Archibald MacLeish on a dying world

That we are at the end of an era is not something that can be proved scientifically. One senses it or one does not. One knows by intuition that the old images, as Archibald MacLeish [pictured right] says in The Metaphor, have lost their meaning.

A world ends when its metaphor has died.

An age becomes an age, all else beside,
When sensuous poets in their pride invent
Emblems for the soul's consent
That speak the meanings men will never know
But man-imagined images can show:
It perishes when those images, though seen,
No longer mean.

[From The Metaphor by Archibald MacLeish, courtesy of Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. v.]

A lot better than my CCD class

"I no longer have a child of school age, but many of you do. You no doubt want to have your offspring know the three Rs but also the fourth: religion. And how do you accomplish that?

"I attended public schools, which meant we were packed off to CCD classes one evening a week. The acronym stands for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, but it could have stood for Catholic Children Daydreaming. That's how boring it seemed, and the result was that that was the last religious instruction many of my peers had.

"So what to do for your kids? You might want to take a look at an online program called CatechismClass.com. It is for kids through twelfth grade, though I suspect not a few adults would find it a good refresher. The entire program is given over the computer at the student's own pace. I've taken a look at the site, and it certainly looks to be a step up (a very big step up) from the CCD classes I took."

"The web address is http://www.catechismclass.com"

~ Karl Keating, in Karl Keating's E-Letter (Tues., 8/31/04)

Chesterton: "Most Americans are born drunk ..."

"Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing."

~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Fr. Louis Bouyer on the New Mass

Fr. Louis Bouyer (1903- ), a former Lutheran pastor who converted to the Catholic Faith and went on to become a leading Catholic theologian, liturgical historian, and author of the acclaimed classic, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer (pictured left), was initially invited to participate in the project of reforming the liturgy as mandated by the Second Vatican Council. Soon he became alarmed, however, that those involved in the project were recklessly exceeding the Council's mandate by imposing a radical liturgical experiment upon Roman Rite Catholics under the pontificate of Pope Paul VI. He observed:

"... the Catholic liturgy has been overthrown under the pretext of rendering it more compatible with the contemporary outlook ..." [Fr. Louis Bouyer, Religieux et clercs contre Dieu (Paris, 1975), p. 12.]

"The Roman Canon, as it is today, goes back to Gregory the Great. There is not, in the East or in the West a Eucharistic prayer remaining in use to this day, that can boast of such antiquity. In the eyes not only of the Orthodox, but of Anglicans and even those Protestants who have still to some extent, a feeling for tradition, to jettison it would be a rejection of any claim on the part of the Roman Church to represent the true Catholic Church....

"Unless we are blind, we must even state bluntly that what we see looks less like the hoped-for regeneration of Catholicism than its accelerated decomposition." [Fr. Louis Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism (Franciscan Herald Press, 1969), p. 3]

Bouyer is also well-known for his book, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, a book appreciative of his Protestant background, but arguing that the positive insights of Protestantism can only be realized provided they are grounded in the living tradition and magisterial authority of the Catholic Church.

Price of Kerry's book drops further

The Amazon.com price for a used copy of John Kerry's Vietnam book, THE NEW SOLDIER, which he has forbidden his publisher to reprint, was $2,475.00 last Friday (see my report). Yesterday it fell to $899.00. Today it is going for $699.00. Perhaps people are catching wind of the fact that the whole thing is available online.

Allen Keyes on same-sex "marriage"

Benjamin Blosser of Ad Limina Apostolorum posted the following entry last Friday (August 27, 2004), which I quote in full: "Good, faithful, and conservative friends of mine have written off [Allen] Keyes (pictured left) as a political vigilante, a moral demagogue, and utterly unelectable. Perhaps there's some truth there. But he seems to be the only one in the Republican Party who has the capacity to intellectually and substantively reflect upon the issues involved, and the philosophical bases of the conclusions he has come to, rather than fumbling through a 'policy-by-the-polls' approach or a crude reactionism. Listen to him weigh in on homosexual marriage:

"When you talk about those rights endowed by God and you talk about issues of affirmative action or any other issues, one of the core principles as it relates to the notions of natural law is the idea, as you well know, that you cannot be judged for those things which you are powerless to affect - gender, race and so on. If, in fact, as some scientific studies suggest, that being homosexual is, in fact, biologically determined, what then would be wrong with granting rights, and even the right to marry?"

"First, no study has made such a determination. . . . And I say that unequivocally. I've looked at the question many times. Second, we are all in a certain sense genetically and biologically predisposed to a kind of sexual promiscuity. We want to engage and indulge our sexual appetites in ways that have no respect for basic human requirements, conventions, family responsibilities and so forth. That's not just true of homosexual people. That's true of heterosexual people. Healthy, red-blooded males who are sexually attracted to every attractive woman they see, and vice versa.'"

"We as human beings cannot assert that our sexual drive is uncontrollable. If we do, civilization is ended. These are not things we can't control. Our passions are precisely subject to our moral will and our rationality. That's what makes us human. So if you're going to tell me that the sexual impulse of anybody -- not just homosexuals -- is uncontrollable and you've got to do it, then you have removed us from the realm of human moral choice and you have consigned us to the realm of instinctive necessity and animal nature. And we are not there. I will not deny our humanity."

"So I think that in this area as in all the areas of passion: our anger, our greed, our resentment, our jealousy -- these are all passions that can be very strong in us but which we know must be disciplined and regulated by our moral will for the sake of conscience and human community. And we have to expect that of one another. Do you realize that the very idea of freedom and self-government is absurd if we are, in fact, subject to uncontrollable passions? Then we're not free. We're slaves to our passions. But that's not so. We believe in this country, in liberty, in . . . true moral choice. And that moral choice is possible with respect to sexual action to such a degree you don't even have to engage in sexual activity. You can refrain from it altogether, if you think that is required by the dictates of moral conscience. And that capacity shouldn't be denied in any human being. And I don't think it's a question of homosexual or heterosexual. It's a question of humanity."

I mean, come on, the man talks like he's reading from a Thomistic manual on moral theology. (Courtesy of My Domestic Church.)"

Padre Pio, "Obi Wan Kenobi" on the New Mass

The late, great Sir Alec Guinness (1914-2000) (pictured right), who played Obi Wan Kenobi in the original Star Wars cinematic trilogy, always reminded me of the recently canonized Catholic saint and stigmatist, St. Padre Pio (1918-1968) (pictured left), famous for his miraculous discernment of the hearts of those who came to him for Confession from all over Italy during his lifetime. Though Guinness was English and outlived the Italian Padre Pio by thirty-two years, the two were contemporaries for most of their lives and shared not only a profound devotion to their Catholic Faith, but a profound devotion to the traditional Latin Mass of the Roman Rite.

When Padre Pio, even before the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, heard that a New Mass (Novus Ordo) was being prepared, he immediately wrote to Pope Paul VI requesting that he be dispensed from the liturgical experiment and permitted to continue celebrating the Mass according to the traditional rite of St. Pius V. When Cardinal Bacci came to bring him the authorization, he heard Padre Pio mutter, "For pity sake, end the Council quickly!" Padre Pio's response to the conciliar euphoria and promise of a "new springtime in the Church," was to declare: "In this time of darkness, let us pray. Let us do penance for the elect." ("Padre Pio: on Spirituality, Vatican II, and the Novus Ordo Missae")

The deeply private Sir Alec Guinness (a convert to Catholicism), for his part, went on record to say:

"Much water has flown under the Tiber's bridges, carrying away splendor and mystery from Rome since the Pontificate of Pius XII.... [T]he banalities and translations which have ousted the sonerous Latin and Greek are of a supermarket quality which is quite unacceptable. Hand shaking and embarrassed smiles or smirks have replaced the older courtesies: kneeling is out, queuing is in, and the general tone is like BBC radio broadcast for tiny tots...." (Joseph Pearce, Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000].)

Price of Kerry's book drops

The Amazon.com price for a used copy of John Kerry's Vietnam book that he has forbidden his publisher to reprint has dropped from $2,475.00 (as I reported last Friday) to $899.00 today. Evidently a couple more used copies have been discovered and submitted for sale, deflating the original price.

Imagine forgetting what sex is!

Imagine something as absurd as this: a whole generation that has forgotten what sex is, a whole generation that has forgotten what penises and vaginas are for! This is essentially the thesis of Christopher West's book (pictured left), Good News About Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions About Catholic Teaching. And where does West go for his information about the true meaning of sex? To the writings of Pope John Paul II -- What could seem more absurd! What could a celibate old man who's never had sex tell this generation of sexually active, horny kids about sex! The surprising thing, though, is the Pope has written so much about sex, huge volumes with titles like The Theology of the Body, as well as phenomenological analyses of the sexual urge in volumes like Love and Responsibility, and much, much more.

Why should anyone today pay any attention to this stuff? First of all, take an inventory of your own experience. If you're into "recreational sex," ask yourself just how fulfilling you find your relationships. Girls trade sexual favors in exchange for what they hope will be love. Guys trade the expectation of a long-term relationship for short-term sexual favors. Just how satisfying is that in the long run? I knew a young woman at Lenoir-Rhyne College who was sleeping around with nine guys, and that was when she was already engaged to marry another guy, also a Lenoir-Rhyne College student. One of the other guys having sex with this girl was a fraternity brother of the guy she was engaged to marry. Is it any wonder that student relationships become miserable and tortured with guilt, resentment, and recriminations? Is it any wonder that one out of two marriages ends in divorce? Who understands what 'marriage' is anymore anyway?

Second, if you're married, ask yourself how fulfilling your sex life and love life are. You've heard all the jokes: "Question: How do you paralyze a woman from the waist down? Answer: Marry her." Why the proverbial "headaches" that wives get? There are reasons for all of these things. Men easily divorce sex from love and tend to focus on performance with the aim of personal satisfaction. I know of a guy, in fact, who says that the only 'meaning' in life, as far as he is concerned, is packed into the experience of explosive sex -- surfing that cusp of arousal just on the edge of orgasm for as long a possible, perhaps for an hour, and then plunging into explosive ejaculations and cuming like a rapist -- with a different woman every night. And this guy is supposedly 'married'! Women naturally feel used when approached by men in this manner. Men will sometimes talk about "getting lucky" at home. Women will sometimes use sexual favors within marriage to get what they want. But either way, they're just using one another, and they're missing the most wonderful, exciting, fulfilling thing in the world as far as sex and love are concerned. And they don't have the first clue to the meaning and power of sex as it was meant to be -- harnessed to genuine love.

But none of this will mean anything to you until you begin to re-educate yourself and re-program your instincts. People today are sometime accused of being sex-obsessed, of thinking always and only about sex and nothing but sex. The truth, however, is that people don't think enough about sex: they no longer respect it, because they no longer understand it, and so they don't even know how to begin thinking about it as it was meant to be.

Christopher West offers an easily accessible introduction to the sexual dysfunction suffered by most of us today, and to the solutions that lie close at hand -- not easy solutions, but clear solutions that require the cultivation of new habits and disciplines, which can slowly but surely begin the process of healing and mending our souls that have been disintegrated by destructive habits foisted upon us by the illusions of contemporary society. Lust must be overcome by genuine love. Sex must be harnessed to the integrating power of genuine love. What any of this means, though, will not be immediately apparent in a society where commercial advertizements approaches soft porn, and where masturbation, recreational sex, and unbridled sexual experimentation are accepted as 'natural' and 'healthy.' Things are not what they seem.

For starters, I recommend chapters 1, 4 & 5 of West's book. Beyond that, you can read more online here. Finally, here is a prayer by Christopher West:

"This is a woman [man] in the image and likeness of God, never to be looked upon as an object for my gratification. Lord Jesus, grant me the grace to see the image of your glory in the beauty of this woman [man], and order my sexual desires toward the truth of love. I renounce any tendency within me to use others for my own pleasure, and I unite my sufferings with yours on the cross. Amen." (Christopher West, Good News About Sex and Marriage, p. 83)

Kerry's Vietnam book, which he doesn't want you to see

The picture to the left is the ORIGINAL cover of John Kerry's book THE NEW SOLDIER. John Kerry's friends, the so called Vietnam Veterans Against the War were mocking the famous Iwo Jima scene photographed during the Second World War (notice the inverted flag). 6,825 American boys died in WWII to plant that flag on Iwo Jima. Kerry wrote THE NEW SOLDIER soon after returning from Vietnam. The book is out of print. Kerry will not allow the publisher to reprint it. There's is one used copy of the book available at Amazon.com going for $2,475.00. But you can read the whole book online, complete with pictures, for free here. To make an informed decision on November 2nd, you need to have all the facts.

In the Epilogue to THE NEW SOLDIER, Kerry writes:

"And so a New Soldier has returned to America, to a nation torn apart by the killing we were asked to do. But, unlike veterans of other wars and some of this one, the New Soldier does not accept the old myths. We will not quickly join those who march on Veteran's Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the 'greater glory of the United States'.... We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.... We will not uphold traditions which decorously memorialize that which was base and grim...."

Ratzinger on protestantizing liturgists and their repudiation of Trent

Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, edited by Alcuin Reid, OSB (Farnborough, Hampshire, UK: St. Michael's Abbey Press, 2003) offers many revealing insights into Cardinal Ratzinger's views on the contemporary liturgical scene. Some of his remarks are startling in their implications. For example, commenting on the views of the liturgical revisionists during and after the Second Vatican Council, he remarks:

"A sizeable party of Catholic liturgists seems to have practically arrived at the conclusion that Luther, rather than Trent, was substantially right in the sixteenth century debate.... [O]ne can detect much the same position in the post-conciliar discussions on the priesthood."

Again, he refers to theologians who share Luther's opinion that it is "the most appalling horror and damnable impiety to speak of the sacrifice of the Mass," and remarks:

"It is only against this background of the effective denial of the authority of Trent, that the bitterness of the struggle against allowing the celebration of Mass according to the 1962 Missal, after the liturgical reform, can be understood. The possibility of so celebrating constitutes the most intolerable contradiction of the opinion of those who believe that the faith in the Eucharist formulated by Trent has lost its value."

Again, Ratzinger observes:

"The serious nature of these theories comes from the fact that frequently they pass immediately into practice. The thesis according to which it is the community itself which is the subject of the liturgy, serves as an authorization to manipulate the liturgy according to each individual's understanding of it. So-called new discoveries and the forms which follow from them, are diffused with an astonishing rapidity and with a degree of conformity which has long ceased to exist where the norms of ecclesiastical authority are concerned. Theories, in the area of the liturgy, are transformed rapidly today into practice, and practice, in turn, creates or destroys ways of behaving and thinking.

"...Trent did not make a mistake; it leant for support on the solid foundation of the Tradition of the Church. It remains a trustworthy standard.

"One thing should be clear: the liturgy must not be a terrain for experimenting with theological hypotheses. Too rapidly, in these last decades, the ideas of experts have entered into liturgical practice, often also bypassing ecclesiastical authority, through the channel of commissions which have been able to diffuse at an international level their 'consensus of the moment,' and practically turn it into laws for liturgical activity. The liturgy derives its greatness from what it is, not from what we make of it. Our participation is, off course, necessary, but as a means of inserting ourselves humbly into the spirit of the liturgy, and of serving Him Who is the true subject of the liturgy: Jesus Christ. The liturgy is not an expression of the consciousness of the community which, in any case, is diffuse and changing. It is revelation received in faith and prayer, and its measure is consequently the faith of the Church, in which revelation is received."

Read more below:

• "The Novus Ordo: a workshop of perpetual innovation?" (click here)
• "Vatican II should not have ignored Pius XII's Mediator Dei" (click here)
• "Where art thou, O liturgical beauty and holiness?" (click here)
• "On the Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum and the institutionalization of abuses in the Novus Ordo" (click here)

Questions the press should ask Senator Kerry

Peter Kirsanow has an article entitled "Media-Ready Crib Sheet: Twenty Questions for John Kerry" (National Review Online, August 26, 2004). He writes:

"Senator Kerry has been pretty successfully avoiding the media, but sometime between now and November 2 he'll have to sit down for a far-ranging interview on a program other than The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Thus far, most Kerry interviews have been less-than-penetrating (one recent poll even indicates that nearly a third of the electorate knows very little about John Kerry) and certainly not hostile (in comparison, see, among other things, President Bush's press conference of last spring). Bill Clinton was subjected to far-greater scrutiny by this time in the 1992 election cycle. Kerry's legendary policy flip-flops as well as his campaign's shifting stories related to the current controversy compel questioning at least as tough as that directed at Kerry's critics."

Check out Kirsanow's questions. Dynamite!

Yoder family nicknames

Some of my readers will know the progeny of Dr. J. Larry Yoder and his wife Marianne. I refer, of course, to their three sons, Nathan, Joshua, and David, all now graduates of Lenoir-Rhyne College. If, on one occasion or another, we were to hear them refer to one another, respectively, as "Narcus," "Oshi," or "Shrava," we might wonder what on earth they meant. These are all abbreviated forms of terms of endearment that evolved in the usage of their father during their childhood. Why they took these particular forms, don't ask me (though their father, Dr. Larry Yoder may be willing to tell you if you're really nice to him). The Yoder boys' childhood names in their entirety, I have learned, are as follows:

• Nathan Yoder was "Ninga-Nooga-Nathan-Narcus-de Barfasoi."
• Joshua Yoder was known as "Oshi-nazzer-fenuzzer-poo."
• David Yoder was "Dava-shrava-octarava-inga-stinga-woo."

So if you happen across Nathan Yoder, who is teaching two ethics courses this fall at Lenoir-Rhyne College, you just might say to him "Hello Professor Narcus," and just see what happens. Or, if you run across Joshua Yoder, currently working for the Hickory Daily Record, you might just try greeting him with a friendly "Hey there, Oshi!" Or, if you value your life, you might just forget I ever told you this.

Novus Ordo: a workshop of perpetual innovation?

Fr. Joseph Gelineau (pictured left), who has been described by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini (the revisionist chief architect of the Novus Ordo) as one of the "great masters of the international liturgical world" following the Second Vatican Council, testifies to the fact that the liturgical revolution following the Council went far beyond what the Council Fathers intended, when he wrote:

"It would be false to identify this liturgical renewal with the reform of rites decided on by Vatican II. This reform goes back much further and goes forward far beyond the conciliar prescriptions. The liturgy is a permanent workshop." (Demain la Liturgie, p. 10, n. 18, emphasis added)

This is the same Gelineau, it may be recalled, who, without a shred of regret, declared: "the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed." (Op cit., pp. 9-10)

Cardinal Ratzinger, though animated by radically different, non-revisionist sympathies, draws quite similar conclusions:

"Today we might ask: Is there a Latin Rite anymore? Certainly there is no awareness of it. To most people the liturgy appears to be rather something for the individual congregation to arrange." (Feast of Faith, p. 84)

Vatican II should not have ignored Pius XII's Mediator Dei

Pius XII's magnificent encyclical on the Sacred Liturgy, Mediator Dei, was acclaimed as the magna charta of the liturgical movement when it appeared in 1947, according to Fr. John W. Mole, O.M.I. (Whither the Roman Rite? p. 32). Yet, for whatever reason, the Fathers of Vatican II apparentely did not mention this encyclical even once in their Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. This is particularly odd, given the fact that Pius II's encyclical contains important warnings against precisely the kinds of abuses that would follow in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.

Take, for example, the argument used to justify many of the changes introduced since the Council -- the argument that by standing instead of kneeling during the Eucharistic prayers, or by receiving Communion in the hand instead of on the tongue, the modern liturgical architects, far from introducing harmful innovations, were simply restoring ancient customs from the early Church. Here is what Pius XII had to say about the matter in Mediator Dei:

"The liturgy of early ages is worthy of veneration; but an ancient custom is not to be considered better, either in itself or in relation to later times and circumstances, just because it has the flavor of antiquity. More recent liturgical rites are also worthy of reverence and respect, because they too have been introduced under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, who is with the Church in all ages unto the consummation of the world. These too are means which the august Bride of Christ uses to stimulate and foster the holiness of men.... The desire to restore everything indiscriminately to its ancient condition is neither wise nor praiseworthy. It would be wrong, for example, to want the altar restored to its ancient form of table; to want black eliminated from liturgical colors, and pictures and statues eliminated from our churches, to require cruicifixes that do not represent the bitter sufferings of the divine Redeemer; to condemn polyphonic chants, even though they conform to the regulations of the Apostolic See.... This attitude is an attempt to revive the 'archaeologism' to which the pseudo-Synod of Pistoia (1794) gave rise; it seeks also to re-introduce the many pernicious errors which led to the synod and resulted from it, and which the Church in her capacity of watchful guardina of 'the deposit of faith' entrusted ito her by her divine Founder has rightly condemned. It is a wicked movement, that tends to paralyze the sanctifying and salutary action by which the liturgy leads the children of adoption on the path to their heavenly Father.... See that your flocks are not deceived ... by a mania for restoring primitive usages in the liturgy." (emphasis added)