The Teaching Auxiliary of L.A.

Seeds of the Word: Finding God in the Culture

Barron, Robert

(2015-03-11). Word on Fire. Kindle Edition.

"And therefore I believe that it is the task of the coming generation of Catholic intellectuals to offer a convincing apologetic for the basic narrative of the faith." (Kindle Locations 2326-2328).

When I told a friend I was reading Bishop-elect Robert Barron's book Seeds of the Word, he told me that since I had seen so many of the YouTube videos from which the book was drawn I need not have purchased it. 

Indeed, there are very few of the chapters of the book which I had not already encountered on YouTube and which I did not remember quite well. Nonetheless, for Robert Barron fans I would say that this book serves much the same purpose as the marvelous collections of Pope Benedict's Wednesday Audience talks. They gain a life of their own when printed in sequence. The reader has a freedom the viewer does not. 

With that caveat, I highly recommend the book. Barron, even though just short of a decade younger than I am, has a very different world view precisely because he was born into things which I saw come into being. Although he may still be on my side of the "amice barrier" as they say, his is a world which gets me to sit up and take notice. It is a matter of intellectual vitality or vivacity, which for him I thank God.

Barron's world does not necessarily go down well with a more traditionalist outlook, but the joy would be in finding room for a knock down drag out or two within the house of orthodoxy. I hope all who read that phrase take it benevolently and remember the times when Mother Church in her great wisdom has refused to resolve differences between different theological schools by declaring one or the other the winner.

We hope and pray that Robert Barron will continue to use his talents to further the dialogue and ..."offer a convincing apologetic for the basic narrative of the faith."

Disposable Income: a blessing or a curse? Not. Neither.

This CWR article by Carl Olson got me thinking about whether it is right to say that of late the middle class (typical Americana talk for somebody not rich or poor) has been ignored or neglected in papal discourse. I came to the tentative conclusion that "class" vocabulary is not where we are at and since forever, when it comes, among other things, to framing moral discourse. We need to look to our duties vis-a-vis the poor in a different way. We need to be more evangelical in our approach; it would be hard to make the case for the Gospels or St. Paul having singled out a class of people as addressees for talk about coming to the aid of the needy. Even in the Acts of the Apostles it would seem that charity is bestowed at eye level or, if you will, in the midst of folk: there simply isn't a center and a periphery, nor is there an up and/or a down.

"When he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them for alms. Peter looked intently at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up; and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong." (Acts 3:3-7)

A penniless Peter and John move to the aid of a beggar and redirect his whole life. The scene involves no transfer of money or goods but a superlatively human exchange which leads a man to strength in Christ.
The other week in Krakow, Poland I encountered a very different type of begging poor (not unlike Rome) from the people I see on the streets of Kyiv. One insightful friend who knows Krakow much better than I do (this was my first visit) explained that as the city is a tourist mecca begging is organized and aggressive, whereas in Kyiv, also because of the war in Ukraine, the influx of tourists the city once knew is no more; there's no big money, if you will, to be gained by seeking an alms. Here for the most part on the street you meet regular folk and generally they, the regular, being of modest means. Hence, you witness the typical behavior of Kyiv's beggars as discrete; they tend to kneel, sit or stoop by the side of the road with head bowed, with hand or paper cup extended in supplication: even in a city of three million, begging is not a confrontation of the stranger but an anxious almost embarrassed plea to a neighbor.

When I was a boy, people throughout the Midwest generally did not lock their houses. There were no TV's or stereos or phones or laptops or anything to be stolen; most folks had vegetable gardens with tomatoes, radishes, perhaps carrots and cucumbers. The greatest risk you ran on a scorching hot summer day, parking your car downtown in a small community, leaving the windows open, would be that on your return you would find that someone had gifted you with a bag of freshly picked cucumbers from their garden, more than they could eat and in the face of everyone else's abundance and lack of cash, not to be sold for no matter how little. In the culture, if you didn't have your own garden, it was a pleasant gift for the table. Abundance, such as it was, was being shared within the community.

My first thought in proposing a more evangelical approach to charity than the responsibility devolving upon the upper or more fortunate classes of society was the idea of talking about disposable income or goods (like cucumbers in season). Even here however, while on right grounds from a humanitarian point of view, I don't think we've entered into the essence of the encounter between Peter and John and the beggar at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. Miracle of healing aside, Peter and John communicated saving good news in and through the Name of Jesus, which is above every other name. Certainly, my excess (that extra shirt in the closet, if you will) belongs to those who have none, but I need to learn to give like Peter and John. That is anything but "social gospel".

Olson titles his article: "The hyperbolic and exhausting papacy of Francis" and he appeals to the authority of Elisabeth Scaglia's fatigue... Let me be a child and long to repeat the act of Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate, to speak the Holy Name with power and conviction, fully expecting something greater and better than my miserable coin to happen. But let me do it at eye level and out of love for my neighbor!

Heroic Virtue

A friend posted an email to the NYR Daily from 21 December 2009 by the noted author and historian, Timothy Snyder, which closed as follows:

"But what if evil were plural in 1941? And what if patriotism is not about perfecting the past, but about making imperfect choices about the future?"

Snyder's piece has lost none of its relevance and I'd like to transpose his question about what distinguishes brothers Andriy and Kliment Sheptytsky, when it comes to judging them as being righteous among the nations in the eyes of Yad Vashem, to address the question of what saints are made of. I do this quite serenely in that the Church has now declared Andriy venerable.

In a sense, I suppose all the tribulation about declaring the heroic virtues of this giant of a man should not surprise us. We have the cases of several Roman Pontiffs of late, who have been at the center of similar controversies and each for different reasons: Bl. Pius IX, Ven. Pius XII, Bl. Paul VI. For the sake of perspective, I would like to take them together with Metropolitan Sheptytsky and abstract from the particular issues which may have placed their veneration in question for some or for many.

For me the matter at hand deals with the Church's never-ending quest for surety when declaring someone a friend of God. From the earliest days of the Church up until the present, we have gladly given recognition to martyrs as friends of God, to those who have identified most perfectly with Christ in His suffering and death upon the Cross. I remember learning as a child that the first non-martyr to be officially canonized by the Church was St. Martin of Tours, on whose feast day I was ordained a bishop. Naturally, before Martin others were considered saints though not martyrs, surrounded by devotion and popularly supplicated for their intercession on behalf of those of us still below. Even so, it is important to underline that it cost the Church centuries to step out in faith and declare virgins, confessors, pastors and doctors of the Church saints in the absence of testimony to their martyrdom.

Interestingly enough, beatification does not follow immediately on attestation of heroic virtue as is the case for martyrs. It requires a miracle through the intercession of the one declared venerable. 

The great metropolitan, whose prayers and sacrifices in this life were decisive for the building up of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as we know it today and who, no doubt, has never ceased to pray for his Church from his place before the Heavenly Throne, has not so much received a present in his jubilee year as have we. We move on with new confidence and hopefully learn from the witness of his life, now certainly defined as heroic in virtue.

Telling News Headlines

"Detroit-area Catholic leaders urge gay marriage supporters to skip Communion"

This headline got me wondering about what people think and where they are at in the Church today (at least what those who write headlines might be thinking). Specifically, where does the expression "skip Communion" come from? Is that as in "I think I should go to confession (e.g. as I missed Mass last Sunday through my own fault) before I go to Communion again"? Hence, I better skip Communion.... To say it otherwise, I can't quite imagine my dear friend Archbishop Vigneron of Detroit saying that if you support gay marriage, it would be best if you just skipped Communion. The whole thing is somehow off; it does not ring true. There's nothing of the Godhead in this choice of language.

The notion of "skipping Communion" is, yes, too flippant for one thing, but for the rest, the headline gives the impression of a break in routine. We skip class, we skip taking a vitamin, we skip a meal, but there is something course about the idea of "skipping Communion" as if we were talking about something quite ordinary. In advocating the homosexual lifestyle as something neutral for Catholic faith, you are advocating something which is gravely wrong, even if you do not so indulge yourself. You are giving scandal by denying time-honored and true teaching. The notion that you should just skip Communion on that account, well sorry, but it does not work for me. You can string together countless shrugged shoulders and clueless grins, but, please, don't put Holy Communion in the category of things you, well, sort of skip. 

Perhaps this is indicative of the real gravity of the rupture which followed the post-conciliar liturgical reform: reception of the Lord Our Savior, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, becomes not something from which I abstain, being aware of having committed grave sin and hence being totally unworthy, but rather it is something I may be well advised to skip. Sad! How far can one get from the reverence involved for one and all in St. Jerome's last Communion before his death, as pictured above.

In his writings, St. Louis de Montfort describes the deliberateness with which one prepares to receive Christ in Holy Communion; what he says about the devotion one should strive for is quite foreign to today's parish everyday and I make that observation with regret. 

A friend on Facebook the other day was asking advice on how he could recover months of archival notes, which he had accidentally cancelled from his notebook computer. Once recovered, he duly rejoiced to have the fruits of his labor back in his possession. By analogy, we need to reflect upon the pearl of great price and the anything but routine nature of processing up to receive our Divine Master in Holy Communion.

We need to recover life's passion, life as centered in the Holy Eucharist. 

Part of the Protestant Reformation in England involved stripping and destroying the altars in the churches, but it also included destroying the joyful noise of the hand bells rung at the consecration and during processions with the Blessed Sacrament. The senses were dulled in the 16th Century, as to a certain extent have been ours today. My plea to headline writers would be not to short change teaching by banalizing it with a just skip it. I know the authorities in Detroit had more to say and teach about the worthy reception of Communion.

Taking God into our own Hands - Through Whose Looking-glass

The Stripping of the Altars

Duffy, Eamon

(2005-05-28). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

"The blustering scurrilities of Bale or Becon did not seem to the Marian authorities the best model for establishing truth and stabilizing the religious life of the people, for such “pernicious and hurtful devices” could only engender “hatred among the people and discord among the same”. Satire and burlesque are commonly the weapons of those who seek to assail the established order, wedges hammered into the wall to create or exploit a breach. This was how the bishops perceived the position of Protestant controversialists, striving by fair means or foul to shake the religious convictions of centuries. It was the Protestants who needed to make an impression, and who sought to deploy the belly-laugh and the jeer to make their points. The bishops believed that what they needed to do was not to contribute to, but to quieten the babble of alehouse debate. Their objective was to re-establish the order and beauty of Catholic worship and the regular participation of the people in the sacraments, and to underpin it by a regular and solidly grounded pattern of parochial instruction, which would repair the damage of the schism. 

This preference for the beauty of holiness over the cut and thrust of debate was not, in any straightforward way, a rejection of the value of scripture-reading or preaching, though there were those, like Gardiner, who were gloomy about the likely impact of either. As we shall see, the Marian church sought to ensure regular parochial preaching and followed Cranmer's precedent in preparing a set of homilies to be used by “insufficient” preachers. Though the Bibles as well as Erasmus's paraphrases were collected up from the churches during the Marian visitations, Bible-reading or the possession of Bibles was never condemned by the regime. Protestant versions of the Bible were suspect, not English Bibles as such. (Cardinal Reginald) Pole, as a member of the evangelically minded Spirituali of Cardinal Contarini's circle, had a deep sense of the value of scriptural preaching and expounded the Bible daily to his own household. A new English translation of the New Testament was one of the projects agreed and begun at Pole's legatine synod at the end of 1555. But he abhorred religious argument and the spirit of self-sufficiency which he believed indiscriminate Bible-reading by lay people was likely to encourage. Better for the people to absorb the faith through the liturgy, to find in attentive and receptive participation in the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church the grace and instruction on which to found the Christian life. This was the true Catholic way, the spirit of the parvuli, the “little ones” of Christ, for whom penitence, not knowledge, was the true and only way to salvation. The object of preaching and teaching was not to impart knowledge, but to cause the people to lament their sins, seek the healing of the sacraments, and amend their lives." (Kindle Locations 12833-12854).

This scholarly book documents Catholic parish life in pre-Reformation England, distinguishes between the Henrican and Edwardian reforms, the Marian restoration, which preceded the last sessions of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation, and the devastation of the Elizabethan reform. While it is certainly not beach reading for summer, it is more than accessible for most readers and does not demand a special preparation so much as it presumes genuine love for the Church and the Papacy, and a desire to love to the point of healthy envy a Catholic world very different from our own.

The most unsettling thing about the book is the sense of déjà vu with which it filled me, thinking about the iconoclasm and willfulness of the last fifty years of my experience, not unlike the excesses of 16th Century Tudor England. Henry VIII may have stubbornly pushed away from Rome in order to marry again, but financing an excessive lifestyle at court, paying debts incurred by the Tudors and just plain greed led to a systematic despoiling of churches and parishes, carrying off precious metals and stones, recycling for secular use textiles which had adorned altars and statues, then smashing the images and whitewashing the temples, and silencing their bells and song. Greed and pride brought down a beautiful edifice of penance, prayer and petition, firmly binding together the Church Militant, Suffering and Triumphant.

"In this emphasis on the positive value of ceremony and sacrament, Pole and his colleagues, so often accused of lacking a grip of the realities of mid-Tudor England, were certainly more closely in touch with the feelings of the laity at large than were the reformers. Resentment and rejection of ritual change had lain close to the heart of both the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Western Rebellion, but it was not only in the dark corners of the land that men and women felt that the repudiation of time-honoured ceremonies was symptomatic of more profound and more drastic discontinuities. Procession, pax, holy bread, and holy water were the formal expressions of the identity of the parish, and the rituals in which pecking-order and precedence were manifested or negotiated. Repudiation of or abstention from such rituals might be a manifestation of the repudiation of neighbourly charity and the unity of the community. Ceremonies which, to the reformers, were unchristian or idolatrous, were somewhere near the centre of things in the religious and communal instincts of the people." (Kindle Locations 12876-12883). 

Queen Mary's reform was a rational thing which sought to do what was best. During the reigns of Henry and Edward so many priests had been lost to the service of the altar that she and her emissaries did well to insist upon the restoration of the one high altar in each church, but this paucity of priests precluded the restoration of the side altars and chapels, which had played such a key role in the devotion of the people. This week, a visit for me to the Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, Poland, and an innocent question from a young person about how liturgy as we know it could be possible therein, brought home to me once again the shocking reality of the rupture which has destroyed our organic continuity with the past. The life of faith buzzes around those side altars and chapels, even if I doubt that even there Masses can be guaranteed at each one every morning. Maybe from long before the 2nd Vatican Council that iconoclastic spirit brooding in certain circles and wanting to rationalize worship, seemingly for the sake of real development, makes the reparation of harm done seem an insurmountable challenge. For now, I guess, we find ourselves not unlike those who sought the Marian restoration, partial and rational as it was.   

 For that I return to the wisdom of Pope Benedict's wisdom in urging the mutual enrichment of the two forms of one rite as the path toward, first, even imagining, and then carrying out the restoration which far from being an exercise in nostalgia or archaeology, would touch hearts and bring life, integral life back to our parishes. 

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Flailing, but not without hope

Not long ago, I watched a video made by two hikers who freed a young hawk from a bull snake's strangulation hold. No doubt the naturists in the crowd might protest this human interference which deprived the bull snake of his part in the food chain, but I want to focus if I may on the stage whispers in the video, wondering if the hawk had already suffocated or if his wing had been broken in the snake's grip.

My stage whisper utters something of my worries about our faith in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and concerning the Church's constant and inerrant teaching about the transubstantiation. The "reformers" of the past who distanced themselves from the body Catholic and those of our present day (from within the sheep fold) continually resort to sacrilege as a means of dulling the faith or depriving God's people not only of faith in but of the Most Blessed Sacrament Itself. The latest violation documented for us by the world press has been the distribution of Holy Communion out of baggies (paper or plastic, you choose) at a mega-mass in Latin America (here ). 

Faith in Christ, truly present Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, and in the hearts not only of God's little ones, is not so robust as to survive constant trivializing. We take more care in wrapping the dumbest present brought to the home of somebody hosting a dinner party. Distribution of Holy Communion just cannot be done without harm in such big crowds and somebody is called to defend the faith from its being lost entirely to banality.

What is at stake here is much more than theater. Theater as such goes both ways, whether as depicted in the colored etching of a Papal Corpus Christi Procession from a bygone era or from the photos in the link above. As pastoral initiative, however theatrical, I will choose the procession any day. Prior to the reform of fifty years ago, the Holy Sacrifice had its proper context and outdoor processions even with the Blessed Sacrament were the exception (viz. Corpus Domini); the distribution of Communion outdoors except at a Mass before battle, in the form of Viaticum for the soldiers, was unheard of. Maybe it is time again to confine the celebration of the Eucharist to the protective four walls of the temple and resort to processions, whether with the Sacrament, with blessed palm branches, candles or crosses, as the means of edifying the larger gatherings outdoors.

I rather suspect that the young hawk was getting his just desserts for swooping down on the bull snake, sunning himself and minding his own business, when a feathered meal gave him a peck he could not ignore. Were it not for the hikers, the hawk would have met his end in short notice. May the Lord as He passes by look with mercy upon us and intervene to spare us from the grasp of banality, no matter when or where. Fear and trembling is more than good theater; it is our salvation.

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Redemption As Inclusive

Divine Sonship

Today's start of the visit of the Holy Father to countries on his home continent of South America has brought a resurgence of news and blog commentary about traveling to, reaching out to or in someway giving priority to "the peripheries".

The theme or notion is indeed catchy or so it seems. I noticed at home in the U.S. on vacation that some elderly priests I know, especially if they happen to have an anti-European bias, really like the concept and see it as a sort of affirmative action program directed toward empowering or at least drawing closer to those who are alienated or perceived to be deprived of a full voice in the life of the Catholic Church. What never gets enunciated in the process, however, is just what we have to offer to those who are far off. Through no fault of the Holy Father's, what comes across is an aimlessness about this reaching out to others.

For whatever reason, people seem to miss the heart of this "social gospel"; they fail to see themselves in this encounter as Christ-bearers. Sadly, whether knowingly or unknowingly, that part of the spectrum of opinion makers which is left-leaning to heterodox tend to push the periphery theme at the expense of other dimensions of the Pope's message to the Church and the world. They do Pope Francis a disservice and leave us short-changed if not worse, at a time when valuelessness or relativism seem to be menacingly on the march, trampling all in their way to wherever they might deny to be headed. The beautiful Christmas antiphon which I link above in the subtitle sings and says it all fully and tenderly. Our universe must be configured or reconfigured around Jesus, the Son of the Eternal Father.

As timely a message as reaching out to the peripheries is, there is much more to be heard from Pope Francis and it does not seem to get the attention it deserves. Relativism and the tragic spirit of the age must be contradicted or confronted, yes, challenged. Sadly, we seem to have forgotten that aimlessness or indifference constitutes not a broadening but a narrowing of our horizons and as such a hindrance. Values need to be affirmed and the focus must be upon the Lord Jesus, living and reigning in His Church. We need to get back to the basics. St. Paul worked constantly to draw the Gentiles to whom he was sent out of this impasse:

"We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return— I speak as to children— open wide your hearts also." [2 Cor. 6:11-13]

Real love and life are won by those who run after Christ in the fragrance of His garments. The age must be confronted in its opposition to the only begotten Son of God: quare fremuerunt gentes... It must be done with the same grace as the beautiful antiphon is sung.

We hope and pray for the countries to be visited, for South America in general, and for all the world. May hearts open wide and the King of Glory, the Beloved Son, enter in and take possession of our hearts!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI