when dinosaurs fed on them and on their smaller ground-cover cousins. Magnolias--whose white flowers and primitive cone-like fruit has grown these grounds since the Cretaceous--among the first of the flowering plants, ushering in the great age of the Dinosaurs. St. Augustine grass--grass in name only that coils and snakes its way across the many yards, thick ropes and tangles of its stems holding the bare earth together. And depending on the season our many animals--first the birds: egrets--cattle, Great American, Snowy; herons--tri-color, night, great blue; Storks and cranes--Sandhill and woodstork; Ibis, both white and scarlet; the occasional roseate spoonbill and bald eagle. Then the other fauna--tree-frogs, and Cuban emigré frogs, and toads. At night the swamps and collection pools might boom with the call of the gators, if it is mating season.

All of this is simply the setting for people who every day come out of their homes to go to work, to labor over their houses and yards, to sit in the garage with the door open and watch the world go by, to chat, to argue, to drink, to party. Each little house a blank facade that tells you nothing about the life inside. So much an expression of our own facades, that hide so much of the life inside.

And that seems the most amazing thing of all--the life inside us all. Through the tender attention of a Divine and loving creator we are each sustained in our individuality. We are each made whole and unique, with talents, gifts, abilities, and inclinations all our own. We are each fashioned to be saints--to love God in a way that is uniquely our own. God breathes life into us in each moment--and all of these houses, yards, animals, trees, the rocks themselves, are sustained moment to moment by his mercy, forbearance, and the tender love of a Father for even his wayward children.

But yet more amazing, we are each of us the image and likeness of that same God. If we could stop our endless self-involvement for just a moment and look deeply into those nearest us, we would be able to catch a glimpse of God in even the most unGodlike. We could see His face in the face of each brother and sister. We would know His love in the person of His people. God is with us in the persons who surround us. If we do not meet Him, it is because we have withdrawn and choose not to see Him. His presence is everywhere--His hands the hands of each person we meet; His eyes look out at us from countless faces; His heart beats, loudly or more softly in each breast.

So here where I live, in all the pink and yellow and green and blue and coral houses, here where sagos and magnolias and St. Augustine grass paint the landscape, here were birds of every feather and alligators and frogs all gather, in each of the houses of reformed earth lives a God, our God, who lives within us, the Holy Spirit sustaining us.

And now most amazing of all--this is true wherever we go. And all too often we choose to overlook it. Take a moment today to see God in what is around you. Take a moment today to express heartfelt gratitude, whatever our situations, for the great mercies He shows in every moment, the great graces we receive when we are open to receive them.

In Iraq, at the Shrine of Ali

Pray for the victims of the bombing of the Shrine, for their families, and for all of the people hurt directly and indirectly by this. Imagine if you will what would have happened if the same thing were to take place at Lourdes--because this is a sort of Lourdes of the Muslim world. Imagine the shock and the horror, the anguish and the anger. And then remember not so long ago people were setting fires to churches with African American congregations, and a little before that bombing churches in Alabama. And remember that as different as we like to think we are, there are among us those same fanatics who in the name of some cause would cause misery to million. who to achieve their goals would have no problem causing misery to millions. And pray for God's mercy on us all because it is all that sustains us and all that keeps us safe from the same horror.

Leaving the Question of Inerrancy

I am not particularly interested in the question of inerrancy. The church teaches it, I believe it. I do make some attempt to understand it with the Church's mind--but I may well be quite unsuccessful. On the other hand, if I hold a stricter definition and it poses no problem for me, then I am certainly not flying in the face of Church teaching.

However, I do find Scripture wholly other. It is a direct encounter with the Word of God. Breathed by the Holy Spirit, it speaks constantly and lovingly to us of the Savior, even when it seemingly does not speak of the Savior at all. One priest I knew referred to the Bible as a series of love-letters from God. While inspired (authored) by the Holy Spirit, the writers are undoubtedly human. What sense would it make for God to write of Himself, "How lovely are your dwelling-places, O Lord." And yet the inspiration comes from the Holy Spirit and the writer writes it with the gifts God has given. The Holy Spirit preserves the intergrity while cultivating the gift. I am amazed and awed by the stunning cross-pollination. Both are works of God and gifts of God (inspiration and talent) and yet the obedience of the writer and the witness of the Holy Spirit so perfectly combine.

Let's face it--we've all read religiously oriented books of the modern day. Some better, some worse. However, few, if any, touch us the way Scripture touches us. And scripture can do so not because of very talented writers, but because of the Holy Spirit. Truthfully some of St. Paul's sentences are syntactical nightmares that go round and round and round and come out here. But the whole of the writing makes for a fabric of faith, a foundation upon which a church that has endured two-thousand years relies for continually informing and forming its members. Scripture and Tradition flow together and apart (but parallel, not antithetical) to help produce the richness of the faith.

The word of God is sharper than any two edge sword--so true, and like a sword, a work of fine craftsmanship, balance, and purpose. The words of holy scripture are life. "Teach me thy ways O, Lord, shew unto me thy paths" (Psalms 25:4). The Bible is one font of this teaching.

In the Bible we encounter Jesus face to face. By reading the Bible, we move beyond ourselves and begin to understand meaning and purpose as God would have us know them. Reading the Bible is considered so important, so crucial to the Catholic that the Church grants daily a plenary indulgence for one-half hour of scripture reading (under the usual conditions) and a partial indulgence for any period less.

All of this is simply a long winded way of asking, "Have you read your Bible today?" If not, put away that newspaper, novel, or law review and pick up the only really important or relevant library you need to read. The things of this world are passing and frail--proper preparation for meeting God requires that the potential wedding guests at least know their host's name and have some notion of which of the many people there He will be. Bible, first thing in the morning, Bible at noon, Bible last thing at night. There are a great many places on the web that you can find one-year reading plans if you've no idea of where or how to start. But pick it up daily, and frequently throughout the day. It will make a difference in your life.

Biblical Inerrancy

Comments on a meditation on Mark below have provoked a certain strain of comment that seems to demand more than comment box reflections.

The "problem" of Biblical Inerrancy is one with which scholars have contended and are still contending. Regretably, the only defense I can offer comes from the words of others. I have some difficulty explaining and fully understanding them myself, but they seem to teach what they teach infallibly.

From an article by William Most

Inspiration rules out any sort of error in the Bible whatsoever. Thus Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, wrote that since God is the author, "it follows that they who think any error is contained in the authentic passages of the Sacred Books surely either pervert the Catholic notion of divine inspiration, or make God Himself the source of error." Note that Pope Leo said that one of two things happens: either they pervert the notion of inspiration, or they make God the author of error.

Charges of error refer primarily to three fields today, matters of science, of religion, or of history. We will take up each of these in detail, putting off the matters of history until after our chapter on literary genre.

In regard to matters of science, Raymond E. Brown wrote: "Already in 1893 Pope Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus ... excluded natural or scientific matters from biblical inerrancy, even if he did this through the expedient of insisting that statements made about nature according to ordinary appearances were not errors. (An example might involve the sun going around the earth.)"1

Here is what Leo XIII actually said: "We must first consider that the sacred writers or, more truly, 'the Spirit of God, who spoke through them,' did not will to teach these things (that is, the inner constitution of visible things) which were of no use for salvation, wherefore they at times described things . . as the common way of speaking at the time they did."

Brown, straining mightily, says that this is a "backdoor way" of admitting scientific error. We even today commonly speak of the sun as rising or setting, or as moving around the sky, when we know perfectly well that it is the earth that is moving. Who would say we are involved in habitual error on this account?

Very honestly, I am ignorant in these matters and not fit to put up much of a defense. All I can do is site from previous teaching that suggests that the Catholic Church teaches that the Bible is inerrant in all that it says--in all respects. Perhaps the difficulty is with my phrasing, but I my intention is merely to restate the first sentence of Fr. Most's excerpt above. "Inspiration rules out any sort of error in the Bible whatsoever." This seems to me to say that the Bible is inerrant in all respects. This seems to have been taught by Leo XIII and affirmed by Vatican II. If I truly understand it correctly, I have no real problem with what it is saying.

Now, I will grant you that it sounds as though it were a case of special pleading to say that an error is not an error if it is spoken according to the common understanding of the times (which is in error). And yet, it makes a sort of sense to me. God was not teaching science, He was teaching salvation. To have complicated His inspiration with a right a proper discussion of the natural world, which would have been beyond His human subject at the time, might have precluded future understanding. Because the subject is salvation and not science, God allowed the person to speak with the understanding of his time, which in his time was without error. That it was later proven not to be correct does not make it an error in its time and place. I will not argue the point--I will merely accept what I understand of it. I cannot explain further.

However, I do think it important to stand by the absolute inerrancy of scripture in all respects. I do think I can, in good conscience contend that the Bible is without any error whatsoever, even in the matter of science and history understood according to the people of the time and kept preserved to better clarify the essential message.

I guess I think of it like this. If God inspired it, it cannot be false. If God wished to convey the message of salvation first, it is unlikely that He would spend time giving special knowledge of the natural world to the writers. If He had done so, the people of the time would not have listened to His message because they would have thought the prophets and writers even more unhinged than they already considered them. Because the knowledge of salvation is eternal, it is without error. Because the statements of the natural world are confined to their time and culture, they are without error in their milieu.

I know, it isn't completely satisfactory. On the other hand, it does seem to be the teaching from time immemorial--rearticulated by Leo XII, Pius XII, and Vatican II. I would say its pedigree is, if not impeccable, at least very, very fine.

I append hereto the relevant portions of Providentissimus Deus

Inspiration Incompatible with Error

20. The principles here laid down will apply cognate sciences, and especially to History. It is a lamentable fact that there are many who with great labour carry out and publish investigations on the monuments of antiquity, the manners and institutions of nations and other illustrative subjects, and whose chief purpose in all this is too often to find mistakes in the sacred writings and so to shake and weaken their authority. Some of these writers display not only extreme hostility, but the greatest unfairness; in their eyes a profane book or ancient document is accepted without hesitation, whilst the Scripture, if they only find in it a suspicion of error, is set down with the slightest possible discussion as quite untrustworthy. It is true, no doubt, that copyists have made mistakes in the text of the Bible; this question, when it arises, should be carefully considered on its merits, and the fact not too easily admitted, but only in those passages where the proof is clear. It may also happen that the sense of a passage remains ambiguous, and in this case good hermeneutical methods will greatly assist in clearing up the obscurity. But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican. These are the words of the last: "The Books of the Old and New Testament, whole and entire, with all their parts, as enumerated in the decree of the same Council (Trent) and in the ancient Latin Vulgate, are to be received as sacred and canonical. And the Church holds them as sacred and canonical, not because, having been composed by human industry, they were afterwards approved by her authority; nor only because they contain revelation without error; but because, having been written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author."(57) Hence, because the Holy Ghost employed men as His instruments, we cannot therefore say that it was these inspired instruments who, perchance, have fallen into error, and not the primary author. For, by supernatural power, He so moved and impelled them to write-He was so present to them-that the things which He ordered, and those only, they, first, rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth. Otherwise, it could not be said that He was the Author of the entire Scripture. Such has always been the persuasion of the Fathers. "Therefore," says St. Augustine, "since they wrote the things which He showed and uttered to them, it cannot be pretended that He is not the writer; for His members executed what their Head dictated."(58) And St. Gregory the Great thus pronounces: "Most superfluous it is to inquire who wrote these things-we loyally believe the Holy Ghost to be the Author of the book. He wrote it Who dictated it for writing; He wrote it Who inspired its execution. "(59)

21. It follows that those who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error. And so emphatically were all the Fathers and Doctors agreed that the divine writings, as left by the hagiographers, are free from all error, that they laboured earnestly, with no less skill than reverence, to reconcile with each other those numerous passages which seem at variance-the very passages which in great measure have been taken up by the "higher criticism;" for they were unanimous in laying it down, that those writings, in their entirety and in all their parts were equally from the afflatus of Almighty God, and that God, speaking by the sacred writers, could not set down anything but what was true. The words of St. Augustine to St. )erome may sum up what they taught: "On my part I confess to your charity that it is only to those Books of Scripture which are now called canonical that I have learned to pay such honour and reverence as to believe most firmly that none of their writers has fallen into any error. And if in these Books I meet anything which seems contrary to truth, I shall not hesitate to conclude either that the text is faulty, or that the translator has not expressed the meaning of the passage, or that I myself do not understand."(60)

New Resources

In the course of preparing the previous post, I happened upon the following enormously valuable resources:

Greek New Testament, this one is up and working and provides the original Greek of the verse with an ability to parse the words as you click on them. Great for those learning Biblical Greek.

The New Testament Gateway, whose caretaker seems not to care for the Notion of Q (Quellen--a "source document" for the synoptic Gospels or at least Matthew and Mark). But it links to a Greek New Testament gateway that has links to a great many site.

And perhaps most wonderful of all The Unbound Bible which allows you to search for Biblical References in 10 English Versions, 5 Greek Versions, 2 Hebrew Versions (OT), 6 ancient versions--including Latin and the Septuagint, and 42 modern languages (including Icelandic). In addition, you can display these in parallel three versions at a time. It includes a Greek Lexical parser, and a Greek and Hebrew Lexicon, as well as a guide to reading the Bible in a year. The presence of Naves Topical Bible and Matthew Henry's commentary show this to be a protestant-influenced, possibly evangelical site, but the resources are tremendous and exciting (and it does include a Douay-Rheims-Challoner).

Wonderful, wonderful resources. Go and make good use of them.

Continuing the Reading of the Gospel of Mark

The other day I reported that I was up to the third verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. In the subsequent days, I have made it up to the fifth verse and I am puzzled. So I will share some of my thoughts with you.

"People of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins." (NAB)

" And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins." (KJV)

"The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. " (NIV)

"And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all they of Jerusalem, and were baptized by him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins" (Douay-Rheims-Challoner)

"kai exeporeueto proV auton pasa h ioudaia cwra kai oi ierosolumitai kai ebaptizonto panteV en tw iordanh potamw up autou exomologoumenoi taV amartiaV autwn" (bad transliteration of the Greek New Testament)

"et egrediebatur ad illum omnis Iudaeae regio et Hierosolymitae universi et baptizabantur ab illo in Iordane flumine confitentes peccata sua"(Latin Vulgate)

These verses all suggest that the entire Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to John at the Jordan and after confessing (or in the words of the leaden NAB, which may be more literal, but is certainly less Catholic-friendly "acknowledging") their sins they were baptized. [More on acknowledging--I do not pretend to be a Latin scholar, so I will not advance an opinion on the Latin or Greek. But the sense here must be more than acknowledge. Acknowledge means simply to say, "Yeah, I done it, and whattareyagonnadoaboutit?" Another instance of the utter linguistic insensitivity that constantly surfaces in the NAB. Even if the desire is to be absolutely literal, it would seem that this kind of translation would require a gloss to make a point of the word.]

Now the problem. I have a good blog-friend who will recognize himself as he reads this, who insists on reading "inerrancy" in a rather narrow way. For this passage to be inerrant by the way he insists on reading other passages, every single person in Jerusalem, and the entire population of the countryside of Judea would have had to go to the River Jordan. While this is not impossible, it does strike me as improbably. The Roman legions went to John to be Baptized? Herod the Great? The Chief Priests? As I said, not impossible, but highly unlikely.

And yet we know the Bible is without error in any aspect. This is taught clearly throughout the history of the Church, by Leo XIII and by all other popes, up to and including the present. It is part of the dogmatic definitions of the
Second Vatican Council. We are not to read the Bible as teaching only those aspects related to spirituality as being without error, but we are to read it as being without error in every respect.

What then do we make of such a passage which posits so improbable a thing? There are two possibilities. The improbable did indeed take place and thus must be considered the facts of the case. Or the language here is meant to convey something other than a literal counting and recounting and to suggest something to the largely gentile audience Mark was addressing.

It would seem that this is a lot of exercise over a very, very minor issue. On the other hand, can there be any minor issues when it is the authenticity of God's word that is at the core of the question?

Okay, so is the language metaphorical? It does not, on the surface appear to be, and there would be no need for it to be. If Mark and the Holy Spirit had wished for us to understand this to mean a great many people, there are many ways of saying this without the words that are used here.

So I came to wonder if God is not telling us about a truly miraculous messenger in the person of St. John the Baptist. Perhaps he was so filled with the spirit that all of the living AND the dead came out to him to hear the preaching and to confess their sins. The entire countryside of Judea and all of Jerusalem. Perhaps the statement is not so much about the then-current populations of these two places as about the spiritual centers of the places--the zeitgeist as it were, (I know zeitgeist isn't exactly correct, but you get the drift), the genius loci or Guardian Angel, however you wish to term it--the spirit of the land itself. That is, the spirit of the Nation of Israel finally came to see what it had done before and acknowledged that sin, becoming baptized--with but a few holding back in the present to renew that great sin of old and redouble it.

It seems to matter little how one reads it. One gets to the core question--what does it say to me and what am I called to as a result? I am a person of Jerusalem, I am a shepherd of the hills of Judea. I am called by the Spirit through the voice of a powerful preacher to witness the advent of the great Savior. I am called each day, invited each day. To quote the Book of Revelation: "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. " (KJV-Rev. 22:17) (And the tone-deaf NAB "The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." Let the hearer say, "Come." Let the one who thirsts come forward, and the one who wants it receive the gift of life-giving water.") We are called to be baptised and to drink of the water made holy by the Baptism of the One who saved All.

Each person is issued this invitation, this call from the countryside every single day. And we must respond every single day. I prefer to respond by confessing my sins rather than acknowledging them; however, we are all called to this water to this life-giving stream, to this constant immersion in the cleansing tide of Baptism. So, whatever the intricacies of the literal meaning--about which I am little concerned--it is as it is--the meaning of this passage must transcend the merely literal (although the literal must be understood) and seems to say something about the possibility of the person in the world to be called and to respond to grace. The passage speaks of the enormous and overwhelming mercy of God.

But, you can see that I have only crudely defined the contours of the verse, and so perhaps it is a subject for more reading, thought, meditation, and prayer. Thanks for sitting with me through this much. Your thoughts would be welcome.

And many deep thanks to the friend I mentioned above--by his steadfast insistence (with which I still disagree) he has forced my attention in such a way as to be truly concerned about what is being said in every particular. This is a tremendously valuable gift. Thank you.

Time to Confront Yet Another Personal Flaw

Coming from a very fundamentalist background, and being quite insecure in some aspects of my Catholic Formation, I tend to shy away from writers whose work suggests some heterodox accretions. I feely acknowledge this weakness, and I am working on trying to reduce its prominence as a guiding principle. What I read as heterodox is not necessarily so; nor is my judgment always on target on these issues.

As a result, for some time I have been wary of Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI. I haven't known quite what to make of him. He originally came recommended by a source I have come to admire and trust--Mr. Nixon of Sursum Corda. I had read previously, and even subsequent to the recommendation, some columns that I found slightly off-putting. For example, it seems that there were several columns in which he referred to God as She. Now, this would seem a trivial enough problem; however, this kind of reference seems to fly in the face of FATHER, Son, and Holy Spirit. Is this language simply a trope--a linguistic trick to shock one out of complacency, or does it reveal a deep and underlying flaw in theology. Much more importantly than that--have others observed similar characteristics in Fr. Rolheiser's writings? Or did I just get a mistaken impression from a couple of columns--perhaps too quickly read?

I ask because another very trusted, very trustworthy sort has brought him to my attention once again. I don't wish to cast doubt upon Fr. Rolheiser's work, but I also don't really wish to spend a lot of time in the sea of new age syncretism with someone who doesn't think language matters. (Despite the wretched appearance of some of these hastily cast-off entries, language really does matter to me.)

I would appreciate any and all contributions to better understanding how to approach (or not to approach) this writer. Thanks.

After too long a silence. . .

John da Fiesole at Disputations is back. . . in spades. Some wonderful reading there today--but then you already know that, don't you?

Starting in the Comment Box

This started as a response to Neil below, who notes some other difficulties with Yancey's book. But it quickly grew to proportions that demand their own space:

Dear Neil,

But each of these people has something about them that is worthy of imitation--at least as much as St. Jerome, say. I wouldn't want to imitate all of Jerome's life, or the life of St. Catherine Laboure, but there are undeniably strains of their lives that are worthy of imitation. So too, I think with each of the "heroes" Yancey sites. Moreover, sometimes you don't need someone to imitate so much as someone to tow you to shore, to ground you once again in the reality that you are in the presence of God throughout your life.

Your point about "signs of contradiction" without internal structure, is of course, the strongest argument for the Catholic Church. But that also is peripheral to the core of the book. The book is not about religious practice. I guess I keep coming back to the purpose of writing and I am trying to judge the success of the book more on what it was intended to do, not on what it could do ideally.

Not every spiritual book is necessarily a guide to how to live. Some simply provide inspiration. And it is this aspect of the book that I find entirely successful. Yancey told me about thirteen people I could turn to for "light reading" who would tend to enhance my spiritual life rather than detract from it. Necessarily the list is idiosyncratic--they will not be the same people for everyone. For example, through the mystery of Grace, a fallen-away Catholic pointed me most strongly to the Catholic Church. Reading James Joyce's "The Dead" and the utterly magnificent sermon on Hell from Portrait of the Artist showed me the magnificence of the church and the depth to which it affected even those individuals who attempted to escape its embrace. I would not suggest that anyone attempt to follow Joyce's model. And yet, I find there tremendous inspiration--what Thomas Dubay might call the "Evidentiary Power of Beauty."

We all need to know where the life preservers are. When we enter stormy waters and the ship threatens to capsize, we need to know where we can turn. Yancey suggests some places to turn, some people to look at. Paul Elie, in The Life You Save May Be Your Own suggests others. And that book shows models that are not perfect. Dorothy Day seems to have been shrouded in a certain naivete with regard to socialist and communist regimes--and yet there are those who think her worthy of Sainthood. Certainly I would not want to imitate her politics. And so I would say that the lives of saints carry two elements--imitation and instruction. Of the two I would say that instruction may be the more important. As I frequently point out to my Carmelite group--it is fine to imitate St. Therese, but one need neither envy nor desire to be St. Therese--after all God has one of those. God wants us to be Saints, and in some measure we become Saints by imitation, but we also become Saints by refutation. That is, we do not imitate those aspects of a Saint's life that might be less than saintly in some lights. Heroic virtue does not mean perfection. All of those examples Yancey shows us, he shows us not necessarily for imitation (although there are many good things to imitate) but for instruction and for hope. These are fellow-travelers who have been through some stormy waters and yet have kept afloat. Perhaps from them we will learn things that will help us.

Thus I return to the theme--what did Yancey attempt to do in the book? I would repectfully submit that he suceeded in his intention of showing us people who could help to remind us the power of the Holy Spirit and of faithfulness. I must also say that I did not find it particularly Evangelical either in tone nor in accomplishment. As you noted in a previous entry, it is very ecumenical in its embrace, and that is not necessarily an attribute one associates with Evangelical Churches. Most particularly the presence of Gandhi is not something one would expect to find in such as study. I think Yancey transcends the limits of his church and offers us an interesting perspective on how faith operates and how we can shore our own faith up. I might suggest a different roster of authors (In fact, I know I would), but nevertheless, I could come up with a list of those who have inspired me and transformed my life. Perhaps that might be a worthwhile endeavor for some future entry.

Show Music in Church

The point of this is not to complain about music, but to speculate about what it might ultimately do. Yesterday I returned to the parish I had long attended because I needed to get to an earlier mass than I can normally attend at the local Shrine. My local parish hands out the bulletins at the beginning of Mass, assuring that for most people Mass preparation time is spent reading up on the events of the coming week. This has always been the case--mildly disturbing, but as it tended to keep people quiet, not anything worth making a fuss about in itself.

Later when I glanced through the bulletin, I discovered seminars in centering prayer (about which I am uncertain--I try to weigh all of the authorities on either side. I think that it is something that too easily slips into gimmickry and method--though M. Basil Pennington, a major proponent of Centering Prayer, insists that it is not). Much more bothersome, and becoming nearly epidemic, I read that the Women's Group of the parish was going to spend a morning "walking the labyrinth" at some nearby locality. This I find more profoundly disturbing. Again, it is perhaps without cause. But these kinds of things remind me profoundly of days when I was more associated with Pagan and Wiccan types who performed similar rituals. I know as well that walking and praying can be a very effective combination, so I suppose much of this is a matter of the emphasis of the individual.

But more disturbing and disheartening than all of this was the service itself. While still ostensibly solidly orthodox and faithful, the music consisted of a series of show-tune like melodies that seemed more for the exaltation of the cantor than for the spiritual setting of Mass. Much of the music was simply unsingable--consisting of strings of staggered triplets that spanned far too many octaves for a normal congregation to embrace. More, I noted a common strain in that they seemed to exalt the individual rather than God.

In moments like these, the heartsickness of some who lament the paucity of Latin settings for the Mass is driven home hard. In my mnd, fairly or unfairly, I have associated the music program from this once-magnificent parish with elements such as labyrinth walking and centering prayer. The whole brew seems a little off to me. Discordant elements tend to breed discordant elements.

I know that it need not be this way because the Parish wasn't this way before, nor is the Shrine I attend at all like this. But it seems to me that once this element has crept into a celebration, it tends to poison the entire system. I don't know that labyrinth-walking can be said to be poison, but it at least gives off fumes that strike one as dangerous.

All of this is a way of supporting those who fight hard to maintain their parishes' integrity in the Mass. It is to lend some support to those who would give us masses with Chant rather than the modern song books. It is to say that while complaint is still not the better way, constructive action undertaken to reform is absolutely necessary--and that action might take the form of a letter to the Pastor of the Church.

Great Post on God's Presence

From T.S. O'Rama.

One More Quick Note on Yancey

In a critique below, Neil Dhingra (ever a cogent observer) critiques Soul Survivor and finds that there is a certain weakness about it that stems, perhaps from Yancey's own experience of the church and attempts to heal from those experiences.

Mr. Dhingra phrases it this way:

I did not think that the book was entirely successful, though. Yancey has been left scarred by his early experience in church - "Although I heard that 'God is love,' the image of God I got from sermons more resembled an angry, vengeful tyrant." These experiences keep resurfacing in the book - the angry responses he gets in response Christianity Today articles about Martin Luther King or Gandhi, the "climate of hysteria" that surrounds the religious discussion of the AIDS crisis and C Everett Koop.

Yancey values his subjects because they challenge - from a religious angle - the authenticity of this negative church experience. "The churches I attended had stressed the dangers of pleasure so loudly that I missed any positive message. Guided by Chesterton, I came to see sex, money, power, and sensory pleasures as God's good gifts." They do so as misfits, outsiders - "Several of them, a psychiatrist would probably diagnose as unstable." We constantly get sentences like, "Despite his Harvard roots, Coles hardly fits the mold of an ivory-tower academic." This, of course, confirms Yancey own identification as "an ordinary pilgrim, one person among many on a spiritual search. Unavoidably, and by instinct, I question and reevaluate my faith all the time."

And this is where I think that book is weak. His subjects are almost solely valued for their iconoclasm, their attacks on complacency and legalism. None of them are really allowed to structure Yancey's religious experience: Dostoevsky doesn't make Orthodoxy an attractive option; we don't know if Yancey takes up Henri Nouwen's habit of a half-hour of contemplative prayer a day. This limits their possible influence on Yancey and his ability to deeply interact with them. The book is often quite moving, but one gets the sense that Yancey's focus on "surviving" the church may leave him with too little in the way of concrete practice and an inability to live any sort of ecclesial existence.

I can't fault the cogent observation, but I would reply: surviving is the essential theme of this book. It isn't about growth, transformation, ecclesial conformtity, or any number of other things it could be about. It is about survival. What Yancey points out through his examples is indeed contra societal norms, but I would argue that that is where Yancey meets Christ. "A sign of contradiction," in other words iconclasm as we phrase it today. It is in the sign of contradiction, in the lack of conformity with the expected norms of society that Yancey has his most authentic experiences of Jesus Christ.

Now, that may not be where many of us encounter Christ--but through Yancey's struggles and through his eyes, I came to appreciate many of these people for the signs of Christ they bring to the world. How they transformed Yancey's life is of less interest to me than the possiblity that they may transform my own. Not that I don't care about Yancey, I do. But perhaps he chooses to moot this point to emphasize what these people can do for other individuals who are looking for examples of Christlikeness.

So, while I acknowledge that this might be levied as a criticism, my reading of the book made this a strength and invited me to consider more carefully these varied influences. I believe that makes for a sucessful book. I doubt seriously that Yancey really wanted a reader to spend time reflecting on Yancey's life and challenges--his life enters only as example of what kinds of transformation might result from contact with those who live a Christ-like life in whatever mode.

Quick Note For Those Who Favor Complaint

While I did note that it is important to point out things that are harmful to society and to individuals--it did seem to get overlooked. I do not think of that in the form of complaint but of critique. Complaint generally centers around matters that, while important may be merely symptomatic of what should be analyzed and critiqued. Warhols artistic decadence, for example, is hardly comparable with abortion or other cultural concerns. Disney may be symptomatic, but it doesn't rise to the level of exploitation of the poor.

In matters where there is not the life, health, or spiritual welfare of the individual at hand, I think out best advice on viewing the world comes from St. Paul:

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. (Phil 4:8)

Doesn't it seem better to lead by better example than by complaining about what is presently here. Isn't it better simply to ignore the cultural burn-out places and point to things that are truly beautiful and wonderful and instruct by their beauty and wonder? Once again, I gather up all the power of ancient cliche and say, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Complaint makes you a curmudgeon, and example in life make you a saint.

John Geoghan

Died today in a prison attack. I pray that he had time to repent and find the mercy of God. I am reminded once again to pray for the restoration and healing of all of his victims. May God have mercy on all of us, sinners.

Report on Yancey

My small book group met today and the general atmosphere was one of agreement--wild enthusiasm for Soul Survivor. At least two of us had started with strong reservations about Yancey because of some preconceived notions and a wide experience in "Christian Bookstore" titles. We were delighted to be proved wrong. So wrong that I bought one other book today, although I initially had three in my hands to purchase. Decided to go a little easy on the budget. Came home and ordered about a dozen from the library.

People Who Know Jesus Intimately

I never fail to be delighted by people who know Jesus more intimately than would seem possible. Take for example this blurb:

The Book of Enoch was a favorite of Jesus and where he discovered the title "Son of Man" to use in his public work.

What a rare and magnificent privilege to have access to Jesus' library, or if not His library, His personal scriptorium, or at least His intimate thoughts. I did not realize so much about Jesus was so readily known or discernable by so many. I do so love learning about these unnoticed byways on the path of salvation.

Of course it's wildly improbable that Jesus might have picked that phrase us from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel where it occurs about 50 times, or even Daniel where it actually refers to Him. I know my speculation is way out of bounds. These people undoubtedly have certain knowledge that it was the book of Enoch that was the source.

[This is one way I rate the reliability of a site offering religious works.]

As Though You Hadn't Been Subjected to Enough Already

My experience with Soul Survivor so inspired me that I picked up the other Yancey book I owned and started to read. And so, now, you will have that inflicted on you as well.

from The Jesus I Never Knew Philip Yancey

Before beginning this book I spent several months in three seminary libraries--one Catholic, one liberal Protestant, one conservative evangelical--reading about Jesus. It was daunting in the extreme to walk in the first day and see not just shelves but entire walls devoted to books about Jesus. . . .

The agglomeration of scholarsip began to have a numbing effect on me. I read scores of accounts of the etymology of Jesus' name, discussion of what languages he spoke, debates about how long he lived at Nazreth or Capernaum or Bethlehem. Any true-to-life image receded into a fuzzy, indistinct blur. I had a hunch that Jesus himself would be appalled by many of the portrayals I was reading.

At the same time, with great consistency I found that whenever I returned to the Gospels themselves the fog seemed to lift. J. B. Phillips wrote, after translating and paraphrasing the Gospels, "I have read, in Greek and Latin, scores of myths, but I did not find the slightest flavour of myth here. . . . No man could have set down such artless and vulnerable accounts as these unless some real Event lay behind them."

The truth of the last paragraph would seem obvious. But often in discussion and debate, it seem that the scholar is inclined to rely upon sources other than the Gospels themselves. To some extent we have the magisterium to aid us in our interpretation of the Scriptures, but to rely entirely upon the magisterium and to not have the direct and essential encounter with Jesus ourselves is a way of not knowing Jesus.

How many of us read through the entire set of Gospels in a year outside of Mass? Some protestants I know read through the entire bible every year. They are truly devoted to the word. And while I admire deeply that devotion, I must readily say that there are large, very dry, very barren portions of scripture for me. Every word is inspired, but not all the words are particularly inspiring at any given time. But let us consider the core of our faith--the story of Jesus. How many of us engage it directly and completely every year? How many plumb the depths of the scriptures on a daily basis. I would suspect very few of us. And were I to expand the thought to the whole of the New Testament, I would imagine that the number would go from few to a vanishingly small percent.

Over the past week or so, I've been reading the Gospel of Mark. I have read and read and read and read and read, and I have not yet finished with the marvels of the first three verses of the Gospel. The Gospel writings are so crammed with riches that they cannot be absorbed simply by reading (for most of us) nor by hearing them at Mass, though that is a truly graced and sacramental exposition of them. The Gospel writings must be encountered in the world of prayer. They must be slowly and carefully examined and unpacked. They must be listened to in the heart.

How many try to do this? I don't really know. I suspect much of St. Blog's actually makes the attempt, but the discipline may become too tedious--we may not find the time each day, etc. But the source of our knowledge of Jesus Christ are the gospel accounts. We deprive ourselves of essential nutrition when we choose to read Fr. Brown's redaction of the Gospels, or Fr. X's summary of the Gospels, or anything other than the Gospels themselves.

I know that one of the things that often keeps me away from the Gospels is fear. I know that if I let Him, Jesus is going to encounter me where I am presently, and if I allow it, I will come out of the encounter changed. Because I don't know fully the nature of that transformation, I tend to avoid it. Who knows, I might come out and discover that I'm not supposed to be a father (seems kind of unlikely since I have a child--but you never know). What it really boils down to, for me, is laziness that takes the form of fear. Jesus will transform you, and transformation means change, and change means work. Good enough reason right there to avoid the Gospels.

But it is only in the Gospels that we encounter the words and the life of Jesus. Yes, we can read visionaries and novelists, and any number of other writings of Saints and other sinners, but not one of them has the authority of the word touched by God Himself--inspired and inerrant--Truth undiluted.

I guess what I'm saying is--if you're reading the scriptures, and particularly the Gospels every day--great! keep doing it. However, it you're not, it's time to start. Life changes day to day, and reading the Gospels seems to be a good way to let God guide the change.

What Kind of Day Would It Be Without a Quote of Some Sort

And so, for those of you anxiously awaiting it, this from Torgny Lindgren:

"Even the days and moments could be split up and broken down to the size of footsteps, one after another, the various little movements of the fingers, the blinking of the eyelids and the breath of the lungs. Like grinding down time in a hand-mill."

Remarkable, and even more so when one considers that this is a translation from Swedish!

Some Interesting Corners of the Blogworld

Now, here's an interesting little place I stumbled across this morning. I don't how many of the opinions here I'm likely to agree with; however, it the goal is succinctly stated in the group name, I'm right there with them: Epivalothanasia: Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia (CURE). God grant success to such a mission.

The Culture of Complaint

I was recently listening to someone rant on NPR about the horrors of Disney World and the ultimate cultural destruction it signifies and I grew progressively more annoyed. I live near the place, many people here hate it for a great variety of reasons. There are a great many reasons to despise the Disney congolmerate, not the least of which is the manner in which they treat some of their lesser-paid employees. However, to rail on about the horrors of Disneyworld strikes me as a setting up a straw man for the world's problems.

I lilke Disney World for a couple of reasons. First, as a Florida resident, it attracts enough people here so that I'm not killed by state income tax. When I moved here from Ohio at the same pay, I got an immediate 7% raise because there was no state income tax.

Second, I enjoy it because children do enjoy it, and they enjoy not because it is Disney but because it is fundamentally enjoyable. You walk around a world that is utterly unreal and encounter utterly unreal folks, and you have a pleasant day. (That is except for a minority of sturm und drang New York or Brazilian tourists who drag their little ones through an exhausting day and spend their time red-faced screaming at some over-tired child who only wants to go back to the hotel room and rest and be cool... but then, that's a different rant)

There is much to dislike about Disneyfication of society. However, to dislike Disneyworld itself seems a waste of time. If you so disike it--don't go. Don't take your family, advise your friends to stay away. But don't waste your time and everyone else's ranting and raving about its horrors--myriad though they may be.

I see this as symptomatic of our society. If I don't like this or that thing, I must assure that no one else enjoys the same by pointing out all of its many faults and problems.

Why not just forego the displeasure of the place? Why try to denigrate and destroy what many are obviously enjoying? What harm is there in enjoying it?

Like the great many quizzes that circulate about St. Blogs--some take them, some don't. But what sense would there be inveighing against them and trying to persuade everyone that pressing a few buttons one way or the other is somehow tearing down society.

Again--I don't care for the novels of Michael Crichton--I could write a dissertation on their errors, their problems, and their many flaws--but why? Rather than do so, I neither read them, nor in large groups tend to comment on them. In a one-on-one conversation I might give an opinion, but I have long got over the need to make a point of dispising vocally everything that is popular. Popularity is not a crime.

So, I've gone on at length to say simply what everyone's mother probably told them at one time, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." And this is a good credo for commenting on most things. There are some exceptions--people should be warned about things that are potentially spiritually damaging. They should be warned about things that once seen cannot be unseen. But for the most part, if something is popular and you don't like it, the better part of valor is to share that dislike with close friends who want to hear about it. To shout it from the rooftops seems bad form.

For Those Who Wish To Know More

About Torgny Lindgren, here is a brief biography. He is a member of the Swedish academy, and thus eligible to vote on the Nobel Prize. I don't know what it does for to his status for receiving one.

Another Praise Moment

Once again I marvel at the wonderful and interesting work done in St. Blog's. Witness the work of Against the Grain, a blog with always reasonable comment by a person who seems to take the task of commenting quite seriously. Go there and enjoy!

A New Site of Great Interest

For those not particularly bothered by the adoration of God in other cultures this wonderful resource.

An example:

I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside!
sufi mystic - jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

And another

O love, O pure deep love, be here, be now. Be all; worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance, Frail living leaves burn with you brighter than cold stars; Make me your servant, your breath, your core.

sufi mystic - jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

Not everyone's cup of tea, but wonderful reflections and prayers from around the world.

Brag Session--Feel Free to Ignore

I thought I might offer an explanation as to why things are so sparse here these days. I've been asked by the local science center to assist in the writing of all of the display copy for their newest temporary exhibit. Such stuff shall die away, of course, when the exhibit is gone, the ephemeral copy is lost--such is the way of the world. But what a thrill to be able to write for so large a public, even though most will give no thought to it having been written and having a person who put together the thoughts expressed. How many of us stop to consider that someone puts together all that text that accompanies an exhibit? Nevertheless, it is a rare thrill and a privilege to be able to contribute in such a way to the education of adults and to that of children as well.

Also, I have been tapped by the local historical society to assist in their next publication of a bulletin. I'm contributing several poems and have assisted in the past as an editor--I hope to do so in the future as well.

So, I've been maxed out recently with writing. You'll forgive the paucity of what is here presented, and perhaps its disjointed nature. This week I also have to prepare our local Carmelite Newsletter, review the website we've just started, and prepare for a family visit.

Nevertheless, as I said yesterday, I write because I cannot do otherwise. The thought of not writing is overwhelming. If I did not write I would be only a shadow of what I am, and presently I am only a shadow of what I should be.

Summation

I will start by pretending that someone out in the world at large is interested. Actually, I get the impression a great many MIGHT be interested, but I think we're at a week of summer vacations. However, it could simply be that everything written in recent days is just cataclysmically boring. If so, my sincere apologies; however, I must say that :

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

Sorry.

As to Philip Yancey's book--he rounds out his discussion with a review of Henri Nouwen's life and writing. My conversation with the author on this part of the book was sufficiently private that I sha'n't bore you with the details. Suffice to say that I found his portrait profoundly moving--more moving and more profound in many ways than I find the written work of Fr. Nouwen.

I have moved on. I own one other Yancey book that has lain on the shelves gathering dust for lo, these many years. So, I picked it up, and it already has me engaged. Perhaps more on that later.

In addition to another Yancey, I am also reading Torgny Lindgren's Light, a novel about the aftermath of a plague in Sweden that has some gorgeous stuff in it. To wit:

"He was the third to die. He died of plague and knowledge."

"It's not right," said Könik. "Death has lost its senses and its sight and is flailing around blindly."

"They think they're going to save themselves, they think salvation must consist of some sort of deception."

"Könik wanted to make coffins that it would be easy to rise from."

"A lot of them have lain down to rest for a while," said Könik. "But they'll be up again."

"If the Great Sickness came here to Kadis," said Önde, "we'd let it be. We wouldn't disturb it unnecessarily. We never molest any stranger who comes here."

I've read two other Lindgren books Sweetness (yes, so one author has both Sweetness and Light) and one of my favorite books of the last ten or so years The Way of The Serpent--a marvelous very short novel told in a rolling Biblical voice that is just stunning. I've read it twice already and am looking forward to a third and a fourth time. Vivid, powerful, and very mysterious--there are tremendous depths here. If the Nobel Committee didn't have such a powerful political agenda in their selection of writers, I wouldn't be surprised to see Lindgren nominated. He would be the first worthy recipient in some time.

I'm also reading another of my favorite books of all time--a book I have much ado to make any sense of as the "satire" it is supposed to be--Mikhail Bulgakov's magnificent The Master and Margarita. Highly, highly recommended to all. It combines the story of a poet or publisher (I forget which, I haven't gotten that far in the reread yet) who goes to a mental hospital with a retelling of the Passion from Pontius Pilate's point of view. I don't know what to make of it, but it intrigues me constantly.

So much for my reading list. I hope to share with you some of the varied fruits of this labor.

Another Samuel Story

Samuel visited his Daddy at work today. My screen-saver/background on the computer at work is Hans Holbein's portrait of St. Thomas More. After we did the usual tour of the office identifying the various things--starfish, octopod, sponge, scorpion, bone-man dinosaur, I asked him about the person on my screen saver.

Very enthusiastically he said, "Yes, I know who that is."

I was surprised. "Who is it?" I asked.

"That's a pirate. Look at his pirate hat and his pirate gold on his necklace."

From an Eastern Catholic

An interesting blog with a perspective from the East, Katolik Shinja. If I read aright, the blogger is not Korean himself, but lives in Korea or Corea (before they make this change, I would suggest that the hierarchy read about Huntington's Corea). It provides a breeze from the east and a perspective not often seen in our bloglands.

More from Yancey

Reading any worthwhile writing is engaging the author in a kind of dialogue. I know that I have allowed you to overhear far more of the conversation that you might be entirely comfortable with or entertained by. However, writers that really provoke thought and who provide fresh and interesting perspectives are really few and far-between. Moreover, I think Yancey needs an even wider audience than he already has. There is a refreshing generosity about his prose and attitude that rewards even the casual reader. Soul Survivor is a nice place to start because while it is a complete chronicle or story, the individual pieces can be read separately, and there is no need to attempt the entire book in a sitting. In addition, Yancey's genuine enthusiasm for the writers he discusses evokes in the attentive reader a desire to become better acquainted with their work.

I greatly regret that I am coming to the end of Soul Survivor and wish that I could read more and more about this too-often neglected subject--the effect of writers on the life of an author, on the life of a Christian.

from Soul Survivor--Frederick Buechner Philip Yancey

Every writer must overcome a kind of shyness, putting out of mind the fear that we are being arrogant by thrusting ourselves upon you the reader, and egotistical by assuming our words are worth your time. Why should you care about what i have to say? What right have I to impose myself on you? In another context, Simone Weil presents a kind of answer: 'I cannot conceive the necessity for God to love me, when I feel so clearly that even with human beings affection for me can only be a mistake. But i can easily imagine that he loves that perspective of creation which can only be seen from the point where I am." That is all any writer can offer, especially a writer of faith: a unique perspective of creation, a point of view visible only from the point where I am.

There is some truth here and a huge point that is overlooked. Some of us write because we cannot not write. Writing is a process and a prayer--it is a form of analysis that reifies what happens to us. In a sense things are not real and not internalized until they are written. I read that and it sounds nonsensical, and yet I also know that I live it.

Writing is a form of prayer. It is a form of appreciation of God's creation and of consideration and careful meditation on His works. Writing calls us into otherness in a way that little else does. I suppose, in some sense, this is why I don't get tremendously worked up over issues that exercise a great many Catholics. Poor music at Mass--oh well--Jesus is there. Strange liturgy, odd sermon, so long as the Eucharist is consecrated correctly, Jesus is present. Yes--it could be much more beautiful, much more respectful, much more reverent. But then reverence comes from the participant, not from the planner, and the attitude of the hearts in the pews is more important than any external trapping.

However, assault me with the execrable NAB translation--leaden, dull, and sometimes downright idiotic--or place a lector at the ambo who not only needs locution lessons but who hasn't passed his second grace reading class yet, and I'm ready to go ballistic. The words of Scripture are scared, the writing is holy and transforming. Yes, I know that all the rest is as well, but we each have our areas of sensitivity.

But writing and words break through the stupor and astound and convict me. Reading scripture and writing about it give God true access to this stony heart. I think about it as a heart encased in limestone. The Living Word of God is a true and pure stream that carries its payload of carbonic acid to etch away slowly. One day the entombed heart is set free to love Him and all of His creation. This grace for me comes in the form of words and language. Or perhaps this consolation for me is the grace of the gift of speech and thought. We pray in words and words have made a home with me and bring the world to me in a way that little else does. Perhaps this is why I am more skeptical than some about the worthiness of some universally acclaimed writers who are prone to sloppiness and misuse of the language. Perhaps that is why, conta Dale Ahlquist and others, I have no time for the poetic theorizing of G.K. Chesterton, whose own poetic works evoke little or no sympathy from anyone really in tune with poetry. For Chesterton's work (the vast majority of it at least) the word verse is more appropriate than poetry.

We are all constructed differently, all given a slightly different perspective on the world and on reality. And we are all blessed beyond blessing to be who we are and how we are. In some ways our words and our lives celebrate this. Yes, there is time and cause for action, but only after considered thought and reason, after prayer, and after conversation with God and with his Saints. For me, this occurs in writing, in the world of words--wonderful, varied, multitextured, anastomosing, refreshing. I suppose I take as my essential credo, the centerpiece of my celebration of language, this reminder from the Gospel of John:

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." (John 1:14)

Writing and WRITING

I have often heard denigrated the efforts of people who compose blogs as the work of substandard writers or not-writers-at-all. I, for one, am tired of either the false modesty or the blatant snobbery of these statements--for the most part I find much of what is published via blogs as readable or more readable than what is published by large commercial concerns. Admittedly, there is no great undying prose--but read your local newspaper and look for the same.

What blogs have that almost no other source provides is authenticity. The writing touches the real concerns of real people living ordinary lives--people who would not think of writing a novel or publishing memoirs or even composing essays for publications. Some of the work is extraordinarily well-written, some just so-so. But it is real writing, where writing begins--in the heart. Nearly all of it is unpolished to a greater or lesser degree, but that does not render it useless, less-than-other, or not worthwhile.

The efforts of bloggers should not be so lightly denigrated and derided. The process of composition is the same, and blogging might be likened to your local dinner theatre--it's not Broadway, but it can be as entertaining, and is often infinitely more accessible.

So, put away worries about better, worse, worthwhile, not worthwhile, and write, write, write. You have an audience already built in, talk to us. And don't tell us how worthless what you are doing is. Don't trot out an endless stream of writers from the past who look down their noses at everything from Shakespeare to "lady novelists." It's tiresome, and, to some degree indicative of false modesty. We don't have anything to apologize for and a great many have much to be proud of.

Now that I finally got that off my chest, we return to local programming.

One More Time--Frederick Buechner

Okay, I know you may be tired of hearing about it, but there are tremendous riches in this book, and so I continue.

from Soul Survivor--Frederick Buechner Philip Yancey

There are two ways to picture how God interacts with history. The traditional model show a God up in heaven who periodically dispatches a lightning bolt of intervention: the calling of Moses from a burning bush, the Ten Plagues, the prophets, the birth of Jesus. The bible indeed portrays such divine interventions, although they usually follow years of waiting and doubt. Another model shows God beneath history, continuously sustaining it and occasionally breaking the surface with a visible act that emerges into plain sight, like the tip of an iceberg. Anyone can notice the dramatic upthrusts--Egypt's Pharaoh certainly had no trouble noticing the Ten Plagues--but the life of faith involves a search below the surface as well, an ear fine-tuned to rumors of transcendence.

Buechner has spoken of his quest for that subterranean presence of grace in the world. He writes of an anxious moment in an airport (he battles a fear of flying) when suddenly he notices on the counter a tiepin engraved, against all odds, with his own initials, "C. F. B."; and of a good friend who dies in his sleep and then visits Buechner in a dram, leaving behind a strand of blue wool from his jersey, which Buechner finds on the carpet the next morning; and of sitting parked by the side of the road in a moment of personal crisis when a car barrels down the road with a license plate bearing the simple message "T-R-U-S-T."

. . . Buechner, however, prefers to see in such occurrences hits--upthrusts-of an underlying Providence. For example, when the car drown by, "Of all the entries in the entire lexicon it was the word trust that I needed most to hear. It was a chance thing, but also a moment of epiphany--revelation--telling me, "trust your children, trust yourself, trust God, trust life; just trust.'"

There is so much here to reflect upon, but chief among those things is a primary disagreement I have with Yancey about how to view God's action in the world. He states that there are two ways. I think there may be as many ways as there are people to reflect upon the situation. I don't see God's intervention in either of these two ways. I concur, there are obvious "highs" that may stand out to all people. But if one looks closely enough God's intervention in history is NOT subterranean. It is overt and constant, a smooth running stream that always fills its banks and occasionally overflows. God is present in every moment of every day in every event in history. What He allows to happen, what He causes to happen, what He guides to its final conclusion, these things make up the rhythm of the stream.

In His great mercy God intervenes at every moment. It is up to us to recognize it. God is an ardent lover, not one who passes by momentarily, waves at us and hurries on to other business. He is constantly attentive. He is Freddy in My Fair Lady who stands outside our window and sings, "The Street Where You Live." When He is ignored, still he is attentive. And when he is assaulted (as eventually Freddy is when Eliza sings,” Don’t talk of stars burning at night. . . if you're in love show me), still He loves and responds lovingly.

This is the truth of our personal lives, and I believe that it is the truth of history. Despite all of the great evil that has occurred through history, much of what has happened is the sign of God's hand, his continuous outpouring of love and grace that has brought us to this moment, this day. God is not indifferent.

And if this is true, then so too is the conclusion reached by Buechner. Trust--the hardest thing in the world. Fall back and know that He will catch you. Life is not a lame psychological experiment--how many partners did not catch the person falling back. Is that really trust or simply reliance on peer pressure. But God's eye is on the sparrow. He numbers the hairs of our heads and knows each one. With that kind of personal attention, trust is the only reasonable alternative. Trust God who has supported all of history up until know, whose thoughts and minds keep the universe in existence, whose love has given us all of history up until know, and whose deep caring and concern was given ultimate expression in His Son who loved us unto eternity. Nothing less than God is sufficient, but God alone suffices.

More From Yancey

Some interesting comments on posts below--an interesting book. Admittedly, it seems, some details of presentation may be fuzzy, but then the main thrust of his point is not to present those details (C.S. Lewis) but to talk about people whose work has helped him through troubling time as a Christian. So I grant him a certain leeway--particularly because I tend to latch on to the side streams and make a big deal of them. As in this next piece.

from Soul Survivor--"Annie Dillard" Philip Yancey

On Puget Sound, she attended a tiny church in which she was often the only person under sixty, and felt as if she were on an archaeological tour of Soviet Russia. The Catholic church proved more innovative. On one occasion parishioners partook of sacred mass to the piano accompaniment of tunes from The Sound of Music. Dillard sighs, "I would rather, I think, undergo the famous dark night of the soul than encounter in church the hootenanny." She adds, "In two thousand years, we have not worked out the kinks. We positively glorify them. Week after week we witness the same miracle: that God is so mighty he can stifle his own laughter."

Several notes of moment:
(1) I never knew that Annie Dillard had become Catholic.

(2) I have never cared a bit for Ms. Dillard's writing. In fact, the whole genre that Pilgrims at Tinker's Creek is part of has left me cold since the time of Gilbert White. I don't know what to make of it. I have felt similar things in nature, but the only person who ever came close to capturing it was William Wordsworth. Obviously just a genre I don't understand. I know that Ms. Dillard has written other things, but her most famous work so thoroughly alienated me, I've never bothered to seek out others. Now, I shall try to return to the main work and perhaps dabble in others.

(3) And most significantly--I love the way she envisions God. I am so tired of the Calvinist God who has crept even into the confines of the Catholic Church--the dour, demanding, imperious, old Curmudgeon who, like some spoiled Prima Donna insists always upon His own way, in every detail and in every motion. A God who laughs appeals to me. A God who sees our feeble attempts and who out of His great love is deeply moved to laughter and to joy by them is a Father whom I can love. Just as I watched the fumblings of my young son as he tried to do things and I rejoiced in his failures and ingenuity, not because I was pleased that he was failing, but because i was pleased that he was trying, so is my image and understanding of a God who can laugh. That is the God of encouragement, hope, and joy. Not the one who sits with some large toteboard, carefully inscribing every error, every slip, every straying from the clearcut path. Obviously God does not wish us to depart from the path, and such departure grievously wounds Him. But, I think overall, my heart is inclined to a God who can look at some of the nonsense we generate, accept it for what it attempts to be--worship, after a fashion--rejoices at the attempt and shakes heaven with the thunder of His laughter.

A Disagreement with C.S. Lewis and with Yancey

A shorter quote just sparked a notion--

from Soul Survivor--C. Everett Koop Philip Yancey

C.S. Lewis shocked many people in his day when he came out in favor of making divorce legal, on the grounds that we Christians have no right to impose our morality on society at large. Although he would preach against it, and oppose it on moral grounds, he recognized the distinction between morality and legality.

Of course we will have to exercise the skill of ethical surgeons in deciding which moral prinicples apply to society at large. If we fail to exercise that skill, once again we will risk confusing the two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and that of this world

And yet, it is somehow fine for a Christian to live in a society that consistently seeks to impose its morality upon the Christian framework?

I think there is a grave, typically Christian error here--an error I believe stems from a misunderstanding of Jesus's statement to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. . ." Many seem to read that as saying there are two kingdoms--one of God, one of this world (as articulated above). Such a reading strikes me as utter nonsense. The kingdom of this world is ordained by the will of God one cannot live in it without also living in the Kingdom of God because He is all pervasive. What Jesus says to me in the phrase is not that Christians should buckle under to the Caesars of the world, but that once they are present, all due order should be observed, and Christians should be good citizens of that kingdom. However, when and where possible this world should as much as possible reflect the glory of God. So, do Christian's have "a right to impose their morality on others?" I would argue that every law is an imposition of morality and Christians have as much right as anyone else to impose their morality in a legal, civil, compassionate and humane way.

That said, the Christian morality should not be the morality of individual Christians, but the morality that comes from living in a Christlike way. That is, because we determine homosexuality to be immoral (for example) does not mean that we can pass laws that would not allow a gay man a home to live in or food. Morality must reflect first and foremost God's love and law, not our own wishes tarted up as God's Will.

Those Who Sin Differently Than We Do

More Yancey--from whom I appear to be learning a lot. This book has been a most worthwhile and eye-opening read. Admittedly Yancey has his own viewpoint, and perhaps his own agenda. Nevertheless, I feel I have much to learn from him.

Today--C. Everett Koop (actually not, but you'll see).

from Soul Survivor--C. Everett Koop Philip Yancey

"I've noticed that Christians tend to get very angry toward others who sin differently than they do," one man said to me, a man who directs an organization ministering to people with AIDS. I've noticed exactly the same pattern. After I wrote in a book about my friendship with Mel White, formerly a ghost writer for famous Christians and now a prominent gay activist, I received a number of letters condemning me for continuing the friendship. "How can you possibly remain friends with such a sinner!" the letter writers demanded. I've thought long and hard about that question, and come up with several answers which I beleive to be biblical. The most succinct answer, though, is another question, "How can Mel White possibly remain friends with a sinner like me?" The only hope for any of us, regardless of our particular sins, lies in a ruthless trust in a God who inexplicably loves sinner, including those who sin differently than we do.

Too often I have discovered myself in the situation described above. I have also noticed it in others. I have friends who have been in a number of different relationships in and out of marriage who rail against homosexuality as a sin. I have good Catholic Friends who scream and rant and rave against abortion doctors and yet have had surgery to assure that they will have no more children.

We do tend to like least those whose sins differ from our own. If we're murderers, we can't stand thieves. The only real solution is to focus on the fact that we are all sinners. Is a homosexual any worse a sinner than myself? I would argue that the sins differ in kind, not in number. And yet consistently we seem to make out that homosexuality is a greater sin than say heterosexual promscuity, or allowing our poor to go without food or medical care.

Another example--abortion is a heinous, horrible sin and crime against God and humanity. So too is abandoning a young mother and her child to the care of some governmental system that may or may not provide her with a sufficient means of support in life. So also is depriving anyone of the basic necessities of life--food, water, shelter, and medical care--and yet we constantly face initiatives that would stigmatize illegal aliens and migrant workers in such a way. We can exploit their labor, but we want nothing to do with their problems.

Perhaps the best solution for this is the solid awareness that we are all sinners. We all, each one of us, every single day of our lives, give God and Heaven some cause for sadness. Yes, there are degrees of sinners and of sin, but do we stand as the Pharisee or as the Publican? Do we say that our sins are not so grave as those of our neighbors and thus inveigh against them with a strength that sometimes suggests madness?

Sin is sin, heterosexual, homosexual, abortionist, self-mutilator. We are all sinners before God, and when we really grasp that, we will have little time to spend accusing others, because we will be accusing ourselves and asking God for His mercy and help that we might stop the insanity of our own self-destruction. Grace alone may step in, pick us up, cleanse us, and set us back on our way. Better that we watch our own stumbling steps, than that we spend all of our time looking up from the muck to rant about how others stumble.

Sharing Samuel's Wisdom

Yesterday at school Samuel had a grilled cheese sandwich at lunch time. His comment regarding it when he came home to us is that he wanted a "boy cheese sandwich."

The (Im)Pure Cussedness of Humankind

Some notes from Soul Survivor.

from Soul-Survivor--"Mahatma Gandhi" Philip Yancey

In 1983, after I had just returned from India and Richard Attenborough's film Gandhi was released, I wrote a profile of the man for Christianity Today magazine. Although I have received plenty of venomous letters over the years, I was not prepared for the volume of hate mail the article generated. Readers informed me that Gandhi is now roasting in hell, and that even the devil believes in God and quotes the Bible. "So it's Gandhi on the cover this month," wrote one reader. "Who will it be next month, the Ayatollah?" Another called him "a heathen agitator who did more than any other person to undermine the influence of western civilization." A prominent Christian spokesman railed again the magazine for "replacing Jesus on the cover with Mahatma Gandhi!"

Most of the complaints boiled down to one question: Do Christians have anything to learn from someone who rejected our faith?

First, I'd like to remark that it is so lovely to know how many people are aware of the fates of others with respect to their eternal destination. I have not been so blessed and while I continue to hope that I may achieve the destination that God has intended for me, I do not hold out the presumption that I can continue to conduct my life in the way I have been and make it there.

It's ironic that the man who perhaps most dramatically exemplified some of the more difficult teachings of Jesus is consigned to the pit by those who say that he rejected Jesus.

My answer would be that he rejected (perhaps rightfully) Christianity and all of its glamours and charms--including brutal racism in South Africa, the slaughter of innocent thousands in India, and the horrors of the partition--overseen by Lord Mountbatten (though not brought about by him) in the name of His Majesty's Government. Being brought up a Hindu, he expresses the typical Hindu complaint about Christianity--the paucity of incarnations of God.

However, I would argue that Jesus told us, "By their fruits ye shall know them." And I look at the fruits--peace where there was no peace, patience where there was no patience, and entire class of people raised from the lowest of the low to a place only marginally better, but still better, during his lifetime.

I don't know where Gandhi is. As always, I pray that he is in heaven. He certainly has more "right" to a place there than I do. (I know, no one has a "right' to anything of this sort, and all is given by grace--but I am just Calvinist enough to believe that sometimes you can see glimmerings of that grace in a life on Earth--and in Gandhi, I seem some of that.)

Again I say he rejected not Jesus but those who would thrust Jesus upon him. Those who, at the same time, would not allow him to worship in their churches. (Let's give them credit--those who would put down the most horrific regime the world had seen up to that point.)

I think some of the vitriol that Yancey indicates was directed toward Gandhi might have been a result of the fact that he showed how conspicuously lacking Christianity was in the presence of Christ. Would Jesus have approved of racism? Of antisemitism? Of the judgmentalism that pervades much of our daily discourse? Of our need to feel good at the expense of others? Of oppression? Of murder?

On the whole, I think Gandhi got it more right than wrong and as I observe the fruits of violence, I become more convinced that Gandhi, Dorothy Day, to some extent Merton, and always the Quakers and the Mennonites have a firmer grasp of the truth of the matter than many who would support violent resolution of nearly any conflict. Obviously, I am still in a formative stage with regard to thinking about the issue--but every thought pushes me more closely to their viewpoint. (Though not to the extremes of their views. Gandhi's wife died because he refused to allow doctors to inject penicillin that might have saved her due to the violence it would do to her body--one can go too far.)

Mr Gonzalez Reminds Us

I thought everyone knew--our machines were out at work because of it--there is a really nasty worm making the rounds, largely designed to launch a DDOS attack on Microsoft (distributed denial of service). It infects Windows 2000 and Windows XP by exploiting a port problem, so you don't even need to load an executable. A patch has existed since mid-July that corrects the problem. Get it at here before infection. If you have strange things happening on your computer you may need to take the next step and get the Fixblast exectutable from

A Review of The Crisis of Islam

Admittedly, not a terribly good one--but nevertheless an opinion is available here.

Yet More on Yancey

Yancey quotes Tolstoy:

from Soul Survivor--"Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky" Philip Yancey

We think the feelings experienced by people of our day and our class are very imporant and varied; but in reality almost all the feelings of people of our class amount to but three very insignificant and simple feelings--the feeling of pride, the feeling of sexual desire, and the feeling of weariness of life. These three feelings with their outgrowths, for almost the only subject matter of the art of the rich classes.
(From [Tolstoy's] What is Art?)

This remains true today, it would seem. If one reads the fiction of the day that is highly touted as literary, these three feelings seem to dominate much of literature. Some in greater measure than others, depending upon the writer, but all of them in some mix. There is a tremendous sadness in that confession, and it is a sadness that pervades our media and much of what we choose to do for recreation.

Once again, scratched CD that I am, I point out that the only escape from this trap is the relentless, meaningful, and joyous pursuit of truth. Everything else pales in comparison to grasping the truth of the love of Jesus Christ for each of us. And nothing revives, or should I say resurrects, the soul deadened by much of the crisis of the modern world, than a realization that this world need not be the way that it is--that there is Light, there is Truth, and there is Love available from one unfailing source. Look to it, and you shall not fail.

Some Thoughts on Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor

The book is a series of essays about "heroes" who helped restore Yancey's faith when it was sorely challenged. It's a mixed bag of people, all interesting. But more interesting yet are some of the issues Yancey brings up.

from Soul Survivor--"Dr. Robert Coles" Philip Yancey

I belong, with Robert Coles, to a privileged minority. Everyone reading this sentence belongs, in fact, for only a small percentage of the world's people has the ability and leisure to read and the resources to buy a book. How do we, the "privileged ones," act as stewards of the grace we have received? We can begin, Coles tells us, by ripping off the labels we so thoughtlessly slap on others unlike ourselves. We can begin by finding a community that nourishes compassion for the weak, an instinct that privilege tends to suppress. We can begin with humility and gratitude and reverence, and then move on to pray without ceasing for the great gift of love.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. told Coles in the course of a personal interview:

I have begun to realize how hard it is for a lot of people to think of living without someone to look down upon, really look down upon. It is not just that they will feel cheated out of someone to hate; it is that they will be compelled to look more closely at themselves, at what they don't like in themselves. My heart goes out to people I hear called rednecks; they have little, if anything, and hate is a possession they can still call upon reliably, and it works for them. I have less charity in my heart for well-to-do and well-educated people--for their snide comments, cleverly rationalized ones, for the way they mobilize their politcial and even moral justifications to suit their own purposes. No one calls them into account. The Klan is their whipping boy. Someday all of us will see that when we start going after a race or a religion, a type, a region, a section of the Lord's humanity--then we're cutting into His heart, and we're bleeding badly ourselves.
(From Cole's Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage)

This struck me rather hard. It is always easier to pigeonhole than to treat a person as a person. Even here at St. Blogs we've had a long debate on the efficacy of "modifier"-Catholics--whether we self-identify (and hence tend to identify others as "Orthodox," "Radical Traditionalist," "Liberal," etc.) I have questioned the wisdom of such division, and have eschewed any such labels for myself in hopes that it would prevent me from seeing others through the filters established by such a world view. It has not entirely, which I regret deeply. To forestall further inroads, I have decided to note this and state general opposition to labels for people. The views that are held may, perhaps, be categorized, but a person should never be stigmatized with anything other than God's own loving label--"child of God." We are all God's children, and brothers and sisters in the larger family by adoption. Thus we are prone to the rivalries of all children, and have the need to prove ourselves in views, opinions, and sometimes even by labelling a view we do not favor in such a way that it brings us the favorable comment of those whose favor we wish to curry.

The truth cannot be found in labelling. The truth cannot be found by identifying "us and them." And the truth is the only thing worth finding. The truth is found in a direct and continuous encounter with Jesus Christ. When we label a person, we have effectively found a way to remove that individual from Christ-likeness and put them in a place where we do not have to deal with them.

Throughout I have said we, because I know the phenomenon is widespread, even if mostly involuntary. But I say specifically, that I have failed here as often as (or more often than) anyone else, and for those failures I apologize to all. With the grace of God and the love of Christ, I move forward with the fervent prayer that this habit of being will gradually diminish to be replaced with the ability to look at each person for the image of God that he or she is. It is also my prayer for all of you. Hopefully, enough of us can infect the entire world with a view of the person as ultimately worthy of our respect and love by virtue of Him whose image each one is.

A New Scupoli Translation

Mr. Perry seems to be working on a new translation of Scupoli's The Spiritual Combat, along with some cogent notes and details. So far only fourteen chapters, but I hope the work continues.

On Disputations

While Mr. da Fiesole's blog is always entertaining and interesting, parties in the blog world wonder when summer will ever be over and we can return to school. Here in the south, where things are not judged by temperature alone, we are inclined to believe that summer has expired. (After all, my child started Kindergarten this morning). So, we stand by waiting, seemingly patient, and trying hard, but the tap, tap, tap you hear is the toe of my boot, hidden discretely, by my Carmelite habit.

Just In Case

I've gotten two weird error messages this morning about space available is some device or another; however, the posts made it to the blogworld fine. Don't know what the messages mean, but they prompt me to think in Alicia's and Bill Luse's direction.

Spiritual Combat Revisited

I have been reading the book with the title above on and off for a couple of month. Last night I finished a section that prompted some fairly serious thought.

from Spiritual Combat Revisited Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory

The good in us is God's and the evil in us is our own. However much this may go against contemporary modes of thought, this unpleasant truth is the lesson of Scripture and the teaching of the Church. But it is not just contemporary modes of thought that find the truth repellent--it is we ourselves. Somewhere, buried not all that deep in ourselves, is a conviction that we are not really all that bad. Here we have to learn to pray for the humility to see and accept this fundamental lesson of the Gospel about the human condition. (p. 56)

I wonder about this--not about the truth of it, but more the nuanced subtleties of it. Stated this boldly it begins to sound a bit Calvinist. One would expect the next words to be "utter depravity." But scripture and the Church both teach that mankind was created good as part of a good creation; this would seem to imply that there is something good. Now, as Mr. Robinson points out, that good comes from God, and yet we experience it and are part of it and are inseparable from it. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that we tend to embrace the good as our own doing. But it is not, it is part of our being, but not something we have caused to be. Whereas everything that God made is beautiful and good; and yet, we see the tracery of destruction, unhappiness, and corruption throughout the human world. Why is this? Because we are, in fact responsible for all of that. Everything that is ugly, unwieldy and depraved is of human origin--perhaps promoted and encouraged by the Evil One, but willingly undertaken by people themselves.

Do we accept that all good is from God. Intellectually, every Christian acknowledges the truth encompassed in this passage; however, equally our emotional aspects resist it because it seem a vast abyss wherein we will become utterly lost. If we accept that we are capable only of evil (St. Thomas Aquinas points out that the only act a person is capable of without the assistance of grace is the rejection of God's will) then we might begin to think of ourselves in that fashion.

And yet, we are loved by God and we are loved for ourselves--corrupt, imperfect, and unloving. His Love makes us worthy of love. If we lean on that and rely upon His goodness to support us we will begin to understand to truth of the passage above without sinking into a mire of self-revulsion and hatred--hardly conducive to active Christian ministry and life.

So we must carefully tread the brink of an abyss--total self-involvement and self-assurance and total self revulsion. With the truths of the scripture and the teachings of the Church these two resolve quite readily and we needn't think about the act.

However, we do need to adjust ourselves to the fact that we are in need of transformation, and everything that is foul around us, is more than likely contributed to by us. Even if not, it is the product of human beings and not of God. We need to be very careful about taking credit for all the good that flows from our Gracious Lord and part of our examen should be to tease out those places where we continue to give ourselves credit for what we do not do ourselves.

Alicia Has a New Home

Here is the new Fructus Ventris establishment. Please drop in and make the house-warming an example of rousing St. Blog's hospitality.

We Are Reintegrated

Jack at Integrity asked me to let everyone know that he's back on board. Welcome back, Jack.

Prayer Reminders

From the Prayer Chapel:
Please remember the following critically important intentions in your prayers:

1. Bill White's wife who is experiencing some unusual medical difficulties.
2. Pansy Moss and Family
3. DYLAN, DYLAN, DYLAN (I know, I harp on this too much, but that's the way it is for brother poet)
4. Christine and Gordon and family (please really work on this one--they've been out of work for more than half-a-year and all reserves are coming to an end)
5. Katherine and Frankin (ditto--although there was a brief interim of employment--still, very difficult situation)
6. All in St. Blog's who have intentions they do not express to us, for healing, emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical and all other intentions for our blogfamily.

Thanks to the PoMo Crowd We Have:

This delightful example of interpretive gibberish extracted from an excellent Wall Street Journal Opinion piece.

To be sure, the new gospel's disciples do not generally jettison Scripture outright. Instead, they radically reinterpret it, using techniques imported from America's postmodern universities. Walter Brueggemann, a theologian quoted in a pro-same-sex-union Episcopal publication, put it like this: Scripture is "the chief authority when imaginatively construed in a certain interpretive trajectory." Approached this way, inconvenient passages can be dismissed as inconsistent with "Jesus' self-giving love."

On The Crisis of Islam

Go to The Catholic Bookshelf for an interesting insight into Islam. More to be posted there later. The book, by Bernard Lewis, is short, well-written, and very informative. Highly recommended.

A Prayer of St. Raphael Kalinowski

from Drink of the Stream Compiled by Penny Hicks, O.C.D.S.

We entrust our task to our Most Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, under her maternal care.

If there is anything to correct, let it be corrected once and for all; may the good that is done continue to increase.

Toward this purpose, may God's love flood your souls along this earthly life, and finally lead you to the fountain of love, that is to God Himself in eternity.

On a Somewhat Lighter Note

A blessed feastday to all our Dominican brothers and sisters.

Invoking the Saints

Erik suggests a few to call upon to see our Episcopal brethren to safe shores. Here I add a few more. (Also, if anyone knows, why do we not say please, when asking such favors from the Saints? An imperative sounds as though we deserve it, and we most certainly do not.)

St. Thomas Becket, pray for us.
St. Robert Southwell, pray for us.
St. Thomas More, pray for us.
St. John Fisher, pray for us.
St. Edmund Campion, pray for us.
St. Margaret Clitherow, pary for us.
St. Anne Line, pray for us.
St. Margaret Ward, pray for us.
St. John Rigby, pray for us.
St. Philip Howard, pray for us.
St. Robert Gwyn, pray for us.
St. Swithun Wells, pray for us.
St. Augustine Webster, pray for us.
St. John Houghton, pray for us.
St. Robert Lawrence, pray for us.
St. Richard Reynolds, pray for us.
St. John Stone, pray for us.
St. Alexander Briant, pray for us.
St. Edmund Arrowsmith, pray for us.
St. David Lewis, pray for us.
St. Henry Morse, pray for us.
St. Henry Walpole, pray for us.
St. Nicholas Owen, pray for us.
St. Philip Evans, pray for us.
St. Thomas Garnet, pray for us.
St. Alban Roe, pray for us.
St. Ambrose Barlow, pray for us.
St. John Roberts, pray for us.
St. John Jones, pray for us.
St. John Wall, pray for us.
St. Cuthbert Mayne, pray for us.
St. Edmund Gennings, pray for us.
St. Eustace White, pray for us.
St. John Almond, pray for us.
St. John Boste, pray for us.
St. John Kemble, pray for us.
St. John Lloyd, pray for us.
St. John Pain, pray for us.
St. John Plesington, pray for us.
St. John Southworth, pray for us.
St. Luke Kirby, pray for us.
St. Polydore Plasden, pray for us.
St. Ralph Sherwin, pray for us.
John Henry Newman, pray for us.

To all these Saints, and all of those who lost their lives for the faith, we beg your guidance for the people who have been cut lose from their moorings, separated from the Mother they dearly loved. Guide them into the bosom of the Holy Catholic Church, a true and devoted Mother. But more importantly, intercede for us, who have allowed so grievous an offense to the dignity of our Precious Lord. May your sufferings and shed blood help in some small measure to make up for the grievous sin committed against Our Sovereign, Gentle, Loving King.

Amen.

Talking About the Fall of a Church

Erik at Erik's Rants and Recipes(the post sited et seq.) has some excellent points about the self-destruction of the Episcopal church. As you will note in my response below, I have a great deal of sympathy with a portion of the view, but cannot crow over the cause. Jesus has suffered yet another grievous insult, and in our own fuddled ways, we fail to see the real issue. (Not all of us, but unfortunately a great deal too many.)

Dear Erik,

Speaking as one whose dearest friend (other than my dear wife) is an Episcopalian, you'll probably be quite surprised to hear that I don't disagree with your anti-anglicanism all that much. I look down upon them for the crimes of the past that have settled in the present. The Martyrs St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More as well as St. Edmund Campion and St. Robert Southwell are all one their heads as a communion, not to mention the many dreadful depredations that followed. (Yes, i know to be raised to Martyrdom for Christ is a great honor and privilege in heaven, but it doesn't stop me from being selfish and wishing that their work had been allowed to continue.)

But I do not crow over this self-destruction because of the grave nature of the insult to Christ. Many Episcopalians do love God, deeply, sincerely, and completely, and yet they are so fuddled, they do not realize that this blasphemy they crow is another slap in the face to Jesus. This is a grave and serious crime against humanity and God, and in it there is nothing good.

Its stain is upon this land and like so much toxic waste, it will trickle into the ground to contaminate the groundwater for a great many years to come. One triumphalist Episcopalian was quoted as saying that now the Episcoplal church can lend its moral weight to the debate on gay marriage. You and I recognize that as infinitely risible. Unfortunately the majority of American people and even a sizable minority of Catholics probably view this a sterling example of truth and courage.

So, you'll pardon me if I don't crow along, I am too saddened by yet another crime against the God I try so hard to love.

shalom,

Steven

On Dealing with Sinners

In a response to a post below, Erik suggests a question which is in urgent need of an answer. To wit, how do we deal with the sin of homosexual behaviors?

To rephrase the question more broadly, "How do we deal with sinners?" And the answer, as you might guess, is obvious--just as we have been doing up until now. We are all sinners and we are all children of God. Our commandment is to love our neighbor. Love does not express itself in endless harangues against how a person lives. Homosexual behavior, while a mortal sin, is no more mortal than say, theft, adultery, gossipmongering, scandal. That is, while we are well aware of the nature of the sin of a person professing homosexual behavior, others sin as well and we do not know it.

Do we ignore the sin? No, but we do not allow the sin to stand in way of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. We do not let it stand in the way of true equality and justice before the law and before God. We do not countenance the death of sinners, as God does not wish it. In short, we do not let the sin stand in the way of love and justice.

The only way the truth can be received is through a heart filled with love. When we fall short of perfect love of the person as person, our ability to share the good news of salvation is impaired. If we are constantly harping on the sin, we will alienate the individual. Our lives must reflect the love we know, and through that image of the living God, encourage the sinner to seek Him. If we are asked, we must be prepared to state boldly and gently what we know to be the truth, and we must be prepared to live it and defend it.

So, as Erik points out, many of us know caring, talented, loving, generous people whose known sin is homosexual behavior. We are inclined to regard their sin as "not so bad." I see this in part as a work of Grace. We cannot let our feelings about the person disguise the fact that the behavior involved is seriously disordered and gravely sinful. But these feelings allow us to show some facets of God's all-encompassing love. And our calling is to reify that love to the degree possible.

Count on St. John of the Cross for Just the Right Words

from The Ascent of Mount Carmel III:38.3 St. John of the Cross

How many festivals, my God, do the children of men celebrate in Your honor in which the devil has a greater role than You! And the devil, like a merchant is pleased with these gatherings because he does more business on those days. How many times will You say of them: This people honors Me with their lips alone, but their heart is far from Me, because they serve me without cause [Mt 15:8-9]

Indeed!

Ceux-ci m'amuse

This at Disputations. (The first entry for today if direct linking continues to not work)

and
This at Apologia

New BlogRoll Things

I've added a lot to my blogroll recently, but I just wanted to mention two additions.

Thanks to the sober, temperate, and even-handed Mr. Kevin Miller, I have added Heart, Mind & Strength to the Blogroll. At times in the past there was a trifle too much silliness for my taste, but Mr. Miller's writing along with some other features make it worth wading through. (Though truth to tell, I have not seen much silliness in the parts I've been able to get through.)

I've also added a link to a page of publications by one of my very favorites--Archbishop Charles Chaput, long may he live and serve his Church. By such men is the Church made a more holy place.

The Fruits of Crisis

As you can see from the posts below, I have plumbed some of the depths of feeling that have overcome me in the past few days and have determined the reality that lay behind them. I am wounded because Christ is again assaulted, torn, spat upon, and ignored. This isn't merely "an Episcopalian thing." It is a physical and spiritual assault upon the Body of Christ. We have once again freed Barrabas and crucified our King. Not everyone of course. Just as there were those in the crowd who sorrowed over what was happening, so too now, there are many who sorrow. But the profound offense, the deep wound that has been made, the insult to Our Lord, once again shows the strength of His love, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."

I wish ignorance could excuse them and I pray God's mercy upon them, for in this case, I must believe that they know very precisely what they do, and yet they do it anyway.

It is time once again to make reparation for the damage we have inflicted upon Our Lord. We're called once again to realize our own depth of sin and to turn toward His gracious love. We're called once again to bring our straying brethren with us.

And what never fails to amaze me in all of this is His Graciousness--in all the multitude of meanings that term has--His complete Graciousness, His all-encompassing Love.

A Prayer of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

from Drink of the Stream
Compiled by Penny Hicks, O.C.D.S.

May my life be a continual prayer, a long act of love. May nothing distract me from You, neither noise nor diversions, nothing. O my Master, I would so love to live with You in silence. But what i love above all is to do Your will, and since You want me to still remain in the world, I submit with all my heart for love of You. I offer You the cell of my heart; may it be Your little Bethany. Come rest there; I love You so.

The fruit of much trial in the past few days is to reflect upon how much and how intensely I love God. To see Him once again dragged through the streets, spat upon, and crucified, reminds me of my complicity--mostly a complicity of silence, sometimes of silent agreement.

I am trying to clear the cell of my heart, to make the little Bethany Blessed Elizabeth speaks of. But it seems everytime I remove some debris, I sit down again, exhausted and create more. Entropy threatens to win, until God uses an occasion to open the windows, let in light, and remind us that despite all appearances, He is still in charge.

So though many are treading the via dolorosa because Jesus has once again been denied, they are more aware of Him. He will triumph in the end, and He will rescue us from all that would destroy us utterly. For a little while, it is Good to be the Cyrene, and help however little to carry the cross. The indignity our Precious Lord has suffered over the past few days because of the deluded enthusiasm of many and the outright diabolism of a few we can take part in.

A Meditation of St. Teresa of Avila

from Drink of the Stream Compiled by Penny Hickey O.C.D.S.

O Christians, it's time to defend your King and to accompany Him in such great solitude. Few are the vassals remaining with Him, and great the multitude accompanying Lucifer. And what's worse is that these latter appear as His friends in public and sell Him in secret. He finds almost no one in whom to trust. O true Friend, how badly they pay You back who betray You! O true Christians, help your God weep, for those compassionate tears are not only for Lazarus but for those who were not going to want to rise, even though His majesty call them. O my God, how You bear in mind the faults I have committed against You! May they now come to an end, Lord, may they come to an end, and those of everyone. Raise up these dead; may Your cries be so powerful that even though they do not beg life of You, You give it to them so that afterward, my God, they might come forth from the depth of their own delights.

We Are All Sinners

And all subject to temptation.

We are not perfect nor do many of us wish to be.

The first step in conversion is to recognize Jesus Christ and know through Him the love God has for us.

The second is to desire to be all that we are in His eyes.

Sinners though we are, God does not look upon us as such. He looks upon us as children.

And children that we are, we need to strive to please Our Father, as all young children do.

My daily prayer, O Lord don't let me become a teenager in faith
or
if it is thy will, get me through adolescence quickly.

God loves us into eternity if we will stop our struggling to be free and remain free in His loving embrace.

For Our Troubled Episcopalian Brethren

Mr. Lane Core has compiled a list of readings for those who are looking for a way out of the current crisis.

To his list I would append the entire contents of the Project Canterbury Site (see left column), as a very focused recognition of what the Anglican Church, until recent times, has always been.

Contributed by Mr. White

How did I overlook it? Novena to Our Lady of Walsingham and other appropriate devotions. As Mr. White points out, perhaps a proper refuge in this time of trial.

A Request for Outside

There has been an appeal to remember Nagasaki day, today.

In memoriam of a terrible, terrible tragedy--as one must regard all war these word from Pacem in Terris an encyclical of Pope John XXIII:

Peace on Earth—which man throughout the ages has so longed for and sought after—can never be established, never guaranteed, except by the diligent observance of the divinely established order. . . .

5. But the world's Creator has stamped man's inmost being with an order revealed to man by his conscience; and his conscience insists on his preserving it. Men "show the work of the law written in their hearts. Their conscience bears witness to them." (5) And how could it be otherwise? All created being reflects the infinite wisdom of God. It reflects it all the more clearly, the higher it stands in the scale of perfection. (6)

6. But the mischief is often caused by erroneous opinions. Many people think that the laws which govern man's relations with the State are the same as those which regulate the blind, elemental forces of the universe. But it is not so; the laws which govern men are quite different. The Father of the universe has inscribed them in man's nature, and that is where we must look for them; there and nowhere else. . . .

35. Hence, before a society can be considered well-ordered, creative, and consonant with human dignity, it must be based on truth. St. Paul expressed this as follows: "Putting away lying, speak ye the truth every man with his neighbor, for we are members one of another." (25) And so will it be, if each man acknowledges sincerely his own rights and his own duties toward others.

Human society, as We here picture it, demands that men be guided by justice, respect the rights of others and do their duty. It demands, too, that they be animated by such love as will make them feel the needs of others as their own, and induce them to share their goods with others, and to strive in the world to make all men alike heirs to the noblest of intellectual and spiritual values. Nor is this enough; for human society thrives on freedom, namely, on the use of means which are consistent with the dignity of its individual members, who, being endowed with reason, assume responsibility for their own actions .

36. And so, dearest sons and brothers, we must think of human society as being primarily a spiritual reality. By its means enlightened men can share their knowledge of the truth, can claim their rights and fulfill their duties, receive encouragement in their aspirations for the goods of the spirit, share their enjoyment of all the wholesome pleasures of the world, and strive continually to pass on to others all that is best in themselves and to make their own the spiritual riches of others. It is these spiritual values which exert a guiding influence on culture, economics, social institutions, political movements and forms, laws, and all the other components which go to make up the external community of men and its continual development.

These words are eerily appropriate to the other major concern weighing upon my heart as well.

The Episcopalian Church

Please pray for those Bishops who do not wish to set aside six-thousand years of tradition and who wish to remain loyal to the teachings of Jesus Christ that they can find a way to peacefully and amicably separate from their apostate brethren. Let us pray that it may be done without endless litigation and vitriol. This vote is truly a sad day for the Episcopal Church and the dawning of many sad days for all Christian Churches.

As a coda--I honestly wish I understood why this weighs upon me so heavily. It isn't my communion, so in some sense, isn't even my business and yet, it feels pressingly important and urgent. Nevertheless, after this point, I promise to try to keep it merely in my prayers and not in the face of my readers.

On the Brown Scapular--A Retraction

In a post below I was unforgivably vague in how I phrased things, and I believe that I may have hurt many of my regular readers. I post here for all to read my apology to Mr. Jeff Culbreath, who quite rightly upbraided me about my apparent position on the matter.

Dear Jeff,

First, I owe you and everyone an apology for the apparent lack of clarity of this post. I will post something this morning that clarifies.

I think it profoundly admirable that he [Jeff's Son] is so devoted to the scapular. I don't think it particularly superstitious, and I'm certain that you are bringing him up a good Catholic. I agree with you that one should not cast aside sacramentals. But neither should one commit mortal sin thinking that wearing the scapular is going to keep you from Hell. I know that you do not teach this but it is part of the "guarantee" some rely upon in wearing the scapular. I think that what I'm saying is the teaching needs clarification for modern ears. In previous the language says that wearing the Brown Scapular would keep you from Hell. I think this could be misinterpreted as a license to sin. All would grant that this is an absurd notion. However, if one were to wear the Brown Scapular worthily, then one would be kept from the fires of Hell by the grace of God and the intercession of Our Lady. There is no supersition in this, and the language is clearer. Some would understand the original wording to mean this, but when I quizzed a person on the issue, they replied quite frankly to my question, "If you committed a mortal sin, did not confess or repent of it, and died wearing the scapular, you would go to Heaven." Their answer was, "Yes, that is what Our Lady told us." I seriously doubt that Our Lady told us that the Brown scapular was a "get out of jail free" card, or a license to commit mortal sin.

What I think needs to be done is not to abandon our Lady's Garment, but to respect it for what it is and to live the life that is required by what it is. That is all that I meant to say--not that it should be cast aside. In fact, I believe that every believing Catholic would do well to become part of the Brown Scapular Confraternity and wear the scapular worthily.

I am truly sorry if I gave the misimpression that I stood against this great and valuable gift of the church. Please forgiven me if I have caused you any pain or harm by this, it was not my intention. And while I cannot speak for him, I do not believe it is Mr. O'Rama's point either.

shalom,

Steven

On the Episcopalian Problem

I honestly, really do hate to say this, but I can't see what all the fuss is about with the "reports" on the new Bishop-to-be. After all, if we're ordaining gay bishops, what could really be wrong with pornography? Or, if it is wrong today, surely it must become right when a sufficiently large group of the populace believes it to be. And inappropriate conduct--who's to decide what is truly inappropriate? We eschew biblial guidance and the wisdom of tradition. After all this has been in the works for years and years. Never mind the fact that even if it has been brewing for 20 years, we have 6,000 years of unbroken tradition in opposition.

I have a very dear friend who is Episcopalian and she doesn't see this argument. When I press and ask her on what grounds one can make any value judgment if you have discarded biblical guidance and 2,000 years of tradition, she has no answer--and yet she still sees this as a mighty step forward for the Church. She's convinced these false allegations have been brought forward as the work of Satan. If they are false, they are Satan's work and should be done away with; but if there is an element of truth, they are the relentless play of logic in the field of wandering away from the Lord.

As much as I prefer not to weigh in on such matters, of recent days I have gotten the impression that I need to stop sitting on the fence and to take a stand, for or against. Fortunately, I picked an easy one to start with.

On the Brown Scapular

Agonizingly slow day in St. Blog's today. But T.S. O'Rama has an interesting post on the proper approach to devotionals and indulgences--reflecting on some words here a while back. Recommended!

Make Heaven Here on Earth

Speak the truth in love.

That's it. When we speak the truth, we share Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the only solution to all that ails us. He is the Truth. He is the only light that matters. We count on Him for transformation. We count on Him to change the entire world. This is the Truth that sets us free--free for complete service to Him. Praise God and thank Him for all His holy works, by them we are transformed and made whole.

Four Particularly Pressing Prayer Concerns

Sorry for the alliteration, it wasn't intended to be funny:

(1) For Pansy Moss, her husband, and her family. We all need to keep praying and keep supporting this family in every possible way. God is good, and we need to make certain that we constantly demonstrate it.

(2) For Dylan--He needs our constant support and prayer. I don't often use martial imagery--in fact, I deplore it, but we need to storm heaven for him. His healing is dependent upon our prayers and upon God.

(3) For the unemployed who are presently seeking work--particularly Gordon and Christine, Franklin and Katherine, and a young man of distant acquaintance who has just been laid off work, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and whose wife is expecting their first child. Lord, have mercy.

(4) For my wife and our present situation that it is resolved in accordance with His will (no marital troubles, just health and other concerns rocking the rather easy boat of our existence.)

The Episcopal Church

Please continue to pray for our brethren in this distraught Church. The momentary crisis has not yet passed, and will not pass until they have drunk the last of their bitter draught. Let us pray that people of good will come to their sense and understand the full ramifications of what they are doing. Barring that, let us pray that it will be possible for those who can no longer belong to the communion to separate in a Christian and dignified manner. Oh, the terrible times we are in, when one cannot distinguish between the innate worth every every human being and the necessary sanctity of holy office. As T.S. O'Rama pointed out yesterday, this is the necessary result of a logical follow through on decisions made decades ago. Let us thank God that despite our own current difficulties and crises, we have a Church and a Holy Pope that is not reluctant to take a difficult stand on issues of morality, doctrine, and practice. Praise God for His guidance and steady hand with His Holy Church. Let us all pray that she too is not put to the test.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Finished it last night, and I need some time to think about it. But soon, I shall put up a review at Catholic Bookshelf. Until then, suffice to say that it is recommended for a great many reasons. I'm going to spend some time sorting out what those are, but right now--recommended seems enough.

Moving on to Bernard Lewis's The Crisis of Islam and David Mills's work on knowing the Real Jesus. I have to try to work in Richard Russo's Empire Falls (I'm considerably less than impressed. THIS won a Pulitzer. Must have been a dead year for fiction.) Also working on a wonderful book by Philip Yancey: Soul Survivor, bascially biographies of twelve or thirteen people who have helped Yancey retain his Christian faith when elements of the church were making it very difficult.

One More Quote About Day

A Quote that comments on a previous controversy--one that I found very comforting in an odd sort of way.

from The Life You Save May Be Your Own p. 444 Paul Elie

There were many for whom she prayed each day, among them various people who had committed suicide. She prayed that those who had taken their own lives would have the grace of final repentance. That her prayers occurred long after the deaths was of no matter, she said. "There is no time with God."

I will not burden you with the personal details that make this so welcome and needed a message. Welcome, needed, and long ignored and resisted. Is it even possible to understand the sheer relentless stubborness of fallen Man?

Elie on Dorothy Day

I'm puzzled by Dorothy Day. I don't know what to make of her. Mr. Elie hardly helps:

from The Life You Save May be Your Own pg. 430 Paul Elie

Around St. Joseph's House, her position on Sainthood was well known: "Don't call me a saint--I don't want to be dismissed that easily." The remark, often taken to express her humility in fact expressed the opposite--her desire to be canonized on her own terms and in her own way--and as she grew older, she was more mindful of the image she presented.

And later

p. 433

Day didn't reject the honors, merely sought to complicate them. On 60 Minutes, she called abortion a grave evil, and stressed that, as a Christian pacifist, she was called to love any enemy, even Adolf Hitler. Around St. Joseph's House she grumbled about the "women's lib" movement and the lack of traditional piety among young people.

Now this is one interesting lady. I don't care much for her politics or her view of Capitalism as yet another form of violence (although I'm inclined to greater sympathy that way as time goes on), but who can resist this woman who seems to have such a firm grasp of those things we all should know by heart?

Something a Little Bit Scary

Please pray for me in my capacity as Regional Formation Director. At our meeting Saturday I had a number of people come to me and request my assistance as a spiritual guide/director. I do not know if this is within my capacity. Certainly I can listen and pray with people, but whether or not I can guide them, I cannot know. Whether I am being called to this, I do not yet know. I suppose by virtue of being formation director, there is at least the implication of that--but it is frightening and sobering. A friend commented that "Just because you can't follow your own advice doesn't mean you can't advise with authority." Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Anyway, please pray for anyone who consults me that I might at least direct them somewhere where they can truly get the assistance they need to progress in the spiritual life.

This is utterly unexpected, but then, I am sensing a complete transformation of the group as we move forward in study that is really an amazing evidence of the Holy Spirit at work. Each member of this group has the potential to become a real spiritual dynamo--I am constantly amazed at the integrity and the real power of prayer this group displays. I am humbled to be part of it. God is moving in His own way, and I am privileged to be witnessing it and participating in it. (Or, at a minimum, I am at least not getting in the way.)

For Our Episcopal Brethren

I think of this particularly at a time when the Episcopal Church seems poised to take yet another plunge in Bishop Spong land. These erstwhile believers seem intent on forging brave new paths of scriptural denial. It seems that if one begins down the path of question inerrancy, everything in the Bible, no matter how clearly spelled out becomes dispensible.

We need to pray for our sister Church and be ready to support what are hopefully the many who will eschew this terrible, riving betrayal of God's word.

I think of the passage from Ezekiel (3:17-21):

17
Thus the word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman for the house of Israel. When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me.
18
If I say to the wicked man, You shall surely die; and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his wicked conduct so that he may live: that wicked man shall die for his sin, but I will hold you responsible for his death.
19
If, on the other hand, you have warned the wicked man, yet he has not turned away from his evil nor from his wicked conduct, then he shall die for his sin, but you shall save your life.
20
If a virtuous man turns away from virtue and does wrong when I place a stumbling block before him, he shall die. He shall die for his sin, and his virtuous deeds shall not be remembered; but I will hold you responsible for his death if you did not warn him.
21
When, on the other hand, you have warned a virtuous man not to sin, and he has in fact not sinned, he shall surely live because of the warning, and you shall save your own life.

Woe to those who lead the sheep to places where they are easily slaughtered. Woe to the shepherds who take their direction from the sheep, because while the sheep may die, their destruction shall be upon the heads of the shepherds. The Bishops of the Episcopal church seem poised on the brink of mortal peril--peril of their souls. We need to pray for each of these men of God that they have the firm resolution to do not what the sheep and modern, depraved, secular minds require, but they have the courage to do what God demands.

From Paul Elie

In reading The Life You Save May Be Your Own, you meet many different people and primarily four different writers. The strands concerning Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day are particularly intriguing. I look at Day as the end-road of pacifism and can't seem to separate that thought from all of the socialist/communist/anti-capitalist thought. I don't know what to make of her. Her cause has been advanced and so there must be something profoundly good and moving. Very likey, this is not the book to find that out.

During last night's reading I came upon this passage in the Merton strand:

from The Life You Save May Be Your Own p. 404-405 Paul Elie

Written for the bishops, the "Message to Contemplatives" might be a message to Merton's critics, the would-be revolutionaries and street-fighting men of the Cahtolic left. For it makes clear why he sees the contemplative life as crucial to any program for peace and justice. In Merton's view, the "experience of God," obedience to the Gospel or the affirmation of human solidarity, must be the basis of the believer's actions in the world. The contemplative life, in his account, is at once the opposite of worldly life and a concentration of it; it is religious experience exaggerated, grotesquely at times, so as to bring a truth to light--to describe the desert in the heart of every would-be believer, and to see in this desert the springs of religious experience. And it is in such experience that those who call themselves believers strive to "unite ourselves to the suffering of the world, carrying on before God a silent dialgoue even with those of our brothers who keep themselves apart from us."

There is so much here to think about and unpack. There are so many contradictory strands to bring into play. Merton himself presents certain nearly insurmountable difficulties. What does one make of the example of his life? Was he sucessful at what he aimed to do? Or did he fail, and if he failed, what are we to learned from the example. (And by fail, I mean merely in human terms, because I have no doubt that the tremendous Mercy of God sees him in heaven even now. But some suggest the possibility of Canonization, and I just don't see it in the strains of this story--that's not to say that I am not missing a great deal.)

Merton concerns me deeply because I identify a great deal with some of his writing and some of his thought. But I do not wish to so identify myself that I suffer those same trials. Merton asks cogent questions--questions that go right to the heart of a Carmelite Vocation in the world. How do you make a space of silence in which to really hear God? The closer he became to silence, the more he seemed to wander from God. How do I avoid the same path?

Some Astonishing Words from Saint John of the Cross

I had feared that the clarity of St. John's declaration would be lost in the E. Allison Peers's translation, but it is still there. I offer first, St. John's tremendous metaphor of the pane of glass and the ray of light, and then the conclusion springing from that line of thought.

from The Ascent of Mount Carmel--Book II, Chapter 5 St. John of the Cross

6. In order that both these things may be the better understood, let us make a comparison. A ray of sunlight is striking a window. If the window is in any way stained or misty, the sun's ray will be unable to illumine it and transform it into its own light, totally, as it would if it were clean of all these things, and pure; but it will illumine it to a lesser degree, in proportion as it is less free from those mists and stains; and will do so to a greater degree, in proportion as it is cleaner from them, and this will not be because of the sun's ray, but because of itself; so much so that, if it be wholly pure and clean, the ray of sunlight will transform it and illumine it in such wise that it will itself seem to be a ray and will give the same light as the ray. Although in reality the window has a nature distinct from that of the ray itself, however much it may resemble it, yet we may say that that window is a ray of the sun or is light by participation. And the soul is like this window, whereupon is ever beating (or, to express it better, wherein is ever dwelling) this Divine light of the Being of God according to nature, which we have described.

7. In thus allowing God to work in it, the soul (having rid itself of every mist and stain of the creatures, which consists in having its will perfectly united with that of God, for to love is to labour to detach and strip itself for God's sake of all that is not God) is at once illumined and transformed in God, and God communicates to it His supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has. And this union comes to pass when God grants the soul this supernatural favour, that all the things of God and the soul are one in participant transformation; and the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation; although it is true that its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before, even as the window has likewise a nature distinct from that of the ray, though the ray gives it brightness.

Astonishing. So much so that my group and I spent the better part of two hours talking about this single passage--its implications, ramifications, and its purpose.

St. John of the Cross tells us that in complete union we beome God by participation. That is, in the best Buddhist sense, all that remains of us in terms of things antithetical to God has vanished--the "Ego" but not the self. This is very difficult to explain, but it marks one of many places where Buddhist doctrine varies from Christian. Buddhists strive for the state of extinction of self. That can be interpreted as the irradication of all that keeps one from God. But explicitly it seems to be the annhilation of personality. I used to think St. John of the Cross was very Buddhist in his teaching, but reading carefully, I have learned better. St. John makes the point that one retains one's own nature. What is annhiliated is all that prevents God from shining through one.

The way I explained it to the Carmelite Group was in comparison to a stained-glass window. Each pane of glass has its distinctive coloration, shape, and placement in the window. As each is purified and made truly transparent rather than merely translucent, each retains its color, shape and position--its unique nature within the window frame. We become God by participation, but the delivery of God is mediated by His vessel--the particular pane of glass. Thus we have St. Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Jerome, and St. John of the Cross. No two of these are exactly the same or even remotely similar, and yet all became unique conveyances of God, unique Godly participators in spreading His word and glory.

We would all do well to spend some time truly reflecting upon the meaning of this passage in our own lives. We all have the potential to become "God by participation," and, in fact, we all have that as our root calling and goal. To fall short of it is, as either Peguy or Bloy is paraphrased as saying, the only real tragedy.

The Enchiridion

For those who care to see it nicely formatted PDF of the Enchridion of Indulgences. Unfortunately, it did not have the answers I had hoped for.

An Exercise in Historical Understanding

Incidental to another discussion elsewhere in blogdom the question arose of "unworthy reception of the Eucharist" and its consequences as point out by Paul in 1 Corinthians(?). This is presently understood Catholic Doctrine--If one has committed a mortal sin, he or she should refrain from receiving communion until after confession.

Now, frequent reception of the sacrament of confession is of relatively recent date. (That is, it became the norm closer to our own time rather than closer to the time of the Apostles and St. Paul.) So my question, which I will endeavor to research is what did one do in St. Paul's time? Public confession (there are rubrics and "requirements" for it)? Did St. Paul mean something else at the time, and gradual development of doctrine occur to encompass and define the present protocol? The reason I ask is the Mr. da Fiesole pointed out that many of the comments surrounding this treated the question of reception as a series of rules, and he contended that it was not rules but the reality of the Sacrament. This would seem to imply that if it is presently the reality, it must also have been the reality in the past (unless one wishes to dispose of the much dreaded principle of Uniformitarianism.). If it were the reality in the past, did one simply not ever receive communion again until point of death at which confession and the sacrament were restored? If is is doctrine that governs present reception, does it not constituted an understanding of reality (rubrics and rules) rather than the reality itself?

I know, a minute point, but of interest. And, in reality, utterly trivial. We are bound by what doctrine and dogma are today, not what they were in the past and while the underlying reality has not changed, our understanding of it has been broadened and deepened by the Church's reflection through the ages since the time of the Apostles. In other words, I am saying that I in no way disagree, demur, or find fault with the Church's teaching now OR then, but I am intrigued by the meanings that come from understanding the SEEMING changes.

Humility

Mark at Minute Particulars had a particularly interesting post about humility. I excerpt part of it below to comment:

Oh, and here's my chance to astonish Mark if he happens by--his blog is always interesting, articulate, and wonderfully informative. If it isn't on your list of places often visited, you would do well to add it. I never fail to be edified by him or by Mr. da Fiesole at Disputations. There now, two people have a chance to gauge their astonishment. But I do say that I am always blessed when I make the attempt to engage and understand the discussion that comes from either of these two bloggers--at home or abroad.