Belorussian Export or Constant Challenge

Paul Goble recently documented (here) another attempt in the Russian press to explain religiosity in Orthodox Russia using an expression generally attributed to the Belorussian Head of State, who has classed himself an "Orthodox atheist". The article insists that even before the Bolshevik revolution popular religiosity was not all that profound in Russia and perhaps the aspect of careerism among the higher clergy has generally played a more important role in delineating the public aura or persona in that Church than one is commonly led to believe. The article judges that present attempts by the regime to use Orthodox piety for political ends can only further damage the already fragile flower of popular devotion. 

I have a certain difficulty with the article. Whether in Russia or in the West, I find it hard to move so glibly from noting a very real and worrisome superficiality in matters religious to classing that poverty of spirit as atheism, albeit Orthodox atheism. The dialectic is often described as one between custom and conviction, between popular usage and profound conversion. 

Personally, I think the matter can be easily distorted at the expense of Russian Orthodoxy and, at least on the level of general conclusions based on the behavior of a social elite, be blown way out of perspective. Russia is not alone in facing a contemporary crisis of faith in the upper echelons of its society. I am thinking of a catch phrase similar to Lukashenko's which is still to be heard in certain circles of Mexican society riddled as they are with Free Masonry: "I may not believe in God, but I am thoroughly Guadalupan!" thus indicating a devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, which does not carry over to Church or genuine faith. We would never apply such a description to Mexicans in general, so why should we call the faith of the whole Russian population into question based on the behavior of a high profile sampling?

Really, I prefer not to speak of Belarus, Russia or Mexico, but rather of the most recent threat to culture and fundamental values coming out of a SCOTUS (US Supreme Court) communique that the high court intends to rule on the definition of marriage and presumable strike down the remaining state laws defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Apart from discussion about the courts again and again overstepping their proper constitutional role, there is a discourse on culture in the United States and its decay which needs to be confronted for the sake of truth. The February issue of First Things is rich in reflections on the topic and Rod Dreher's piece entitled Christian and Countercultural is dear to my heart.

I would encourage you to read Dreher. People who read me regularly would know that I probably am more insistent than he about the restoration of Catholic culture as a sine qua non, not for establishing some sort of utopia but for effectively taking the battle to our world's misguided distopians and standing a chance of offering the present and future generations an option to whatever skull-numbing may be out there. Dreher describes present-day American religiosity, especially among the youth, as “moralistic therapeutic deism” (MTD) and he is no doubt right. 

George Weigel is present with an article in the same issue, entitle To See Things as They Are. Weigel is convinced that what he has described elsewhere at book length as Evangelical Catholicism is that which is necessary to take the battle to Dreher's MTD's and win that space in the public square which is rightfully ours. Weigel adds the notion of not only bringing personal witness to our individual conversion stories to our social exchanges but insists on a strategic institutional stance favoring the defense of human life and religious liberty as our two declared and non-negotiable points for countering relativism on its destructive way.

Neither man promises us a rose garden and I cannot help but think of one of the questions posed by Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman in his novel "Callista, A Tale of the Third Century". Persecution, even unto martyrdom, seems to clarify the Church's witness, renew the faith of those who have all but lapsed, and take the battle to those obstinate and primitive enough to choose darkness over light. While we are taught to avoid bringing trials upon ourselves, we certainly trust that the Lord knows better what may be required of us for the sake of the life of the world.

I beseech young parents to pray with their children, to read good books to their children, to look hard and long at the option of home-schooling. I think it is urgent for bishops and priests to restore the liturgy, urging the option of orienting worship, restoring decorum to the celebration, and seriously promoting the cause of enriching our worship by promoting the Extraordinary Form. We owe this much and more to society. The "lamp" must be dressed and returned to the lamp stand!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

An Anthropology - Ecstatic, Vertical, Submissive to God

“Contrast all this with the reverence paid to the Gospel or the sanctuary in the old rite, the magnificent prayers of the Offertory, the elaborate incensations, the Athanasian-style Preface of the Holy Trinity chanted in a solemn manner, the Roman Canon with its many signs of the cross and its reverent elevations of host and chalice— not to mention all the preparations the priest and people make: the Asperges, the prayers at the foot of the altar, the Lavabo accompanied by a psalm. Through such ceremonial actions man acknowledges the supremacy of God and his transcendent mystery, begs to be allowed to worship him, begs to be worthy to offer and to partake of the sacrifice that the Son, in his human nature, offers to the Blessed Trinity. The traditional liturgy reflects not only correct theology but correct anthropology. The anthropology embodied in the old rite, with its panoply of supporting customs and laws, is ecstatic, vertical, and submissive to God, as is dignum et iustum; that which is embodied in the new rite, due to its inculturation in the contemporary West, is rationalist, immanentist, horizontal, and dominative, submitting the sacred to a humanistic canon of “community.” The ancient Roman Rite, stately and hieratic, gives praise and homage to the Crucified Lord, thrusting the Infinite Paradox directly into the eyes and ears of the faithful who have the eyes to see it, the ears to hear it.” [Kwasniewski, Peter (2015-01-03). Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis: Sacred Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and Renewal in the Church (Kindle Locations 400-409). Angelico Press. Kindle Edition.]

I'm so glad Kindle got on the stick and made the Kwasniewski book available so quickly. Although I have barely started reading, I wanted to share a little lightning bolt which hit me while reading the same. It was the brief mention of the preeminence of the old rite for hand washing: "...the Lavabo accompanied by a psalm."  Why did it hit me you ask? Well, because of an experience on the second day of Byzantine Christmas this year in Ivano-Frankivsk: The Archbishop insisted that I preside at the Divine Liturgy, even if he still functioned as principal celebrant at my side. For this fact, I had the joy of going outside of the altar area through the Royal Doors to have my hands washed. The acolyte pours water three times while reciting in a low voice the proper prayer for the ablution. It was not so much how the gesture was performed but that it was performed with prayer. Hence, might I say, my yearning, my "anthropological" yearning for something more "ectastic, vertical and submissive to God..."

The notion of mutual enrichment of the two forms of the Roman Rite is bound to lead us to focus more and better on Christ.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Maidan Rising - The Fullness of Time

  "Jesus and his followers went as far as Capernaum, and as soon as the sabbath came he went to the synagogue and began to teach. And his teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority.

  In their synagogue just then there was a man possessed by an unclean spirit and it shouted, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus said sharply, ‘Be quiet! Come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit threw the man into convulsions and with a loud cry went out of him. The people were so astonished that they started asking each other what it all meant. ‘Here is a teaching that is new’ they said ‘and with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.’ And his reputation rapidly spread everywhere, through all the surrounding Galilean countryside." [Mark 1:21-28]

"'Here is a teaching that is new’ they said ‘and with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.’"  For some reason, my meditation on today's Gospel went beyond its first and foremost message concerning the sovereign authority of Jesus. 

The rather grotesque painting (placed above), often titled  "In the Fullness of Time", came to my mind and I wondered to myself just how the Pax Romana actually facilitated the spread of the Gospel. I thought about our world today as possessed, filled with unclean spirits, and even about the Church, like the synagogue at Capernaum, which can leave the demoniacs seemingly unchallenged in its midst until Christ comes to teach and cast them out. Our world would seem to be as decadent and death-dealing as that into which our Savior was born in the fullness of time. Indeed, in each and every age, we are called to His manger bed, to welcome and pay homage to the King. In each and every age we are called to respond to God's love as manifest in the Son, Who took on flesh and redeemed us by His Blood. In each and every age, some turn away from the Virgin Mother and Her Child, preferring death to life.

In the painting the angel, sheltering the Holy Family under his wings, casts a glance over his shoulder at Caesar's world, which would soon enough fall at the feet of Christ. We might ask what has changed. Is it not the same world we see around us today in the terror of Charlie Hebdo's France, Boko Haram's Nigeria and the ISIS of the Middle East, to mention just a few: a world refusing to shelter under the angel's wings with the Newborn Savior, the Son of God Most High? Is it not a world which still rejects God's authority and makes its bed with unclean spirits? What would it take to bring our world to its knees, to seek shelter under the angel's wings, at the feet of Mary and her Beloved Son? 

The other day a lovely group of carolers, university students from Lviv, came by for Christmas with singing and a thoughtfully well-prepared play (vertep as it is called in Ukrainian). Visiting afterward, they told me their next stop was Maidan, meaning of course today the memorial which remains in Institutska Street with the little wooden chapel, commemorating those who died in the "revolution of dignity" as it is called. Not long ago an ambassador asked me if the hand-painted Christmas scene which had figured so prominently on Maidan was yet to be found. I told him I didn't know if it had survived the fire-storm of those last days of February. The word "dignity" is nice, but thinking of that crib scene, thinking of all the plastic rosaries also symbolizing the struggle of those days not only here in Kyiv but elsewhere around the country as well, I wonder if we couldn't speak about a people seeking shelter under the angel's wings at the very center of our picture.

It would be wrong to speak about justice and retribution, but I cannot refrain from saying that too many in our world have not understood ultimately where victory lies, too many have scorned the manger bed and the shelter of the angel's wings. Too many have embraced outward show, Caesar's pomp, his decadence and death-dealing decay. Ukraine can teach itself, Ukraine can teach our world about right choices, about ultimate victory in His Mother's arms. Maidan is rising!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Struggling for Perspective - Holy Communion

"2. Thou commandest that I draw near to Thee with firm confidence, if I would have part with Thee, and that I receive the food of immortality, if I desire to obtain eternal life and glory. Come unto Me, sayest Thou, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Oh, sweet and lovely word in the ear of the sinner, that Thou, O Lord my God, dost invite the poor and needy to the Communion of Thy most holy body and blood. But who am I, O Lord, that I should presume to approach unto Thee? Behold the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, and yet Thou sayest, Come ye all unto Me. 

3. What meaneth this most gracious condescension, this most lovely invitation? How shall I dare to come, who know no good thing of myself, whence I might be able to presume? How shall I bring Thee within my house, seeing that I so often have sinned in Thy most loving sight? Angels and Archangels stand in awe of Thee, the Saints and just men fear Thee, and Thou sayest, Come unto Me! Except Thou, Lord, hadst said it, who should believe it true? And except Thou hadst commanded, who should attempt to draw near?" [Kempis, Thomas A.; The Collected Works of Thomas A Kempis (2007-11-17). The Imitation of Christ (Optimized for Kindle) (Kindle Locations 2658-2667). Kindle Edition.

Why do we not find it mind-boggling that people clamor for admission to Holy Communion as if life preparation were not needed to draw so close to the living God? I'm beginning to fear more each day that the virtue of faith is a terribly rare commodity in our world today. We really need to go back to singing Dies Irae at funerals and fasting at least three hours with a good Confession when preparing to receive Holy Communion on our knees. The fear of the Lord is born of love for the One Who first loved us and was lifted up upon the Cross for our salvation. Life is a preparation for Liturgy and Liturgy is an encounter with Him Who alone is holy and just.

St. Charles Borromeo was indeed one of the great reformer bishops of the Council of Trent. First and foremost he helped his priests of Milan to reform their lives, to recollect and to be beacons for others. He taught and he lovingly led his people on the path of Catholic Reform. We have an urgency today for reform grounded in sound teaching.

For all of my adult life, I have been witness to people in places high and low who have sought to undermine the Tradition; they did it out of willfulness with scarcely a thought for the One Who is higher than the angels. Too much has been vulgarized and for too long. Yes, it is indeed so for lack of faith.

I think, to use a figure from St. Charles, it is time to close the stove to protect that last ember of faith and devotion before the contrary winds of a relativist society snuff out what still burns though faintly within our hearts. We need to become beggars before God, confident in His will to draw us to Himself.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Restoring Catholic Culture - The Quest

It has been a while, but I finally happened upon an article which I am excited enough about to risk a comment. It touches an issue dear to my heart, which most people in authority in the Church in the US seem unwilling to face. You can find the article and read it for yourself over at OnePeterFive; it is not very long. The author seems to draw the conclusion that we, the Catholic Church in the US, are no longer producing as we did in the past and we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work to find a solution to the problem of defections from the life of the Church. The author goes beyond the rather bland and often repeated comment that the single largest religious body in the United States is made up of former Catholics. He goes beyond it and addresses more than the general sentiment of resignation which this statement tends to inspire.

As the notion of political incorrectness seems too dated, I guess I would have to say that most people who talk about us, as Catholic Church in the US, having a problem and of people, especially priests being in denial about the gravity of the situation, well, to use my long dead, party-hearty auntie's expression, they are worse than wet blankets. We are not allowed, it would seem, to say that what we have been doing for the last half century obviously isn't working. School and parish closures, failing vocations, and more won't allow us to say we're on our way to extinction in the US, as people tend to say about the Church in most countries of Western Europe suffering the same societal irrelevance.

"Putting all these numbers together, we find that less than 10% of baptized Catholics in this country both attend Mass on Sundays and go to Confession at least once a year. In other words, less than 1 in 10 baptized Catholics actually follow the two most measurable precepts of the Church, which all Catholics are obliged to follow."

It sounds as bad as Belgium or Holland to me. One in ten, the article says, goes to Mass on Sundays (what about Holy Days of obligation?) and confesses once a year. Why does this not seem to make an impact on our priests and bishops?

"So how should Catholics respond in the face of these daunting numbers? Unfortunately, three improper responses to this crisis have emerged in the past few decades. They are denial, despair, and desertion... What is the way forward? If denial, despair and desertion are not the proper Catholic response, how should Catholics react to the calamity of less than 10% of all baptized Catholics actually practicing their faith? In a word, determination."

To my mind the author describes the situation we face quite accurately but does not really answer his own question by urging us to determination. Maybe he thinks he has done enough to try to challenge folks to take a closer look. I don't know. At any rate, there are and have been for the longest time good people out there with suggestions, with ideas as to where to start. My own sympathies lie with those who insist on working for a restoration of Catholic culture. We have a fundamental problem, a foundational problem; it is not just a failure on the efficiency scale or in the area of communication skills: it is not simply a question of better marriage prep courses or friendlier greeters at the door of church on Sunday. Performance liturgy, a la mega church (facit "crystal cathedral" Orange County remake), is not the answer either. We need to aim much higher or dig deeper.

John Senior explains as well as anyone what a restoration of Catholic culture would require, starting with reading classic books to children and getting them familiar with a whole vocabulary and world view that their parents have missed out on. Promoting the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite as a means hopefully of enriching Ordinary Form worship and moving us in liturgy beyond a didactic model to genuine worship of the Living God is no small part of the Catholic experience. I have had notes from priests and bishops who went for the ad Orientem experience of the Novus Ordo during Advent and Christmas this year and who testify to their joy at being able to withdraw from the spotlight and focus together with their people on Christ, the Dawn from on high Who comes to visit us.

Blog entries can't really exhaust such important topics. I thank OnePeterFive for eloquently posing a question about a serious problem most involved in parish ministry seem to want to deny. If I could add to the discussion it would be in terms of insisting upon restoration and recovery of Catholic culture. "Venturing where no one has gone before" might be a thrilling slogan for Star Trek fans, but in the real Christian life we find our future in the past, in the One Who is, Who was and Who is to come.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Book Club - Study and Discussion Material

Introduction to the Spiritual Life

Bouyer, Louis

(2013-10-28). Ave Maria Press. Kindle Edition. 

"Contemplation understood in this way is, in truth, germinally present in the most elementary act of Christian faith. And we might say that this seed develops to the degree to which faith conforms us to itself by obedience. This is why progress in prayer, causing the contemplative aspect more and more to predominate, is not so much as might appear to a superficial view the product of psychological concentration and simplification. Far more is it a progress in conforming life, and the whole inner being from which it precedes, to faith. The more the objects of our faith, or rather its great central and total object, the mystery of Christ in us, incorporates itself in our existence, from which our most profound consciousness is inseparable— or even better, the more this mystery likens us to itself— the more does faith, without losing anything of its mystery, cease to be obscure for us." (Kindle Locations 1595-1601)

Over the years, I would have to say this is one of the few books that I have read which I would really like to see taken up by groups to be read and discussed together chapter by chapter. It does not depart from the norm in its description of the spiritual life, but there are some chapters which just say things better than I can ever remember reading them. The chapter on prayer is mighty and the clarity of expression concerning monasticism and the other vocations in the Church is terribly enriching.

Some who have been reading my reviews right along would know that I firmly believe that a monastic revival within the Church would be cornerstone to any serious effort to restore Catholic culture. Bouyer's concerns lie elsewhere in this book, but he makes the case for the primacy of monasticism and comes out clearly for a non-delusional description of the vocation to matrimony. Such clarity on the spiritual life for all in the Church could go a long way to heading off pandemonium in the synod hall come next October.

  

Memory as Gift to Others - in Truth

Memoirs of a Happy Failure.

von Hildebrand, Alice; Crosby, John Henry.

Saint Benedict Press. Kindle Edition. (2014-11-09)

"God in His Wisdom does not show us the whole way we have to travel. How many of us would turn back, if we only knew what was awaiting us. I thank Him for not having revealed to me how arduous my task would be: to hold high the flag in defense of the objectivity of truth in a fortress of relativism." (Kindle Locations 105-107)

Too many famous people have already endorsed this great book, paying high honor to the marvelous lady whose life is herein recounted. Alice von Hildebrand makes us a gift of her memoirs and I only wish to pass it on to any and everybody. The book is an incomparable witness to truth as life-giving. We cannot have enough dread of the ills which afflict our times, first and foremost of the horror of relativism. Alice has always championed truth and done so with grace. I don't know if we can set out in life to nurture others, whether our own off-spring or students in the classroom. I do know that such a calling comes from God and is caught up into His life; it is what true greatness is all about. Philosophers and doctors of the Church are nurturers; so are mothers; so is Alice.

 In some ways "Memoirs of a Happy Failure" served to illustrate a point made in another book I am reading these days (first published in 1960):

"The most serious error we could make here would be to imagine that there might be some ways of Christian life in which the cross would be present and even overwhelming, and others in which it would have little or no place. If we were to believe a certain school of thought— which has more and more adherents today, it would seem— while God sets apart certain persons to come to him by way of a negative, crucifying asceticism, He allows the great majority, on the contrary, to join him by way of a positive asceticism of self-development. . . . Such a supposition is based on a complete misunderstanding of what was explained in the previous chapter: that creation itself, inasmuch as it is fallen, makes the cross inevitable, and that the cross, in Christ, becomes salvation, the only possible salvation of creation. There cannot, then, be any “creative” vocations as opposed to “redemptive” ones. Every vocation is at the same time a vocation to the cross and a vocation to the resurrection, to the restoration of what God created good in the beginning and which must become so once again at the end. The cross must, therefore, be present equally in every form the Christian life can take. But there are many different ways in which the cross may be brought in." [Bouyer, Louis (2013-10-28). Introduction to the Spiritual Life (Kindle Locations 3021-3030). Ave Maria Press. Kindle Edition.]

So much of the controversy of 2014, it would seem, turns around this point: that a share in the redemptive suffering of the Cross does not touch everyone in the same way or with the same painful intensity. It is as if Christ's words "get behind me, Satan!", Peter's wish to diminish Christ's Cross or withdraw it all together, as if those words had never been spoken and the successors of the Apostles could withdraw or unload burdens from people's shoulders as seemingly too heavy or extreme. 2015 will find us all storming Heaven for our shepherds, that they hear the reprimand of the Lord Jesus and understand that it is He Himself out of love Who proffers a share in His Cross to all who have been baptized into His death.

Indefectibility is Christ's sure promise to His Church and our challenge to stand with Him at the foot of the Cross to resist the onslaught of hell's minions.