"I Tremble For My Country When I Reflect That God Is Just . . ."

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . .”  - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781.

    Among the most wonderful of the many graces God has bestowed on me in this lifetime is the privilege of fatherhood.  In just a few short years I’ve seen my children go from the enchanting helplessness of infancy to robust young man and womanhood.  I’m always a step (or two, or three) behind the curve, it seems: I constantly find myself surprised not only by how big they are, but by how they’ve grown on the inside.

    Which brings me to the topic of this post.  My son John, now sixteen years old (just short of seventeen) has developed a number of interests: movie-making, writing, science, apologetics, Thomistic Philosophy (he likes to peruse some volumes of the Summa Theologica we picked up at a library book sale), and current events.  Given the decline of morals and the decay of social institutions all around us, he recently found himself, like Jefferson, trembling for his country in the face of God’s justice, and decided, as the proverb says, that it’s “better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”  

    In John’s case, that light is a prayer candle: given that so many of our problems are rooted in the decline of faith, he is urging as many people as possible to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet for the sake of our country.  We live in the United States, but we encourage those of you living in other parts of the world to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet for your own country as well, because we are all experiencing many of the same things, and we are all subject to God’s justice. My Son has set up a web page HERE explaining his idea, and I have agreed to help him spread the word.  Please take the time to look at John’s page, and join us in this prayer campaign.  

    Thank you, and God Bless.

'Crux Fidelis' attributed to King John IV of Portugal

"The Crucifixion" by Eugene Delacroix

    King John IV of Portugal can claim many distinctions: his acclamation as King in 1640 marked the beginning of the conflict that eventually freed Portugal from the domination of the Spanish Habsburgs; during his reign the Portuguese Empire reached its greatest extent; he was a great promoter of culture, amassing a great library, lavishly patronizing the arts and even, we are told, authoring his own musical compositions.  

    Whatever his merits as a composer, however, he seems not to be the real author of the best-known piece attributed to him.  The beautiful setting for the Crux Fidelis performed in the clip below (much like the Ave Maria commonly attributed to the 16th century composer Giulio Caccini, but which was probably a product of the twentieth century) seems to have been composed by someone less illustrious and more recent: “no known manuscript of the work exists, and it was first published only in 1869, in France. On stylistic grounds, it is generally recognized that the work was written in the 19th century“ (see here).

    Fortunately, the Pseudo-John was himself (or herself?) a gifted composer.  “King John’s” Crux Fidelis, whatever its provenance, has earned its place as a favorite Lenten hymn.

 The words of the hymn, by the way, are much older than the music.  They are a part of a larger work, Pange Lingua Gloriosi Proelium Certaminis by St. Venantius Fortunatus, 6th century Bishop of Poitiers (this hymn also provided the inspiration for St. Thomas Aquinas’s Pange Lingua).

Crux fidelis, inter omnes

arbor una nobilis:

nulla silva talem profert,

fronde, flore, germine.

Dulce lignum, dulces clavos,

dulce pondus sustinet.

Faithful cross, above all other,

One and only noble tree:

None in foliage, none in blossom,

None in fruit thy peer may be.

Sweetest wood and sweetest iron,

Sweetest weight is hung on thee!

Are you Ready For "Real Funny Jokes About Abortion"?

(An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published in September, 2014.  To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.)

“Be Sober, be watchful.  Your adversary the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  Resist him, firm in your faith.”  (1 Peter 8-9)

     In my recent discussion of an essay by Ezekiel Emmanuel supporting the idea that we should not try to keep people alive beyond 75 years old, I said:

The more often such opinions come from such sources, the less unthinkable such opinionThes become in the wider world until they eventually become commonplace.  We have seen this strategy employed to perfection in recent years in regard to the redefinition of marriage. 

The Successful Game Plan

 

They aren't laughing . . . 

   The picture-perfect example of how to bring about a massive change in public perceptions and sentiment, in fact, has been the Gay Rights movement, which eventually built the stunningly successful Gay Marriage campaign.  The strategy was explicitly laid out almost three decades ago in 1987, in an article by Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill (later expanded into a book) called “The Overhauling Of Straight America” (entire article here). Kirk and Pill call for a graduated media campaign to change public opinion, starting with making homosexuality seem commonplace by talking about it constantly, particularly in the entertainment media; then by portraying homosexuals as victims, at which point they can enlist supporters outside their own circles by appealing to a sense of justice, and only then seeking to destroy the credibility of any critics by using their media reach to portray opponents  as ignorant haters, bigots, etc.  Anyone who has been paying attention for the last three decades has seen this strategy play out precisely as scripted (we are now in the final “destroy the opposition” phase).

     This idea didn’t start with Kirk and Pill, of course, nor with the Gay Rights movement.  Some might recognize the ideas of master “community organizer” Saul Alinsky, who in turn was simply putting a groovy spin on long-standing communist agitprop doctrine - the need to use the entertainment media to shape public opinion explains why the communists were so interested in Hollywood in the thirties and the forties.  Kirk and Pill also saw the potential of the entertainment industry, but they had a resource that was not available to Stalin-era agitators: television.  Therefore:

Where we talk is important. The visual media, film and television, are plainly the most powerful image-makers in Western civilization. The average American household watches over seven hours of TV daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message--of normalcy.

“Desensitization” was necessary before the public would accept the rest of the gay rights program, and television did in fact prove to be the perfect medium (feel free explore the links here if you don’t believe that this strategy was employed to the fullest).

If it worked for Gay Marriage, why not abortion?

Mindy Kaling

     This brings us to today, and the curious case of Mindy Kaling, as recounted by Brent Bozell [article here]. Mindy, Bozell tells us, “not only stars in her own sitcom on Fox called 'The Mindy Project,' she’s in charge of it.”  Her character on the show is an OB/GYN.  Professional feminist and pro-abortion activist Amanda Marcotte sees Kaling’s show as a ready-made vehicle for the same sort of desensitization that the Gay Rights people carried out so successfully:

Abortion is actually a perfect topic for a half-hour comedy because it touches on so many themes that comedy writers love to mine for the laughs . . . How easy it is, if you let go of the fear of getting letters from anti-choice nuts, to make some really funny jokes about abortion.

     The problem for Marcotte is that most people, even those who are generally in favor of legal abortion, don’t see the humorous potential in the intentional slaughter of innocent life in the womb (including a huge number of women who have direct experience of abortion, such as the women from "Silent No More" pictured above).  Kaling herself, who doesn’t appear to be pro-life but does seem to know her craft, at first politely rejected the idea of using her show “to make some really funny jokes about abortion”, telling an interviewer: “It would be demeaning to the topic to talk about it in a half-hour sitcom”.  Unfortunately for Mindy, nobody is allowed to sit on the sidelines for this battle, and the abortion industry and its cheerleaders turned up the heat.  Soon she was apologizing for her failure to humorously promote abortion on her program, and has now reached the point where she says she “has faith” that she will find a “hilarious take on abortion that’s saying something new.”  Don’t worry, folks, “The Mindy Project” will be rolling out its abortion laugh-riot any day now.

     This is not the first recent attempt by the abortionists to follow the gay marriage media  playbook: there was the Abortion Comedy “Obvious Child”, and creepy “comedienne” Sarah Silverman has been trying to mine the laugh-potential of abortion for some time.  “Obvious Child”, however, was much more popular with pro-abortion movie critics than it was with the public, so maybe Anthony Esolen is right [see here] that the average person’s innate common sense won’t allow too many of them to be taken in too deeply by the Culture of Death for too long.  Maybe . . . but I’m not sure that he isn’t underestimating the power of people in our fallen state to convince themselves of just about anything, especially if it means the orgy can continue.  Be that as it may, brace yourself: I suspect we’ll be seeing more and more of the “lighter side” of abortion from the entertainment media in the future. Be sober and be watchful . . .

    

Lent Points To Purgatory

The 1st Sunday of Lent

Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross

     One of the things that confounds people outside of Catholicism is the way Catholic Christians tend to understand that things which are true can be true in different ways, as in, for instance, the traditional Four Senses of Scripture. This multi-faceted Catholic Vision doesn 't apply only to Biblical interpretation, but to all sorts of beliefs and practices.  A good example is the Season of Lent, in which we see the patterns of the next world reflected in this one.  
     On the primary level, Lent is about where we are right now. We understand that we are prone to sin, that we must undergo a period of preparation, and of spiritual cleansing, before we can experience the joy of Easter.  And so through various penitential practices, including the sacrament of Confession, the “giving up” of various things, devotions (e.g., the the Stations of the Cross), and works of charity we seek to acknowledge and express sorrow for our sins,  and to turn away from attachment to worldly things, so that we can turn instead to God.

     The logic of these Lenten practices also applies in the next life, in Purgatory.  The word Purgatorium means a place of cleansing. The Catholic belief is that Purgatory is both a completion of temporal punishment (penance), and as the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us, "purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven," for  those "who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified" (CCC 1030). That purification is sometimes described in terms of removal of our remaining attachment to sin, so that we are prepared to meet our Lord in the unfiltered light of Heaven.  If we need Lent here, where we see dimly as through a mirror, the same is certainly true in the next life where, God willing, we will as see Him face to face (see 1 Corinthians 13:12).  

     Our tradition tells us that the greatest Saints are taken directly from this life into the Presence of the Almighty.  Most of us, however, even if by God's Grace we find ourselves bound for Heaven, have reason to expect a detour through Purgatory. That’s something to keep in mind as we go through Lent here in this world: if it’s appropriate to purify ourselves in preparation for the Feast of Easter, how much more so for the Eternal Supper of Lamb in the New Jerusalem?

A Musical Gem - Zelenka's Miserere

The Prophet Nathan confronts King David with his sin 

     One of the things I aim for in my bloggery is to share some gems from the Catholic Tradition that are not as well-known as they deserve to be. For centuries Catholic artists have been creating beautiful things to honor God. We have accumulated a vast treasury of works of unequaled loveliness – including a veritable horde of the most beautiful music ever conceived. Sadly, most of it, it seems, is rarely heard today.  
     Take the piece below, for instance, by the Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745), which is a musical setting for Psalm 51, also known as the Miserere.
     Tradition tells us that this psalm was composed by King David as an act of penance after he ordered the murder of Uriah, one of his officers, so that he could marry the man's wife. Because of it's penitential character, Psalm 51 is always included in Morning Prayer on Fridays, and is also closely connected with the Season of Lent.  It has become my custom to post a couple different musical interpretations of this psalm at the beginning of Lent every year (I have also posted Antonio Lotti's version here on my other blog, Principium et Finis).
     Zelenka was a highly regarded composer in his time, but never received the recognition of some of contemporaries such as J.S. Bach (Bach himself is reported to have been a friend and admirer).  Zelenka was rediscovered by his fellow Czech, the composer Smetana, a century and a half ago, and over the past few decades his reputation and audience has been steadily growing.  His work is known for its innovative harmonics and use of counterpoint, which are evident in the powerful, moving Miserere below.
     

Lent Prepares Us For Grace

Isaiah's lips are cleansed (Giovanni Battista Tiepolo)

    It’s a commonplace that nobody is perfect.  At the same time, it’s clear from Scripture that the God who is perfect prefers (with the exception of Incarnation of the Eternal Word Himself) to use imperfect human instruments to spread His Good News.  We are reminded of this curious feature of Salvation History in all three of this past Sunday's Mass readings, in which we see the Prophet Isaiah and the Apostles Paul and Peter all proclaim their unworthiness . . . and the Lord’s determination to use them as his mouthpieces nonetheless.

    All three use similar language.  Isaiah, after seeing the Lord on his throne surrounded by Seraphim cries out:

Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed!

For I am a man of unclean lips,

living among a people of unclean lips;

yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)

Likewise St. Peter (whom Christ has chosen to be the chief of his Apostles) says, after Jesus has miraculously multiplied his catch of fish: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” (Luke 5:8)  

St. Paul speaks in the same vein when he tells the Corinthians:

Last of all, as to one born abnormally,

he appeared to me.

For I am the least of the apostles,

not fit to be called an apostle,

because I persecuted the church of God. (1 Corinthians 15:8-9)

    It is quite true, of course, that they are unworthy, but the Lord knows perfectly well what their shortcomings are; he is happy to give them what they need to fulfill his mission.  Jesus shows his power to purify immediately after Peter’s protestation of unworthiness:

. . . there came a man full of leprosy; and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and besought him, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean." And he stretched out his hand, and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean." And immediately the leprosy left him. (Luke 5: 12-13)

We see the preparation of Isaiah more directly:

Then one of the seraphim flew to me,

holding an ember that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

He touched my mouth with it, and said,

“See, now that this has touched your lips,

your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.” (Isaiah 6:6-7)

As the cleansing with a hot coal suggests, the purging of sin can be an uncomfortable process.  But there’s more: St. Paul goes on to tell us:

But by the grace of God I am what I am,

and his grace to me has not been ineffective.

Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them;

not I, however, but the grace of God that is with me.(1 Corinthians 15:10-11)

God bestows his Grace on those who consent to be tempered into his instrument.  

    

Caravaggio's "Conversion of St. Paul"

There’s a lesson for us here. Suffering comes whether we are willing or not: look at the case of Jonah, who in the course of running from the Lord’s summons undergoes quite a deal of hardship (including being swallowed by a sea monster and vomited up after three days).  God’s Will is accomplished nevertheless, but Jonah is able to appreciate neither God’s great act of Grace in sparing the one hundred twenty thousand plus Ninevites, nor His lesser Grace of sending a shade plant for the comfort of the reluctant prophet himself. The Ninevites has been saved, but we are left wondering about the salvation of Jonah.

    When I heard these readings at Mass yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of them in terms of the upcoming Lenten season. There’s a part of me that resents the (admittedly small) sacrifices and austerities of the Penitential season.  The experiences of Peter, Paul and Isaiah help to put my own life in perspective. The mild hardships we take upon ourselves during Lent are a reminder to us that our sufferings can prepare us to serve God, and that our patient endurance cultivates our hearts to receive His Grace. And as we saw above, St. Paul tells us that God’s Grace makes us what we are: who am I to refuse?

Be Vigilant At All Times (Worth Revisiting)

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published November 29th, 2014.

To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

   I discovered a very curious thing one day.  As we were saying our family prayers, I noticed that the rosary that I have been carrying has only nine beads on its first decade, as you can see in the picture to the left.  It has wooden beads strung on a strong cord which has never broken, so it must have been that way since I bought it.

     The first thought that entered my mind (after I got over my initial surprise) was of the Muslim prayer rugs that have a few stiches the wrong color, or the great mosques where every row of columns has one that’s just slightly out of kilter.  The makers put these imperfections into their work intentionally, as an acknowledgement that only God can lay claim to perfection, which it is right and proper for us to acknowledge.

     These visible flaws don’t simply remind us that God is perfect, of course; their purpose is also to remind us that we ourselves are radically imperfect; not simply morally flawed, but incomplete without God.  So my flawed rosary, through the (unintentional, no doubt) mistake of its maker can represent the flawed nature of all of us. 

     There is also a reminder here, however, of my own particular imperfection: I have carried this rosary in my pocket for seven or eight years; I don't use it every day (when I pray the rosary in the car, as I often do, I usually forgo the beads and use my fingers, in the interests of automotive safety), but I use it frequently enough that I ought to have noticed that it is one “Hail Mary” short.  In fact, I really should have noticed when I first bought it at the local Catholic book store.  So, I have not only a symbol of human imperfection, but a very real, concrete reminder of my own broken nature, and in a very particular area.    

     As it happens, when I first discovered the curious flaw in my rosary and set out to write about it, this was the Gospel reading for the day:

Jesus said to his disciples: “Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and drunkenness and the anxieties of daily life, and that day catch you by surprise like a trap. For that day will assault everyone who lives on the face of the earth. Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.”    (Luke 21:34-36)

We are about to embark on the Season of Lent, a penitential season which hearkens back to Christ's forty day fast in the desert in preparation for his earthly ministry.  It is a time of penance, and of purification, in which we are preparing our hearts for the trials of Holy Thursday and Good Friday, and the triumph of Easter Sunday. The warning Jesus gives to his disciples above is a warning to us as well: "Be vigilant at all times".  Two verses later we see the chief priests plotting to kill him, and Satan entering into Judas Iscariot.  This is Christ's final warning before the Passion Narrative begins to unfold, to his disciples then and now.  Be vigilant.  It looks like I have my work cut out for me; and every time I put my hand in my pocket, I have a tangible warning of how far I have to go.

The Presentation, Atheism, And The Problem Of Suffering

(An earlier version of this post was published on The Feast of the Presentation, February 2nd, 2015, on the blog Principium et Finis.)


And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed." (Luke 2:33-35)

Girolamo Romanino: The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple

     The Presentation of the Lord presents us with a paradox, or maybe a series of paradoxes, which can lead us deeper into the mystery of Christ.  On the one hand, it is our last fleeting look back at the recently concluded Christmas Season, and we experience some of the joy and wonder of that season, particularly in the prophetic utterances of Simeon. Simeon proclaims the infant Jesus “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32). His final words, however, foretelling that Christ will be “a sign that is spoken against” and warning the Blessed Mother that “a sword will pierce through your own soul also” redirect us toward the quickly approaching Season of Lent and beyond to the sorrow and suffering of the Triduum.  The last thing we see in Luke’s account of the Presentation is the prophetess Anna, who pulls together the apparent contraries in Simeon’s prophecy: she “spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).  In the end, the glory of Christmas and the sword of Good Friday come together on Easter Sunday: Redemption comes only from the light shining through the darkness of suffering, and we catch a glimpse of the entire story in the Feast of Presentation.

     Given the above, I found it interesting that this story [here] appeared just this morning [2 Feb 2015]: Englishman Stephen Fry, an “outspoken atheist”, was asked what he would say if he found himself, contrary to his expectation, face to face with his Creator in the afterlife:

 “I’d say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’” he began.

“’How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault,” Fry continued. “It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I would say.”

"Outspoken Atheist" Stephen Fry

In other words, the old Problem of Suffering (which I spend a lot of time discussing with my adolescent religion students).  For us Christians this problem is resolved in the Mystery of the Cross, as we saw above: it’s a paradox that leads us to a higher understanding, and a greater experience.  For the unbeliever, however, it is a contradiction which, if followed to its logical conclusion, leads to annihilation.  Most atheists believe that all reality is reducible to matter, and that this present world is all there is.  Suffering, therefore, is the worst thing that can possibly happen; hence the righteous indignation of the Steven Frys of the world:

Fry went on to question why the God of the universe would allow pain and suffering and argued that doing away with belief in God makes life “simpler, purer, cleaner, more wroth [sic] living, in my opinion.”

Doing away with belief in God, however, really only makes Fry’s problem worse: instead of leading to redemption, suffering is now simply random and pointless pain.  Not only that, but it is something we all must experience, it’s inescapable.  The only way to eliminate suffering for a Steven Fry is to eliminate not God, but humanity.  Fry’s fellow atheist, the philosopher David Benatar [here] proposes just this solution is his book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. No people, no suffering: that's the best the atheist can hope for.

    Small wonder that The Presentation is included in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, despite Simeon’s ominous (and alarming, no doubt, to Mary and Joseph) utterance.  We are reminded that, through his Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, Christ has sanctified suffering, that it is no longer a random, meaningless evil, but a path to Heaven.  That is, indeed, Good News.

    

(See also "The Presentation & God's Strong Hand" HERE on Principium et Finis)