“Whose Standard?” That is the question posed by St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. But first, would I be out of line to say that the Society of Jesus is not what it used to be? I don’t want to be a Jebbie basher: I have studied under and worked with many Jesuits over the years. I have liked most of them, even admired a few. There are a few Jesuits in public life who are eloquent expositors and defenders of the faith as handed on by the Apostles. Fr.s Fessio and Pacwa, for instance, and Fr. Schall before he passed away several years ago come to mind.
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
(Galatians 2:20)
These Jesuit defenders of Catholic orthodoxy are outliers, unfortunately. A Jesuit of my acquaintance once dismissively referred to Fr. Fessio as “a complicated man.” The clear implication was that his brothers in the Society would disown him if they could. It’s no surprise that the public face of the Society of Jesus today does not belong to Fr. Fessio or Fr. Pacwa. No, by far the most recognizable S.J. right now is Fr. James Martin. His mission does not seem to be preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ so much as celebrating, well, more earthy pursuits.
Two Different Lives
Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
It wasn’t always that way. For a very long time the Jesuits followed the mold of their founder, St. Ignatius Loyola. We celebrate his feast day today, July 31st. Like St. Paul, who told the Galatians he had been “Crucified with Christ,” Ignatius lived two different lives. The crucible of pain and defeat transformed his life. A life of worldly ambition became a new life of sanctity and service. The poor but proud Spanish nobleman Inigo Lopez was indeed reborn as a different man when he became Ignatius.
Like St. Martin of Tours, St. Ignatius had been a soldier before he turned his life over to God. A French cannonball shattered his leg during his brave but futile efforts to defend the city of Pamplona. Doctors performed several extremely painful operations on his leg. They were unable, however, to correct the damage fully. It was clear that he would never be a soldier again.
A Different Battlefield
But something else had happened as well. During his months-long convalescence Ignatius had little to occupy his time other than reading and thinking. The fact that there were only two books in the castle, however, limited his reading. One book was a life of Christ, the other a lives of the saints. That left lots of time for thinking. He eventually noticed that fantasizing about his old worldly ways felt good when he was doing it. Tellingly, it left him feeling empty afterwards.
Reflecting about what he had read in the life of Christ and about the saints left him feeling joyful and uplifted. He began to realize that God was calling him to be a soldier on a very different battlefield. He eventually embraced the life of spiritual heroism exemplified by the likes of St. Francis and St. Dominic. Like them, he gathered his own group of followers who, in time, became the Society of Jesus.
Whose Standard, Christ’s or Satan’s?
“Ignatius convalesces at Loyola” by Albert Chevallier-Tayler, 1904
After his conversion Ignatius sought to live differently. He gave up the military officer’s stern and harsh way of addressing his subordinates, for instance. Instead, he employed a humble and gentle mode, even when administering necessary discipline. At the same time, he never lost his “fighting spirit”, even if he expressed it in a new way. And instead of directing his fire at human enemies, he was now concerned with “the principalities, . . .the powers, . . . the world rulers of this present darkness, . . . the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)
In fact he saw the inner life of every believer as a battlefield. Here, each one of us must choose between following the battle standard of Christ, or that of Satan. His distinctive spirituality includes an emphasis on the “discernment of spirits.” This is a prayerful sifting of feelings and other influences to determine whether they are from the Spirit of God or the Spirit of the Devil. Drawing on his own experience of conversion, St. Ignatius forged an extraordinarily effective weapon to assist followers of Christ in this internal combat: the Spiritual Exercises, a potent mix of imagery, prayer, self-examination, and spiritual direction.
The Church Militant
Having self-disciplined himself in this way, Ignatius believed that the Christian should then, like a good soldier, submit to his superiors in obedience:
. . . we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it.” From The Spiritual Exercises, “To Have the True Sentiment Which We Ought to Have in the Church Militant”
This is not, however, simply the outward obedience that the man under arms must exhibit. It is also the inner obedience of both the Will and the Intellect. The saint explains further in his famous Letter on Obedience [text here]. The short version is that it is an obedience born of love, not fear.
This seems a good time to remember the concept of the “Church Militant”, that each of us is a Soldier for Christ. I’m not talking about soldiering in a literal sense. Granted, given the fallen state of humanity, there will always be need for that. I’m thinking more of the war to defend our souls and the souls of others against the “spiritual hosts of wickedness” that St. Paul mentions in his letter to the Ephesians.
Soldiers in the Cosmic War
Of course, the two kinds of warfare are not unrelated. Jihadists and their allies, for example, can see the spiritual decay in our culture. This only serves to embolden them (just as Osama Bin Laden says he was inspired by the apparent weakness of the United States after our inelegant withdrawal from Somalia). As the forces of Jihad discovered at Lepanto, however, they can’t hope to succeed against a Christendom united in Faith and fortified with Prayer. But against mere Secularism, well, what’s to stop them?
“The Miracle of St. Ignatius of Loyola” by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1617-1619. A dramatic visual representation of spiritual warfare.
Having said that, it is good to remember that any conflict with Islamism, secularism, or any other “ism” that threatens Christian culture in this world is secondary to the big cosmic struggle. The outcome of that cosmic battle is not in doubt (see the Book of Revelation). There will be casualties along the way, of course. We have no guarantee of the outcome of the internal battle each one of us must fight. St. Ignatius, a seeker for his own glory who, by God’s grace, was transformed into a soldier for Christ, shows us how to stay on the winning side, and follow the battle Standard of Our Lord.
Featured image top of page: “Ignatius is wounded at the Battle of Pamplona” by Albert Chevallier-Tayler, 1904
Suicide is a key image for our culture today. Our society is always looking for new ways to destroy itself. We seem intent on destroying our connections to our forebears, destroying their reputations and even tearing down their statues. We reject the classic achievements in music, art, and architecture that they have handed on to us. We are committing collective suicide by refusing to have enough children to replace our populations. And, increasingly, we are literally killing ourselves as individual human beings. The chart below shows a steady increase in suicides in the United States from 1999-2019:
Increasingly, post-Christian culture does not see killing oneself as a bad thing per se, provided it’s done in the proper way. A Swiss organization that calls itself “Lifecircle”, for instance, claims to be working to prevent “suicide.” The organization’s brochure quite correctly points out that:
. . . over half of these people [people who kill themselves in Switzerland] go into death through a violent suicide, which means that they jump in front of a train, jump from great heights, shoot or hang themselves. By these kinds of suicides, people who have seen these images are permanently heavily burdened.
Every year in Switzerland more than 300 train conductors somehow have to cope with the experience of having run over a person… All these people go with their suicide into an uncertain, sometimes brutal death in loneliness and without a goodbye from their relatives and loved ones.
There’s a catch, though. Lifecircle is not so much opposed to people intentionally killing themselves, as it is to some of the messy details (such as those described above) that often follow from committing suicide on one’s own. Their brochure goes on to say:
Perhaps these people could not have been brought to go on living, but they would have had a chance to go into death quietly and in a state similar to sleep, accompanied by understanding people.
Just tidy the process up, provide a little company, and of, course, implicate the medical profession in the process. Then it’s no longer suicide, you see, but Assisted Voluntary Death (AVD), and Lifecircle is more than happy to facilitate AVD.
Lifecircle is one of several “suicide clinics” (not that they call themselves that) in Switzerland, and the dense haze of euphemism around the grisly matter of killing is an essential part of the business model. The number of people availing themselves of these facilities has grown steadily over the past couple of decades. Roughly half of the clientele is Swiss, the other half “suicide tourists” from other countries. I first heard of Lifecircle (perhaps “Deathcircle” would be a more appropriate name) six years ago when I read about one of these “tourists,” an English woman named Gill Pharaoh. She went there to die not because she was terminally ill or in incurable pain, but because growing old was “no fun.” Today’s throwback is the post (slightly revised) I wrote about Mrs. Pharaoh in August 2015 . . .
Here is a sign of things to come, or more accurately, a present reality that is becoming all too common:
A British woman with no serious health issues ended her life July 21 at a suicide clinic because, she said, she didn’t want to grow old. Gill Pharaoh, 75, said her work in a nursing home revealed the “awful” truth of old age and burdens placed on loved ones and caregivers, the Telegraph reports by way of theSunday Times.
Gill Pharaoh, in a photo from her blog
Let me emphasize at the outset that I don’t wish to ridicule Pharaoh: I pray that she can find God’s mercy in the hereafter. She provides us with a concrete example, however, of how today’s conventional wisdom promotes death as the solution to our problems. The appeal to relieve the “burdens placed on loved ones and caregivers”, for instance, is one of the primary emotional appeals that euthanasia advocates use (and both euthanasia and abortion promoters rely heavily on appeals to emotion). Pharaoh herself, who wrote extensively about her decision before she killed herself, dismissed the idea that she should expect the support of her children in her old age, saying: “I had children for the personal and selfish reason that I wanted them for the pleasure and joy they bring. I want them to enjoy their middle years without having to worry about me.”
This is a sad and confused argument. Again, I don’t doubt Pharaoh’s sincerity, but I can’t believe that she was as selfish as she claims. Surely she changed diapers, cleaned up vomit, awakened from much-needed sleep to feed or comfort crying babies, none of which is very joyful or pleasurable, and that didn’t deter from giving birth again. Did she really think of her children as merely a “burden”? Of course not. I’m sure she thought the “joy and pleasure” well worth the “burden” and, yes, the “worry” of caring for her children from birth to adulthood. By even the crassest calculus, isn’t it reasonable to expect her children to return the favor when she needs them to do the same for her?
. . . and needless to say, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the crassest calculus. I’m sure Gill Pharaoh endured the discomforts and inconveniences of child-rearing for the same reason that any of us who are parents do: because we love our children, not because of some loss/benefit ratio. We see the trouble we endure for their sake as a way of expressing our love, of making it real; that’s why, despite all the trouble they cause us, our children bring us joy and pleasure. Ironically, what she has done now is really much more selfish: she has deprived them of the opportunity to love her in the same way. Even worse, by citing their convenience as a primary reason for her premature death, she is placing responsibility for her decision on them.
And, of course, there is more to the ‘”awful” truth of old age’ to which she refers than the purported inconvenience to loved ones:
she recounted a life slowly sapped of former joys like long walks and gardening sessions. “Not to mention the hundred and one other minor irritations like being unable to stand for long, carry a heavy shopping bag, run for a bus, remember the names of books I have read, or am reading, or their authors.”
A few decades ago, when we as a society still recoiled at the thought of intentionally ending any innocent person’s life, euthanasia advocates relied on searing anecdotes about terminally ill people undergoing excruciating suffering, or about people such as Karen Ann Quinlan who were kept alive only by machines, and who seemed to have no hope of ever regaining consciousness. More recently we have reached the point where few of us seem to find it remarkable that we commonly starve to death people who aren’t even dying or unconscious, but are merely extremely old or disabled. And so now, apparently, we are expected to accept that simply slowing down, or having to put up with “minor irritations”, is reason enough for otherwise healthy people to take their own lives.
Pope St. John Paul II toward the end of his life
There’s no reason to think that it will end here. We live in a culture that has increasingly rejected the belief in the sacredness of anything, including human life. Public schools (and many private, even religiously affiliated, ones) reinforce this worldview in a variety ways. It is communicated by popular culture in countless messages both subtle and overt. It follows that if all we really are is protoplasm, or a particularly complex assemblage of molecules, what could possibly be sacrosanct? If the materialist view is correct, then there cannot be any sort of “meaning” to anything; human life itself is meaningless and suffering, which (in this view) is nothing but pointless pain and distress, is worse than useless: why not just put an end to it all? In such a world suicide clinics can only multiply. Is it any wonder that St. John Paul the Great spoke of a “Culture of Death”?
In response to this Gospel of Despair we Christians can point to the Mystery of the Cross. Christ showed us in his own agonizing, distressing death that suffering even to the end can be not just meaningful, but redemptive: through our suffering we, too, can accomplish great good. We have seen the lesson of Christ’s redemptive suffering reflected in the lives of countless of his followers, from the first martyrs to St. John Paul himself, who taught a worldwide audience that “death with dignity” does not mean taking it upon ourselves to cut off the concluding chapters of our lives.
Many of us know family and friends who have likewise embraced the Way of the Cross. In my case I’m thinking in particular of an aunt whose faith-filled serenity during a slow and difficult death from cancer had a profound impact on everyone who saw her in her final days. I couldn’t help but think of this aunt when I read that Gill Pharaoh had said: “I do not want people to remember me as a sort of old lady hobbling up the road with a trolley”. My aunt’s loved ones don’t picture her infirmity when they remember her: they talk about her, how she exuded love and joy despite her suffering, an image of beauty in the midst of the ugliness of her fatal illness. They don’t remember her depleted body: they remember her.
Again, my purpose isn’t to criticize Gill Pharaoh. She, along with the 611 of her fellow British citizens who ended their lives in Swiss suicide “clinics” between 2008-2012, and an ever lengthening list of others throughout the Western World, is a victim of a Godless, and therefore anti-human, worldview, a philosophy that tells us our “dignity” somehow lies in escape from what we are. The Truth is very different. St. Irenaeus said that “The Glory of God is Man fully alive.” Suffering is a part of every human life: we can’t escape from it without denying our humanity.
Featured image top of page: Seneca’s Suicide, by Manuel Domínguez Sánchez (1871)
We live in strange days indeed. The German bishops seem intent on dismantling the Catholic Church in their homeland. Pope Francis sent them a letter two years ago in which he suggested (I think) that they apply the brakes:
The current challenges as well as the answers we give demand a long maturation process and the cooperation of an entire people over years . . . This stimulates the emergence and continuation of processes that build us as God’s people, rather than seeking immediate results with premature and medial consequences that are fleeting because of lack of deepening and maturation or because they do not correspond to the vocation we are given.
As I said, that’s what I think it means: I admit that there are any number of other possible interpretations. The German bishops themselves, for instance, apparently took it to mean “full speed ahead!” Their persistence in what they call “The Synodal Way” has, however, provoked another letter, this time a closely reasoned, scripturally and theologically rich refutation of the abdication of apostolic authority that is taking place in Germany. You can’t explain the situation more succinctly than this:
Yet the authority of the apostles and their successors is not their own. It is a share in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Truth (see John 14:6). Every successor of the Apostles must resist the temptation to imitate the “senseless prophets who follow[ed] their own spirit” in Ezekiel’s time, promoting their own opinions and ideas (Ezek. 13:3). Every successor of the Apostles must also resist the temptation to imitate the prophets and priests of Jeremiah’s time, who adjusted their teaching according to the preferences of the people (Jer. 5:30–31).
Yet the authority of the apostles and their successors is not their own. It is a share in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ . . .
“Priest Offering Mass”, Simone Martini, early 14th Century
The only problem is that this letter does not come from Rome, but from Denver, Colorado, where it was promulgated by Archbishop Aquila, who has absolutely no authority over brother bishops across the Atlantic Ocean. The appropriate authority in Rome is instead occupied with rejecting the proffered resignation of Cardinal Marx of Munich, one of the chief perpetrators of The Synodal Way.
Another thing distracting the authorities in Rome from the misbehavior north of the Alps, if we are to believe the rumors, is the urgent need to suppress Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificorum, which freed the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) from restrictions widely imposed in the aftermath of Vatican II.
I intend to discuss the TLM and more traditional expressions of liturgy in greater length soon, but today I’m reposting a revised version of a piece I wrote a few years ago. At the time Cardinal Sarah, then head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, made a strong appeal to bishops and priests to reintroduce the practice of saying the Mass ad orientem (facing the altar). Sadly, his suggestion was quickly squelched. It was a good idea nonetheless (a great idea, really), and in the post below I explain why, with the help of Captain Picard, the Starship Enterprise, and some extraterrestrials from the far side of the galaxy. So, let’s boldly go . . .
Darmok and Jalod at Tanagra
Just about everybody knows something about Star Trek, especially now that there have been half a dozen (?) different television series and who knows how many movies. I’ve made profitable use of Star Trek material in my classroom and on my blogs on many occasions (almost all from the original series and The Next Generation – some other time we can talk about why it’s limited to those two). One of my all-time favorite episodes is “Darmok”, from the 5th season of Star Trek The Next Generation.
In “Darmok” the (mostly human) crew of the starship Enterprise encounters an alien race called Tamarians, with whom humans have previously had several frustratingly unsuccessful attempts at communication. It seems that the Earthling’s Universal Translators (ah, the wonders of science fiction!) are able to discover the meaning of the Tamarians’ words, but can’t figure out how the words combine to express meaning. What is one to make, for instance, of utterances such as “Shaka, when the walls fell”, or “The river Tamarc, in winter”? The aliens seem to be talking in metaphors and allusions drawn from stories known to them and to nobody else.
Troi and Data explain how the Tamarian language works
Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise experiences the same frustration as his predecessors in his attempts to communicate with the commander of a Tamarian ship, a frustration clearly shared by his alien counterpart. Once it becomes clear that their efforts are going nowhere, the Tamarian captain holds up two daggers and declares “Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!”, at which point both he and Picard are transported (more sci-fi wizardry) down to the surface of a planet below. Picard soon learns that the captain is not challenging him to a duel as he at first supposes, but what he does intend, or what he means by his insistent repetition of “Darmok and Jalod at Tanagra!” remains a mystery.
Eventually, after the two captains together encounter a deadly creature (which mortally wounds Picard’s Tamarian counterpart), Picard puts the puzzle together. Darmok and Jalod were two heroes, perhaps rivals or enemies, who together fought a beast on an island called Tanagra, and formed a bond of friendship. The alien captain had hoped that, by putting himself and Picard in a similar situation, they might likewise achieve through shared experience what they couldn’t find through mere words. Understanding too late his counterpart’s intent, Picard is able at least to comfort the dying Tamarian by recounting to him the ancient epic of Gil-Gamesh.
Captain Picard informs the Tamarians of the death of their captain
We Are Formed by Experience
The Tamarians, as is the way with Star Trek aliens, are really humans in disguise (literally, of course, but figuratively as well). In this particular story the creators of the television show have put their finger on something that goes to the very heart of what it is to be human: we are formed by our experiences, not only as individuals but as peoples. The “aliens” they have created here view the world only through the lens of the stories that have been passed down about the history of their people, and in their everyday experiences they consciously relive the experiences of their forebears. Their only way to communicate abstractions is through the concrete: people, places, and events.
Tamarian Captain and Captain Picard
Now, we Earth-dwellers may not look very much like the Children of Tama at first. We have a wealth of language that communicates abstractions and ideas . . . and yet we are more Tamarian than we might appear at first glance. Notice how easily, for example, the name of the Nazi’s hand-picked Norwegian puppet Vidkun Quisling has become the common noun “quisling”, a synonym for “traitor” . . . or how easily we use a metaphorical term such as “puppet”, as I did just now. Often, we quickly forget that the expressions we are using are metaphors at all. I remember for instance during the 1992 presidential campaign in the U.S. when former (and future) California governor Jerry Brown was asked about the “anointed front-runner” Bill Clinton. Brown asked whether he was running for president, or running for pope. Some allusions are even more deeply buried: how many people even know when they use the word “mentor” they are alluding to Homer’s Odyssey, where the goddess Athena, in the guise of a wise old man named Mentor, accompanies Odysseus’s son Telemachus to guide the inexperienced young man on his journey and, to speak metaphorically, “show him the ropes”.
It’s a Mystery to Me
There’s even more going on here than the use of language. The Tamarian captain understands that actions, that experiences, can communicate in ways that words cannot, which is of course as true of human beings as much as it is of fictional extraterrestrials. This is a large part of why so many religions rely on ritual and formal rites: the actions communicate to us much more deeply than mere words, because we are actually living out what they want to convey. In fact, the true meaning of the term “mystery” (from the Greek μυστήριον) is not something unknowable, but something that can only be known experientially, through doing. Traditional Christianity tells us that God uses these mysteries as a means not only of imparting His Grace, but of revealing himself to us. Once we understand that, we can more easily see why μυστήριον translates into Latin as sacramentum, because sacraments involve not only knowing or thinking, but acting.
Most religions rely, to some degree or other, on mystery. At the very core of Christianity we find the Profoundest Mystery, the Supreme Sacrament: The Infinite God become Man in order to experience our humanity, and to invite us, in turn, to share in His Divinity. We live out this mystery concretely when we receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the “Summit and Source of the Christian Life.” While Catholic Christianity includes countless lesser ways of living out spiritual realities as well, such as the other Sacraments, sacramentals, devotions, and so on, the Eucharist, and the Sacrifice of the Mass in which we receive it, is the most important thing we do.
Turning Toward The Lord
Cardinal Robert Sarah, (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
It can be helpful, I think, to bear these considerations in mind when we look at the suggestion made by Cardinal Sarah, head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, that priests start re-introducing the practice of saying the Mass ad orientem, “toward the rising sun”, which is to say facing the altar rather than the congregation. The Cardinal made the suggestion in a talk delivered at a liturgical conference in London a few years ago (full text here). Cardinal Sarah asked his fellow shepherds in the episcopate to support him in this matter, saying:
I very humbly and fraternally would like to appeal also to my brother bishops: please lead your priests and people towards the Lord in this way, particularly at large celebrations in your dioceses and in your cathedral. Please form your seminarians in the reality that we are not called to the priesthood to be at the centre of liturgical worship ourselves, but to lead Christ’s faithful to him as fellow worshippers united in the one same act of adoration.
Implicit in the part of the quote I have put in bold type above is the idea that what we do and what the priest does during the Mass is a part of the message.
I first came across a similar suggestion in regard to ad orientem worship some years ago in an article by Fr. Joseph Fessio called “The Mass of Vatican II”. In his essay Fr. Fessio explains what the documents of Vatican II actually say about the Mass; for instance, that it should remain mostly in Latin, and that Gregorian Chant “should be given pride of place in liturgical services”, and various other directives that appear not to have much influenced the post-conciliar revision of the liturgy. Fr. Fessio points out that one thing that was done does not appear, anywhere, in the Council’s documents, just as it had never been part of the tradition of the Church over the previous 18 centuries: turning the priest at Mass around to face the congregation, rather than having him face the altar, the liturgical East, along with the people he is leading in prayer. In defending the traditional practice Fr. Fessio more explicitly makes some of the same points that Cardinal Sarah does in his London talk:
It’s true that when the priest faces the people for the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, there may be a sense of greater unity as a community. But there is also a danger of the priest being the performer and you being the spectator – precisely what the Council did not want: priest performers and congregational spectators. But there is something more problematic. You can see it, perhaps, by contrasting Mass facing the people with Mass facing East or facing the Lord. I don’t say Mass “with my back to the people” anymore than Patton went through Germany with his “back to the soldiers.” Patton led the Third Army across Germany and they followed him to achieve a goal. The Mass is part of the Pilgrim Church on the way to our goal, our heavenly homeland. This world is not our heavenly homeland. We don’t sit around in a circle and look at each other. We want to look with each other and with the priest towards the rising sun, the rays of grace, where the Son will come again in glory on the clouds.
The Medium is the Message
Marshall McLuhan famously said of television that “the medium is the message”. The same can be said of all media, including sacred media. How we celebrate the Mass sends a message. The symbolic “message” of the ad orientem Mass is clear: that all of us together, priest and people, are making an offering to God; we all face our Lord together. When priest and people face each other, who is offering what to whom? The message seems to be that we are there to see each other, not to turn to Our Lord. The little cartoon to the left (which, I confess, I stole from Fr. Z’s blog) gives a good illustration of the problem. Cardinal Sarah himself recently made the same point in a talk deliveredto the bishops of Sri Lanka,
In recent decades in some countries the Sacred Liturgy has become too anthropocentric; man not Almighty God has often become its focus.
But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Instead,
In every Catholic liturgy, the Church, made up of both minister and faithful, gives her complete focus – body, heart and mind – to God who is the centre of our lives and the origin of every blessing and grace.
That’s the beauty of the traditional ad orientem celebration of the Mass: we don’t merely read or hear but experience for ourselves the Truth that God is the center of our lives, and we all turn to Him together in our worship .
It’s Greek to Me
Which brings me to one of my few real quibbles with “Darmok”. In the final scene of the episode we see Captain Picard reading a book when his first officer, Commander Riker, enters the room. Riker looks at the book curiously, and says, “Greek, sir?” (did I mention that Captain Picard is the consummate Renaissance man? Starship captain, interstellar warrior, student of Latin and Greek, etc.), which leads to this exchange:
PICARD: Oh, the Homeric Hymns. One of the root metaphors of our own culture.
RIKER: For the next time we encounter the Tamarians?
PICARD: More familiarity with our own mythology might help us to relate to theirs. The Tamarian was willing to risk all of us just for the hope of communication, connection. Now the door is open between our peoples. That commitment meant more to him than his own life. Thank you, Number One.
Now, the Homeric Hymns is not a bad place to start, as far as it goes, but if Picard really wants to get at the “root” of what it is to be human, I have a better suggestion for him, one that goes like this:
A vivid picture of sin has been given to us by St. Augustine: homo incurvatus in se, “man turned in upon himself.” The image that conjures up in my mind is rather like a dog chasing his tail . . . or myself, in some of my less glorious moments. The point is, we direct ourselves inward, away from God, away from other people, hoping to find within ourselves what can only come from beyond. The world in which we are living today is becoming more and more a world not so much turned in upon itself, because that would imply that we’re doing it together, but a world in which each and every one of us is turned in upon ourselves, eight billion dogs simultaneously chasing their own tails.
Such intense self-absorption is bad for us, of course, because we were made for love by the God Who is Love (1 John 4:8), and love is willing the good of another. And therein lies a problem, because one effect of sin turning us inside out is that it turns love inside out as well, so that we find ourselves actually willing evil for others.
A few years back I ran across a story that perfectly captures the essence of a world full of people curved in upon themselves. Below please find my exploration of the wonderful world of Vasectomy Showers:
An Age That Knows No Shame
The celebrated 17th century wit François de La Rochefoucauld once opined, “hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue”. In other words, we lie about what we are doing because we’re wise enough, at least, to be ashamed of it. What can we say, however, about an age that knows no shame?
I’m thinking here ofan article from Britain’s Daily Mail, whose headline blares:
Forget baby showers! Young couples are holding ‘vasectomy parties’ to celebrate the start of a childless family, and ask guests to name their CAR instead
While the Daily Mail further tells us that “The cost of having children is deterring a growing number of couples from expanding the family unit”, the comments of the seemingly happily self-sterilized couples in the article suggest motives other than penury:
Instead of the traditional baby shower, couples also invite friends to ‘car showers’ where guests help them name their new car.
They also play board games like The Price Is Right, where they talk about what they can buy now that they’ve saved money by not having kids.
Clearly, it’s not that they don’t have money, they simply would rather spend their cash on toys for themselves than on their own progeny.
Now, in order to equate one’s child with a car – or not really equate, actually to value one’s own child as less than a car – one must engage in a certain amount of dehumanization. We can’t simply say that “I prefer playthings to my own sons and daughters”, so we instead we say things like:
‘All a baby shower is a party to celebrate that you had sex,’ wrote another user [of the blogWereNotHavingABaby.com]. ‘That a sperm managed to hit a fertile egg. A vasectomy shower is a party to celebrate soon to be sex.’
Nobody, including almost certainly the person who first wrote it, really thinks that a baby shower is intended to celebrate “That a sperm managed to hit a fertile egg”. People have baby showers to celebrate the creation of new life, to welcome a new member of the family, and as a way of sharing that life with the wider community. A “vasectomy shower”, likewise, doesn’t celebrate “soon to be sex”, it “celebrates” the decision to render that sex barren and empty, a meaningless self-indulgence. It is an attempt to glorify, or maybe better yet justify, saying “no” to life.
Not all vasectomy party supporters put the matter quite so crassly, of course; some aim for a more reasonable-sounding tone. One woman, for instance posted the comment:
I had swallowed the motherhood mandate hook, line, and sinker and I had never given myself the space and time to question whether I really, really want children.
In some ways this last comment is sadder than the in-your-face defiance of the more outrageous self-sterilization promoters. She seems to have truly come to believe the current conventional wisdom that what she “really, really wants” should be the paramount prority in her life. There is no sense that she owes anything to any children she might otherwise bear, to her family, to her community, or to her God. Curvata est in se.
Non Serviam!
We all want what we want, of course: that’s the way of our fallen human nature. Our wishes and desires are among our strongest motivators. At the same time, healthy societies have always recognized that if they are to flourish, or even just survive, more is required. Individuals need to see their own fulfillment as tied in with and subordinate to that of their society. There have always been positive incentives (calls to heroism, public acclaim, etc.), and also negative consequences: our modern word “idiot” comes from the Greek ἰδιώτης (“idiotes”), from the adjective meaning “one’s own”. The idiot was one who rejected the community to make his own way and set his own standards.
The revelation of Jesus Christ raises the issue to an even higher level. Christ tells us not merely to find our own fulfillment within the larger community, but that “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) . . . and he backed it up with his own death “for the many”. For the better part of two millennia the central image of Christianity, God’s self-sacrifice out of love for all, has dominated not only the Church but, to a great degree, Western culture itself. We can see it in the visual arts, and in music, but also in certain cultural expectations. When we really, really wanted to follow our own desires in defiance of right order, we knew that we were were also defying the Will of God, and turning our backs on Christ’s willing acceptance of death for our sake. That didn’t always stop us, of course, but often it did. Even when it didn’t, the knowledge of the standard Christ set for us on the Cross fed and strengthened the voice of Conscience calling us back.
“Satan Cast Down From Heaven” by Gustav Dore, 1866
That history is important, because it means that our current state of shamelessness is of a different order than that of the age of Caligula and Nero. The Romans of two thousand years ago were rejecting the the human wisdom of their forbears, which was foolish and destructive: one consequence was that the old patrician nobility of Rome, including families that had been prominent for centuries, virtually died out by the end of the first century A.D. In our case, we are rejecting not mere human wisdom, but Divine teaching and the example of God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ, his gift of Himself offered up for us on the Cross. We are following a different example, that of Satan, into whose mouth the poet John Milton puts the words, Non Serviam!, “I will not serve!”.
Giving The Devil His Due
We don’t see these exact words come from the Devil’s mouth in the Bible, but they had been associated with him long before Milton composed Paradise Lost because they so accurately sum up the nature of Satan’s rebellion. And they do in fact come from Sacred Scripture, in the book of Jeremiah, where we see the prophet chastising the wayward people of Judah:
Your wickedness will chasten you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; the fear of me is not in you, says the Lord GOD of hosts. “For long ago you broke your yoke and burst your bonds; and you said, ‘I will not serve.’ Yea, upon every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down as a harlot. Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly of pure seed. How then have you turned degenerate and become a wild vine?” (Jeremiah 2:19-21)
Michelangelo’s “Jeremiah”, 1508-1512
Since Non Serviam (as it appears in the Latin Vulgate translation) so perfectly captures the attitude that led Lucifer to his fall, these words naturally came to be associated with the Devil. To take it a little further, if it was “evil and bitter” for God’s chosen people to abandon his ways, surely it is at least as wicked for us Christians, who also were planted “as a choice vine, wholly of pure seed.” The chastisement that inevitably flows from our collective refusal to answer Christ’s call to self-sacrifice is abundantly clear, if we’re willing to see it. It is evident in the disintegration of the institution of the family and all the needless misery that follows, we can see it in the dying populations of the formerly Christian countries of Europe and, soon, North America, and in many other social ills. Even worse, it is manifested in the decline of Faith, and the likelihood that many souls will therefore be lost forever.
Principalities and Powers
Jeremiah’s image of harlotry itself fits perfectly with our present situation. After all, isn’t our era’s great refusal of our Lord’s call to service precisely about indulging sexual desire without responsibility, or consequences, or any limits that we don’t choose for ourselves? Which brings us back to the vasectomy showers, a celebration of sexual pleasure without self-sacrifice, without true union, without real love. Non Serviam! And just as Satan looks to ensnare all of us along with him in his apostasy, the public glorification of sexual rebellion in vasectomy parties is intended to break down the walls of shame in order to make the repugnant seem acceptable . . . and, ultimately, good.
Oh, yes, and if you publicly oppose that newly enshrined “good”, or even refrain from endorsing it with sufficient enthusiasm, there’s hell to pay. That has been the strategy of the revolutionaries in every battle of the Sexual Revolution. That is why not so long ago the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires (who has since been promoted to a position of some prominence in Rome) said that the push to “redefine” marriage was “a move by the devil, looking to confuse and deceive all children of God” (articlehere). The same judgment applies to other innovations, such as the public celebration of sterilization, that seek to undermine traditional sexual morality. The degradation of our moral norms and the dismantling of social institutions that embody them is, quite simply, diabolical.
Vasectomy parties and and the like may strike us as ridiculous, but they’re not funny. They might be only a small step on the proverbial Highway to Hell, but who wants to go that route? More than that, the fact that such a thing can be reported with, apparently, no shame attaching to its promoters is a sign of how far we’ve fallen. After all, despite the carnality of the battlefield, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). In that fight, whose battle standard do we want to follow, Christ’s . . . or Satan’s?
“‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.’ So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mark 10:7-9)
When I observed in my recent post “Sins of the Fathers . . .and of Kings” that “one of the greatest contributors to poverty and other debilitating social ills today is the break-down of sexual morality”, one reader commented: “It is enough to watch the news or TV for two minutes to realize that our miseries are not due to lack of dollars but to lack of morals.” The connection between our sexual conduct and our societal health is impossible to miss, at least for those who aren’t heavily invested in the so-called “sexual revolution”. It is clear that the societal endorsement of sexual license directly undermines the institution of marriage, and the breakdown of marriage in turn has a profoundly negative impact on children most immediately, and from there on everything and everyone else.
“What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mark 10:9)
“Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the Temple” by Luca Giordano, before 1690
This last point is backed up by an enormous body of research accumulated over decades. I’m not going to delve into that mountain of data here, except to illustrate with a small sample from a 2014 article by posted on the United States National Institute of Health website:
Divorce adversely affects society by
1. Diminishing the child’s future competence.
2. Weakening the family structure.
3. Contributing to early sexual experimentation leading to increased costs for society.
4. Adversely affecting religious practice—divorce diminishes the frequency of religious worship.
5. Diminishing a child’s learning capacity and educational attainment.
6. Reducing the household income.
7. Increasing crime rates and substance use, with associated societal and governmental costs (Waite and Gallagher 2000).
9. Increasing emotional and mental health risks, including suicide.
Studies have attempted to estimate the financial cost of divorce to the United States, with most recent estimates reaching $33.3 billion per year, and with adolescent pregnancy costing at least $7 billion (Schramm 2003).
(Anderson, Jane: “The impact of family structure on the health of children: Effects of divorce”: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240051/)
We can see in the sociological findings above living proof of the words of Our Lord, when he said:
“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit.” (Luke 6:43-44)
“The Holy Trinity” attr. to Francisco Caro, 17th century
As damaging as the breakdown of the family is material terms, it’s important to bear in mind that the consequences listed above are, in and of themselves, contingent: there are worse things than worldly suffering. The ultimate purpose of loving families and stable societies is to better prepare us to spend eternity with God. The love we experience in our earthly families is intended to give us at least a glimpse of the life of the Trinitarian God, who, St. John tells us “is love” (1 John 4:8). Saint Paul tells us that our experience of human love in our families leads us to a greater love:
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Ephesians 5:31-33)
If stable, loving families bring us closer to each other and to Our Lord, consequences of family breakdown such as increased crime, more substance abuse, less religious observance and so on do the opposite: they separate us from each other, and they separate us from God. We should not be surprised by our Lady’s warning at Fatima as reported by the seer Lucia: “The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.”
As it happens, the final battle is a continuation of the very first. The Devil, whose name (ὁ διάβολος) means “Divider,” sought to separate the very first human family and set husband against wife, so that Adam found himself accusing both his wife and his God: “The man said, ‘The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.'” (Genesis 3:12)
Blessed Margaret Pole
The battle that began in The Garden has never ended. Last week we looked at how the sexual immorality of English Kings Edward IV and Henry VIII half a millennium ago deepened and extended the separation between Christians that continues to this day. As it happens, just this past Friday the Church observed liturgical feast of one of the smaller participants in that particular drama, Blessed Margaret Pole. Margaret was the niece of Edward IV and Richard III, and also a member of the household of Henry VIII when she served as the governess to his daughter Mary (later Queen Mary). Henry is known to have referred to her as “the holiest woman in England”. Nonetheless, he dismissed her from his court because she opposed the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (which he obtained by separating from the Catholic Church and putting himself at the head of the English church), and then his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn. Blessed Margaret was later arrested and eventually beheaded because of the public opposition of her son, Cardinal Pole, to Henry and Anne’s marriage.
I recently referred toSt. Julia of Corsica as a “A Saint For Our Time”. Blessed Margaret Pole, who gave her life in defense of the sanctity of marriage, also seems especially suited to the situation of our increasingly post-Christian culture. The niece of two kings and a woman renowned for piety, never tried for any crime much less convicted, Blessed Margaret was martyred because she refused to applaud publicly the sacrifice of Holy Matrimony to a third king’s lust.
Blessed Margaret’s antagonist Henry VIII, on the other hand, could serve as a sort of patron “anti-saint” for our times. He was a man possessed of great gifts: he was given a strong, handsome, athletic body, a quick mind that he applied to writing and musical composition as well as to governing, and was entrusted with the rule of a rich and powerful kingdom. Henry never mastered himself, however, and so his prodigious talents were put at the service, not of his people, but of his equally prodigious cravings for women, wealth, and power. In the end he tried to swallow even the Church. In his later years his grossly obese body became a living image of his insatiable appetites.
Henry VIII
People come and go, but human nature doesn’t change. King Henry is long gone, but his imitators are still with us. Like Henry, they are not satisfied with mere tolerance or tacit assent: they require full-throated public approval, and so the Margaret Poles must be silenced. None of us is literally being led to the block, thankfully, and pray God it never comes to that. Nevertheless, as we have seen over and over again, those who stand up for Church, family, and traditional moral norms today, even if they do so privately, can expect to have their character blackened and their livelihoods threatened.
I have often heard Blessed Margaret’s younger and much better known contemporary, St. Thomas More, proposed as a Patron Saint for our age because of his martyrdom in defense of the Church and Marriage. Like him, Blessed Margaret’s firm reliance on Christ’s loving care gave her the strength to stand fast in the face of mortal threats, and the serenity not to be swallowed up in bitterness against her persecutors. We would do well to invoke Blessed Margaret Pole along with St. Thomas More, and to pray for her intercession against the ravenous spirit of Henry VIII that yet again threatens both Faith and Family.
Featured Image at top of page: ‘Signing the register’, Edmund Blair Leighton (1920)
Language is a slippery thing. We often tend to think of it simply as a means of communication, but we underestimate its ability to twist and to hide meanings at our peril. I recently wrote about the word “debunk,” which is more often invoked to hide and protect bunk than it is to expose it. Today’s word is peccadillo, a Spanish word derived from the Latin peccatum, “sin.” The -illo on the end makes it a dimunitive, diminishing the meaning of the original to “little sins.” The implication is that the sins thus designated are small and unimportant, mere trifles. In current usage the word peccadillo almost invariably refers to sexual sins, and serves as a warning to the judgmental and puritanical among us not to make too much of such transgressions. These are, after all minor affairs, victimless crimes, even . . . aren’t they?
If this seems like an odd introduction to the post below, bear with me. I first published this piece (the most popular I ever wrote, if we are to trust Google Analytics) six years ago, on the occasion of the long-delayed Christian burial of England’s King Richard III, more than half a millennium after his death. Despite the brevity of his reign (less than three years), Richard remains one of the most recognized British rulers. He is himself a fascinating figure (especially after we get past Shakespeare’s villainous caricature), but he is also the link between two other monarchs: the father of his predecessor, Edward IV, and Henry VIII, the son of his successor. The “peccadilloes” of Edward and Henry, as we shall see, had reverberations far beyond any crimes Richard is alleged to have committed.
Richard III
530 years is a long, long time to wait. On Thursday, March 26th 2015, England’s King Richard III, the last English monarch to die in battle, and the one of the last English kings to die a Catholic, finally received a Christian burial. Not a Catholic funeral, unfortunately, but his interment in the Anglican Cathedral of Leicester was a great improvement over the hasty, unmarked burying of his desecrated corpse after the Battle of Bosworth Field 530 years ago.
Richard remains one of the most controversial of British kings. He assumed the throne when his twelve-year-old nephew Edward V was declared illegitimate by Parliament. Edward and his younger brother Richard were sent to live in the Tower of London (which was not yet used exclusively as a prison), and their uncle became King Richard III. The two boys disappeared from public view and just two years after his accession Richard was deposed by Henry Tudor, who then became Henry VII. Richard has been suspected ever since of having the “little princes” murdered, although historians today (especially since Paul Murray Kendall’s 1955 biography of Richard) acknowledge that there is no convincing evidence that he was the author of their deaths, and that, others, including Henry Tudor, had far more motive to kill them than Richard did.*
As interesting as it would be to speculate on the probable guilt of the various parties involved (and, of course, it would be), that’s not the purpose of this blog. Instead, I’d like to focus on what can happen when we let desires untamed by a properly formed conscience have free rein. The connection here is that Henry VII, who drove Richard from the throne, in time bequeathed the throne to his son Henry VIII, who separated the English Church from the Universal Church and made himself its head. Henry’s action had profound consequences, and not only the destruction of Catholic culture in England along with a century and a half of strife and bloodshed (which was, in itself, more than enough). Historian Warren Carroll has demonstrated that the separation of the English Church went a long way towards ensuring that the Protestant Reformation became a permanent feature of religious life in Europe, a thing which might otherwise have remained a largely German affair. In later years, the growth of the British Empire ensured that the split in the Latin Church was spread over the whole globe.
An idealized portrait of henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
And all because of Henry VIII’s wandering eye. He did not set up his own church for theological reasons (he never considered himself a Protestant), nor was he compelled by a groundswell of anti-Catholic feeling in England, this last point thoroughly documented in Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars. No, Henry was motivated by his failure to produce a male heir with his wife, Catherine of Aragon, coupled with an ardent desire to indulge in a more intimate relationship with one of Catherine’s ladies, Anne Boleyn. Anne’s price for returning the king’s affections was that she be allowed to take Catherine’s place. Since the Pope was unwilling to grant Henry an annulment, the English monarch simply made himself the pope of England, and, as far as he was concerned, the problem was solved. While it is possible that a Plantagenet descendant of Richard III, had he ruled instead of Henry, might also have split with Rome, it seems much less likely, since the actual break was precipitated neither by domestic pressure nor by external forces, but was instead closely tied to Henry’s personal desires and character.
On the other hand, however decisive Henry VIII’s libido might have been for the creation of the Anglican Church, there would have been no Henry VIII to have caused the split had it not been for another king’s lust. That king is Richard III’s elder brother, Edward IV, father of the little princes who were allegedly murdered in the Tower of London. Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, a sudden and inadvisable match, came as a surprise to his family and advisors; he married her not because it was an appropriate marriage for an English monarch but because, as with Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII a couple generations later, it was her price for bestowing her favors upon the king.
Elizabeth brought her family with her, of course, whose ambitions after Edward’s death were so alarming that many nobles and Parliament called upon the late king’s brother Richard to serve as protector of the young Edward V and his brother. Soon it seemed expedient to remove the twelve-year-old king altogether in favor of his grown-up and capable uncle, especially after another sexual indiscretion of Edward IV’s came to light which allowed Parliament to declare Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville null, and the boy-king illegitimate. In other words, Edward’s lust-driven behavior in one instance created the unstable situation that made the deposition of his son desirable, and his libidinous behavior in another instance provided the grounds to do so. As we saw above, the consequences of these indiscretions can still be seen around the globe more than half a millennium later.
Board, Ernest; King Edward IV and His Queen, Elizabeth Woodville at Reading Abbey, 1464; Reading Museum; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/king-edward-iv-and-his-queen-elizabeth-woodville-at-reading-abbey-1464-41580
Few of us, of course, can expect our misdeeds to have anywhere near the impact of those of Edward IV or Henry VIII. Nonetheless we can see, as Scripture tells us, how “the iniquity of fathers” is visited “upon children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation” (Numbers, 14:18). Indeed, for centuries. The point is, we have no way to predict how far-reaching the consequences of our own sins will be, and how long they’ll last. Nobody who has seen the vast store of sociological data that has been amassed over the past few decades can deny that one of the greatest contributors to poverty and other debilitating social ills today is the break-down of sexual morality. The next time we are tempted, we might do well to remember what happened when Edward and Henry went astray.
*In brief, while Richard might fear that the princes could become a rallying point for those disaffected with his rule, he could point to the fact that they had been formally removed from the succession by act of Parliament, and that he had been legally crowned. Henry, on the other hand, came from a line that had been excluded from the succession generations earlier by Henry IV. He needed both Richard and the princes dead, because the justification for his rebellion was that Richard was a usurper: if so, then Edward V, and not Henry Tudor, was the rightful king; if not, then Richard III was the rightful king, and Henry simply a traitor. Either way, no Henry VII.
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.(Acts 2:1-4)
Tongues of Fire
“Pentecost” by Fray Juan Bautista Maíno, 1615-1620
This Sunday we celebrate one of the greatest Christian feasts, the Solemnity of Pentecost, which is sometimes called “the birthday of the Church.” We see the central event of Pentecost in the passage from Acts above: the Apostles, along with the Blessed Mother, “the women”, and other disciples, were staying together in Jerusalem where we are told “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer.” (Acts 1:14) Up to this point the small band of Jesus’s remaining followers were keeping to themselves, largely avoiding the hostile public atmosphere in the aftermath of their leader’s crucifixion and awaiting the arrival the Spirit which he had promised (Acts 1:4-5).
And what an arrival it was! Along with the rushing wind came tongues (γλῶσσαι) of flame which enabled them “to speak in other tongues” (γλώσσαις ). The disciples immediately put this newly bestowed power to work by rushing out of the house where they staying and enthusiastically preaching the Gospel to the crowds who had come to Jerusalem from all over the known world to celebrate the Jewish feast of Pentecost (the name comes from the Greek Πεντηκοστή, fiftieth, occurring fifty days after Passover). They continued preaching, and publicly living out their Christian faith, in the face of often violent opposition.
While this Sunday’s liturgical celebration is devoted to Pentecost, it is good to remember some of the saints whose feast day also falls on May 23rd. Of particular interest is St. Julia of Corsica (also known as St. Julia of Carthage), a martyr who refused to be seduced by personal gain or cowed by the threat of torture and death. My first post about St. Julia, published seven years ago, was one of the most visited pages on my original blog, a testimony to the timelessness (and the timeliness) of this saint.
St. Julia of Corsica
St. Julia’s story throws an interesting light on both the events of Pentecost and on the situation in which we find ourselves today. Her story starts in Carthage in the 5th century, where she was born into a noble family. When that ancient city was captured and sacked by the Vandals, Julia was enslaved and sold to a Syrian merchant named Eusebius. Despite the hardships and humiliations of her servile state she remained content, even cheerful, because of her piety and her deep love of Christ. These same qualities greatly endeared her to her master.
On one occasion, when Julia was on a journey with her master, he stopped at the island of Corsica where the locals were celebrating a pagan festival. Eusebius joined in the revelry; Julia, needless to say, stayed away. Her refusal to participate greatly annoyed the local governor, a man called Felix, who, according to the account in Butler’s Lives of the Saints,
asked who this woman was who dared to insult the gods. Eusebius informed him that she was a Christian, and that all his authority over her was too weak to prevail with her to renounce her religion, but that he found her so diligent and faithful he could not part with her.
Felix, however, was not one to take no for an answer. First, he offered Eusebius four of his own female slaves in exchange for the one Julia; Eusebius emphatically refused to surrender her. Next, after her master had fallen asleep, the governor approached Julia directly, offering to free her if only she would sacrifice to the pagan gods. She answered that she was “as free as she desired to be as long as she was allowed to serve Jesus Christ.” This answer enraged Felix, who had her tortured and crucified.
“St. Julia” by Gabriel Von Max, 1866
A few points stand out from the account of St. Julia’s life. First and foremost, her devotion to Christ and her courage in the face of unspeakable suffering is an inspiration to us. Maybe, the next time I’m tempted to “go along with the crowd” simply because I’m afraid of the disapproval or verbal abuse of others, I’ll take some strength from Julia’s fortitude in the face of much, much worse persecution.
Julia also shows us the power of example. Clearly, her character and virtue made a large impression on her master Eusebius. While her diligence and fidelity alone were not enough to win him over to the faith, at least not right away, they did give him the courage to stand up to the governor Felix, and convince him not to give her up for, literally, any price. None of the accounts I have seen, unfortunately, tell us anything about what eventually happened to Eusebius. One wonders whether the example of her heroic martyrdom was finally enough to make him a Christian. We do know that the witness of the martyrs was crucial to the conversion of very many people, for which reason Tertullian said: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
A Saint for Our Time
Julia’s story also tells us something about the nature of sin. I am reminded yet again of Father Richard John Neuhaus’ aphorism: “When orthodoxy becomes optional, sooner or later it will become proscribed”. Simply doing the right thing, in other words, is seen as a rebuke by those who are doing the wrong thing. Look at Julia: she wasn’t interfering with the pagan festival, she was simply staying away. The governor, however, couldn’t tolerate anyone who was not actively endorsing his activities.
How often we have seen this same attitude today. Granted, at least in the United States, nobody is literally being crucified, although the advocates of a “New Orthodoxy” will certainly try to destroy the reputation and livelihood of anyone who does not publicly cheer for their moral and societal innovations. The list of people, from celebrities on down to ordinary people including school counselors and college professors and students who have been “cancelled” merely for stating their adherence to things that were considered to be commonsense up until the day before yesterday is too long to go into here. We all know about the weak-kneed corporations giving in to leftist bullying and, and within the last year we have seen communications monopolies such as Twitter, Facebook, and the rest become bolder than ever in their attempts to shut down speech that doesn’t adhere to the politically correct point of view.
The Dogma Lives Loudly
Notice that many of the stances that draw the most fire from the Woke Cancellation Mob are not only things that have traditionally been taken for granted by virtually everyone, but are also matters of clear Catholic teaching. Consider the following questions from then Senator, now Vice President (!) Kamala Harris directed toward judicial nominee Brian C. Buescher, regarding his membership in what Senator Harris and Senator Mazie Hirono characterized as an “extremist” organization:
“Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization? . . . Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed marriage equality when you joined the organization?”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett: can you hear the dogma?
This was not an isolated incident: the year before Senator Dianne Feinstein disapprovingly observed to Judicial nominee (and eventual Supreme Court Justice) Amy Coney Bryant, also a Catholic, that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” The year after Harris’s grilling of Buescher, Senator Cory Booker demanded of Neomi Rao, another nominee for a federal judgeship (and in her case a convert to Judaism) “whether you believe it is sinful for two men to be married?” It’s telling that these prominent politicians, two of whom were planning presidential runs, were deterred neither by the Constitution’s explicit ban on “religious tests” for office nor by fear of a electoral backlash from their overt shows of anti-religious bigotry. It should come as no surprise that the administration in which former Senator Harris now serves has promulgated a rule denying conscience protection to Catholic and other doctors morally opposed to “gender reassignment” surgery, and is promoting the so-called “Equality Act,” which would force pro-life doctors to perform abortions.
We should not conclude from the examples above that this is primarily a political problem: as we have seen before (here and here, for instance), politics is an outgrowth of things going on at deeper levels in society, in the culture and, more fundamentally still, on the religious level. Politics reflects changes that have already taken place on those deeper levels, and if major national politicians believe that they can get away with such overtly anti-Christian behavior (and why shouldn’t they? It’s worked so far), something has already gone very wrong at the roots. In fact, aggressive secularism has not only taken over the culture, but has also taken on the the role of an alternative religion that is fighting traditional Christian belief for possession of the deepest foundations of our society. The secularists can draw on their cultural influence to acquire political power, and then in turn use their political gains to protect what they have won on the other levels. As Austin Ruse says in an essay published on the Crisis website this week:
Catholics and other Christians must understand that we are not merely up against a new faith but a new faith that is an established Church backed by the power of the federal, state, and local governments.
Like St. Julia, simply by believing in orthodox Christianity and following its precepts, we are seen as a threat by that rival faith.
More Precious Than GoldTested By Fire
But, of course, that’s not the end of the story. Christ sent the Holy Spirit down on his Church at Pentecost, the Church against which, he had promised Peter, the “Gates of Hell” would not prevail (Matthew 16:17) . . . but he had also promised persecution (Matthew 5:11). The Persecution was not long in coming. The same Peter who boldly addresses the wondering crowds on Pentecost will soon be writing to the early Christians:
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.(1 Peter 1:6-7)
St. Maximilian Kolbe
Granted, the sort of harassment Christians face in the secular West does not come close to that faced by the Early Church or by martyrs like St. Julia . . . yet. The same can’t be said for much of the Islamic world, where Christians face tremendous violence or, increasingly, in communist China. We are kidding ourselves if we think it can’t happen here. At the same time, throughout the history of the Church we have seen zealous persecutors from St. Paul himself to the Nazi death-camp guards who were awed by the martyrdom of St. Maximilian Kolbe converted, often by witnessing the faith and Christ-like serenity of their victims. The ancient accounts don’t tell us, but St. Julia’s master Eusebius, or even the governor Felix, might well have been among these. Whether or not they were moved in this way, we can be sure that many of the other pagan witnesses were.
Finally, the times are dark, but be of good cheer. The example of St. Julia of Corsica is a reminder that, although there will always be defeats along the way, Christ wins in the end. If we can put our Hope in His promise and rely on the support of the Holy Spirit, as Julia did, we can persevere. As St. Peter said: “Rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 13).
During the summer when school is not in session I used to work in the garden center of a local retail store, which was a pleasant break from the rigors and stresses of the academic year. One afternoon I cashed out a very friendly older woman, but when I wished her a “good evening” she shook her head and, still smiling, said “I never have good evenings these days.” “I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied “why don’t you have good evenings?” “Because my husband has Alzheimer’s.” All I could think to say was “I’m so sorry.” It was only after she left that it occurred to me I should have said, “I’ll pray for you.”
St. Dymphna holy card
As it happens, I did pray for her and her husband at the time, and again that night with my family during prayer time. I have often remembered this incident over the intervening years. I mention it today because this is the feast day of St. Dymphna, patron saint of sufferers of mental illness (including Alzheimer’s) and their families.
I invite all of you to say a prayer along with us for this couple, and for all who are afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease or other mental illnesses and their families, asking for the intercession of St. Dymphna:
Lord, our God, you graciously chose St. Dymphna as patroness of those afflicted with mental and nervous disorders and Spiritual afflictions. She is thus an inspiration and a symbol of charity to the thousands who ask her intercession.
Please grant, Lord, through the prayers of this pure youthful martyr, relief and consolation to all suffering such trials, and especially those for whom we pray: Sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease and their families.
We beg you, Lord, to hear the prayers of St. Dymphna on our behalf. Grant all those for whom we pray patience in their sufferings and resignation to your divine will. Please fill them with hope, and grant them the relief and cure they so much desire. We ask this through Christ our Lord who suffered agony in the garden. Amen.
You can read more about St. Dymphna HERE at catholic.org.
Featured image top of page: Martyrdom of St Dymphna and St Gerebernus by Jacques de l’Ange (Attr.) or Gerard Seghers (Attr.), early 1600’s
“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”
You’re probably familiar with the quote above, a favorite of Pope St. John Paul II. It’s author is Tertullian (c. A.D. 160 – c. A.D. 220), one of the foremost Christian writers and apologists of his age, who also gave us such essential terms as “Trinity” (Trinitas) and “Three Persons, One Substance” (Tres Personae, Una Substantia). Despite his enormous achievements, however, and his lasting influence, Tertullian is not considered a Father of the Church; we don’t even call him “Saint” Tertullian: he chose, sadly, to follow his own judgment rather than that of the Apostolic Church, and fell into heresy in the latter part of his life.
Tertullian AD 155-220
I first wrote this post six years ago, as a follow-up to my essay “Merton’s Parable of the Trappists and Icarians”. I had been reminded of Tertullian by several things I read at that time about the Trappist monk Thomas Merton who, if he had still been with us, would have been celebrating his 100th birthday at the time (January 31st 2015). I don’t mean to suggest that Merton was a figure on a par with Tertullian: the late Trappist made no lasting contribution to the development of Catholic Doctrine, and added no new words to our vocabulary, although he was quite influential in his time (and still is, to a degree). Like Tertullian, however, he didn’t stay the course: while he never considered himself to have left the Church, his growing involvement with Zen Buddhism in his last years appeared to be carrying him outside the bounds of Christian belief and practice.
I resisted reading anything by Thomas Merton for a long time, largely, I confess, because I was put off by certain enthusiasts who were mostly interested in his Zen phase. When I first picked up The Seven Storey Mountain, the autobiography he wrote shortly after joining the Trappists, I wished that I hadn’t waited so long: the story of his conversion was beautiful and inspiring, as was much of his other writing from the 1940’s and 1950’s. Sadly, Merton didn’t stay that way. He has always reminded me of an image from the English historian (and Catholic saint) the Venerable Bede (672-730 A.D), although not in quite the same way Bede used the image. In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, a retainer of King Edwin of Northumbria convinces him to embrace the new faith of Christianity by telling the king that his life is like a bird that passes through an open window into a well-lit hall, and then out again into the stormy night: his pagan worldview can only explain that brief moment in the light, but what comes before or after is dark. The Christian Faith, on the other hand, can explain it all. In Merton’s case, he is the bird in the image. He flew out of the darkness of his early, unbelieving, years into the light of the Faith, but appeared to be headed out the far window when he met his end in Thailand in 1968.
Thomas Merton
As I mentioned above, this post was originally sparked by other articles I read marking the centennial of Merton’s birth. On the Catholic World Report site, for instance, Karl Olsen had posted a piece (“More on Merton”), a spin-off from an earlier article published in This Rock in 2008 by Anthony E. Clark (“Can You Trust Thomas Merton?”) for which Olsen had been the illustrator. The two pieces highlight the dilemma presented by this conflicted, contradictory monk: yes he was a good Catholic gone bad, but he was also a gifted writer who, in his orthodox period, wrote some insightful and uplifting things. Clark’s This Rock article very helpfully includes a list of Merton works to avoid, but also enumerates recommended writings, which Clark introduces by saying: “These works represent the early era of Merton’s monastic life, and his views are still quite orthodox. These books are beautifully written; they are what made Thomas Merton Thomas Merton.”
It’s tempting to simply drop Merton altogether, given the potential bad influence of his later, heterodox books. I don’t think we should do that. That’s not the way the Church dealt with Tertullian, or Origen, another almost-Father of the Church gone bad whose good writings are still read. We should hold on to what what is good and beautiful. We haven’t thrown out the word “Trinity” because Tertullian became a Montanist, and we likewise should not forget The Seven Storey Mountain just because Thomas Merton seemed to lose his way later in life.
Thomas Merton is a name that can provoke a reaction from all manner of Catholics . . . all manner of reactions as well, depending on whether you invoke the Merton of the 1940’s, a doctrinally orthodox convert to Catholicism who was enamored of his new life in a Trappist monastery, or the Merton of the 1960’s who, although still a monk, seemed more interested in anti-Vietnam politics and Buddhist mysticism. This article, an update of a post I first published six years ago at the time of Merton’s hundredth birthday, is about an illuminating story in one of his early (i.e., orthodox) books. I’ll publish a follow-up post about Merton himself next week.
Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey
Although vowed to silence in his everyday life in the Trappist abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was a gifted writer whose literary work was first permitted, and then encouraged by his superiors. His first and best book is The Seven Storey Mountain, the autobiography he published in 1948. It’s a beautifully written, compelling story of his conversion to Christ and to Catholicism. He was not without his failings, however, some of them rather serious. Not only that, but toward the end of his life in the mid to late 1960’s he became increasingly drawn to Zen Buddhism. It was not clear that he could still be truly considered a Catholic at the time of his unexpected death in Thailand in 1968.
The Founding
Prior to his later turn toward Buddhism, however, most of Merton’s writing was thoroughly Catholic and often inspirational. One of my favorite pieces, from his 1949 book The Waters of Siloe, is his account of the founding of his monastery, Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, which had been established by French monks a century earlier. The tale starts with the departure of the founding monks, in the dead of night in the pouring rain, from their original monastery in France; it details their many adventures in getting to, and then across, the Atlantic Ocean, and finally their arrival at their new home in the rolling Kentucky hills.
I had at one time hoped to write a children’s book drawing on Merton’s story (which is itself based on a contemporary account in the monastery’s records). My own kids liked the idea, but, sadly, the late monk’s literary trustees did not share our enthusiasm for the project, so it was not be. Too bad.
Nonetheless, it’s worth reading Merton’s version of the story. He has a wonderful way with a narrative, and makes the most of some of the amusing twists in the story, as when the reclusive Trappists lose their luggage in the worldly sprawl of Paris, or when (again in the pouring rain) the “Silent Monks” need to find a way to wake up the Jesuits under whose roof they were planning to spend their first night on their arrival in Kentucky.
The Parable of the Icarians
The most striking thing in Merton’s story, however, is a little parable which he weaves into the larger narrative. As it happens, among the other passengers on the ship that carries the Trappists to America are members of a secular communal group called the Icarians. Merton doesn’t miss an opportunity to contrast the peace and order of the Trappists, whose little society is founded on Jesus Christ, with the Icarians, who follow the ideas of the socialist utopian Etienne Cabet: the Trappists feed the other travelers, including the Icarians, from their mobile kitchen, while the Icarians prohibit their members from taking spiritual sustenance at the monks’ masses; the Trappists “owned all their property in common. They were, in fact, vowed to the most uncompromising poverty, forbidden to possess anything as individuals,” whereas when the Icarians decide to divide up their wealth one member attempts to make off with all of it and another “wrote a letter of delirious invective against Cabet and then blew out his brains.” The Trappist superior is shocked when one Icarian, who had fallen overboard, confided that he was prepared to stab himself to death rather than drown if nobody came to save him; later, the monk is bemused to discover that another Icarian, who is asking to join the Trappists, is in fact a married man.
Merton himself explains the difference between the two groups as follows:
. . . the monks had Christ living and working in them by faith, by charity. The monks were united by the Holy Spirit in the peace of God, which tames and dominates and sublimates man’s nature and ordains it to the highest possible ends. But the Icarians were united only by the frail bonds of an “armed neutrality” of insatiable animal appetites.
Gethsemani during Merton’s residence in 1950’s
Merton’s thesis is a simple one (which I address from a somewhat different angle in my recent post “What We Owe to Caesar“): Jesus Christ is the foundation of all truth, and a society built on Christ will be orderly and flourishing; a society that relies exclusively on human wisdom is doomed to futility and disintegration. The Icarians (who were actually more successful than most such groups: their last community didn’t disband until 1898, fifty years after they began) are neither the first nor the last example history offers. Merton saw it himself in his own history, in the contrast between the disorder and unhappiness of his early, worldly, life, and the joy that he found in the Christ-centered world of the monastery (and one hopes he found his way back to the Lord before the final end). His tale of the Trappists and the Icarians is just one more illustration that only the house built on the Rock (see Matthew 7:25) will stand.
Featured image above: “The Fall of Icarus” by Bernard Picart (1731)
