Holy Cows

The guys at the Shrine had me laughing out loud again. Check out their post about Two Holy Cows (it helps to read the piece they link to first). I just about lost it reading the Jesuit one.

The Honor of Darlings

Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. Here begins, it is needless to say, another mighty influence for the humanization of Christendom. If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why); the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin. When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.

- From "The Everlasting Man" by G.K. Chesterton

I came across this fine quote in the comment box of another blog. I struggled a bit with Marian doctrine through college in the midst of my migration from Methodism to non-denominational evangelicalism. It was the typical knee-jerk reaction to the perceived Mariolatry in the Catholic Church, a deep fear of conflating creation with creator. When I began my journey towards Catholicism, I found that my previous struggles had mysteriously vanished, leaving only a deep respect for and honor towards the Mother of God. I can only conclude that this vanishing coincided with the mysterious revelation of family experienced by most new fathers at the birth of their children. Having been blessed by two beautiful daughters I have obtained a privileged glimpse of the profoundly beautiful bond shared by mother and child. While my joy was properly and necessarily saddled with the husbandly burdens of provision and protection, I have seen the sole burden of love pass between the eyes of my daughters and their mother. To reduce that ethereal connection to the simple act of a tool to bear the required earthly burden is to blaspheme the very nature of holy familial bonds. To cut Mary out of the Holy Family immediately after the birth of Christ is a grave occasion of the sin of dishonoring Motherhood.

If Christ reigns as the fulfillment of the Davidic Kings, what then are we to make of the role of the Davidic Queen? Are we to deny the role of the Queen, Mother of the King and advocate for the people, as an unnecessary expansion of the prophetic fulfillment achieved by Christ? Are we to deny that the New Adam came through the assent and obedience of the New Eve, crushing the serpent under her heel with that amazing look of love I now know so well? Are we so afraid of confusing honor with idolatry that we would conveniently remove the Mother of God from a now crippled image of the Holy Family?

I would hope, as in my own case, that this rift in those baptized in Christ would be healed not by intellectual or rational assent, but by a revelation of the iron-clad ties of motherhood to the life of a cherished child. I can’t in good conscience conveniently sideline Mary after seeing my darling girls in the arms of Mom. Maybe we don’t need more arguments, only more darling boys and girls honoring their Mother.

The Catholic Brain

I know there are some readers out there who knew me very well before I joined the Catholic Church, and many of you probably haven't recieved a really good defense of that admittedly major shift. I still intend to chronicle the journey in depth over the next few months, but I found a great link that might be helpful. Check out this site for a nice, simple, and often humorous parallel to my own journey. It's not the same, but there is a very similar sort of path at work. The questions he asks were the ones I asked, though under different circumstances. Check it out and feel free to pepper me with questions should you have them.

Liturgical Warfare

I’ve been following the liturgy wars with some interest since swimming the Tiber and I’m finding it difficult to formulate a position on the whole mess.

My own liturgical tastes certainly gravitate towards a more traditional Mass. While I would much rather hear the organ, Palestrina and chant than banal praise choruses, I find it hard to denounce the latter on any sort of firm theological footing. I can criticize them for being campy, overly emotional and saccharine, but I certainly don’t think they rise to the realm of heretical. The venom with which I’ve seen both sides inject this issue of liturgical purity is disturbing and seemingly genocidal. It would seem that both sides wish to win this war by means of magisterial fiat, wiping away the opposition with one firm papal proclamation. While certainly effective, this tactic would seemingly do little to heal the fractures experienced in the wake of Vatican II.

I have, however, been pleasantly surprised at the tact and pastoral care applied to this issue by Benedict XVI. With Summorum Pontificum the Pope succeeded in bringing the Tridentine Mass back from the Gulag, placing it firmly in the Novus Ordo universe as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. I hope that Novus Ordo devotees will realize the reverence and dignity of the Tridentine Mass and that Tridentine devotees will realize that a mass need not be in Latin to be reverent, beautiful, and spiritually fulfilling (not to mention valid!). What I hope both sides discover concurrently is that there is not a liturgical war to be won, decisively, with the utter defeat of their brothers and sisters on the other side of the liturgical chasm.

In the current state of affairs, the world can ill afford to be burdened by a Church increasingly burdened largely by its own internal struggles, divisions, and fractures. I pray for the formation and training of our young priests, that the leadership they display in this generation would restore the mass as a reverent and beautiful sign of our solidarity. Mass is our window into heaven, not the window into the boisterously divided Catholic kitchen table.

Swimming the Tiber

Some things in life are easy to pin down. At the Easter Vigil this year I fulfilled a call on my soul that first took hold as I walked into the Basilica of San Pietro for the very first time. I experienced this warm, peaceful call of home twice – first as a Methodist and secondly as a non-denominational Evangelical. Both occasions inspired a complete and comfortable feeling of tranquility in the loud and tourist-filled center of the Roman Catholic world. For that reason my entry into full communion with the Catholic Church this Easter was more homecoming than radical change. Though it probably came as a shock to many, it was as natural as a trip down the hill to the local Trattoria for this one-time adopted son of Italy.

I am a lover of Beauty. Beauty is one of the last great truths to stand against the tide of mediocrity and relativism. Beauty IS Truth. I worry about false sincerity, false ideology and false advertising – but not false Beauty. There is much Beauty in the Catholic Church. It may be obscured under a couple layers of dust and forgotten by a large number of the faithful in well-worn pews, but it is there - a reminder that beautiful things can be created in honor of the Truth of our Lord and his amazing sacrifice. Though the Church may clothe herself in the Beauty of the past as one might wear an old, threadbare sweater - with little notice but with a profound sense of history - She will eventually learn to knit again.

Though I could write of the myriad reasons for making this journey (and I most likely will at some point) – it is sufficient for me now to say that I found the spiritual home I’ve been looking for ever since setting foot in the seductive streets of the Eternal City. Deo Gratias.