Category Archives: Catholic Tradition

Not fear but love

10 Friday Apr 2020

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I was struck, watching the Stations of the Cross live-streamed from Shrewsbury Cathedral by the reflection that it is not fear of Hell but love of Christ which makes me repent of my sins. The horrors and agonies of crucifixion are things on which few of us wish to reflect. As Fr Marcus Walker reminds us, most of the art depicting the pivotal event of this Friday erases the darkness and the pain. Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for rebels and slaves, and the portrayal of it in Richard Harrison’s Golgotha is gruesome; it is a picture of pain; as Fr Marcus puts it, “there is nothing else there.” It is not a painting one could “like,” but it is one which commands attention because it recalls to us the love that God has for us.

I pray, daily, that God may “spare us from the fires of hell,” but those “fires,” and the fear they engender, would be a poor foundation of faith. They would not help in those moments when one finally imitates Jesus and asks “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” What helps draw me to repentance is the knowledge of God’s love. What hurts most is the knowledge that He hung and suffered there because of my sins. What makes me rejoice most is that He did it for love of me, and that through that love He set me free. I am free. I am free to worship Him – or not. And why should I not?

Though there are times when the darkness hides Him, the Light is never extinguished. Though I cannot always hear Him, His voice is never silent. Though there are times He seems hidden, that is as it should and must be. We take from our society an impatience and a desire to have what we want and to have it now. So, when we make God in our image and mutter that He is not there, it is we who are not there. We are not there attending to the message of the silence or the mystery of what we see only as through a glass darkly.

But He is there. He is there, not least today. Not least when we pray the Stations of the Cross. Not least when we contemplate the Tree on which the Prince of Glory died. Our richest gain, we count but loss, and we pour contempt on all our pride. What are we that He should have gone through this pain for us? Yet He did so. Whatever we suffer, He has suffered. In the spaces and the silences we should reflect on that fact and upon the message of the Cross.

This day is “Good” because it witnesses, as nothing else could, to what draws us to God. St John, as ever, said it best: “ In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

I wish all our readers and commentators a holy Easter, and as today, we enter into the darkness, let us travel towards the light of Sunday together in hope and prayer.

Closed for business?

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Faith, Lent, Prayers

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Britain is in lockdown except for “essential services;” these, apparently, do not include those of the Church of England and the Catholic Church. For many this is not only counter-intuitive, it runs contrary to the priestly duty to be with those in need; the result has been a good deal of criticism of the “leadership.” Knowing, in my own limited sphere, how easy it is to criticise “leadership,” I pause for thought before going in that direction.

I can imagine how hedged about with caution from “legal” and “HR” the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Nichols are. Imagine the outcry if a Church service led to the spreading of the Coronavirus, or even if a Church left open for private prayer were to do so? Unlikely? Perhaps. Impossible? Would you bet your life and reputation on it? Hence, I am sure, the advice offered to priests. But, even if one takes the harsh view that Church leaders have failed to lead, nothing should be allowed to detract from the efforts they, and all bishops, are making to ensure that the Churches are there, virtually, for people.

The former editor of the Catholic Herald, Luke Coppen, has a piece in the current edition of the Spectator on the subject of whether the closure of Churches will have an adverse effect on Christianity in this country. It is easy enough to imagine why it might.

Once out of the habit of going to Church, will people go back to it? Catholics, who have always been told that missing Mass is a sin may, seeing a dispensation granted so readily, decide that it can continue post Coronavirus. But, on the other hand, there has been an upsurge in online searches for “prayer,” and, not that you’d know it from the press, but the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Facebook page has an excellent series of talks on the subject, whilst he, Cardinal Nichols and Rabbi Mirvis have an excellent and thought-provoking discussion here. No doubt there will be those who will reach for the smelling salts at such news, but if they would stop and listen, they might learn something.

On this, a Maundy Thursday like no other, when we commemorate the institution of the Holy Eucharist, and when we remember Jesus washing the feet of the Apostles, we are drawn, ineluctably to His command of love and service. At this time, when our Churches are closed, we can still come together in prayer and remember, that for all Catholics, where Mass is celebrated Christ is present, and so is the community of believers.

So let us pray for all priests and religious, not least for our leaders whom it is easy to criticise. All do God’s work as they can. And I hope that a former Anglican might be forgiven for invoking the General Confession from the Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father;
We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.
We have offended against thy holy laws.
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;
And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;
And there is no health in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
Spare thou them, O God, who confess their faults.
Restore thou those who are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

Blindness in the early afternoon

05 Sunday Apr 2020

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In Little Gidding, Eliot describes the way in which the “brief sun flames the ice, on ponds and ditches, /in windless cold that is the heart’s heat/ reflecting in a watery mirror/ A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.” The season is “midwinter spring,” one well-known to Englishmen and women, where time is suspended “between pole and tropic.” But the poet is also referring to something else with which we are all familiar – that spiritual lukewarmness from which many of us suffer

Yesterday we considered our deafness to God; today I want to consider our blindness. In this time of trial how many of us have our eyes focussed on the news, and on each other? There is, at least to me, something shocking in the rush so many make to judgment. From the policeman telling people sitting in the park that they cannot do so, to those people themselves, congregating in numbers which rightly give cause for concern, from the person doing his or her best to comply with regulations thinly sketched, to those twitching their curtains and reporting their neighbours for going out “uneccessarily.” The cry to close down open spaces is easily made by thosen notn occupying small apartments with young children. All around we can see a rush to judgment.

We are not told that God is mercy or judgment, we are told that He is “love.”  Indeed, St Johngoes as far as saying that the identifying feature of the Christian is the love we have for each other. This is sometimes interpreted as meaning that Christians have love for other Christians, but frankly, even if one accepts this narrower definition, we have to ask how many of us would be found guilty if such love were a crime; would there be enough evidence against us? There would if it were a matter of our rush to judgement; there would if it were a mater of preferring our own view to those of others; there would if it were a matter of virtue-signalling (at least in our own judgement of virtue. Yet, as Eliot reminds us, the “heart’s heat” is “windless cold.” It is that “glare” which blinds us.

We see not through agape, that love God has for all His creation, but through our own eyes. Little Gidding was where the proud Stuart, King Charles I, fled after his defeat at Naseby by the Puritans. It was, for him, a moment of humiliation to which a mixture of stubborn pride and principal had brought him. It was significant that he retreated to the religious community at Little Gidding.

Often accused of being a closet Romanist (enough to endear him to some of us), Charles I was an avowed Arminian, that is he supported those within the Church of England who emphasised continuity with its Catholic past, exemplified in particular by the episcopate. Had Charles been willing to compromise on this point, he might have saved his own life. That he did not do so is one reason why the Church of England recognises him as a Saint and Martyr. Like so many saints and martyrs, his career was one marred by sin, not least the sin of pride; but at his end, he died for something greater than himself. At the last, his blindess was lifted.

It took a greater trial than most of us have to bear to open King Charles’ eyes, but a crisis is an opportunity to turn our eyes toward God. On this, strangest of Palm Sundays, let us ponder what acts of love we might perform which would mark us as God’s. We know from the history of Christianity that it has often been the Christian response to such crises which has, indeed, convinced many of the truth that God is love. Can we, in our time, imitate what our forebears did?

 

 

The silent God?

04 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Newman, poetry, Prayers

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“Thus religious truth is neither light nor darkness, but both together; it is like the dim view of a country seen in the twilight, which forms half extricated from the darkness, with broken lines and isolated masses.”

Religion without dogma made no sense to Newman; without that it was “mere sentiment” – and that was a foundation of sand. But he was well aware of the limits of humanity and acknowledged that the application of the intellect to religious matters might well produce a diminution of faith. It was, he commented, as though it was assumed that theologians were “too intellectual to be spiritual” and thus “more occupied with the truths of doctrine than with its reality.”

For Catholics the Church is the rock upon which dogma rests; we accept the historical reality of the Revelation it transmits to us. But intellect alone will not suffice; that is where prayer and devotional practices are needed; we do not worship by brain-power. For Newman,“Revealed religion should be especially poetical – and it is so in fact.” Prose was inadequate to convey the Truth of revealed religion, but, without an Authority to pronounce on revelation and tradition, private judgement would simply lead to the sort of chaos he came to discern within the Church of England in his own day. Thus, the mixture of light and dark in the quotation which heads up this essay.

Although we are each the subject of our own experiences, and whilst Christ came to save each of us, our egos are but a vehicle when it comes to understanding that Christ Himself is at the centre of our Faith. The central truth of the Christian Faith is the Incarnation. God became man and died that we should have eternal life. And yet knowing this, we can, nonetheless, in times such as this lose sight of this and, in despair, wonder why God is silent in the face of our prayers for healing and safety.

Much prose has been given over to the problem of why God allows mankind to suffer – the technical term is theodicy. But the intervention which speaks most to my heart is the poem, “Denaill” by George Herbert:

When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears;
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse:
My breast was full of fears
And disorder

This is no intellectual exercise, it is the heart-felt anguish of the poet who agonises at what he feels is God’s refusal of his prayerful requests. He feels abandoned, as though his soul has no mooring. It is only in close reading that we see that the poet is, himself, in “denial”. Each stanza concludes with a last line which does not rhyme – except for the last one which concludes:

 O cheer and tune my heartless breast,
Defer no time;
That so thy favours granting my request,
They and my mind may chime,
And mend my rhym

Which, of course, is a rhyme. God has answered, it is the poet who has been in denial. God’s answer may not be the one we expect; it maybe that we are not listening.

We are made in God’s image; but we are not God. How much we long for a God whom we can understand, as well as worship, how often we think that God is absent; but how often to we think that it is we who are absent, we who are deaf?

T.S. Eliot, as so often, expresses it best in the first part of Little Gidding:

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

We have to put away our worldly concerns. Our intellects can rest secure on the rock of the dogma proclaimed by the Church. What should concern us is prayer, and even the best of prayers is but the antechamber to our encounter with God. We intersect with the past and the present, the living and dead, and above all with Him whose Kingdom shall have no end.

God is not silent; we lack the ears with which to hear Him if we think so.

Acts of quiet heroism

02 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Education, Faith

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As might be expected of it, our news media remains in “gotcha” mode, and it is swift to report acts of selfishness and greed in this pandemic. It makes, and rightly so, an exception for Health workers and those who keep the shops running; but it could, and should do more to celebrate what one might call “acts of quiet heroism.” It is in that vein that I will write about more parochial matters than usual.

Two weeks ago I came home, as usual from University; well, not quite “as usual.” The railway termini I traverse were eerily quiet, and when I bought my usual bite to eat for the train, the cheerful man at the kiosk told me he would not be working on the morrow as “business is right down.” Little did we know then what was to come, though, having a portent of it, I had taken care to pack a case as though I were going home for a vacation; though I knew that was was coming would be far from that.

Like most universities, mine exists to teach, and that teaching is mostly done face-to-face. My colleagues love their teaching and give so much to our students; but was it possible to replicate this on-line? It was with that conundrum that a few of us had been struggling for the previous two weeks. The previous day we had announced that we would be moving to on-line teaching after the week-end. It was a bold promise – could we keep it? Did it matter? This was a pandemic, surely the only thing that mattered was that people were “safe?”

As a Catholic university we celebrate our “ethos”; this would test it – and with it, us. A major restructure two years previously had done something odd for our times, it had aimed at the principle of subsidiarity – letting academics have as much freedom as possible to decide how they did what they did best. Would that survive in this time of trial? How would staff rise to the occasion? How would students respond? It was not as though most of us were adepts at this on-line learning lark. The Senior team had been meeting daily to plan for what was coming – but all I could tell my colleagues was to hold their breath and wait to see what the first week of on-line teaching would bring. As things turned out, it was the dog that did not bark in the night.

Assuredly not everything technical went smoothly, but something more important did – the spirit of generosity which we pride ourselves on cultivating. There was plenty to ignite that fractious spirit which rejoices in pointing out the shortcomings of others, and which asks why x or y was not thought of in advance, as well as more than enough material for anyone who wanted to blame someone else. None of that happened; that spirit proved to be a damp squib. Not only did colleagues prove themselves even more innovative and adaptable than even I had expected (and some of the examples we have collected of good practice are simply amazing), they were generous in mutual aid, good temper and generosity of spirit. If, as they do, times like this test whether you live your values, then colleagues – and students – came through.

Conscious that not all our students would have laptops, our IT team sourced and supplied them to those who needed it; its members went above and beyond the call of duty in helping staff and students. Our students mucked in an got on with it, responding to the evident enthusiasm and “can do” spirit of their teachers. I have never felt so proud of leading my teams.

For those students who had to stay in residence, the cleaning and catering staff continued to provide the usual service – albeit at a distance. Some of us even learned what 2 metres looks like! The security staff were there as ever, doing what they do best – providing a reassuring presence for anyone who needed it, knowing that colleagues in Counselling and Student Welfare were on hand for those who needed it.

What emerged warmed the heart. We really  were a community. We pulled together with but one thought – that our students needed us and needed to continue with their studies. From the lowest to highest in the hierarchy we all served, doing whatever was necessary. We did not simply our duty, but whatever the spirit of service demanded. I had wondered what a Catholic university could look like – and amidst the fog of war I saw the vision emerge. Multiple acts of quiet heroism motivated by the ethos which tells us that everyone matters, and that there is no act of service which is too much. The chapel may have had to close, but we, those of all faiths and none, were out there evidencing the spirit of a Catholic university.

Nor, of course, are we the only ones. As I talk (remotely, of course) to colleagues elsewhere, I see the same story. Universities (and their managers) often get a bad press, and sometimes it is even deserved, but what I see (remotely) of my own university and others, makes me want to send up a quiet prayer of gratitude.

I miss walking the historic grounds of my university, and I miss my colleagues and the endless cups of coffee while we try to put things to rights, and I miss the students and their enthusiasm. But I know that these things will be there to come back to. But I know something even better, that we have drawn together as a community in a way we can all take pride in. What faces us yet, we cannot fully know, but with such a spirit, I dare hope that our patroness – the Queen of Heaven – will not think we have failed to rise to the occasion.

The Church and ourselves

30 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Pope

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What an astonishing institution the papacy is, that it can bring us so intimately close to the people of the seemingly distant 6th century, & allow us to feel a bond of communion with Rome and Italy in a very different period of agony.

Thus, Tom Holland on Twitter a few days ago.

He is of course correct. There is no other institution which can take us back to the days of the Roman Empire. For Catholics it takes us back even further, to St Peter himself. And if the Church is Eternal and bears the imprint of it Founder, Christ, it also bears the mark of its first leader. In that, it brings it closer to us all.

Is it perfect? No more than we are. Is it, like St Peter, sometimes impulsive, sometimes failing to understand the first time? Well, so are we. Does it mean well but fail to follow through at times? Well, in that it is like us. Nor is this surprising. We are not yet what we shall become through Grace, and whilst the Church is protected from mortal error, it is not, in this world, free from erring, any more than was St Peter. The great error of clericalism was to forget that bishops and priests are also like St Peter too; they can err and stray from the way as can we all. It was the failure to face that fact which allowed the abuse scandal to continue for so long.

Some will object here. We all have in our mind’s eye the Church as it should be; perhaps we also have in the same place an image of how we should be: one day it will be so, through God’s Grace. One reason I can’t join in the arguments about the current Pope is that either the Church is what it is, that is founded by Christ Himself, or it isn’t. If it is then we have His promise that even the Gates of Hell will not prevail against it. If it isn’t, then as St Paul put it in a related context, our faith is in vain. There is no middle position.

I find, and always have found, St Peter a reassuring companion. No organization founded by men would have identified such a fallible figure as its first leader; or if it had, it would never have written about him the way the Gospels do. He is hot-headed. He fails to understand what Jesus is saying, He is vainglorious, promising to stand by Jesus whatever befalls Him, and then denying Him when the heat is on. Peter is all of us. Yet despite that, or maybe because of that, Jesus chose him as the leader of His Church.

Jesus did not write a book of instructions, neither did He have an angel dictate His thoughts to the Evangelists who wrote what we recognise as Holy Scripture. What ‘we’ recognise is what the Church has canonised, and we read it in the light of the teaching of the Church. No merely human institution would have proceeded in such a way, but then, although run by human beings, the Church is not merely a human institution. It is of Divine origin and its purposes of those of God Himself.

It is this knowledge which makes us anxious about what happens in the Church. We have, all of us, our views of which parts of our rich heritage matter, and we wish to see that emphasised; being human, we can do that to the detriment of Christian charity. Blind to the beam in our own eye, how quick we can be to recognise the mote in the eye of others. Anxious about the ark of our Salvation, how quick we can be to complain when others seem, in our eyes, to be endangering it. Being human, how quick we can be to forget Christ’s promise about the Church prevailing even against the Gates of Hell.

It is, in its own way, reassuring to see how like St Peter we all are. It is reassuring because, for all his failings, Christ forgave Him and restored him. We know so little about his later life, but a later story about the end of his life on earth has about it the ring of truth.

The Apochryphal Acts of Peter, finds him fleeing Rome during the Neronian persecution; a perfectly sensible thing to do. Then, at a crossroads,where the Appian Way meets the Via Ardeatina, he meets our risen Lord.

“Quo vadis?” Peter asks, to which Jesus replies:

“Romam vado iterum crucifigi.” [I am going to Rome to be crucified again].

Peter then does what we have come to expect of him by now. He turns back to certain death in solidarity with Jesus. To the end he is an example to us all.

The God who is love, the Son who died that we might be saved, the Church which He founded and which is the barque of St Peter want only one thing; that we should turn from sin, repent, and be renewed in Christ Jesus. If this were easy or simple, Christ need not have died for us. If we were capable of doing this without Grace, we should have no need of the Church, we could rely on our reading of the Bible and our feelings. But like Peter and the Apostles, left to ourselves we should err and stray like the lost sheep we are.

Like Peter, we will go astray, but like him, if we listen to the Lord and pay heed to the Church He founded, then we can see the route to our salvation.

During this time of trial each of us has the opportunity, as this Lent draws to an unprecedented close, to decide “quo vadis?” Let us pray for the discernment to behave as St Peter did.

Mary’s Dowry

29 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Marian devotion

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Today, at noon (UK time) England will be rededicated to Our Lady. The illustration above is the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham. As long-time readers of this blog will know, Walsingham is close to the heart of Jessica, who founded this blog and who has written most movingly about it in pieces to which links can be found here.

In the Middle Ages, Walsingham – ‘England’s Nazareth’ was a Marian shrine of a size which rivalled Compostella. It owed its origin to Richeldis de Faverches the Saxon wife of a Norman lord. Richeldis had a deep faith in God and devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and was well known for her good works.

In 1061, Richeldis was privileged to have a vision of the Blessed Virgin. She was transported, in her vision, to Nazareth and saw the holy house where the Holy Family lived. Our Lady made it clear she wanted it rebuilt in England’s green and pleasant land:

“Do all this unto my special praise and honour. And all who are distressed or in need, let them seek me here in that little house you have made me in Walsingham. To all that seek me there I will give my help. And there at Walsingham in this little house shall be held in remembrance the great joy of my salutation when Saint Gabriel told me that through humility, I should become the Mother of the Son of God.”

Legend has it that when the masons attempted to build the house, the ground would not yield to their spades, but that in the morning the angels had built it – as she intended.

Skilled craftsmen were commissioned  to carve a statue of Our Lady. Our Lady was enthroned on the Throne of Wisdom and crowned as the Queen of Heaven and Earth. She herself was a throne for the Christ-Child, Who was represented holding out the Gospels to the world. Her right hand pointed to Him, and He extended His arm in a double gesture of blessing and protection of His Mother. Each part of the statue was rich in symbolism, such as the seven rings on the throne standing for the Seven Sacraments, which Henry VIII defended centuries later, and the flowering lily-sceptre which she held in her right hand. It symbolised her Perpetual Virginity, and, in the teachings of the Cistercian saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, that She is the Flower of the Rod of Jesse. Miracles of healing were performed there from the start.

In 1381, in the middle of the turmoil we call the “Peasants’ Revolt,” King Richard II dedicated his realm to Our Lady in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey; this meant that England was given over to her protection. The prayer of Entrustment for 2020 can be found here.

This moment has been three years in the planning, and no-one could have envisaged then the circumstances in which it will now take place. I had hoped, being in Norfolk, to be able to be there; now none of us will be.

The illustration above is the Wilton Diptych, a late medieval portable altarpiece which depicts the Dedication of England to Our Lady. It was painted toward the end of Richard’s reign, one which had seen the realm ravaged by the Plague and by civil strife; the King himself would soon be overthrown by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV, and part of whose legacy would be the rivalry between the Houses of Lancaster and York which would plunge England into years of civil strife.

It would be Bolingbroke’s son, Henry V, who would invoke the help of England’s Protectoress on the eve of Agincourt; his appeal enjoyed more success than that of his dead cousin, Richard II. Like every other king of England since its construction, Henry V visited the Holy site. The last one so to do was Henry VIII, who was responsible for its destruction during the orgy of iconoclasm which followed his break from Rome.

One effect of the Reformation and its legacy was that for hundreds of years the tradition of Marian veneration was lost in this country. No doubt in Recusant houses in half-forgotten corners of the realm Our Lady was held in reverence; but that really was a faith which could not speak its name. But the tradition was not wholly lost in Angicanism, and divines like Launcelot Andrewes, continued the ancient tradition, as I explained here.

The Oxford Movement helped create the context in which a Shrine was once more estabished at Walsingham in the late nineteenth century. In 2016 the old Slipper Chapel became a Catholic Basilica, and under the formidable Rector, Mgr. John Armitage  huge strides have been made toward making the Shrine what it was in medieval times – a centre of international pilgrimage. The Rededication was meant to mark a milestone in this process, and will do so, but not in the way planned at the time.

With England on lockdown because of the Coronavirus, everything will have to take place at a distance except for those on the ground doing the Rededication. But perhaps, as has happened elsewhere, more will follow on-line than might have done in normal times.

There will, of course, always be those who protest at Marian “idolatry,” but for faith illiteracy which seeks not to remedy its own ignorance there is no remedy. I have written elsewhere in this blog on the subject, and those who wish to rehearse the arguments can find them set out in that place. For my part, I prefer the simply piety expressed by Jessica in a moving post here.

Christ is the Word made flesh. Our Lady was chosen by God to bear Him and to raise Him, and she chose willingly to accept that responsibility; she was the gateway through which the author of our salvation entered the world. Of all of us, she is the best. What more natural sentiment could there be than to be grateful to Our Lady? What more natural reaction in times of travail could there be for the pious king than to seek her as protector for the realm? As the history of Walsignham shows, Our Lady is deeply threaded into the history of England.

So it is, in God’s Providence, that this special moment, long in the planning, takes on a significance far deeper than any of us could have imagined. As we sit in our homes in the shadow of this pestilence, after a period of political turmoil, we are all, alas, better placed to empathise with Richard II and the emotions which prompted him to the Dedication in the first place. Let us pray, in hope, for the spiritual blessings which wil follow on this act of national piety. And let us remember the Marian prayer of Pope Francis for this time:

O Mary, you shine continuously on our journey as a sign of salvation and hope.

We entrust ourselves to you, Health of the Sick.

At the foot of the Cross you participated in Jesus’ pain,

with steadfast faith.

You, Salvation of the Roman People, know what we need.

We are certain that you will provide, so that,

as you did at Cana of Galilee,

joy and feasting might return after this moment of trial.

Help us, Mother of Divine Love,

to conform ourselves to the Father’s will

and to do what Jesus tells us:

He who took our sufferings upon Himself, and bore our sorrows to bring us,

through the Cross, to the joy of the Resurrection. Amen.

We seek refuge under your protection, O Holy Mother of God.

Do not despise our pleas – we who are put to the test – and deliver us from every danger, O glorious and blessed Virgin.

Let me conclude with one of the moving prayers which forms part of the Rededication:

We your faithful people assembled here offer you this country in which we live. Once it was yours, all its children were your children and you were honoured throughout England as its Protectress and its Queen. Again do we consecrate it as your Dowry, and entrust it to your maternal care.

Apostle to the Apostles

23 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Early Church, Easter, Faith

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This happened to catch my eye over at Father Z’s. While in my tradition we don’t do Saints like the Catholics do, we do respect the stalwart in faith who have gone before us. Amongst them is Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the Risen Christ, and her Feast day was yesterday. That is why she is sometimes called the Apostle to the Apostles, Christ himself charged her with going and telling the apostles that He was risen.

Well, I gather some think that the Church has rather shortchanged her and that her reputation has been sullied. Maybe so, not my department, but I keep in mind what Jessica wrote long ago about her on NEO, my blog. It was this:

Under Jewish Law the testimony of a woman was no testimony at all. The first witness to the Risen Lord was a woman – Mary Magdalen. She was tearful. There she was, come to the tomb to anoint Him, and there was the stone moved. Her mind went where most of our minds would have gone – someone had taken Him away. That great stone had not moved itself, and dead bodies don’t walk out of tombs. The grave-clothes were bundled up and there was no trace of Jesus. Hard to imagine her feelings at the point. Only two days earlier her world had fallen apart. The man whose feet she had anointed and whom she had followed so loyally had been taken, tortured and then crucified. She knew that; she’d been there (which was more than could be said for most of those Apostles). It was over. All that remained was for her to do a final duty to the corpse. But even that was to be denied her. They had taken her Lord away.

She ran back to where the disciples were and told Peter the horrible news. Typically Peter, he ran to the tomb, and equally typically was outpaced by the younger John. But John stood at the entrance, and when Peter arrived he it was who, impulsive and brave as ever, went inside to see that the tomb was, indeed, as empty as Mary had said. The men went back home, no doubt to tell the others; Mary, as is the way of women, wanted to stay there a moment longer, perhaps to gather her thoughts, perhaps to mourn a moment alone.

She looked into the tomb again, only to be met by the most amazing sight – two angels asking her why she wept. The answer she gave echoes down the ages:  “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” As she turned away she saw a stranger, whom she took to be the gardener and asked where Jesus was. Then the man spoke – just one word, one word which shattered the world as she had known it and which echoes down the ages, even to the end of all things. ‘Mary’ was that word, the first from the lips of the Resurrected Lord. However much her tears had blinded her, that voice was clearly unmistakable: “Rabboni!” She said. Teacher, teacher, that was what she called Him. She went to cling to Him and He said: ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’  He bade her to go and tell the others what she had seen.

The testimony of a woman was no testimony in Jewish Law, and yet it was to a woman that the Risen Lord first came. He had broken the bonds of death, He had conquered the power of death and of Satan, the hold of sin on mankind was broken; and these things He entrusted to the power of one who in Jewish Law could offer no testimony at all.

She was the first. Let us love and honour her for that this Easter morning: ‘He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!’

And there, on Easter morning itself, our Lord made his statement on the equality of women. We would do well to note that he made no case for their superiority, as so many these days seem to think, he made the case that women are valuable, and trustworthy, in their own right, which role is not the same as men but is complementary and equal to men.

In the Tridentine Missal, the Epistle is this (from the Song of Songs)

I will rise, and will go about the city: in the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, and I found him not. (quaesivi illum et non inveni.) The watchmen who keep the city, found me: Have you seen him, whom my soul loveth? When I had a little passed by them, I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him: and I will not let him go …

Would that we all (or any of us) were that faithful to the Lord.

Newman and a White Rose

19 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Newman

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Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie, with their friend Christoph Probst, in 1943

Many of us see our countries as possibly headed into dark times, and sometimes we despair, and it is hard to remember that while we are in this world, we are not of this world. But we do have our duties and responsibilities in this world as well. Perhaps a reminder wouldn’t hurt. Particularly one which reminds us that what we say and write and do today may well echo down the corridors of time. This is an article I first published here on 19 February 2018. I ran across it yesterday, and think it worth a rereading. Neo.

Here most of us admire the Blessed John Henry Newman quite a lot, as we should. After all, most of us who write here are orthodox Christians of one flavor or another. Nor are we alone.

A couple of weeks ago, I was involved in a discussion of The White Rose, one of the main resistance groups in Nazi Germany, and how it was almost completely driven by Christian ideals, although its leadership was a combination of Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox.

But how did that come to be, can we see the roots of this? Why yes, yes, we can.

An article in Catholic Herald last week by Paul Shrimpton tells how a goodly share of what Hans and Sophie Scholl believed and would lead them to the guillotine, seventy-five years ago yesterday, came from Newman.

From their letters and diaries we know that they were strongly influenced by St Augustine’s Confessions, Pascal’s Pensées and George Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest. Now it has become clear that their lives were also shaped by the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman.

The man who brought Newman’s writings to the attention of the Munich students was the philosopher and cultural historian Theodor Haecker. Haecker had become a Catholic after translating Newman’s Grammar of Assent in 1921, and for the rest of his life Newman was his guiding star. He translated seven of Newman’s works, and on several occasions read excerpts from them at the illegal secret meetings Hans Scholl convened for his friends. Strange though it may seem, the insights of the Oxford academic were ideally suited to help these students make sense of the catastrophe they were living through.

Haecker’s influence is evident already in the first three White Rose leaflets, but his becomes the dominant voice in the fourth: this leaflet, written the day after Haecker had read the students some powerful Newman sermons, finishes with the words: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace! Please read and distribute!”

When Sophie’s boyfriend, a Luftwaffe officer called Fritz Hartnagel, was deployed to the Eastern Front in May 1942, Sophie’s parting gift was two volumes of Newman’s sermons. After witnessing the carnage in Russia, Fritz wrote to Sophie to say that reading Newman’s words in such an awful place was like tasting “drops of precious wine”.

In another letter, Fritz wrote: “We know by whom we were created, and that we stand in a relationship of moral obligation to our creator. Conscience gives us the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.” These words were taken almost verbatim from a famous sermon of Newman’s called “The Testimony of Conscience”.

The White Rose, which Hans and Sophie led, has become the most famous anti-Hitler resistance in Germany today, saving only the Zwanzigsten Juli conspiracy itself, in which the Rev Dr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was implicated. This founder (amongst others) of the Confessing Church would surely have also agreed with much of what Hans and Sophie learned from Newman’s writing.

In fact, I’m quite sure he was familiar with it, if in no other way, because of his friendship with Bishop George Bell of Chichester, now subject to a witch hunt led by his own church, to whom Bonhoeffer’s last message from Flossenbürg was addressed. Of course, Bonhoeffer was hanged a few weeks before the camp at Flossenbürg was liberated.

When Fritz visited Sophie’s parents, he gave them a collection of Newman sermons translated by Theodor Haecker. Haecker himself also visited the Scholls, and signed the visitor’s book with Newman’s own motto, Cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart speaks to heart”).

So does it still.

And Now, in Illinois

13 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by in Abortion, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith

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Indeed, Live Action reports

The state already had among the most liberal abortion laws in the nation. The new Illinois RHA does away with things the state’s ban on partial-birth abortion, parental notification of minors, ends the need for licensing abortion facilities by the state, allows non-physicians to commit abortions, and allows for abortion at any time, for any reason, including for reasons of “health” which may include “physical, emotional, psychological, familial” or any other type of “health” the abortionist will accept. And abortionists have made clear that they believe the very state of being pregnant and not wanting to be is reason enough to commit an abortion.

Today on NEO, I’m talking about Pelegianism in the modern world. Here’s a prime example.

But Gene Veith at Cranach noted one ray of hope.

The Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, Thomas Paprocki, has issued a decree barring the leadership of the state legislator and Catholic lawmakers who voted for one of the most radically pro-abortion laws in the country from receiving Holy Communion.

He did so with some excellent language describing just how great a sin that abortion is.

From the Catholic News Agency (my [Gene’s] bolds):

“In accord with canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law…Illinois Senate President John Cullerton and Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan, who facilitated the passage of the Act Concerning Abortion of 2017 (House Bill 40) as well as the Reproductive Health Act of 2019 (Senate Bill 25), are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois because they have obstinately persisted in promoting the abominable crime and very grave sin of abortion as evidenced by the influence they exerted in their leadership roles and their repeated votes and obdurate public support for abortion rights over an extended period of time,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki wrote in a June 2 decree.

“These persons may be readmitted to Holy Communion only after they have truly repented these grave sins and furthermore have made suitable reparation for damages and scandal, or at least have seriously promised to do so, as determined in my judgment or in the judgment of their diocesan bishop in consultation with me or my successor,” the bishop added. . . .

“I declare that Catholic legislators of the Illinois General Assembly who have cooperated in evil and committed grave sin by voting for any legislation that promotes abortion are not to present themselves to receive Holy Communion without first being reconciled to Christ and the Church in accord with canon 916 of the Code of Canon Law,” Paprocki wrote.

In a statement issued June 6, the bishop said that “in issuing this decree, I anticipate that some will point out the Church’s own failings with regard to the abuse of children.”

“The same justifiable anger we feel toward the abuse of innocent children, however, should prompt an outcry of resistance against legalizing the murder of innocent children. The failings of the Church do not change the objective reality that the murder of a defenseless baby is an utterly evil act.

So there you go, a couple of Lutherans commending a Catholic bishop.

Sadly, it’s not an extreme sanction, like excommunication which separates one (presumably permanently) from the Church, and it only applies in the Diocese of Springfield. But it is way past time for our clergy to begin to correct the course of these murderous miscreants. That applies to all clergy, for I think not correcting your congregants on such an issue, makes one a participant. I’m not smart enough to know if God agrees with that, but I think He may not be overly happy with his ministers who do not protect children.