To Live In Truth

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany (Resumed)

Given by Father Scott Archer, November 6, 2016

“But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection” (Col. 3:14).

With so many aspects of our spiritual lives, to have charity toward God and neighbor requires an act of the will; however, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, charity also adds a certain union to the beloved. So too, contrition is an act of the will; we have contrition because our sin has offended God who is all good and deserving of all our love. The Catechism of the Council of Trent states, “But although contrition is defined as ‘sorrow,’ the faithful are not thence to conclude that this sorrow consists in sensible feeling; for contrition is an act of the will." 

When we rely on emotion to judge our faith, our love of God, our contrition, or even our spiritual experiences, we fall into the trap of judging our relationship with God based on that emotion. In prayer, for example, God sometimes gives spiritual consolations to encourage us, but most often He does not. Emotions can aid us in our devotion, but they are only partially under the influence of the will. Love of God, charity toward our neighbor, and contrition are choices based in the will, in cooperation with grace. “It is the will only that God desires,” wrote Saint Francis de Sales, “but all the other powers run after it to be united to God with it.”

Although J.K. Rowling is neither an Aquinas, nor even a Tolkien, she does hit upon a useful theme in illustrating my point. In the novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter, in his first year at Hogwarts, accidently finds the enchanted Mirror of Erised. He stares into the mirror and sees images that appear to be living. He soon realizes they are his murdered parents, as well as other family members. His mother is smiling, with tears in her eyes; his father puts his arm around her. He is enthralled with the vision, as he is seeing his family for the first time. It makes him feel happy, but it is not real. The Mirror of Erised, “desire” spelled backwards, gives only the illusion of what the viewer desires; the one who gazes upon his or her reflection sees what is most wanted, based in emotion. And it is addictive. Dumbledore, the wise headmaster, discovers Harry using it and warns him, “This mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.”

In the enchanted mirror, people become entranced by their own image, pleased by the illusion of receiving that which they most desire. Spirituality that is based on feelings is the same. It can neither give us knowledge or truth. People can become addicted to spiritually emotional experiences. Their lives can become an endless search for what makes them feel as if their relationship with God is the best it can be, judging this relationship solely on whether they receive spiritual consolations. They may even judge the Mass based on whether or not they feel good afterwards, the priest was engaging, or the music upbeat. They use their emotional responses as a proof of the holiness of their experience, but this, alone, is an illusion.

St. Francis de Sales wrote, "To live in truth – and not in untruth – is to lead a life entirely conformed to naked and simple faith according to the operations of grace and not of nature. This is because our imagination, our senses, our feeling, our taste, our consolations, and our arguments may be deceived and may err. To live according to them is to live in untruth, or at least in a perpetual risk of untruth, but to live in naked and simple faith – this is to live in truth."

We must always be on guard that we are not trapped by emotional experiences in regard to our faith; that we are not entranced by an illusion of our own holiness, and believe we have found the secret mirror that reflects our true spiritual state, filling us with false spiritual happiness. The reality is that love of God, contrition for sin, and our spiritual lives are based in the will, aided by grace.

Pray always that God will protect you from the illusions of the devil, who wants nothing more than for you to gaze upon yourself in the spiritual Mirror of Erised, when God wishes you to work out your salvation day by day, as St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “…with fear and trembling work out your salvation,” with true love of God and charity toward your neighbor, fulfilling your religious duties faithfully, in authentic prayer, avoiding all sin, and practicing virtue.

The Catholic Roots of Halloween

The question often arises about the celebration of Halloween by Catholics. Is it, for instance, "pagan" to dress up and go about as ghosts and goblins? The question often comes up because many modern Christians (mostly non-Catholic ones) believe that Halloween has something to do with worshipping the devil and participating in witchcraft.  The truth is that the origins of Halloween are rooted deeply in the theology and popular customs of Catholics. It is a revision of actual history to say that our modern celebration of Halloween has origins in Druid customs. It is said that the ancient Celts celebrated a major feast on October 31st, but the fact is that they celebrated a festival on the last day of almost every month.

Halloween, a contraction of "All Hallows Eve," falls on October 31st because the Feast of All Saints, or "All Hallows," falls on November 1st. The feast in honor of all the Saints used to be celebrated on May 13th, but Pope Gregory III, in 731, moved it to November 1st, the dedication day of All Saints Chapel in St. Peter's in Rome. This feast spread throughout the world. In 998, St. Odilo, the abbot of the powerful monastery of Cluny in France, added a celebration on November 2nd. This was a day of prayer for the souls of all the faithful departed. Therefore, the Church had a feast for the Saints and those in Purgatory. 

It was the Irish Catholics who came up with the idea to remember somehow those souls who did not live by the Faith in this life. It became customary for these Irish to bang on pots and pans on All Hallow's Eve to let the damned know that they were not forgotten. In Ireland, then, all the dead came to be remembered. This, however, is still not exactly like our celebration of Halloween. On Halloween we also dress up in costumes. 

This practice arose in France during the 14th and 15th centuries. During the horrible bubonic plague, the Black Death, Europe lost half of her population. Artists depicted this on walls to remind the people of their own mortality. These pictures and representations are known as the "Dance of Death" or "Dance Macabre." These figures were commonly painted on cemetery walls and showed the devil leading a daisy chain of people into the tomb. Sometimes the dance was re-enacted on All Soul's Day as a living tableau, with people dressed up as the dead. But the French dressed up on All Souls, not Halloween, and the Irish, who celebrated Halloween, did not dress up. 

The two were brought together in the colonies of North America during the 18th century, when Irish and French Catholics began to intermarry. Thus the two celebrations became mingled, and we began dressing up on Halloween.  It is, as we can see, a very "American" holiday, but Catholic as well. 

Another part of this holiday is called “Trick-or-Treating.”  It comes from the traditional Catholic practice, started in the 9th century, of “souling.” Catholics in England had a tradition of going from house to house and begging for soul cakes on All Souls Day. The beggars would receive a small cake marked with a cross. For each soul cake received, the person promised to say a prayer for the benefactor’s beloved dead in Purgatory.

I hope that you can see Halloween, not as something that threatens the faith of our children, but as a fun time to remind us all about important truths. Christmas and Halloween are the only two holidays we have left in America with customs surrounding them. In the days of Catholic Europe there were a lot of these types of celebrations associated with our Catholic feasts and solemnities. These were celebrations that grew up as a result of Catholic practices and beliefs. The notion that Halloween is evil is quite untrue. While it is true that Halloween was more popular in Celtic Europe (Irish Catholics), there were similar celebrations among the German and Latin Catholics on All Souls Day. Halloween can still serve the purpose of reminding us about Hell and how to avoid it. Halloween is also a day to prepare us to remember those who have gone before us in Faith, those already in Heaven and those still suffering in Purgatory. Halloween is a time to let people know about the Catholic roots and significance of this celebration.

Sources: Compiled by Father Scott Archer from information from the Diocese of Peoria, and adapted from an original article by Father Augustine Thompson

The High Ground

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

(WB Yeats, "The Second Coming")

I have a daily regimen of Catholic commentary and news sources. Many of the authors refer to the Church as a segmented entity. Descriptions commonly refer to "right," 'left," and a sort of hallowed "middle ground" to which all truth and right practices gravitate.

Recently, I even read a statement which implied that there is no truth outside of the middle ground, that "right" and "left" represent a false distinction and should more correctly be considered as degrees of rejection of the true Faith.

A brief survey comparing the Catholic Church before and after the Second Vatican Council reveals a sea change, in general, but most significantly, a change that profoundly affected all of Catholic life because it was the "summit of Catholic life": A change in the way Catholics prayed after the promulgation of the "New Order," the "Novus Ordo," the Mass of Pope Paul VI.

Never in the history of the Church was there such clear evidence of a rejection by so many of so much of what had been handed down from generation to generation. Never in the history of the Church had the liturgy undergone such dramatic and confusing changes, all for the sake of "...proclaiming the noble destiny of man and championing the Godlike seed which has been sown in him...." (Gaudium et spes, 1965) through the rally cries of ecumenism and actual participation.

I'm going to assume that anyone reading this knows of the dramatic, revolutionary changes that swept through the Church after the Second Vatican Council, because I do not intend to present that case here and now; and even if I were to set out to accomplish such a monumental task, we'd all be better served by referring to what's already been published.

What I am going to consider, though, is the concept of "middle ground," because it is that which carries the "false distinction."

A half-century of introducing experimentation, innovation, and novelty into the lifeblood of the Church —the liturgy— has resulted in a Catholic population buying into sophistry: that which most Catholics do is orthodox because that's what most Catholics do.

Here again, the problem with the liturgy must be acknowledged. Over the last half-century, what most Catholics do when it comes to praying the Mass is to engage in a creation-by-committee that, at its heart, was constructed to carry out the pastoral constitution of Vatican II: Proclaim the noble destiny of Man by focusing on Man.

This approach, or orientation, is diametrically opposed to the description offered by Jesus and offered in the text of the Mass, itself: Proclaim His death and resurrection, and that He will come again, the focus being on God.

So, where is the "middle ground" between "proclaiming the nobility of Man" and proclaiming (through commemoration) the death, resurrection, and the assurance that Christ will come again?

How can the "centre...hold" between a theocentric path revealed, initially by Our Lord and by the Holy Spirit through time, on the one hand, and a human-centric course ordered to constant adaptation to cultural and generational trends, on the other? The answer is "...the centre cannot hold" when the "...falcon cannot hear the falconer."

Catholics are not called to live on and defend some indeterminable, ever changing middle ground based on popular opinion or mistaken understanding of authentic organic development. In fact, such a place is more fittingly referred to as a "no man's land...an indeterminate or undefined place or state," or, historically, "a dumping ground between two fiefdoms."*

While there will always be contention among theologians as part of the organic development of Tradition and liturgy, in any given moment of history "the Summit of Catholic life" can not exist as a kind of "dumping ground" and to defend such a place is the vanity of idealogues. Instead, we are called to seek and defend the high ground according to our state in life and the talents given us.

The Holy Spirit, through time and generations of saints and faithful Catholics, has shown us the high ground, defended always, everywhere, and by all.

*definitions for 'no man's land' from wikipedia and Google

The Death of Martyrs Blossoms: On Priestly Sacrifice

By Father Scott Archer

Pope St. Gregory the Great said, “The death of the martyrs blossoms in the faith of the living.” A martyr is one who is put to death for the faith; not just any faith, but the true and Catholic faith. Martyrs are witnesses to the truth, and powerful reminders that the passion of Christ continues in the faithful who are members of His Mystical Body, and who unite their suffering and death with Christ. Martyrdom is seldom anticipated; martyrs are chosen by God. T.S. Eliot captures this in his play Murder in the Cathedral when his Thomas Becket says, “A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom.”

Sacrifice and the priesthood are one, inasmuch as the life of the priest is perfected when he submits himself to the will of God. As the priest stands in the place of Christ at the altar, and is reminded daily of His sacrifice, the necessity of abandoning himself, like Christ, to the will of the Father is ever-present in his mind. “Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done.” We will never know the thoughts of Father Jacques Hamel as he began to offer Mass on the morning of Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in a small town in the Diocese of Rouen, France, the capital of Normandy. It was then, however, that he was called upon to give one last submission to the will of God. While offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, something he had done every day of his long priestly life, Islamists came into the church, forced him to his knees next to the altar, and slit his throat. The assailants offered prayers in Arabic as the horrified witnesses looked on. Father Hamel had offered a different sacrifice to God that day as he breathed his last.

We would be mistaken if we were to look upon this event with the eyes of the world; a world which has largely turned its back on Christ and His Church. God wishes us to see with the eyes of faith the joy of submission to His will, even to the offering of our very lives. As with most persecutions of the Church, the priests are the first to be put to death. The reason is clear and simple, as the prophet Zacharias wrote, “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” It is a method, however, doomed to failure because God uses the blood of martyrs to strengthen the faith of His people. For those priests called to give their lives, it is a consequence of them already dying to self in order to answer the call of Christ to share in His priesthood. Priests offer sacrifice to God on behalf of mankind in the Mass for the living and the dead, and when they are also called to share intimately in the death of Christ by offering themselves in witness to the true faith, they find great joy. Offering the Sacrifice of the Mass is the reason for his being, while sacrificing himself means he has been found worthy to die for Christ to whom he was configured at his ordination.

Like Father Jacques Hamel, Blessed Noel Pinot offered his life for Christ in a manner illustrating how closely linked is the Mass with the sacrificial ideals of a priest. Blessed Noel lived during the French Revolution, and like so many persecutions before, the shepherds were struck down by the enemies of Christ. A priest and eyewitness said of Blessed Noel’s death, “The martyr prayed in a state of profound recollection. His countenance was calm and his brow radiated the joy of the elect. On his lips, so to say, one could follow the canticles of thanksgiving bursting forth from his heart.” On February 21, 1794, dressed in his priestly vestments at the foot of the scaffold, as he looked up at the guillotine he began the prayers he said every day at the foot of the altar; Introibo ad altare Dei (I will go in unto the altar of God).

I have little doubt that Father Hamel looked upon his final sacrifice with the eyes of faith; a faith he had nurtured during his entire priesthood. Let us not weep so much for him, as a priest sacrifices his whole life to carry out the will of God for his own salvation and that of the people; his martyrdom is a reminder that the priest is not here for himself. Let us rather be resolved to be more faithful to Christ and the Catholic Church—more resolved to pray for the virtue of fortitude against the rise of radical Islamic terrorism spreading across the world. His example must arouse our sleeping spirits to a rebirth of our commitment to Christ. Pray especially for all priests of the Church, that our zeal for souls ever increase, and our zeal for Christ and His Church never fail. 

Accompaniment

Analogies are never perfect, so why are people compelled to use them to describe a more complex situation which should be clear in the first place?

I suppose it's because an analogy diffuses volatile topics by changing the context. Instead of, for example, trying to take the bull by the horns and explain exactly why someone's passionate opinion on the pope, or the president, the constitution, or Vatican II is a one-way ticket to chaos and eating Soylent Green for every meal, the analogy comes to the rescue.

So, forgive me, but I am offering one more analogy to simplify the complex and to obfuscate the simple, to paraphrase a critique of Gen. George Pickett's use of analogies in the movie, "Gettysburg."

I recently discussed the proposition that the Church must accompany those who continue to live in mortal sin with no regrets and no firm purpose to amend their lives. Ambiguities in our current pope's way of speaking and writing have led some with authority in the Church to conclusions such as, the divorced and remarried (living like husband and wife) may receive communion so that the Church accompanies them; or, those living a homosexual lifestyle must be accompanied by the Church (and that phrase is liberally interpreted as meaning that they should be admitted to the Sacrament of Holy Communion); or, those living together outside of Sacramental Marriage must be accompanied by the Church where they are, again, the liberal interpretation being that they should receive all Sacraments which are granted to Catholics in a state of grace. The common rallying cry for these types of abuses is, Holy Communion is not just for the perfect, but for the weak as well. And, here again, the liberal-minded application of this concept is to allow reception by those who are in a state of mortal sin because, who is weaker and in more need?

To obfuscate the simple, and hopefully to take the issue out of the realm of Cult of Personality and loyalty to approaches established at the height of the liturgical revolution of the '60s and '70s, I humbly (and apologetically) offer my analogy of the day....

A year ago last Lent, through fasting and eating a low-carb diet, I lost 40 pounds. I decided to give myself a reward: I bought a new pair of jeans to accompany me at my new weight and also through continued weight loss.

But, situations arose that made it easy for me to excuse myself for falling back into my old eating habits, the habits that had led to me being about 50 pounds overweight in the first place.

I gained weight, slowly and steadily, and instead of accompanying me in leanness, my new jeans accompanied me through weight gain...all the way back to where I had started nearly a year and a half ago.

Funny thing is, my jeans still fit. In fact, they are loose in the thighs and the butt, places where jeans usually get too tight when I'm overweight, even by 15-20 pounds. But, my jeans became worn. They are thread bare in a couple of places. I had to buy some new jeans.

I bought a pair of carpenter jeans, same brand, same size as the ones that I have been wearing. I got them home, pulled them on...tugged at them...sucked in my gut, pulled and tugged the button into the button hole, and...there (gasp)...they're buttoned.

But, how could that same-size jeans that I was wearing moments ago, be so tight and uncomfortable?

Obviously, my comfy jeans had stretched out as they accompanied me through weight gain. My poor eating habits had been manifested twice over: I gained my weight back, and my jeans had stretched right along with me, ultimately, becoming a false size that reflects more of my bad eating habits than any true measurement of body size.

Well, same thing goes when those in the Church would adapt Her to the habits and minds of Men.

Risen (2016)

A movie review by Father Scott Archer

March 4, 2016

A movie based on a Biblical event which is covered in only one chapter of each of the first three gospels, and just two in the fourth, should, at the very least, remain faithful to the source material; furthermore, it should not be considered as presumptuous to expect that any use of artistic license would not change the original story. Risen, a film written by Kevin Reynolds and Paul Aiello, and directed by the former, fails on both counts, needlessly abandoning the Gospel in favor of elements which are alien to the original story. Beyond that, this movie depicts interactions between the Apostles and followers of Christ as being more reminiscent of a modern charismatic prayer meeting than of any scholarly consensus regarding the nature of early Christian communities. 

The story is centered on the eye witness account of Clavius (Joseph Fiennes), a Roman tribune present at the crucifixion, who eventually searches for the body of Christ, and finally becomes a believer. The movie begins with Clavius presiding over the crucifixion of Christ. This scene should be fairly straight forward: The Gospel of John tells us, “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalen. When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple whom he loved... (John 19:26-27). Instead of the scene so clearly described in the Gospel of John, Risen presents the viewer with the Blessed Mother, the only time we see her, standing at a great distance away, with Mary Magdalen. The Blessed Mother is wailing loudly, though this is not recorded in Scripture, and John the Apostle is not seen at all.

One would think a movie about the resurrection would show the resurrection. The movie shows a stone rolled in front of the tomb, and later ropes were used to secure it to the tomb, but there was no depiction of the resurrection.  The movie does not stay true to the gospels in regard to Christ’s resurrection appearances. In one scene Christ healed a leper. The resurrection was the ultimate miracle to prove that He was the Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. After witnessing the resurrection, there would be no need for further miracles. Finally, to my utter amazement, there was no Ascension! In the end, Christ simply walked backwards as he spoke a few of the words recorded in Scripture.

Throughout, the depiction of the apostles and Christ, played by Cliff Curtis, was beyond distracting. There was a lot of hugging and laughing. The character of Bartholomew, when not laughing at being threatened with crucifixion, stared with glistening eyes as he spoke of his faith. When the other apostles and Christ were not laughing, they were hugging. Another distraction was the continued use of the name Yeshua instead of Jesus. It made no sense, given the fact that all the other characters were called by their English names; for example, Mary, Peter, Andrew, and Bartholomew.

Risen fails because it ignores much of the Scriptural accounts of these events, it portrays the Blessed Mother, Jesus, and the apostles in ways foreign to our traditional understanding of their characters, and it adds material that makes no sense in the context of the story. There are wonderful movies that have been made about the life of Christ; this is not one of them.

The progressive Traditionalist: Now, about how we 'can't go back'....

A music director was recently denied a job at a nearby Catholic parish. The decision not to hire her seemed to hinge upon her understanding of what the Church has actually asked of us regarding the liturgy and the music of the liturgy: Gregorian chant should have pride of place, and there are certain requirements that must be met for music to be legitimately liturgical.

The priest informed her that "we can't go back," and promptly hired a music director known in the area for her "praise and worship" (evangelical Protestant) approach to Catholic "church music."

"We can't go back" has become the rallying cry for those Catholics who have become thralls of the liturgical revolution. This call to rally around the modernist flag of innovation and novelty is a grave misunderstanding of the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Holy Catholic Church, not to mention, it represents a fatalistic, dead end approach to authentic liturgical development.

Truth be told, I totally agree with the sentiment: we can't go back, we most move on.

My sense of the Catholic Church in America is that, for the most part, it has been mired in the "Spirit of Vatican II" for so long that few Catholics understand the nature of authentic liturgical development and fewer still would recognize the difference between liturgy and parody, at least as defined by Card. Ratzinger in his book, "The Spirit of the Liturgy": "...If the various external actions (as a matter of fact, there are not very many of them, though they are being artificially multiplied) become the essential in the liturgy, if the liturgy degenerates into general activity, then we have radically misunderstood the 'theo-drama' of the liturgy and lapsed into a parody." (from pp. 171-5, _The Spirit of the Liturgy_.)

For decades now the wheels have been spinning in the muck of the novel modernist insistence that going forward means embracing this year's innovations, this year's fads, this years sound bites, this year's post-modern conversion theories. And as if thralldom to fashion is not enough, we are also instructed to define this endless parade of novelty as progress.

This approach is every bit as identifiable with the '70's, every bit as stuck in the '70's, as platform shoes, leisure suits, and striped bell-bottom pants.

Being that this approach hinges upon generational fads, the most profound effect it has had is to divide generations of Catholics: the hootenanny Catholics from the Evangelical Catholics, the sing-around-the-campfire Catholics from the contemporary music Catholics, the "praise and worship" Catholics from the Polka Mass Catholics, and anyone with a sense of the orthodox approach to worship seems to be set out on an island all by themselves.

Each new crop of youth ministers spends an inordinate amount of time convincing their charges of the utter lameness of the previous generation's education and approach to worship. Ultimately, the prayer of the Church, the Mass, resides right along side the guy in the platform shoes, the woman in the big hair from the '80's, the grunge of the '90's, etc.: worship as fashion. All is ordered to each generation.

What difference does it make as long as each fad sparks a little spike in attendance and interest in parish events?

The danger is exactly that which was predicted by certain orthodox heroes of the Second Vatican Council. The insistence on cultural/generational adaptation and on a multitude of options that distinguish Pope Paul's New Mass presents a "law of prayer," a manner of worship, that is no longer ordered to Christ but, instead is ordered to Man and the noise of the secular world. As the saying goes, the law of prayer, the law of belief, or the way we pray informs our belief. In case it's not clear by now, this notion of adaption to Man, so popular in the early '70's, has sown the seeds of relativism among the Catholic faithful. The Church is at a point where one of the most common phrases we might hear or read in the church social hall or on social media, respectively, is the one that begins, "I'm Catholic, but...." From there, all manner of error is embraced in the name of "the Spirit," in the name of cultural norms, and in the name of individual conscience (no matter how that conscience was actually informed, or rather, misinformed).

There is growing recognition that it will take drastic actions to correct the damage done by this distortion of the Roman Rite. Much has been written lately about reverence, bringing back "the sacred," and engaging and/or restoring various pre-Vatican II devotions; but what doesn't seem to be on the table, what seems to be beyond the comprehension of the powers that be in the Catholic Church in America, is the idea of leaving behind this notion that these problems are solved by the inventions of men. We must move forward and realize the utter futility of trying to solve problems which, mind you, were created by novelties rooted in humanism, merely by plugging in new novelties rooted in humanism. Spinning the wheels...always spinning the wheels....

No, we can't go back. We must go forward.

"...there's something good in this world, Mr. Frodo...and it's worth fighting for."

Mention Gregorian chant...

...mention the use of Latin...

...mention Mass offered ad orientum without altar girls and EMHC...

...mention receiving Holy Communion on the tongue while kneeling at altar rails...

...mention re-installing those altar rails...

...or mention the idea that each parish should offer the EF (Traditional Latin Mass) each week...

...and, in most parishes, you'll most likely hear a sort of Pavlovian response, almost a chant: "We can't go back, we can't go back, we've gone too far, we can't go back."

It's almost a text book definition of tragic irony, this notion that "we can't go back," as espoused by a generation of Catholics that cannot keep themselves from going back over and over again to the same mistaken, experimental approach encompassed in the "Spirit of Vatican II."

In former times, an objective observer would've said, "These people got snake bitten by that Second Vatican Council! They're up the creek without a paddle," and that's exactly what happened when popular Catholic opinion embraced the faulty premise that tradition, history, and heritage must be rejected in favor of the leaven of the secular world--snake bitten and up the creek without a paddle.

A battle exists between opposing forces. One side fights for that which was always, is, and will always be the greater good, the greatest good; that good which is always worth fighting for. On the other side, there are those seduced by their own desires and, having implemented them and imposed them on others, act as slaves, addicted to those desires.

Lately, we read about living in a post-Christian West. We talk about the secular world getting the upper hand and how a sort of shadow has fallen over the Church. There is confusion and everyone goes their own way. Bishops disagree with bishops. Cardinals disagree with cardinals. Priests disagree with priests. Our Holy Father engages in controversial behavior and uses controversial language. It seems that the pasture has been left to the weeds. The light of the Church seems to be failing.

But...the Church has always taught that darkness and confusion is merely a cloak that covers the light for a moment until the darkness is thrown off, and we move beyond it. And yet, to suggest seeking the light beyond the darkness, the truth beyond the chaos of relativism, instead of inspiring this Catholic nation to go forward and leave behind the mistakes of one generation, merely receives that same old, tired response that reeks of despair, "We can't go back...."

Is it true that the darkness has become so blinding that many have chosen to abide in the dark, or worse, have come to call the darkness the light? Can it be that this fight is left to a few, a remnant, a band of brothers willing to stand for the good in the world even when it would seem that all are against them?

I'll defer to my old friend Samwise....

"Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for."
(_The Lord of the Rings_, J.R.R. Tolkien)

The annual Christmas pilgrimage

So, the bulletin for the 4th Sunday of Advent featured the annual column asking the laity to be very friendly and welcoming to the visitors who usually swell attendance numbers for the Masses of the Nativity of Our Lord. Though it's not stated per se, I've always read this kind of pep talk as an implication of causality, like, if only we'd been more friendly to begin with, maybe the extra 500 people would've never stopped coming to weekly Mass in the first place!

Obviously, this is not what our pastor intends his request for civility to imply. None the less, his request demands consideration beyond whether or not to wish the members of the annual pilgrimage to church at Christmas a "Merry Christmas" or a "Happy Holidays."

Specifically, one question that comes to my mind is this: To what type of religious experience are we welcoming these souls?

When my wife and I were considering converting to the Catholic Church, we started by attending the nearest parish church.

My wife's observation as we walked back to our car after Mass: "Well, I could go here without any problem. This is exactly like the Lutheran church in my hometown."

My reaction was similar, but with an opposite conclusion: "What's the point of joining the Catholic Church when it's exactly the same as the Methodist church of my childhood?"

That's the problem: As it was in my Protestant youth, it is now in most parishes offering the enculturated version of the Novus Ordo; on Christmas Eve, watching "It's a Wonderful Life" seems more in keeping with the season than attending these community-centered, entertainment/worship events.

Thus, we can make our welcome as sweet as wild honey and it won't make any difference if that to which we are welcoming this nation of lost and wandering ex/lax Catholics is not identifiable as wholly Catholic.

I try my best to drive my family to the nearest weekly Tridentine Mass (80 mile round trip), but weather and infrequent local commitments mean that we attend the local Novus Ordo at least two Sundays each month.

I already know what the Mass of the Nativity in my local parish will be: MAYBE we'll sing a Christmas hymn (although, last week a traditional hymn was replaced at the last minute by a Marty Haugen gem), but more than likely, since there'll be a half hour of carols before Mass, the music director will regale us with up-to-date or contemporary hymns from the "Worship" hymnal; the altar servers will be made up of boys and girls (hopefully they won't break into giggling at each other from opposite sides of the sanctuary as happened last Sunday); the priest will proceed down the center aisle smiling at people and maybe even shaking hands and doing a high-five to a teen (our youth are our greatest asset, remember); the orientation of the following worship service will be totally focused on the community; the homily will be more sugary than my wife's home-made caramels; the music will be the Dan Schutte setting because key people ( the music director) must regard it as user friendly (I suppose it is, if you are a big fan of "My Little Pony" and "Gone with the Wind"); and, in the end, I will leave with the sense that I have been sitting through an hour long group therapy session. Well, not even that. Dr. Phil is more severe in some of his assessments than the motivational, cheerleader speeches we sometimes receive locally. The local Mass will seem more like going to a live radio show, a variety show.

No sense of sacred mysteries, very little reverence or acknowledgment of the Real Presence...everything is centered on the people and their temperament, or at least the priest's perception of their temperament.

And what would the average non-church goin' chap think after witnessing such nonsense? I know because I was that person for many years after being alienated from the church of my youth. There's really only one reaction: Why come to this church when I get more of a sense of reverence for the sanctity of life and the depth of God's love for us by watching _It's a Wonderful Life_ on Christmas Eve?

The Counsel of the Hollow Men

I'm a convert. My wife and I were brought into the Church Sept. 14, 2000. My brother is a convert as well and was ordained a priest in 1990. He offers the Novus Ordo (New Mass-NM) and the Tridentine Mass (Traditional Latin Mass-TLM) at his parish. When I informed my brother that my wife and I had realized the justice of worshiping God through the Catholic Church, he immediately said, Find a priest who is offering the Tridentine Mass, and he will teach you well.

Almost as soon as we started attending the TLM, we experienced a sort of gag order as far as how we should speak of the ancient rite and the New Mass. It went something like, "We accept the NM as legitimate while merely preferring the TLM (for obvious reasons that...we're not supposed to talk about)."

We had the sense that we were doing something wrong by attending the TLM, but the more I came to understand this form of the Mass and the more it became, to reference the CCC, the "summit of (my) Catholic life," the stronger was the sense that for me to abandon this form of worship would be to abandon my faith.

I'll admit: That's a bit melodramatic, and perhaps not entirely accurate; certainly I could remain a Catholic and attend the NM, it would just take more extracurricular work on my part.

My true, less melodramatic sense was that abandoning the TLM would make me a hermit, living in a desolation, being forced to build walls of defense to guard my faith each time I attended a NM and experienced music that was not liturgical and sometimes was even anti-Catholic, tag-team readers and cantors and deacons (oh, my), priests who created barriers not bridges between the people and God by inserting so much of their own personalities into the Mass that "actual participation" seemed limited to a closed dialogue between priest and people instead of prayer to God, and...well, the list of distractions and stones in the pathway to Catholic worship at the NM goes on and on, laid with the best of intentions perhaps, but not necessarily laid in a way that makes straight the path. Plus, as a Protestant-by-birth, I was aware of an old saying that seemed to apply: The road to perdition is paved with good intentions.

It was very clear to me: The ancient rite seemed like serious business and the new Mass, as it was offered pretty much every where, seemed like it had been designed to entertain elementary school children. It didn't take me long to recognize the chasm that existed (exists) between regulars at the TLM and the regulars at the NM.

The difference was manifested in many ways, from the way people described "assisting at," or "offering" the TLM compared to "going to" or "breaking bread" at the NM, to the way most people dressed at either Mass, to the way that people at the TLM knelt and prayed in silence after Mass and the people at the NM tended to hang out visiting loudly; but the most concise, most clear sentiments denoting the width of the chasm came from a nun who loved the New Mass and a parishioner who loved the Old Mass:
      Sr. ____: Those people are disobedient and holier-than-thou!
      Old Mass Parishioner: They act like Protestants because they worship like
      Protestants.

Once I recognized the depth and drama of the controversy swirling around the TLM, the Mass I loved, I asked my brother, "What have you gotten us into, anyway? Maybe being ignorant and blissful would've been better?" It was a joke, of course.

After a few years, by the 2010's, it became obvious that secular persecution of the Church in the U.S. was on the rise. As federal and some state administrations imposed a new order-style societal vision upon all, from convents to Catholic hospitals, to Catholic universities, and Catholic-owned private businesses, I again found occasion to joke with my brother: "Great, I was a narcissist with my own customized religion for 25 years, all my liberal friends loved me, and then I become a Catholic just in time for the next Great Persecution!"

Now, as secular persecution increases in accord with new laws and new sensitivity to the expression of opinions which contradict the newly-discerned notions of family and the sanctity of life, and more than ever we need the solid rock of Tradition and the TLM, we suffer through Bishop of Rome Francis (BORF), in rhetoric and through suggested modifications of practices, pruning the Vine to the point where there's a very real fear that large groups of people who call themselves Catholics will practice their faith in a manner that does not embody the doctrines of the Church, thereby becoming cut off from the very root system that sustains the life of the Vine, the Church.

I could joke about the other situations because, behind it all, my Catholic formation was based on the truth that the Church was inseparable from Tradition and history. She has deep roots. I could look beyond the confusion caused by the "spirit of Vatican II" with assurance that, at its heart, the Church still held to the clear presentation of the Faith in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. It would just take time to work it back to the forefront. And, of course, in my life as a Catholic, we had the last years of Pope St. John Paul II and we had Pope Benedict XVI as, for the most part, tradition-friendly guardians of the faith.

But, with each new controversial BORF-appointed cardinal, with each new controversial BORF-appointed bishop, with each new controversial BORF-suggested implementation of innovative pastoral practices, with each new controversial BORF interview, thoughts of the day, and name-calling tirade, the wee bits of traditional Catholic teaching he espouses become more and more obscured by what seems to be a renewed enthrallment with the hollow gestures and phrases of the "spirit of Vatican II."

Most days now, the awareness grows of a conspiracy of men blinded by the lust of imposing their own designs upon the Church.

At once, we are hermits, and we are the flock tended by hollow men

Excerpt from "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Elliot: 

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. 

Alas!Our dried voices, 

when We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, 

shade without colour,

Paralysed force, 

gesture without motion....

When Our Babies Were Babies

A few years ago I used to wait at the school bus stop with the other parents in my neighborhood. There was a young mother who would wait there, and being that both of us had babies in strollers (we pretty much parked ourselves right at the bus stop while other parents with no kids-in-tow would just sort of ramble about or meet their kids half-way down the road) and were Christians, we'd often end up talking about kids and God to pass the time. She was an evangelical Protestant, and I'm a convert to the Catholic Church.

In one conversation, in an attempt to sum up the similarities and differences between Protestant and Catholic approaches to God, I made the point that in the Catholic Church we have one-time Sacraments that are very similar to protestant "sacraments," those that reconcile us with God and prepare us for our state in life; specifically, baptism, confirmation, and holy orders or marriage. Then I made the point that we Catholics are also accompanied through life with Sacraments that we may receive as often as we like, providing that they are worthily received. I mentioned the Eucharist-as-Sacrament-and-Sacrifice and the Sacrament of Penance.

She took special exception to the latter saying, "I would never let someone come between me and my God, especially when it comes to admitting my sin."

I said, "Me either, and it doesn't work that way with a good priest. A good priest is like John the Baptist, he decreases while Jesus increases. In other words, personality, ego, any self-pride, are left outside of Sacramental confession so that what is left is a man who, through Sacramental empowerment, has been set aside from the world specifically to serve God in administering the Sacraments--a good priest will allow his personality to decrease while Christ increases. What happens invisibly through the Sacramental empowerment of the priesthood, has a visual expression in the vestments the priest wears: the vestments cloak the priest's individuality, his person, and present instead, religious symbolism of Christ and the Church. In the days when the priest would offer the Mass facing liturgical east (away from the people) the people would not even see his face, only the vestments, and then, this concept of priest as the person of Christ would be visually complete as well. Only during the readings in the vernacular and the homily would the people see the priest's face for an extended period of time." (I'll admit, I didn't say it exactly this way....)

Well, her family moved away, and as far as I know they remained evangelical Protestants, but regretfully, I have to say that, had she ever let that tiny, intellectual seed grow into curiosity, and from there, evolve into a trip to her local parish, based on my own experience, she'd have a difficult time experiencing what I had described to her. 

More and more, as the "Spirit of Vatican II," so recently as the pontificate of Pope Benedict decried as a hijacking of the Second Vatican Council, becomes more and more embedded in parishes around the U.S., we are confronted with priests who routinely promote their own personalities, joyful and zealous though they may be, as the stepping stone to God. Sadly, as Pope Pius XII pointed out in "Mediator Dei," since we are all unique persons and do not necessarily respond the same way to the same stimuli, instead of a stepping stone to God, most of the time, imposing an approach to prayer and worship based on the opinion/personality of the pope/bishop/priest inevitably becomes a wall between us and God, which is... 

...exactly the problem my neighbor had with the Catholic Church way back when our babies were babies.