Five Quick Takes

I’m having some difficulty with my next post on gender, partly because, as I cannot stress enough, I am not an expert. It’ll probably be another couple days. In the meantime I do recommend ContraPoints’ recent video Transtrenders, though, for people who’d like to hear about trans theory from an actual expert (however fervently she may claim not to care).

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Today is the memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. I have always been fond of the Carmelite tradition: The Dark Night of the Soul by St John of the Cross (the poem, not the full mystical manual) was one of my first tastes of Catholic mysticism, and it carried me through some extremely black midnights of my own as a teenager grappling with sexuality and faith. I nearly took him as my patron saint, and one of the special pleasures of my parish is that our altar houses a relic of his. Given my voracious unchastity, I don’t really feel able to wear the Brown Scapular; but I still turn to St John of the Cross and St Teresa in prayer, and now and again I even get wild and read them.

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My friend Joey Prever is getting surgery soon for some back and foot issues. If you’d say a prayer for him, that’d be cool of you. Incidentally, he was recently interviewed by the Convertigo podcast, discussing his family’s faith journey and his own.

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I’ve been grappling with symptoms of depression again, so I finally got my Zoloft refill. I forgot how much it messes with sleep: it doesn’t so much keep you from sleeping as make you awake, which I expect can’t be great for you but doesn’t actually feel bad, and my depression manifests partly as insomnia anyway so it’s not like it’s interfering with sleep I’d otherwise be getting. A much bigger aspect of depression, though, is a lack of motivation; people tend to think of depression as being sad, when it’s much more a matter of being numb. That involves you in a kind of abstract sadness of course, but it’s a very different experience.

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I have heard, though I have not verified, that ICE (which, fuck ICE) has gone as far as setting up fake Grindr profiles to entrap illegal immigrants (which, actually don’t fuck ICE, it will end badly). So if you’re on Grindr—which I don’t recommend, but if you are—and you either are undocumented, or could be assumed to be undocumented by a racist ICE agent … uh, be extra careful, I guess? Deleting the app would be better. Do that.

Five Quick Takes

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Readers may have noticed I’m posting more often; I’m trying to adjust to the schedule and volume Patheos is going to want from me (two or three posts a week at five hundred words minimum). No fixed date yet for the change-over, but I did want to suggest to my Patreon sponsors (thank you for your support!) that now might be a good time if you want to make adjustments to your pledges, since supporting three or four posts a month at $X is quite a different thing from supporting a dozen posts a month at the same rate.

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I’ve heard about the clash between the Jesuit school that won’t fire a gay-married teacher and the Indianapolis archdiocese that won’t let the school call itself Catholic so long as it perseveres in its refusal. My initial impression is ‘unimpressed with the archdiocese,’ but I’m waiting to weigh in until I have more facts at my disposal. For the present, I’ll say only that the archdiocese seems to have a better case, canon-law-wise, than it is being given credit for in some quarters; and that I am not mollified by this.

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Yours truly with the inimitable Grant Hartley, whose workshop on queer culture for Christians was a delight.

Revoice’s second year continues to release its effects into me. On the positive side of things, Johanna Finegan’s excellent keynote is now available on YouTube, Eve Tushnet’s excellent workshop on celibacy has been posted on her blog, and I bought three copies of Lead Them Home’s excellent book Guiding Families of LGBT+ Loved Ones and gave one to my pastor.

On the more melancholy side, a number of friends of mine left the Side B community shortly after the conference, and that’s been hard for us. It’s always a little gloomy to see a fellow laborer leave the field you’re in, even if you’re confident they will continue to do good work.

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Today is the memorial of SS John Fisher and Thomas More: Fisher was the sole dissenting voice among the English bishops, imprisoned and eventually martyred, for refusing to sign the Act of Supremacy; Sir Thomas More, martyred on similar grounds, was actually executed on 6 July, but I think they slated the two together to give Fisher a little more notice.

The film A Man For All Seasons was my introduction to St Thomas More, and his story was a major element in my initial opening to Catholicism; I encountered it at a time when I believed that sincere, consistent Catholics went to hell, and it was mighty hard to maintain that belief in the face of his obvious devotion to Christ. Who could forget that simple and magnificent last confession: ‘I die the king’s good servant; but God’s first.’ I nearly took him as my patron saint for Confirmation—St Joan and St John of the Cross were strong contenders as well, and they remain part of my little family of favorite intercessors.

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Tomorrow being Corpus Christi and also my parish’s picnic, I made cupcakes in honor of the Real Presence: red velvet—first time making them!—for the Precious Blood, with white frosting to represent the Host, and silver foil wrappers for the chalice (I couldn’t find golden ones). I also have some white and red sprinkles, with which to make white cross designs on the frosting, and to dot them with red spots of blood as if they were Eucharistic miracles, because Catholicism is just that metal.

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Five Quick Takes

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It has been a bear of a week: five shifts at one job, two at another, plus ordinary housekeeping. In a way, though, the exhaustion was kind of a gift, because I also received some bitterly saddening news, and being tired helped keep my emotions from going totally haywire. (The physical medium of emotion is, mercifully, limited; bless the body.)

A dear friend of mine, who left the Catholic Church last year, has left the Side B community as well. I treasured (and treasure) her writing, which is brilliant and engaging and vulnerable, and I’m grieved that we’ve lost two of the things that brought us together as friends in the beginning. Of course, we wouldn’t have become friends if we had nothing else in common—vitally, we are the same type of weird. But it always hurts when somebody that you’ve been journeying with leaves the path you were sharing, whatever the reason.

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Work continues on my second novel, The Book of Salt, a sequel to Death’s Dream Kingdom. No spoilers, but I will share with fans that this second novel features Catholic vampire hunters, Francis Thompson, Enochian angelic magic, and just possibly Jack the Ripper.

FOR MINE IS AN EVIL LAUGH

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The Epiphany season is unusually long this year, since Easter is so late (21st April, which is nearly as late as it gets in the Gregorian computus). Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation, rounds out the Christmas cycle as oriented to the Nativity. The earliest part of the Paschal cycle begins on Septuagesima Sunday, about seventy days before Easter, which ushers in Shrovetide—a period of a bit less than three weeks during which people prepare for Lent, culminating in Mardi Gras, also known as Shrove Tuesday. (Shrove comes from the archaic word shrive meaning ‘to hear confession, absolve,’ or by extension ‘to receive absolution’; hence the expression short shrift, which originally referred to a rushed administering of sacramental forgiveness before a condemned man was executed). But, about as often as not, there is a gap between Candlemas and Shrovetide, during which the Epiphany season continues.

I’ve long been inclined to think that there are no accidents in the Church’s liturgical cycle. Especially in its older and more complicated forms, since they were crafted when there was less to do, and making something with many layers of meaning would have been the more appealing as a way to stave off boredom while waiting for YouTube to be invented. The fact that Shrovetide sometimes begins before Candlemas and sometimes after, leading to an overlap between the Nativity and Paschal cycles or a breach between them, seems to me to harmonize with a truth about the Incarnation itself—a truth that, appropriately, is expressed in Candlemas itself, which serves as a sort of hinge between the two seasons.

Christ is sometimes referred to as ‘the man born to die.’ This is, in one sense, perfectly true, and not just in the ordinary sense that everybody is born with the known fate of death ahead of them, but in the sense that he was born with a purpose that was wound up with death, as cords are wound up with each other to make rope. The overlap between Christmastide and Shrovetide thus makes sense, and we see it in Christmas imagery: the Baby laid in a trough like a lamb, the myrrh brought by the Magi, the tragedy of the Holy Innocents, the use of red in decorations both sacred and profane. Candlemas has this in spades in St Simeon’s prophecy to the Virgin: Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also).

Yet there is reason to believe (pace St Anselm and his variegated successors, from St Thomas Aquinas to Jack Chick) that the Incarnation was, so to speak, Plan A for humanity. On this view, redeeming man by means of the Incarnation was God’s response to sin, but, even if man had never sinned, God would still have chosen to glorify humanity by personally taking on a human nature born of a woman. The image of God in man was not accidental, nor final in itself, but a foreshadowing of what man was made for: to be the point at which deity united Itself with creation and with matter.

Whatever God’s original purposes, it is certainly the case that the Incarnation has done more than save us from sin; it deifies us. Epiphany, the disclosure of the glory, is thus a Christian mystery almost independently of the Passion, and so the separation makes as much æsthetic sense as the overlap.

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I recently read that the Archbishop of Denver, one Samuel Aquila, is supporting not only Courage (which after all is a pontifically sanctioned organization), but Desert Stream Ministries, an ex-gay group. Andy Comiskey, a self-professed ex-homosexual and a convert to Catholicism, founded Desert Stream in 1980 and still runs it; Archbishop Aquila has, I gather, begun sending the priests of his archdiocese to be trained by Desert Stream.

I’m livid. Or I would be if I weren't exhausted. I do not know what it is going to take to get Catholics to quit falling for this bullshit. There is no revealed teaching that we have any obligation to become straight if we aren’t. There is no scientific evidence and no theological support for the idea that sexual orientation can be changed by psychotherapeutic means. There is plenty of scientific and anecdotal evidence that ex-gay groups and therapies do substantial harm, and that alone is an adequate theological reason to be deeply suspicious of them.

Maybe I’ll write more about this later, but not right now. I am so sick of this needless, stupid pattern of homophobic abuse.

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On a lighter note, while I already knew about Lindsay Ellis thanks to her magical ‘Thanks, I Hate It!’ video about 2017’s live action Beauty and the Beast (yuck), I more recently discovered a whole world of clever, engaging literary criticism on YouTube. Ellis herself has done more than one series (‘Loose Canon,’ a series discussing different versions of characters through history, may be my favorite); in addition, there’s The Dom, Overly Sarcastic Productions (which does summaries on historical as well as artistic subjects), Earthling Cinema, and Hello Future Me. I’ve linked some fun, exemplary videos here. Enjoy!

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The Next Catholic Reform, Part III

[Saint] Francis wanted to call the outcast, ready to revolt, to be part of the people of God. If the flock was to be gathered again, the outcasts had to be found again. Francis didn’t succeed, and I say it with great bitterness. … Excluded as they were from the flock, all of them were ready to hear, or to produce, every sermon that, harking back to the word of Christ, would condemn the behavior of the shepherds and would promise their punishment one day. The powerful always realized this. The recovery of the outcasts demanded reduction of the privileges of the powerful …

—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

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Brass tacks, then. If my evaluation of how the Catholic Church got into this mess is mostly or even largely accurate, then we can identify a few reasonable, workable ways to confront the mess and clean it up. The summary is: we have a hierarchy that feels embattled and defensive, trying to maintain its authority with its members and its prosperity and influence in the general culture; this has led to a deformed attachment to appearances, which rewards dishonesty and evasion and punishes complaint regardless of its legitimacy; and this in turn results in a clerical culture that fosters unhealthy approaches to sex and gives substantial cover to predators.

The focus of most traditional Catholics in accounting for this scandal has been upon sex (and especially homosexuality), but I think that’s mostly a red herring. It is the diseased dynamics concerning image and power that brought the scandal into being—if the hierarchy had not been trying to protect both, it would probably have dealt with the problem openly and as it was discovered, and there would have been far fewer victims. These are problems with pride and avarice, not lust.

Conversely, progressivist Catholics have long been talking about the all-male, celibate priesthood and the Church’s doctrinal stances on issues like divorce and homosexuality as contributing factors to abuse. Personally I’m a little skeptical of this, partly because there are other institutions consisting largely or entirely of celibate men—for instance, there are monastic orders among Buddhists and Hindus, as well as Eastern Orthodox Christians—which, so far as I know, don’t display the same problems that the Catholic hierarchy does. However, to the extent that factors like an all-male environment intersect with image and power issues (and I strongly suspect they do), they’d be relevant, though not necessarily in the way progressivists claim.

The thing to do, I believe, is to hack at the roots of pride and avarice, rather than plucking the flowers of lust. There are several ways this could be done, none of them mutually exclusive.

1. Impose poverty on clergy. There’s nothing wrong with having a beautiful church building, indeed there’s everything right with it: we should give God our best, materially as well as otherwise, and it’s a more creditable (and more public) use of gilding and marble than a billionaire’s private gym or a shopping mall. But chanceries, rectories, and episcopal residences could be cut down to size. A chancery office does not need chestnut panelling and Tiffany chandeliers to serve its purpose, and outside of the liturgy, bishops do not really need to appear in state. Even if they are receiving dignitaries, what could be more appropriate than requiring an official who wants to deal with the Church to deal with her in her poverty? the poverty in which her Lord entered, lived, and died in the world? An inverse relationship between ecclesiastical stature and secular prosperity would not only help rein in pride and greed, it would be deeply apostolic.

2. Introduce laity, male and female, into the official operations of the Church. Of course there is some of this already. But it can be ramped up. Sacramentally speaking, qualified laymen and laywomen could be made eligible to fulfill almost any function in the Church except for celebrating the sacraments: teaching seminarians, running hospitals and schools, serving as diocesan officials. Even the office of cardinal could be reöpened to laymen—it was not restricted to clergy until 1917, though most cardinals were in fact priests or bishops; and indeed, the ancient electoral form included the right of the laity of the diocese of Rome to confirm or reject the papal candidate whom the clergy had picked, a system which was not changed for the first seven hundred years of the Church’s existence. [1] It’s particularly important that seminarians should be formed with constant (not periodic) contact with laymen: these are the people they’re devoting their lives to serving and they should understand them.

Introducing women into these official functions seems to me like a good idea, too, up to and including appointing female cardinals. (This is a different matter from conferring Holy Orders on women, which has been pronounced theologically impossible by the Church. Celebrating the sacraments and making authoritative doctrinal definitions are the powers attached to Order, but most business the Church conducts is not directly either of these things.) This is not because women are any less fallen than men, but because, in a number of ways, they aren’t likely to make the same kinds of mistakes that men typically do. The obvious example in our current situation is that women are far less likely to be sex offenders, and, to judge from the last two or three years, less likely to ignore or minimize reports and evidence of sexual abuse. But the peculiarly feminine genius, which I don’t claim to understand very well, is one half of the human experience, and I think it’s accordingly foolish to exclude it from the human governance of the Church. She is far more than her human governors; but she is not less, nor is she immune to their faults and limitations.

3. Encourage all Catholics, and require clergy and other officials in Catholic institutions, to be thoroughly educated on sexuality. I’ve said several times that this is a power problem more than a chastity problem, but chastity is obviously involved—partly because, in both healthy and unhealthy ways, sex is easily experienced as power. [2] Now, we have the doctrines of chaste conduct, marital and celibate, pretty well outlined. We have some acquaintance with psychology and sexual development. We have the beginnings of a mystical theology of sexuality, e.g. in the work of St John Paul II. But, to be perfectly blunt, what we need is sex ed.

Dishonesty about contraceptives, ‘discreet’ silence on sexual matters, defamatory portraits of the queer and kink communities, and an alarming lack of clarity about consent, are all familiar in Catholic circles. But none of them should be, nor do they need to be. Many of them are fostered by a desire to protect the Church’s teaching; but, as Kallistos Ware pointed out in The Orthodox Church, ‘Christianity, if true, has nothing to fear from honest inquiry.’ 

Catholic teachers and apologists should be prepared to acknowledge that, yes, condoms work to prevent pregnancy and STDs most of the time, and our reasons for objecting to them lie elsewhere; Catholic parents and pastors should be prepared to speak frankly about things like masturbation and porn, without hiding behind euphemism or manipulating people through shame and guilt; Catholic theologians and journalists should be willing to learn about gay, trans, and kink people from their own lips, rather than repeating quack science and stereotypes and excusing their prejudicial ignorance as fidelity (as if understanding a community entailed approving of everything about it); Catholic teenagers and confessors should be able to identify the difference between genuine consent, abuse of authority, coërcion, intoxication, and predatory acts. Addressing these issues intelligently is not an obstacle to chastity. It is the subject matter of chastity. Knowledge is the natural ally of integration, and that, not abstinence just as such, is what chastity is.

4. Establish total financial transparency, at both the parochial and the diocesan levels. This is going to get some significant pushback from the hierarchy, but I think it is one hundred percent necessary to any substantial reform. Money is what allows abusers and those who cover for them to get away with what they do—rarely, I think, through direct bribery or embezzlement, though that doubtless happens, but rather because money can purchase two things that those who wish to keep shaming secrets want: privacy and lawyers. ‘Uncle Ted’s’ notorious beach house was a splendid little thing for keeping his indiscretions away from the public eye, and Cardinal Wuerl’s legal team enabled him to be transferred from Pittsburgh to the second see of the nation despite his ghastly record; privacy and lawyers may be seen operating together in the squalid behavior of the Archdiocese of Baltimore over the half-revelations of The Keepers. None of that can be dealt with unless there’s total openness about how much money is coming in and what it’s being spent on.

And when I say total, I mean total. Gross income [3] for every parish, school, hospital, diocese, and so forth; the wages of every person paid by the Church, whether salaried or hourly and irrespective of their work; every expense footed by parochial or diocesan accounts or by institutions they govern and fund, including both the amount paid and what the payment was for; every yearly surplus or deficit; and legally binding statements that the information provided is both true and complete. Websites would be the easiest way of making this information publicly available, though letters might be preferable for that very reason—I’m not certain.

5. Restore the liturgical ritual of degradation for serious offenders among the clergy. This may be the least important of the proposals I’m putting forth; but I think it would be worthwhile. Considering the sometimes liturgical character of many of the offenses the scandal is about (e.g., abuse happening in the confessional), and the publicity it has entailed, a public and liturgical response is called for. Degradation, the ritual removal of the privileges of ecclesiastical office, fulfills these requirements exactly, and helps symbolize how seriously the Church needs to take these things. I think it might help reassure the faithful, too, insofar as the liturgy is the principal business of the Church and also the context in which Catholics are most likely to deal with fellow Catholics and with the hierarchy, and placing these issues in that liturgical context is therefore an act which directly, officially addresses the majority of Catholic Christians.

Doubtless other measures would also be reasonable, and many of these things would help to heal the gravely wounded trust of the laity in the hierarchy. Still, these five points seem to me like a very good place to begin. But, remember, any effort to implement them must begin in prayer. Partly because it is going to take a lot of prayer to get the clergy to accept such a reform—I mean, if I were in their shoes, I wouldn’t much want to give up my possessions and stature. But also because it would (perhaps will) be very easy for these acts to become merely malicious. Few of us can quite truthfully say that we don’t enjoy seeing someone who hurt us being taken down a peg. And there is little, if anything, of heaven in that pleasure. Only God can purify our hearts and the pleasures they harbor, and guide all our deeds to a wholesome end.

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[1] It was changed in 769, through a synod convened to deal with electoral abuses and a number of disputed elections that resulted in antipopes. For the time, this was probably a wise decision, but what is wise changes according to circumstances.

[2] This is a huge topic that I am only hinting at here. A guy I dated for a little while a few years back used to say, ‘Everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power.’ I don’t think he was right exactly, but the maxim is, I think, more oversimplified than wrong. In particular, the pleasure of male strength (in both heterosexual and gay male sex) is an obvious way in which sex is experienced as power, as too in a different way is the compelling beauty of the female (in heterosexual and lesbian sex). Most forms of kink, like BDSM, involve much more explicit or ritualized power games. I don’t think these things are intrinsically unhealthy, although their development and expression certainly can be.

[3] Gross income, not net income. Net income is, approximately, synonymous with profits. Gross income is the total amount of money received into an account, before any deductions or payments are made from it.

Whitsunday Eve

Whitsunday Eve: spirits, awake;
The hells beneath their masters shake;
For unmade Love-in-Light descends
On those their Maker called his friends,
To laurel them with stranger fire
Than priest or Levite could ensire.
From Babylon by riven tongue
Across the earth all men were flung
By the one Word, to curb their pride:
Now Zion meets a changing tide,
A living water-wave of speech,
Of strangers singing, each to each,
In words that only angels knew
Until these minds, uplifted, flew
On silver Dove-wings. Lips of gold
(As Hebrew prophets darkly told,
Before they knew or heard the laud
Goyim would offer to their God)
Proclaim the holy, trinal Breath,
He who woke Lazarus from death
At the Word of the Father: now
He makes the whole creation bow,
Entering in a lovelier light
Than yet had graced man's ghostly sight.
The rushing fire-wind-water sound
Makes all the infant Church resound;
Who once on Sinai fell with fear
Rains down in power and glory here --
Our Lord the Spirit, sacrament
Of God's own being. Heaven is rent
With cries of pure seraphic joy
That hell has no power to destroy;
For lo, the Church receives her birth
And call, to be upon the earth
Her Savior's Body, he her soul,
That his life may suffuse the whole
Creation by her agency;
For this was his great mystery,
His being we should share by grace
For that he shared our fleshly race;
His Spirit this great secret plumbs
And triumphs that his kingdom comes.

Meditations for Holy Week 2018

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Palm Sunday

(Matthew 21.1-11, Mark 11.1-11, Luke 19.28-44, John 12.12-18)

Here is no continuing city, here is no abiding stay.

Ill the wind, ill the time, uncertain the profit, certain the danger.

O late late late, late is the time, late too late, and rotten the year;

Evil the wind, and bitter the sea, and grey the sky, grey grey grey.

O Thomas, return, Archbishop; return, return to France.

Return. Quickly. Quietly. Leave us to perish in quiet.

You come with applause, you come with rejoicing, but you come bringing death into Canterbury:

A doom on the house, a doom on yourself, a doom on the world.

We do not wish anything to happen.

Seven years we have lived quietly,

Succeeded in avoiding notice,

Living and partly living.

There have been oppression and luxury,

There have been poverty and license,

There has been minor injustice.

Yet we have gone on living,

Living and partly living.

—T. S. Eliot, Murder In the Cathedral

Fig Monday

(Matthew 21.12-22, Mark 11.12-26, Luke 19.45-48)

A shadow passed over Saruman’s face; then it went deathly white. Before he could conceal it, they saw through the mask the anguish of a mind in doubt, loathing to stay and dreading to leave its refuge. For a second he hesitated, and no one breathed. Then he spoke, and his voice was shrill and cold. Pride and hate were conquering him.

—J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Temple Tuesday

(Matthew 21.23-26.2, Mark 11.27-13.37, Luke 20.1-21.38, John 12.19-50)

Professing only a moral union, they fled

from the new-spread bounty; they found a quarrel with the Empire

and the sustenance of Empire, with the ground of faith and earth,

the golden and rose-creamed flesh of the grand Ambiguity. [1]

Fast as they, the orthodox imagination

seized on the Roman polity; there, for a day,

beyond history, holding history at bay,

it established through the themes [2] of the Empire the condition of Christendom

and saw everywhere the manumission of grace into glory.

Beyond the line of ancient imperial shapes

it saw the Throne of primal order, the zone

of visionary powers, and almost (in a cloud) the face

of the only sublime Emperor; as John once

in Patmos, so then all the Empire in Byzantium:

the Acts of the Throne were borne by the speeding logothetes, [3]

and the earth flourished, hazel, corn, and vine. [4]

—Charles Williams, The Region of the Summer Stars, ‘Prelude’

Spy Wednesday

(Matthew 26.3-16, Mark 14.1-11, Luke 22.1-6)

If suddenly he should change his mind,

Tell the dark boy with copper hair

To go, to go,

And he went, lamenting, granting

His mercy from eyes like ruined planets—

Would the end of the world find him friendless?

Before God Glorified, he thought,

I shall stand,

And my knees knock from not kneeling.

Only his mother, he supposed, and one or two

With whom he had never been possessed,

Might say something to extenuate,

Might ask forgiveness for a fool’s despair.

But then, suddenly, he laughed,

Saying

The bars are all open in hell.

—Dunstan Thompson, Lament for the Sleepwalker, ‘Merciful God This is a Strange Reckoning’

Maundy Thursday

(Matthew 26.17-46, Mark 14.12-42, Luke 22.7-46, John 13.1-17.26)

And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of pain.

And he said:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Good Friday

(Matthew 26.47-27.61, Mark 14.43-15.47, Luke 22.47-23.53, John 18.1-19.42)

Father was eighty years old now, and promptly at 8.45 each evening—an hour sooner than formerly—he would open the Bible, the signal for prayers, read one chapter, ask God’s blessing on us through the night, and by 9.15 be climbing the stairs to his bedroom. Tonight, however, the Prime Minister was to address the nation at 9.30. One question ached through all of Holland like a long-held breath: would there be war?

… Then the Prime Minister’s voice was speaking to us, sonorous and soothing. There would be no war. He had had assurances from high sources on both sides. Holland’s neutrality would be respected. It would be the Great War all over again. There was nothing to fear. Dutchmen were urged to remain calm and to—

The voice stopped. Betsie and I looked up, astonished. Father had snapped off the set and in his blue eyes was a fire we had never seen before.

‘It is wrong to give people hope when there is no hope,’ he said. ‘It is wrong to base faith upon wishes. There will be war. The Germans will attack and we will fall.’

He stamped on his cigar stub in the ashtray beside the radio and with it, it seemed, the anger too, for his voice grew gentle again. ‘Oh my dears, I am sorry for all Dutchmen now who do not know the power of God. For we will be beaten. But He will not.’

—Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

Holy Saturday

(Matthew 27.62-66, Luke 23.54-56)

A voice came from beyond the river: ‘Do not do it.’

Instantly—I had been freezing cold till now—a wave of fire passed over me, even down to my numb feet. It was the voice of a god. Who should know better than I? A god’s voice had once shattered my whole life. They are not to be mistaken. It may well be that by trickery of priests men have sometimes taken a mortal’s voice for a god’s. But it will not work the other way. No one who hears a god’s voice takes it for a mortal’s.

‘Lord, who are you?’ said I.

‘Do not do it,’ said the god. ‘You cannot escape Ungit [5] by going to the deadlands, for she is there also. Die before you die. There is no chance after.’

‘Lord, I am Ungit.’

But there was no answer. And that is another thing about the voices of the gods; when once they have ceased, though it is only a heart-beat ago and the bright hard syllables, the heavy bars or mighty obelisks of sound, are still master in your ears, it is as if they had ceased a thousand years before, and to expect further utterance is like asking for an apple from a tree that fruited the day the world was made.

—C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Easter Sunday

(Matthew 28.1-8, Mark 16.1-20 [6], Luke 24.1-49, John 20.1-23)

A red-gold glow burst suddenly across the enchanted sky above them as an edge of dazzling sun appeared over the sill of the nearest window. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort’s was suddenly a flaming blur. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand:

‘Avada Kedavra!’

‘Expelliarmus!’

The bang was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading, marked the point where the spells collided. Harry saw Voldemort’s green jet meet his own spell, saw the Elder Wand fly high, dark against the sunrise, spinning across the enchanted ceiling … toward the master it would not kill, who had come to take full possession of it at last. …

One shivering second of silence, the shock of the moment suspended: and then the tumult broke around Harry as the screams and the cheers and the roars of the watchers rent the air. The fierce new sun dazzled the windows as they thundered toward him, and the first to reach him were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around him, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened him. Then Ginny, Neville, and Luna were there, and then all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and McGonagall and Flitwick and Sprout, and Harry could not hear a word that anyone was shouting, nor tell whose hands were seizing him, pulling him, trying to hug some part of him, hundreds of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was over at last …

—J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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[1] They here refers to the heretics of the first several centuries and particularly to the Gnostic and Nestorian heretics, whose beliefs refused either the fact or the fullness of the Incarnation (the grand Ambiguity of the two Natures, human and divine).

[2] In Byzantine terminology, a theme was roughly equivalent to a province.

[3] The office of logothete was an administrative role, originally applying to financial affairs and eventually extended to the civil service generally.

[4] The hazel in Williams’ poetry is typically cited because of its pedigree as a tool in magic (wands being by preference made of hazel), and thus by extension as a sign for transcendent and supernatural things generally; corn in contemporary British English could be used to signify grain in general, as opposed to maize in particular. Thus, hazel, corn, and vine could be understood as the spiritual, civil, and cultural aspects of the Empire, or as a trinal symbol of the Eucharist itself (spiritual power in combination with the grain and wine derived from corn and vine), or most probably both.

[5] In Till We Have Faces, Ungit is a pagan goddess of fertility, vaguely equivalent to Aphrodite, but more Sumerian in character, with a devouring aspect as well.

[6] Mark 16.1-9 are original to the Gospel. Mark 16.11-20 are more dubious, and seem to represent a redactor’s effort to harmonize the ending of Mark with the ending of Luke.

A Lenten Plan for 2018

Well, tomorrow's Ash Wednesday. Lent is finally upon us. I'm planning to spend a few days off social media, but before I log out, I thought I'd share my Lenten plan, in case anybody'd like to join me in it.

1. Fasting and Abstinence. For Catholics of the Roman Rite, including the Ordinariate, Ash Wednesday and all Fridays of Lent are days of obligatory abstinence from flesh meats. This basically means anything warm-blooded (fish, shellfish, amphibians, and reptiles are allowed, so if you have a serious craving for some frogs' legs or an alligator steak on a Friday in Lent, knock yourself out, I guess). Additionally, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting, which means no more than one full meal and two snacks per day. These rules only apply to those older than 14 and younger than 60, and the sick, the infirm, and pregnant or nursing mothers are also exempt.

I generally go meatless throughout Lent, and this year I'm going to take a stab at going fully vegan on Fridays. The Ordinariate also preserves the custom of Ember days: during the first full week of Lent (i.e., the week following the first Sunday), Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday are observed with fasting and abstinence, thus opening the season with a more emphatic transition from ordinary life into a penitential frame of mind.

Do remember that, as my director likes to say, Lent is not a diet plan. The purpose of fasting is the discipline of the soul, not a beach body.

2. Almsgiving. This is the more correct term for what's usually referred to today as charity. Charity, that is, love, is a virtue that embodies considerably more than giving to the poor; however, giving to the poor is one of the most traditional and beneficial acts of charity (it blesseth him that gives and him that takes). Though alms are always appropriate—whether in the form of donations to charitable causes, volunteering in a soup kitchen, or just giving to panhandlers on the street—this is a specially fitting time to distribute them.

3. Lenten Discipline. This is entirely voluntary, and may or may not involve giving something up for Lent (although that exercise is so common that many people don’t realize there’s anything more to Lent than giving something up for it). Adding something, like a daily recitation of the Rosary or reading from Scripture, is just as fitting if not more so. This year, I’ve chosen to read through the Catechism. I’ve dipped into it before, chiefly as a reference work, but I’ve never actually read the thing cover to cover. Including Sundays—which are normally left out of the count, but to spread the task out a little more—it comes to a little over sixty paragraphs a day, which is ambitious but doable. Most of these paragraphs are only a sentence or two long, and many of them are summaries of earlier sections. The schedule I plan to follow, together with the topics treated in the segments being read each day, are as follows. (Dates marked with an asterisk are days when normal Lenten disciplines like abstinence are not obligatory. For Catholics of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Peter, February 22nd, the commemoration of the Chair, is observed as a solemnity and is also exempt from Lenten rules.)

14 Feb. §§1-64. Using the Catechism. Man’s capacity for God; God’s self-revelation; Israel.

15. §§65-119. The finality of revelation; Scripture.

16. §§120-184. The canon. Faith.

17. §§185-248. The creeds. God’s being; God’s oneness.

*18. §§249-308. The Trinity. God’s power; creation.

19. §§309-370. The problem of evil. Angels; the earth; man.

20. §§371-435. The sexes. The Fall, Original Sin; the Incarnation.

21. §§436-498. The names of Christ; the mission of Christ; the Hypostatic Union; Mary.

22. §§499-560. Mary’s virgin motherhood. The mysteries of Christ’s life; the Kingdom of Heaven.

23. §§561-623. The Law, the Temple; the Passion, the Redemption.

24. §§624-682. Christ’s burial; the Resurrection; the Ascension; the Parousia.

*25. §§683-747. The Holy Ghost.

26. §§748-810. The Church.

27. §§811-870. The Church’s unity, holiness, catholicity, apostolicity.

28. §§871-933. The ministerial and magisterial priesthoods; the laity; consecrated life.

1 Mar. §§934-996. Spiritual communion among Christians; Mary, mother of the Church. The forgiveness of sins. Final resurrection.

2. §§997-1060. Death, particular judgment; Heaven; Purgatory; Hell; the Last Judgment.

3. §§1061-1121. The liturgy; the Trinity at work in the liturgy. The sacraments.

*4. §§1122-1178. The sacramental economy. The celebration of the liturgy; the sacred calendar.

5. §§1179-1245. The church building; diversity of liturgical traditions. Baptism.

6. §§1246-1305. The administration, graces of Baptism. Confirmation.

7. §§1306-1372. The administration of Confirmation. The Eucharist, the Mass.

8. §§1373-1429. The Real Presence; Holy Communion, its effects. Reconciliation.

9. §§1430-1498. Penance; contrition, confession, satisfaction; indulgences; the administration of Reconciliation.

10. §§1499-1553. Unction. Holy Orders; baptismal, ministerial priesthoods.

*11. §§1554-1617. The three degrees of Order; the administration, effects of Order. Marriage.

12. §§1618-1679. Consecrated virginity. Marital consent; the administration, effects of Marriage. Sacramentals.

13. §§1680-1742. Christian funerals. The image of God; beatitude; human freedom.

14. §§1743-1804. Ends, intentions, circumstances in morality; the passions; conscience.

15. §§1805-1869. The cardinal virtues; the theological virtues. Sin: venial, mortal.

16. §§1870-1927. Society; authority; the common good.

17. §§1928-1995. Human dignity; equality, solidarity; the moral law, the Torah, the New Law. Justification.

*18. §§1996-2051. Grace; merit; growth in holiness. The Magisterium.

*19. §§2052-2117. The Ten Commandments. The First Commandment: adoration, idolatry, magic.

20. §§2118-2179. Irreligion; icons. The Second Commandment: blasphemy, oaths. The Third Commandment.

21. §§2180-2243. The Sunday sabbath. The Fourth Commandment: the family, civil society.

22. §§2244-2306. Church and state. The Fifth Commandment: self-defense; murder, abortion, euthanasia, suicide; scandal, respect for the body, respect for the dead; civil peace.

23. §§2307-2365. War. The Sixth Commandment: sexuality, chastity; forms of unchastity; fidelity.

24. §§2366-2425. Fertility; adultery, divorce, other offenses against Marriage. The Seventh Commandment: the universal destination of goods, personal property; social justice.

*25. §§2426-2492. Work, the rights of workers; international justice; the poor. The Eighth Commandment: honesty, witness; offenses against truth; privacy.

26. §§2493-2557. Freedom of speech, information; art. The Ninth Commandment: purity of heart. The Tenth Commandment: covetise, poverty of heart.

27. §§2558-2615. Prayer, communion with God. The Law, the Prophets, the Psalms; Christ’s model, teaching of prayer.

28. §§2616-2679. Adoration, petition, intercession, thanksgiving, praise; the sources of prayer. Prayer in the Trinity; prayer in union with Mary.

29. §§2680-2737. The saints, fellow Christians, aids to prayer. Vocal prayer, meditation, contemplation; difficulties in prayer.

30. §§2738-2802. Perseverance in prayer. The tradition of the Lord’s Prayer.

31. §§2803-2865. The seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer; the final doxology.

Meditations for Holy Week 2017

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Below is my traditional set of meditations for Holy Week; this year I decided to choose them all from among poems. The title of each day is also a link to a passage in the Gospels that gives the day its name and/or recounts what happened on it, and (in my opinion) goes well with the poetic selection.

If you’re in the Baltimore area or willing to be, Mount Calvary (816 North Eutaw Street) will be having Triduum liturgies at 7 pm on Maundy Thursday, 12 noon on Good Friday, and 8.30 pm on Holy Saturday. We’ll also be holding a Tenebræ service on Wednesday evening at 7.30, and our customary Sunday Masses are at 8 am and 10 am, Palm Sunday and Easter included.

Palm Sunday

As in a fish-pond clear and still, the fish

Draw to some dropped-in morsel as it moves,

Hoping it may provide a dainty dish,

So I saw splendors draw to us in droves,

Full many a thousand, and from each was heard:

‘Lo, here is one that shall increase our loves!’

And every shade approaching us appeared

Glad through and through, so luminously shone

Its flooding joy before it as it neared.1

Fig Monday

The Adam in the hollow of Jerusalem respired:

softly their thought twined to its end,

crying: O parent, O forkèd friend,

am I not too long meanly retired

in the poor space of joy’s single dimension?

Does not God vision the principles at war?

Let us grow to the height of God and the Emperor:

Let us gaze, son of man, on the Acts in contention.

The Adam climbed the tree; the boughs

rustled, withered, behind them; they saw

the secluded vision of battle in the law;

they found the terror in the Emperor’s house.

The tree about them died undying,

the good lusted against the good,

the Acts in conflict envenomed the blood,

on the twisted tree hung their body wrying.

Joints cramped; a double entity

spewed and struggled, good against good;

they saw the mind of the Emperor as they could,

his imagination of the wars of identity.

He walked slowly through his habitation

in the night of himself without him; Byzantium slept;

a white pulsing shape behind him crept,

the ejection to the creature of the creature’s rejection of salvation.

Conception without control had the Adam of the error;

stifled over their head, the tree’s bright beam

lost in the sides of the pit its aerial stream;

they had their will; they saw; they were torn in the terror.2

Temple Tuesday

For the Commons convene in the Hall of the Nation; like spirits of fire in the beautiful

Porches of the Sun, to plant beauty in the desart craving abyss, they gleam

On the anxious city; all children new-born first behold them; tears are fled,

And they nestle in earth-breathing bosoms. So the city of Paris, their wives and children,

Look up to the morning Senate, and visions of sorrow leave pensive streets.

But heavy brow’d jealousies lower o’er the Louvre, and terrors of ancient Kings

Descend from the gloom and wander through the palace and weep round the King and his Nobles.

While loud thunders roll, troubling the dead, Kings are sick throughout all the earth,

The voice ceas’d: the Nation sat: and the triple-forged fetters of times were unloos’d.

The voice ceas’d: the Nation sat: but ancient darkness and trembling wander thro’ the palace.3

Spy Wednesday

Here is no continuing city, here is no abiding stay.

Ill the wind, ill the time, uncertain the profit, certain the danger.

O late late late, late is the time, late too late, and rotten the year;

Evil the wind, and bitter the sea, and grey the sky, grey grey grey.

O Thomas, return, Archbishop; return, return to France.

Return. Quickly. Quietly. Leave us to perish in quiet.

You come with applause, you come with rejoicing, but you come bringing death into Canterbury:

A doom on the house, a doom on yourself, a doom on the world.4

Maundy Thursday

Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul.

But as he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart:

How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.5

Good Friday

‘Mater Dei

Et mater mei’—

Come, let us with the mariners invoke

‘Mater divinae gratiae

Star of the Sea

Santa Maria

Pray for me’

How many times

Has she been summoned by those trusting rhymes?

Did they echo from the porthole

Just above the spray

Where the native sailors sang

At moments through the day

Of their mother

God’s own Mother

Christ their brother?

Did the crying sea-gulls seem to pray

When the ship’s bells rang

A clamorous Angelus

Mingled with the De Profundis too?

And all the bells were ringing to bring help to you

And failed

And the ship sailed

Out into the translucent blue

And you were sinking

Under the green marble mountains

In the bitter sea

And did you think

She would forget you in your loss?—

Mary, who took you to her heart

With Tom, Dick, and Harry

All the sad sons especially

Whom Christ gave her from the start

When He looked from the Cross

At the bars and the bedrooms

And the Devil in the street

When He watched you through the Blood

That poured across His eyes

The bells

The bells had rung in Heaven

There on the absolutely even

Suddenly silent ocean

She stood

And the sea-roses clustered at her feet6

Holy Saturday

Since I am coming to that Holy roome,

Where, with thy Quire of Saints for evermore,

I shall be made thy Musique; As I come

I tune the Instrument here at the dore,

And what I must doe then, thinke here before.

Whilst my Physitians by their love are growne

Cosmographers, and I their Mapp, who lie

Flat on this bed, that by them may be showne

That this is my South-west discoverie

Per fretum febris, by these streights to die,

I joy, that in these straits, I see my West;

For, though their currants yeeld returne to none,

What shall my West hurt me? As West and East

In all flatt Maps (and I am one) are one,

So death doth touch the Resurrection.

… We thinke that Paradise and Calvarie,

Christs Crosse, and Adams tree, stood in one place;

Looke Lord, and finde both Adams met in me;

As the first Adams sweat surrounds my face,

May the last Adams blood my soule embrace.7

Easter Sunday

Then at the altar We sang in Our office the cycle of names

of their great attributed virtues; the festival of flames

fell from new sky to new earth; the light in bands

of bitter glory renewed the imperial lands.

Then the Byzantine ritual, the Epiclesis, began;

then their voices in Ours invoked the making of man;

petal on petal floated out of the blossom of the Host,

and all ways the Theotokos conceived by the Holy Ghost.

We exposed, We exalted the Unity; prismed shone

web, paths, points; as it was done

the antipodean zones were retrieved round a white rushing deck,

and the Acts of the Emperor took zenith from Caucasia to Carbonek.

Over the altar, flame of anatomized fire,

the High Prince stood, gyre in burning gyre;

day level before him, night massed behind;

the Table ascended; the glories intertwined.

The Table ascended; each in turn lordliest and least—

slave a squire, woman and wizard, poet and priest;

interchanged adoration, interdispersed prayer,

the ruddy pillar of the Infant was the passage of the porphyry stair.8

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1Dante Alighieri, Paradiso V.100-109.

2Charles Williams, Taliessin Through Logres, ‘The Vision of the Empire’ η.

3William Blake, The French Revolution I.54-64.

4T. S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral.

5Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet.

6Dunstan Thompson, The Death of Hart Crane, ll. 9-52.

7John Donne, Hymne to God my God, in my Sicknesse, ll. 1-15, 21-25.

8Charles Williams, Taliessin Through Logres, ‘Taliessin at Lancelot’s Mass’ ll. 25-44.