Public parade of shame

The year opened with Kwame Kilpatrick's theatrically staged public 'apology' for his adulterous affair, subsequent cover-up, ruining of two cops' careers for telling on him, perjuring himself in court, then defrauding Detroit taxpayers to the tune of 8 million to pay for it -- the whole while with his dutiful wife at his size just taking the humiliation -- without ever claiming responsibility and promising that "I won't quit on you." Welcome to Detroit. ("Kwame Kilpatrick’s public apology" [Hello Negro, January 31, 2008]) His record here is redolent of Marion Barry's in the nation's capital.

Then it was Spitzer with a repeat act, excusing himself, the only silver lining the fact that he resigned: Maggie Gallagher, "Spitzer, stop torturing the wife" (Yahoo!News, March 11, 2008), writes:

Can we end the public practice of trying to shame these wives into divorcing their husbands?

There's a reason we feel impelled to do this these days. Adultery has been redefined as a "private matter," as Spitzer put it in his vain, Clintonian attempt to redirect attention from his crimes to his sin. Because we no longer have any public punishments for adultery, we have turned wives into instruments of the public morality: If she doesn't punish him by divorcing him, he will go unpunished, which is intolerable. (Without some punishment, won't all husbands stray?)

[Hat tip to Prof. E.E.]

Is God's love unconditional?

This question has a long history of debate. Among Protestants, for example, one of the tenets of Calvinism is "unconditional election," which implies that God's love for His elect children is 'unconditional', while various Arminians (followers of Jacobus Arminius, as well as most Baptists and Methodists) hold that the gift of salvation and God's love is conditioned upon the "free will" response of His children. From the former tradition we hear things like "Once saved, always saved," and from the latter we hear about "backsliding" and "losing one's salvation." In Catholic tradition one finds similar oppositions between viewpoints that may emphasise divine predestination (as in St. Augustine's works) and those that emphasize human freedom, though without either position necessarily excluding the other when properly understood.

Carmello Fallace's recent article, "Is God's Love Unconditional?" (New Oxford Review, February 2008; rpt. Musings, March 10, 2008, by permission of the publisher), takes up the issue in the context of contemporary Catholic trends. He notices a pervasive emphasis today on "God's unconditional love," and asks himself: Is this true? Is this interpretation biblically warranted? He raises some very good questions. Here are some excerpts to get you started:

Is it true that, as many a modern homilist is wont to say, "God's love is unconditional"? It is true without question that the love of God, as stated in the Old and New Testaments, is rich, it abounds, it fills the earth, is unfailing, is faithful, is steadfast, it endures forever, is great, is higher than the Heavens, it surpasses knowledge, is better than life, etc. It is comforting and reassuring to hope that God's love is unconditional -- and it must be true, otherwise, many priests and homilists wouldn't say so. Right?

... unconditional love means, as far as God is concerned, that whatever we do -- good or bad -- does not matter, and we can expect God to love us the same as He always has.

Many claim that "unconditional love," or something similar, has a biblical basis, that it is written or implied in the Bible, or perhaps in some other Church document. But of the more than 800 instances of "love" in the Bible, none states or implies that God's love is unconditional. Furthermore, there is no official Church document that uses the word "unconditional" to describe God's love. There must be some mistake! some might demur. How could this be? Yes, there has been an enormous mistake, but it is not in the Bible or Church documents....

... If God's love were unconditional, there would be no Hell and all the unrepentant sinners, no matter how evil, would go to Heaven. So, what is God's love if it's not unconditional? It is covenantal. This means that if we want to continue to experience His love, we have to meet His conditions. God's love is eternal, it is constant, but He makes it absolutely clear what He loves and what He hates, and whom He loves and whom He hates. That God's love is unconditional is a modern deception invented by the devil; it is designed to blur our vision so that we can join him in the underworld.

Read the whole article here ... Your thoughts?

Kant attack ad

A friend of mine in Texas just got access to You Tube and wanted to see what would happen if he typed in "Kant." Try it. "Kant attack ad" is hiraliously funny. Follow up with some of the linked offerings, like "Nietzsche attack ad," or the "Kant movie trailer."

Add to that one of my recent favorites: "Monty Python - International Philosophy."

[Hat tip to M.C.B.]

Obedience to rubrics is never sufficient

Oswald Sobrino offers a good, Catholic analysis in "Beyond Rubrics: A Biblical Warning" (Catholic Analysis, March 6, 2008), where he writes:

In reaction to years of liturgical abuse, there is now a new appreciation among some for following the official liturgical rules of the Church, the "rubrics." ...

My point in this post is that, while following the rubrics is absolutely necessary, it is never sufficient. We see that teaching in the prophets of Israel who decried those who relied on external observances over a change of heart and mind....

Those prophets were tough. Their words are still tough and, as affirmed by the Church for centuries, still relevant to Catholics today....

The Lord was tough, too.... [cf. Matthew 23:14-28]

It is thus no surprise that the Roman Catholic Church has always taught that the mere fact of receiving a sacrament or participating in some liturgical act is never enough if the heart is not really open to change.... "... the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them." [CCC 1128]

... No particular form of the Mass, whether ordinary or extraordinary, no exactitude and precision in external celebration, no particular liturgical language, no particular musical arrangement or panoply of vestments (however exquisite or refined) will do the great work of conversion for us and acquit us of the above biblical condemnations if we do not freely surrender to Jesus and freely ask for an outpouring of his Holy Spirit at some point in the course of the external observances. The reaction to past liturgical abuses is certainly understandable and needed; but the reaction should not lead us to another tempting dead end, a dead end about which we have ample, tough, and loud biblical warning that will always be relevant unto the end of time and the coming of the new heaven and the new earth.

If, in contrast to the banality of badly celebrated liturgies, you, like many others, want a deeper experience of and union with God in the liturgy, whether it's the ordinary form (popularly known as the "Vatican II Mass") or the extraordinary form (popularly known as the older "Latin Mass"), you have to go beyond the form and language of the celebration: you have to open your heart to a fuller release of the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit in your life. Once you take that step, your experience of God's grace or charis in any form of the Holy Mass will take a qualitative leap beyond anything you have ever experienced up to now.

My own experience has been that a certain handling (or mishandling) of the rubrics can promote (or hinder) the deeper experience of union with God for which Sobrino is calling here. (A good book in this connection is Dietrich von Hildebrand's Liturgy and Personality.) That notwithstanding, that deeper experience of union with God is the heart and soul of the participatio actuosa ("active participation") for which St. Pope Saint Pius X (the first to use the expression) called the Church in his Motu Proprio, Tra le Sollecitudini (1903), and echoed in the Vatican II Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The point is well-taken.

In a related veign, Sobrino writes, in a post entitled "An Easily Overlooked, Unconscious Heresy" (Catholic Analysis, March 3, 2008):

... we may feel that we are somehow automatically Catholic by virtue of our culture, our customs, and our celebrations. We can thus end up as baptized pagans who think we are Catholic but are not really so. That kind of subconscious ethnic or cultural identification with Catholicism is never sufficient. We are called to a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus in the heart of the Catholic Church--then we are really Catholic. I think that this subconscious reduction of Catholic identity to custom or ethnicity is at least partially responsible for many of our problems with liberal, heterodox expressions of Catholicism and even with some excessively traditionalistic, extreme expressions of Catholicism.

Amen to that. Correct that problem and you eliminate one of the major stumbling blocks to evangelical Christians (and many others) who fail to see the Catholic Faith as a live option. Think here not only of Don Corleone in the 'Godfather' or 'Catholic' government officials who publicly flaunt Church teaching, but of stock anti-Catholic phrases such as "empty ritual," "dead ceremonialism," etc.

[Hat tip to J.M.]

Why Benedict wanted to change the Good Friday prayer

Sandro Magister, "A Bishop and a Rabbi Defend the Prayer for the Salvation of the Jews" (www.chiesa, March 7, 2008):

The bishop is Gianfranco Ravasi. The rabbi is Jacob Neusner. The prayer is the one for Good Friday in the ancient rite. This is why Benedict XVI wanted to change the text ...

The revised version omits "blindness" and "darkness," two words specifically offensive to Jews. With the revision, however, Benedict "did not attenuate, but instead greatly reinforced the prayer with more pregnant Christian content." See why ...

Fat chance

Pope to rehabilitate Luther? London Times theory gets it wrong again ...

St. Thomas Aquinas

If memory serves, January 28th is the feastday of St. Thomas on the new calendar. Today is his day on the traditional calendar, for anyone who cares.

Still Missing

The Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul is still in the hands of kidnappers, who have raised their demands (AsiaNews.it, 3/4/08):

The men who have the fate of Msgr. Paulos Faraj Rahho, Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul in their hands since February 29th last, have raised the ransom and dictated “political conditions” for his release, according to AsiaNews sources in Iraq, close to mediators who are negotiating his safe return.

[Hat tip to A. Wellborn]

Hillary hints at 'dream ticket' with Obama

"Clinton Hints At Sharing Ticket With Obama -- Hillary On 'Early Show': 'Of Course We Have To Decide Who's On Top Of Ticket'" (wcbstv.com, March 5, 2008): "NEW YORK (CBS) ― Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton hinted at the possibility of a Democratic 'dream ticket' with Sen. Barack Obama."

Meanwhile: "Obama says it is 'premature to talk about a joint ticket'" (Ben Smith, Politico, March 5, 2008).

Franky Schaeffer responds to Os Guinness

Well, actually, he doesn't mention a single substantial criticism raised by Guinness (pictured right) in his review of Franky's book, "Fathers and Sons: On Francis Schaeffer, Frank Schaeffer, and Crazy for God" (Books & Culture, March/April 2008). Rather, in his response, "Full Disclosure: A response to Os Guinness" (Books & Culture, March/April 2008), Franky (pictured left) diverts the reader's attention away from those criticisms by questioning Guinness's motives. The ploy is as revealing as it is ineffective. Books and Culture also published a brief reply by Guinness, found at the bottom of Franky's call for "Full Disclosure." As Guinness concludes: "I replied to his book for one reason only: His portrait of his parents was wrong and destructive. It left me alternately grieved and outraged, and I wanted to witness to the truth as I see it before God. I hope one day we can sit down and talk it over amicably."

"A Crisis of Meaning in the Sign of Peace"

Last fall Michael P. Foley wrote a very interesting article on the history and current practice of "Sign of Peace" in the liturgy, which used to be a rite of the "Holy Kiss." His article is entitled "A Crisis of Meaning in the Sign of Peace" (originally published in the Advent/Christmas 2007 issue of Latin Mass, and reproduced by permission of the publishers at Scripture and Catholic Tradition, March 5, 2008). Although the practice in most American Catholic churches has become fairly standardized, it wasn't that long ago that the matter was experienced as a point of tension, at least by some. I recall a friend's recollection of a Mass at a Newman Center at a college in California some twenty years ago at which there was present a little old lady who was a daily Mass attendee there, where she never failed to make a petition for the souls in Purgatory during the Prayer of the Faithful. At this particular Mass, some students came waltzing up to her with open arms to embrace her during the Sign of Peace, and, to their horror, she abruptly responded: "F___ off!" The Sign of Peace in the liturgy has elicited, then, some less-than-peaceful responses in recent memory. Why is this? Has the Sign of Peace undergone a change of meaning in our time? What is the history of this component in the Mass? Here are some excerpts from professor Foley's article to get you started, but you can read the article in its entirety at the above-linked site:

The rite of peace, which was restored to all Masses in the 1970 Missal, has fallen onto hard times. Though some Catholics wholeheartedly praise it as the "highpoint of the Mass" (as one of my priest friends has been told several times by his parishioners), others view the matter differently. The 2005 Eucharistic Synod worries that the greeting has assumed "a dimension that could be problematic," as "when it is too prolonged" or "causes confusion." In Sacramentum Caritatis Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the peace becoming "exaggerated" by emotion and causing "a certain distraction" before Holy Communion. Consequently, the Supreme Pontiff not only calls for "greater restraint" in the gesture of peace but has even raised the question as to whether it should be moved to another part of the Mass.

How could such an ostensibly bright hallmark of the new liturgy become the object of such abuse? To answer this, we must reexamine the unique but all to hidden meaning of the kiss of peace in the Roman rite.

The Holy Kiss

The "holy kiss," as Saint Paul calls it, has almost always been an important component of the Mass. Originally the kiss--which was a full, lip-on-lip act--was given to members of the same and opposite sex; but by the late second century Church Fathers like Clement of Alexandria were complaining that a lascivious element between men and women was creeping into the proceedings. This problem was solved by segregating the sexes to different sides of the nave, a practice that was till being recommended as late as the 1917 Code of Canon Law.



[Pope Benedict XVI and Bartholomew I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople at Ravenna, December, 2007]
Similarly, like most other kinds of kissing, the liturgical kiss was seen as a very intimate gesture, the kind of thing one would only do within one's family. Hence, the kiss was not given to "non-family members" such as heretics or catechumens. This principle was relatively easy to osbserve, since the early Church dismissed non-initiates after the homily, before the kiss was given.

The kiss remained a vital part of the liturgy until the mid-1200s, when it began to fall into disuse, and no one is certain why. The Church tried to sustain the rite by using a paten-like object called a pax-brede....

Read the rest of the article ...

"Tea and Sympathy"

My dear crazy beloved wife has launched her own blog, "Tea and Sympathy," devoted to Evelyn Waugh and literature. I commend it to any of you who love Waugh and other English and American literature. Here she introduces it in her own words:

So, here I am. I'm attaching myself to a blog so that I might discuss literature with other people who want to discuss literature. My primary focus is Evelyn Waugh because I believe him to be the author of the finest English novels that have ever been penned. I like other authors too, of course, such as Oscar Wilde, Anthony Burgess, Jane Austen, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, and William Shakespeare. Let's talk about books.

Enjoy!

Obama: Senate's fiercest opponent of Born Alive Infants Protection legislation

Rick Santorum: "The Elephant in the Room: Obama: A harsh ideologue hidden by a feel-good image" (Philadelphia Inquirer, February 28, 2008):

American voters will choose between two candidates this election year.

One inspires hope for a brighter, better tomorrow. His rhetoric makes us feel we are, indeed, one nation indivisible - indivisible by ideology or religion, indivisible by race or creed. It is rhetoric of hope and change and possibility. It's inspiring. This candidate can make you just plain feel good to be American.

The other candidate, by contrast, is one of the Senate's fiercest partisans. This senator reflexively sides with the party's extreme wing. There's no record of working with the other side of the aisle. None. It's basically been my way or the highway, combined with a sanctimoniousness that breeds contempt among those on the other side of any issue.

Which of these two candidates should be our next president? The choice is clear, right?

Wrong, because they're both the same man - Barack Obama.

... consider his position on an issue that passed both houses of Congress unanimously in 2002.

That bill was the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. During the partial-birth abortion debate, Congress heard testimony about babies that had survived attempted late-term abortions. Nurses testified that these preterm living, breathing babies were being thrown into medical waste bins to die or being "terminated" outside the womb. With the baby now completely separated from the mother, it was impossible to argue that the health or life of the mother was in jeopardy by giving her baby appropriate medical treatment.

The act simply prohibited the killing of a baby born alive. To address the concerns of pro-choice lawmakers, the bill included language that said nothing "shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand or contract any legal status or legal right" of the baby. In other words, the bill wasn't intruding on Roe v. Wade.

Who would oppose a bill that said you couldn't kill a baby who was born? Not Kennedy, Boxer or Hillary Rodham Clinton. Not even the hard-core National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). Obama, however, is another story. The year after the Born Alive Infants Protection Act became federal law in 2002, identical language was considered in a committee of the Illinois Senate. It was defeated with the committee's chairman, Obama, leading the opposition.

Let's be clear about what Obama did, once in 2003 and twice before that. He effectively voted for infanticide. He voted to allow doctors to deny medically appropriate treatment or, worse yet, actively kill a completely delivered living baby. Infanticide - I wonder if he'll add this to the list of changes in his next victory speech and if the crowd will roar: "Yes, we can."

Read the rest of the article.

U.S. Electoral dysfunction leads UK to revoke independence of former colonies

Some of you may have seen this bit of humor making its rounds, "A Message from England" (falsely, according to Snopes) attributed to John Cleese. Anyway, I thought it was funny. It begins thusly:

To the citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the Revocation of your Independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume Monarchical Duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy). Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed....

It goes downhill from there, somewhat, but I've always fancied Monty Python, for better or worse, particularly for a badly-needed laugh.

Solemnity: key to good liturgy

Peter A. Kwasniewski has written another thought-provoking piece, this one the first of a two-part series entitled, "Solemnity: The Crux of the Matter" (Latin Mass [Winter 2008], 8-12; reproduced with permission of the publisher at Scripture and Catholic Tradition, March 1, 2008). Whatever your perspective on liturgy may be, and whether you find yourself in agreement with Professor Kwasniewski or not, we invite you to read the article in its entirety at the linked site above. We are confident, as with other articles we've seen by Professor Kwasnieswki, that it will stimulate fruitful reflection about the Holy Mass, liturgical renewal, and that kind of "active participation" that is properly directed at leading us to the "Source and Summit" of our lives. We have also added a feature allowing the reader to open a linked article in a separate window without closing the homepage. To prime the pump, here are a few brief excerpts:

... The difference between good liturgy and bad liturgy, as far as the mind of the Church is concerned, often does come down to a difference between worship that is solemn, formal, and devout, and worship that is slipshod and superficial, with a decidedly casual air....

... One of the many errors that poisoned the liturgical reform was the fear of ritual, stemming from the view that ritual keeps people away, prevents the priest from "getting in touch" with the people. The new missal has been deritualized, or at least allows and even encourages the priest to deritualize the Mass by injecting the liturgy with extemporaneous remarks, by moving about in a causal manner, and by inviting into the sanctuary numerous unvested laity, which is totally contrary to the spirit of ritual or divine cultus. In Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing, there is an hilarious (and appallingly true) description of the schizophrenic liturgies generated by the current rubrics together with poor training and clueless custom: a clearly ritual ceremony performed by people who act as though the ceremony were not a ritual. The priest, wearing ritual vestments, processes down the aisle to the tune of a hymn. He arrives at the altar. He adjusts his microphone. He looks out to the congregation. He smiles, and then descends into utter banality: "Good morning, everyone!" Back to ritual: "In the name of the Father ..." Back to chatter: "Today, we remember that we are trying our best but are still failing, and so we go to the Lord for mercy." Back to ritual: "Lord, have mercy." Back and forth it goes, until he dismisses the congregation with "Have a nice day, everybody!"

For a long time it struck me as bizarre that so few should sense the utter discontinuity between ritual and quotidian modes of address and bearing, but as I better sized up the mess of modernity, I saw how markedly anti-ritualistic and indeed anti-spiritual our age has become: anything outside the comfort zone of everyday speech about business or pleasure is alien, dangerous, and threatening, and people avoid that region of dissimilitude as much as possible. The Catholic liturgy, which is all about the sacred, the numinous, the mysterious, is diametrically opposed to the mentality of the Western "marketplace of ideas"; it runs against the grain of the ubiquitous modern lifestyle of indulgent materialism. Any traditional liturgy, whereby eyes and souls are focused on that which is above and beyond, is a serious threat to the triumph of egoism that the government, the school systems, and the private sector are all mightily struggling to bring about in every town and home. Never before have I appreciated so much the slogan: "Save the liturgy, save the world."

Read the entire article at "Solemnity: The Crux of the Matter" (Scripture and Catholic Tradition, March 1, 2008). Enjoy.