The beauty and mystery of the feminine

This morning a post over the The Catholic Gentleman blog, "Your Wife is Wearing What? Men, Veils, and the Mystery of Femininity," caught my attention. Given my ambivalence towards this particular issue, I have to admit that it was the beautiful picture of a black-veiled Spanish dancer that drew me to go to the link. Why? Because I am utterly taken with, moved by, the mysterious beauty of women. I have been from my earliest memories. I can remember when I was about 5 or 6 going to the bank with my Mom once a week. There was the most beautiful woman who worked at the teller window. I remember my Mom commenting to someone how taken I was with the lovely bank teller with dark eyes.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Another point I wish to make before proceeding is that my lovely wife, who I am still taken with after more than twenty of marriage, does not wear a chapel veil. This is not a subject I would ever deign to broach with her, let alone something I would ever ask, expect, or insist she do. Such a decision is hers to make in her freedom as a daughter of God.

Nonetheless, I propose a though-experiment: just for the time it takes to read the The Catholic Gentleman post, set aside your prejudices. Of course, feel free to be critical after you read it. This is not just alright, but necessary, anything less is not human, let alone Christian. I would note that the current polarization in the Church, which has intensified a lot lately, is a dirty lens through which to view the world. Clean it off. This is why I think, more than any previous pope, Benedict XVI was the Pope of Christian unity. After all, he was the pope who insisted that Eucharistic hospitality must be extended to those who desire to receive their Lord kneeling and on the tongue. I would note that this is not something I do.

Sr Cristina Succia

Nobody, least of all me, is insisting that women be required to wear a chapel veil. It also bears noting that the decision to wear one cannot be a way of making someone think herself better, or holier, than someone who chooses, for whatever reason(s), not to do so. It's like abstaining from meat on Fridays, or fasting, especially on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. If observing these things gives you a smug feeling of self-satisfaction, then stop right away, remove the veil, eat a hamburger, for the sake of your soul.

Some signs are cheap and disposable, like the Banana Republic ads that suggest that a briefcase is power, that having a family is a threat to personhood, that you should look as thin and edible as a Slim Jim. But other signs are woven into the very fabric of the universe, inviolate and inviolable, and a woman is such a sign. The Blessed Virgin Mary reminds us that a mother does not 'make' a home. A mother is home. Eve is the height of creation because she is a prophecy of the New Eve, the Mother of the Church, the Virgin Mary—and in all her statues and icons, Mary is wearing a veil

AND, I might add, she is beautiful, like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta in her sari and veil, or Sr. Cristina, as she rocks it.

"I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's"

What better for a Friday traditio when All Hallow's Eve falls on a Friday than the late, great Warren Zevon singing "Werewolves of London," especially in a video in which the late, great Joe Strummer receives a "shout out"? For my money, nothing!

Tonight we begin the annual three-day festival: All Hallow's Eve, All Saints, and All Souls. All Souls is the Church's "Memorial Day," which kicks off an entire month during which we remember our beloved dead in a more intense way. We do this as we make our way towards the end of time: the great Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinking a piña colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect

Practicing faith: notes on how to live "this" way

This Friday, 31 October, is Halloween. Overnight, no doubt, a change will happen. We will awake on 1 November deluged by all things Christmas, but not authentically Christmas. We will be faced with what might be called, with no exaggeration at all, "anti-Christmas."

In his short book Who Is a Christian?, which I am milking for all it's worth (I find it all very valuable), Hans Urs Von Balthasar makes a couple of observations about just this that are worth passing along. The title of the chapter in which he makes these worthwhile observations is "What Does It Mean to 'Practice'?"

First, as regards the liturgical year as a whole and its "application," for lack of a better term, to everyday life, he wrote:

"Practicing" is, finally, something the individual will pursue, not only within the socially well-trodden ways of the liturgical year, but equally in the untrodden, unknown paths of his own personal fate, which he will come to recognize as such at times of joy, yet perhaps still more markedly in times of trial. Here he faces the demanding challenge of interpreting his life in relation to God... more effective are the humiliations that the Lord has promised his own as a great grace and which, when they come, must always remind him, for "a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant his master' (Mt 10:24). They are a sign that the Lord and Master has not forgotten the servant. Failures, defeats, reverses, calumnies, contempt; finally, as the very embodiment of his life, a great bankruptcy - all this was the daily bread of Christ (106-107)

Then, as regards Christmas specifically:

Practicing Christmas... means translating the spirit of the feast into our own lives: the fact that God, although rich, has become poor for our sakes in order to enrich us with his poverty (2 Cor 8:9), so shamefully abused as the birthday of Mammon, distorted to the point of unrecognizability into its very opposite, must be restored by Christians to its primary meaning (106)

When we pray the Joyful Mysteries of Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, coming to the third Mystery, the Nativity of our Lord, the fruit of this Mystery is poverty.

If I have to assign this post a moral, or a point, it would be, Before we worry about keeping Christ in Christmas, let's observe the beautiful, multi-faceted season of Advent, which does not merely look back to that singular event when the Only Begotten Son of God was born impoverished in a manager in Nazareth, but to the end of time, when He will return in glory, a time we seek to bring about by praying Maranatha!

In the second volume of the tripartate Is It Possible to Live This Way: An Unusual Approach to Christian Existence, the focus of which is the theological virtue of hope, Msgr Luigi Giussani said,

As the virtue of freedom opens up the space for obedience, so the virtue of poverty opens up the space for trust... which is paradoxical, because freedom and obedience seem contradictory, and the space that non-possession opens up for trust seems contradictory; no, it is contradictory. Instead, in Christian discourse, according to its usual unpredictability, according to its unexpected attitude, hope, above all, gives birth to poverty

"But I ain't turning back to living that old life no more"

This week's Friday traditio is Old Crow Medicine Show singing "Darius Rucker," more popularly known as "Wagon Wheel."

Like Gram Parsons' song "Return of the Grievous Angel," this song makes you homesick. It is transcendent by being deeply existential. We've all been there: alone, cold, hungry, broke, far from home, but not without hope.

Oh, north country winters keep a-getting me down
Lost my money playing poker so I had to leave town
But I ain't turning back to living that old life no more

Schillebeeckx's two profound threats of the 3rd millennium

I found the late Fr Edward Schillebeeckx's short "Forward" to Daniel Speed Thompson's book, The Language of Dissent: Edward Schillebeeckx on the Crisis of Authority in the Catholic Church, published in 2003, deeply insightful and a bit profound.

Among the insights is the Dominican friar's identification of what he viewed as "two profound threats" to the credibility of the Church's authority in the third millennium. First, the many varieties of fundamentalism, "which, whether in God's name, in the name of a political ideology [it bears noting that these fuse together in revolutionary Islamism], or in the name of an absolutely free market economy which tolerates no impartial supervision - do injustice to people, affront human authenticity, and thus cut off every uncritically participating religion from its own authentic sources of inspiration" (xii).

The second profound threat is "ethnic nationalism which is spreading ever more violently around the world and which is probably a variety of fundamentalism (namely, because it is a negation of the historical, temporal, and spatial situatedness of our imaginative and conceptual articulations of what we proclaim as truth)" (xii).

The Nijmegen theologian went on to observe: "Those familiar with history know that some churches, which are often eager to condemn certain sociopolitical views, often stand hesitant or silent before the violent and subtle ethnic nationalism responsible for ethnic cleansing and the brutal rejection of "the stranger": there is now a clearly real danger of self-satisfied complacency in one's own views, along with a growing failure to appreciate the 'otherness' of others" (xii).

I suppose one good observation leads to another: It is also true that some churches, which are eager to condemn certain (opposite) sociopolitical views, often stand hesitant or silent before the dismantling of the great achievement that is Western civilization, at the foundation of which is Christianity, and through their active complicity help create more than adequate space for fundamentalists of both kinds, as well as those who fuse the two together, to realize their goals.

My point is, "self-satisfied complacency" afflicts those at both extremes. If nothing else, phenomena like IS(IS/IL, whatever they want to be called this week), show us how fragile civilization, which people in the West take too much for granted, actually is. This kind of barbarism, which is happening with alarming frequency in the West, also demonstrates the importance of culture and the inadequacy of what Jacques Ellul, who wrote, "Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends," called "the technological society."

I think it is precisely this "self-satisfied complacency" that Jesus sought to shake people from. He still seeks to do so in our day. Certainly the papacy of Blessed Pope Paul VI (I was Montini enthusiast before last week and not just because of Humanae Vitae, which, as Pope Benedict XVI noted in his 2008 Christmas Address to the Roman Curia, "the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against sex as a consumer good, the future against the exclusive claims of the present, and human nature against its manipulation," but lauding Populorum Progresso, Evangelii Nuntianai, and other documents that constituted his unique magisterium) was aimed at doing just this. In all his teaching he sought to move us beyond our self-satisfaction and smugness, our reduction of the Gospel to a self-improvement program, and other such temptations.

My relationship to Schillebeeckx's work is similar to my relationship Karl Marx's work: brilliant at analysis and critical engagement, but his prescriptions for remedying the issues that arose from his analysis, in my view, left a lot to be desired. Nonetheless his work remains well-worth engaging. I also have to note my appreciation for his application of certain aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy of language to his theological project.

As I was surfing the web (does anybody use that phrase any more?) looking for a suitable picture of Fr Schillebeeckx, I came across this remembrance (it had the best picture, but being a personal picture was not available for use): "Edward Schillebeeckx: 1914-2009."

Year A Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isa 45:1.4-6; Ps 961.3-5.7-8.9-10; 1 Thes 1:1-5b; Matt 22:15-21

Before rushing headlong into our Gospel, let’s have a look at something important from our first reading. In this passage, taken from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, we read that Cyrus, whose right hand the LORD grasped, is referred to as the LORD’s anointed. Why is this significant? It is significant because Cyrus was the king of Persia. In BC 539, the Persians, led by Cyrus, conquered the Babylonians, who had destroyed Jerusalem, including the First Temple, and led many away into exile. In BC 538, Cyrus decreed that the exiles could return to Jerusalem and that the holy city could be rebuilt, including the Temple.

If the significance of that is not yet obvious, it is a case of God using a ruler to accomplish His purpose in and for the world. In his encyclical letter, Pacem in Terris, Pope St John XXIII wrote, “Human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous unless it has some people invested with legitimate authority to preserve its institutions and to devote themselves as far as is necessary to work and care for the good of all” (par 46). “The good of all” referred to here is nothing other than the common good.

In the first instance, the common good requires respect for the dignity the human person as such, that is, the human being as a bearer the imago dei, the divine image, or, more philosophically, a being with a transcendent dimension. This means that those in public authority are bound to respect “the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person” (Catechism of the Catholic Church par 1907), identified in our Declaration of Independence as God-given, “unalienable Rights.” And so, the common good requires that all people be permitted to exercise their natural freedoms, which exercise is necessary in order for each person to have the possibility of realizing the end for which s/he is made, which is God Himself.

Turning, then, to our Gospel: Jesus’ interlopers sought to ensnare Him in a trap, but to no avail. By asking Him whether or not it was lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar, the Pharisees and the Herodians (the latter of whom were most likely a political party seeking the restoration of Jewish self-rule under the Herodian dynasty- the Herod’s were Roman vassals during Jesus’ time) thought they had the Lord in a Catch-22. If He said Jewish law forbade Jews to pay the census tax, then He would be openly fomenting opposition to the Roman occupiers, who did not look favorably on such rabble-rousers. If He said it was lawful, then they believed He would discredit Himself and that would weaken His influence and would likely reduce the number of His followers, as the census tax was a loathsome thing to them.

Not only does Jesus’ answer allow Him to evade the trap, it is also the basis for recognizing the legitimacy of governmental authority, even while giving priority to following God. This all sounds neat and fine, but what about those times when our allegiance to God and our allegiance to the state come into conflict? Certainly we live in a time when this is the case, whether it is the unjust HHS mandate, the attempt to re-define marriage, and the fall-out from that for individual Christian citizens, mostly small business-owners, or the courts, as in one case before the Louisiana Supreme Court, seeking to force a priest to divulge something a penitent confessed to him in the Sacrament of Penance.

The Tribute Money, by Peter Paul Reubens, ca. 1612

Among other things, fostering the common good requires governments and officials to act in accord with both divine and natural law, or, to put it in the language of Scholastic theology, to act in accord with right reason. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this means that if rulers or governments “enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order," these laws and measures do not bind us in conscience (par 1903). When necessary, we are to staunchly and peaceably disobey such laws, a practice known as civil disobedience.

In his First Apology, St Justin Martyr, echoing the teaching of Christ, wrote about the charge that Christians were enemies of the state because of their refusal to participate in pagan rites and because they spoke about belonging to another kingdom. Justin argued they were not enemies of the Empire because the kingdom Christians seek is not an earthly kingdom, a kingdom that would be a rival to Rome. If the kingdom Christians anticipated were an earthly kingdom, he reasoned, they wouldn't accept martyrdom in such a clam manner. Instead, they would hide and await the earthly kingdom. On the contrary, St Justin pointed out, more than anyone else, Christians are good citizens because they are allies “in fostering peace,” believing that one day everyone will face God and give an account of their lives. “Only God do we worship,” he said, “but in other things we joyfully obey you, acknowledging you as the kings and rulers of men.” He even used today’s Gospel as an example of what he meant.

Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, tells us, “The way in which the earthly and the heavenly city interpenetrate each other can be recognized only by faith; indeed, it remains a mystery of human history, that is, of a history always troubled by sin” until Christ returns (par 40). Being “the universal sacrament of salvation,” the Church “has one object in view: the coming of God’s kingdom and the salvation of the whole human race” (par 45). In accomplishing her goal of bringing salvation to the world, “The Church believes… she can make a great contribution, through [her] individual members and the community as a whole [by]… bringing a greater humanity to the family of man and to its history” (par 40).

The only way it is possible for us to render to God what is God’s is by participating in the Eucharist. Several years ago, in a speech entitled “Beyond Secular Reason," Archbishop Javier Martínez identified the “Eucharist [as] the only place of resistance to the annihilation of the human subject.” The centrality of the Eucharist was stated beautifully in the final message from the bishops participating in the Extraordinary Synod, which concludes today in Rome: “The high point which sums up all the threads of communion with God and neighbor is the Sunday Eucharist when the family and the whole Church sits at table with the Lord. He gives himself to all of us, pilgrims through history towards the goal of the final encounter when ‘Christ is all and in all’ (Col 3:11).” And so it is, we can only render to God what is God’s because the Father sent His Son, who, in and through the Eucharist, by the power of the Holy Spirit, gives Himself to us.

My takeaways from Synod14's final message

Because it is readily available, I don't want to simply re-state the final message from Synod14. I do want to observe that it is a beautiful document, far exceeding in every way the mid-term report, which certainly had some excellent features, including what it relayed in certain sections of Part III about marriage, including an outstanding section on Humanae Vitae. Sadly, all of these were overlooked as a result of some troublingly vague and ambiguous passages about other, no less important, matters.

In my view, Synod14's final message leaves us with a lot hope about what will occur over this next year leading up to Synod15.

I simply offer below several passages, in sequential order, from today's message that I found deeply moving:

On his journeys along the roads of the Holy Land, Jesus would enter village houses. He continues to pass even today along the streets of our cities. In your homes there are light and shadow. Challenges often present themselves and at times even great trials. The darkness can grow deep to the point of becoming a dense shadow when evil and sin work into the heart of the family

We recognize the great challenge to remain faithful in conjugal love. Enfeebled faith and indifference to true values, individualism, impoverishment of relationships, and stress that excludes reflection leave their mark on family life. There are often crises in marriage, often confronted in haste and without the courage to have patience and reflect, to make sacrifices and to forgive one another. Failures give rise to new relationships, new couples, new civil unions, and new marriages, creating family situations which are complex and problematic, where the Christian choice is not obvious

This light—the light of a wedding story—shines from the encounter between spouses... This authentic encounter begins with courtship, a time of waiting and preparation. It is realized in the sacrament where God sets his seal, his presence, and grace. This path also includes sexual relationship, tenderness, intimacy, and beauty capable of lasting longer than the vigor and freshness of youth. Such love, of its nature, strives to be forever to the point of laying down one’s life for the beloved (cf Jn 15:13). In this light conjugal love, which is unique and indissoluble, endures despite many difficulties. It is one of the most beautiful of all miracles and the most common

Finally, this amazing sentence, which says a lot not only about who are, but Him who makes us who we are: "The high point which sums up all the threads of communion with God and neighbor is the Sunday Eucharist when the family and the whole Church sits at table with the Lord. He gives himself to all of us, pilgrims through history towards the goal of the final encounter when 'Christ is all and in all' (Col 3:11)." I'll be honest, reading that brought tears to my eyes.

Venerable Pope Paul VI- to be Blessed Pope Paul VI as of tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day that Pope Francis himself will beatify the Venerable Pope Paul VI. So after tomorrow we can say, "Blessed Pope Paul VI, pray for us!" Seeking his intercession, along that of St Gianna Molla, Pope St John XXIII, Pope St John Paul II, is something I plan to do often over the course of the next year.

Let us also pray often the prayer given to us at the very end of the final message from Synod14:

Father, grant to all families the presence of strong and wise spouses who may be the source of a free and united family.

Father, grant that parents may have a home in which to live in peace with their families.

Father, grant that children may be a sign of trust and hope and that young people may have the courage to forge life-long, faithful commitments.

Father, grant to all that they may be able to earn bread with their hands, that they may enjoy serenity of spirit and that they may keep aflame the torch of faith even in periods of darkness.

Father, grant that we may all see flourish a Church that is ever more faithful and credible, a just and humane city, a world that loves truth, justice and mercy