More Ugly Churches!

Orange County has released it's plans for Christ Cathedral, nee Crystal Cathedral with  "Antiphonal Layout". I guess that's so the giant puppets will be easier to see.

I guess the New Liturgical Movement is really dead.  After Benedict XVI resigned, what's the point?

Ugly!

Another view of the ongoing St Patricks day saga

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/steven-greydanus/gays-jesus-and-st.-patricks-day

Dana Gioia on Beauty

Rejoice!  Some talks from the 2014 Napa Institute Conference have been posted to YouTube.  Here's Dana Gioia talking about the role of beauty in culture and how it's absence affects us all.

Life High the Cross

An excerpt from a talk I gave at RCIA last year.

Jesus frequently spoke of His coming crucifixion.  For this talk, I’d like to focus on Jesus’ image of the serpent in the desert:  “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”  (John 3:14-15).  This refers to Numbers 21:4-9.  The Israelites are traveling through a desert and grumbled against God, so God punished them with seraph serpents (“fiery” serpents).  The Israelites repent of their sins and beg Moses to take the snakes away. In response, God instructs Moses to mount a bronze serpent on a pole. If anyone was bitten by a snake, he’d look at the bronze serpent and the venom would be neutralized.  Notice: God didn’t take the snakes away.  Instead He gave the cure for the venom.

This is what Jesus identified Himself with.  When He was crucified, He didn’t remove sin from the world, He gave us the cure for sin: the cross.  

When we started RCIA, you went through a Rite called the Rite of Welcome (for the Candidates) and the Rite of Acceptance (for Catechumens).  This rite is an ancient part of the Rites of Initiation.  You may remember this rite because you were probably nervous standing in front of the whole congregation while your sponsor made the sign of the cross all over your body.  Since you likely were nervous about the whole thing I’d like to go over it and reflect on what happened.

The first thing that happened was the priest asked “What do you ask of the Church” and you responded “Faith.”  He then asked “What does faith give you?” and you responded “Eternal life.”  It was in faith that the Israelites looked to the bronze serpent for healing, and it is in faith that Jesus says we are to look to the cross for eternal life.

Then the priest said “Receive the sign of the cross on your forehead. It is Christ Himself who now strengthens you with this sign of love. Learn to know Him and follow Him.”  Then your sponsor traced the sign of the cross over your forehead.

Then the priest said “Receive the sign of the cross on your ears, that you may hear the voice of the Lord,” and your sponsor traced the sign of the cross over your ears.

Then the priest said, “Receive the sign of the cross on your eyes, that you may see the glory of God” and your sponsor traced the sign of the cross over your eyes.

Let’s stop and look at this.  The Church, through the priest and your sponsor, has marked you with the cross over your forehead, your ears and your eyes.  Your forehead was marked first so you might know and follow Jesus.  Then your ears and eyes were blessed so you could hear and see Jesus.  Why in that order?  Don’t you normally see and hear something before you understand it?  Don’t you hear or see a person speak before you follow that person? Yet in this case, we pray that you know Jesus and follow Him before we pray that He is revealed to your senses.  The story of Christianity is not a story of man searching for God, but of God searching for man.  God makes the first step, we have a sense that something is out there and then we see what God has revealed, but we don’t do it on our own.  Faith is a gift, not something we can manufacture by our own effort.

Have you had this experience: after realizing that God is at work in the world, you suddenly notice Him in ways you never did before?  It’s as if you’re seeing the world anew.  God was always there, but until your senses were rekindled through faith, you couldn’t see Him.  That’s what we pray for during this rite.

We pray that you will know Jesus, hear His voice, and see His glory, and we do that with the cross.  This is the contradiction of the cross: we know from the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus that they saw the actual Cross, and didn’t see the glory of God in it. Crucifixion was a brutal, humiliating, gruesome sight. And yet, that’s the throne that Jesus chose to rule from.  The cross was the sign of His love and the sign of His victory, in hoc signo vinces. It’s hard to see God present when surrounded by the troubles of this world.  It's hard to say that God is at work when war and natural disasters cause so much suffering.   And yet, that’s where the cross is.

In the accounts of the crucifixion, we read the story of the good thief and the bad thief.  The bad thief asked to be taken down from his cross, and he did so in a taunting way.  If you are the Son of God, save yourself and save us!  It’s the same formula the devil used when tempting Jesus: If you are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread... But the good thief was penitent.  He didn’t taunt Jesus, he didn’t ask for his cross to be removed.  He asked only to be forgiven, to be remembered.  Archbishop Fulton Sheen put it this way in his classic book “Life of Christ”.

“A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but in the Divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into Paradise. If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief’s request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer: “I promise thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.”

It was the thief’s last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Savior.”

Jesus quite literally and physically united His sufferings with those of the good thief. The good thief saw God beside him at his darkest hour, and cried out to be remembered.  Jesus was physically close to the bad thief as well, but the bad thief couldn’t recognize Him, so he missed the chance to find hope in the midst of suffering.  The good thief could “know [Jesus] and follow Him” as we say in the signing rite. The bad thief could not.

Let’s return to the rite.  The priest then said “Receive the sign of the cross on your lips, that you may respond to the word of God.”  You may recall that in our first class, Father Heines defined faith as “a response to a God who reveals.”  Having signed your senses, it is our prayer that you will not only see and hear Jesus, but respond to Him.  

Then the priest said “Receive the sign of the cross over your heart, that Christ may dwell there by faith.”  The heart is the central organ.  It pumps life-giving blood to the rest of the body.  We pray the light of Faith will not just remain an idea or a sentiment, but it will extend through your entire being and shape everything you do.

Then the priest said “Receive the cross on your shoulders, that you may bear the gentle yoke of Jesus.”  We all have a cross to bear.  Just as God didn’t remove the snakes from the desert, he often doesn’t remove our crosses, but He helps us carry them.  Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus to carry His cross, and sometimes we can help to carry the crosses of those we meet.  

Then the priest said “Receive the cross on your hands, that Christ may be known in the work which you do.”  God gave us a share in His divine nature: God created Heaven and Earth, and in our way we create and build and fix and arrange.  We write poetry, sing songs, paint and sculpt.  The world is our workshop.  By working as a carpenter before His public ministry, Jesus sanctified work itself.  We pray that in all your endeavors, you may bring the light of Christ to the darkest corners of the world.

The priest then said, “Receive the sign of the cross on your feet, that you may walk the way of Christ.”  Faith requires commitment.  Mother Angelica of EWTN said that when you walk with Christ He only shows you one step at a time, and you don’t really know where  you’re going.  She defined faith as “one foot on the ground, one foot in the air and a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach.”  We pray that you will continue the journey wherever it leads.

So for today, as we near the end of your journey, I’d ask that you spend some time thinking about these prayers on your senses and your mind and heart, on what you do and where you’re going.

Cardinal Dolan and Saint Patrick's Day

There's been no shortage of commentary on the Saint Patrick's Day parade next year in New York.  For decades, the leaders of that parade have resisted the temptation to allow gay and lesbian groups march under their own banner.  But, facing the loss of sponsorships and media coverage, the parade organizers have decided that they will allow at least one gay and lesbian group to march with it's banner in the parade.  Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is scheduled to be the grand marshall has supported the decision.

For an example of the reactions check here, here, here and here.

Part of me thinks this is normal New Yorker arrogance: ascribing international urgency to what is, after all, a local issue.  Who cares if they have a parade or not?  New Yorkers may not like to hear this, but I don't really care what they do and who they do it with.

However, this post resonates with me.  I certainly understand the feeling of being hung out to dry when trying to uphold Church Teaching.  You feel like you're doing your best to present a consistent, positive message that is logically airtight and irrefutable, and the Pope says "who am I to judge?"  Or the Bishop undercuts you, or your parish priest contradicts you from the pulpit.  So few people bother to explain the faith, especially the controversial bits.  It seems the Church should be supporting the ones that do, and yet they are the ones that seem to get left out to dry.

But in this case I wonder if the angst isn't misplaced.  As I said before, it's just a parade in New York.  The parade committee is unknown to me: are they Catholic? Are they ONLY Catholic or mostly Catholic or normal-percentage-based-on-society Catholic?  I am aware that the Archdiocese of New York does not control the parade, though I assume it has some influence over what happens at the parade.  And a quick check of the Catechism of the Catholic Church reveals nothing about the composition of a St Patrick's Day parade. So it seems to me that if they previously did not include gays marching with a gay banner, it was because that's how the parade organizers felt the parade should be handled.  And if the new parade organizers feel differently, then it's their call (I'll get to Cardinal Dolan in a bit).

That's called a "prudential judgement" and it comes down to (1) Who has the authority to make a decision and (2) what's his decision.  If he doesn't chose wisely, well it's his decision. If we're talking about a politician then you can vote him out of office. If it's an employee, you can fire him.  If it's a businessman, you can boycott him, but it's his decision.  The trouble here is that I suspect people were reading too much into the decision in the past and (possibly) too much into the decision this year. It may be that the previous parade organizers felt that making sure no one marched under a political or activist banner was consistent with Church teaching.  Or they may have felt it was just a prudent rule to prevent protests or riots or other distractions (can't have the Democrats throwing tampons at the Republicans). Or both or none of the above. They may have just thought it was tacky to have such a group in the parade.  I don't know.

However, people will get called on this who have no say in the matter.  Joe Catholic standing at the coffee pot gets approached by Rick Noncatholic who says "Hey! In NBC's New York News show that the broadcast nationally, as if New York is the only place in America, they said you catlix won't let gays march in the Paddy's Day parade? What's up with that?"  And poor Joe will have to come up with an explanation.  Since he was approached as a Catholic, he may feel the need to have a Catholic explanation.  So he says it's Church teaching that gays can't be in the St Patricks Day Parade, and he may really believe it.  But then years later when a new group takes over the parade and they let the NBC gay club in, he feels betrayed.

But it was never Church teaching.  It just seemed like it.  It was always a prudential decision.

In a way, I think that people are afraid of these decisions.  If you can cite chapter and verse in the Catechism you can say "don't get mad at me! This is coming from Rome, what do you want me to do about it?"  But if it's a prudential decision, then the buck stops here and you're judgement can be called into question much more easily (your judgement will be called into question no matter what, but you have nothing to hide behind if this is just your call).

So what about Cardinal Dolan's role in all this?  Well, he's had a bad spell.  First he cheers on the first openly gay NFL player, then he wants to shut down the only daily TLM in New York and merge the TLM parish with a LGBT parish, then he wants to let gays into the St Patrick's day parade, then he holds up the cause for Archbishop Sheen's sainthood. What happened to the most loved Bishop in America?  It seems like the new Archdiocesan motto is "Gay is OK, Traddy is baddy".  Some of it's probably vindictive reporting, but I think he could probably get better people to inform him of what's going on. It's hard to believe, for instance, that he didn't know about Michael Sam before he commented on Michael Sam.  There was little else in the news at the time.  He SHOULD know those things, especially when he's going to be interviewed. He needs to be ready to talk about what's on the interviewer's mind.

The other thing is he could probably explain himself better, or more.  Perhaps he doesn't think he needs to, being a Cardinal and all.  But it might help if he explained what a prudential judgement is, what sin is, what is not a sin.  Left to their own, people will derive all kinds of motives for other's behavior.  If someone decides that whether gays march in a parade is a matter of Catholic Dogma, then they'll be pretty upset when it changes on them. They either need to humbly climb down from the soapbox they created for themselves, or they will decide that they are the only TRUE Catholics and everyone else is caving in the zeitgeist (there may be a cave in, but it's not identical with a betrayal of Church teaching.)  And the same with the other stuff.

Since you're probably wondering, for the record, I wish Cardinal Dolan would NOT be in the St Patrick's day parade, that he would keep the TLM Parish open, that he would cooperate with Archbishop Sheen's cause and he'd preach a bit more about the gay lifestyle and how it conflicts with Church teaching.  But I don't think he's done anything to be considered a heretic or traitor.  It's his decision.

The Bishops are talking to the wrong people

We all fantasize about what we'd do if we were Pope for a day: excommunicate the Jesuits, shut down the LCWR, banish the Maryknolls to a distant planet, but I'd like to recommend something more modest: force Bishops to speak to their congregation.

We live in a media drenched environment.  We also live in a bureaucratic environment where group-think runs wild.  In that case, it's natural that when something happens that affects the Catholic Church the press wants one person they can contact to get the official response, and the Church likewise wants there to be one official response so there's not a cacophony of voices.  It gets to the point that the former Cardinal Archbishop of LA was reluctant to express a pro-life sentiment and deferred to the leader of the US Bishops pro-life committee.  But the role of a Bishop is not to fall back on bureaucratic policy statements and talking points.  The role of a Bishop is to instruct his flock on the faith.

Last week, the HHS issued a new scheme for its contraception mandate designed to allay the conscience of those who object.  Archbishop Kurtz, the president of the USCCB, promptly issued a statement on the new rules.   I'm sure that statement will soon be posted to my own diocesan website, which does little more than pass along statements by the Pope, the state Bishops' conference and the national Bishops conference.  I doubt anyone actually read it, and it will likely have no impact.  Meanwhile, pewsitting Catholics get a homily that if we're just nice enough to each other, we'll all be happy.

So my proposal is this: for now on all press releases must be issued from the pulpit by the bishop during Mass.  Any bishop is free to make any statement he wants on any subject, but in order for it to get into the papers he has to tell his congregation about it at the same time.  And his entire flock needs to hear it, so each priest in each parish needs to read the same text.  If he thinks the press isn't interested in what he says from the pulpit, then he can work a little more on the text to make it more relevant.  If he thinks the press won't understand complex Catholic terms like "sin" and "morality", he has parishioners who don't either and he can explain what those strange words mean.  It might take two homilies to cover it all, but that's OK. The press will drive to the cathedral an extra time. They get a milage stipend.  If the bishop is afraid that his talks will look dumb in the papers, then they probably will. He may need to come up with something more substantial to say than "Be good."

More about grumblebums

http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2014/on-joy-christian-style.html

I'll accept that there's a difference between a reserved, thoughtful person and a constantly complainer.  No one likes a constant complainer.  But I stand by my point that expecting everyone to act like Cardinal Dolan is unrealistic.

How high are the ways of God

This is pretty stupid, but it makes sense to me.  It's somewhat expanded from something I saw on Fr Barron's Catholicism series (which I won't link to because of the autoplay video).

Consider my dog, Carlton.  He live in the same house as me and experiences the same life I do.  But he's a dog and I'm a man so even though we share the same space, we live in a different world, because of our different natures.

There are many things Carlton and I can both do. For instance we can both eat, drink, walk, run, and sleep.  We do them differently, but it's clear that we're doing the same thing.  For instance, Carlton eats out of a bowl with his mouth. I eat by shoveling food into my mouth with my hands.  But Carlton knows that I'm eating, and he always wants what I have.

There are other things that I can do that Carlton can't really do, but in a broad sense there are similarities.  For instance I can push air through my vocal cords and speak.  He can also push air through his vocal cords and make noise and, if we're generous, we'd call that "speaking" but it's not really.  When I speak I can express complex ideas.  Carlton's communication was brilliantly summarized by Gary Larson as "Hey!"

When Carlton hears Jenny and I talk, it's unclear what he thinks of it.  Does he think we're saying "Hey!" to each other over and over again?  It may not make sense to him, but he knows it's normal behavior.

There are things that I do that Carlton can't do so he gets me to do them for him.  For instance, I can open the back door.  He's seen me open the door a thousand times, but there's no way he can open it himself and he doesn't even try.  But he knows that I'll open it if he scratches or sticks his cold nose on my back when I'm sleeping in bed.

Finally, there are things that I do that Carlton is completely incapable of understanding.  For instance, writing this blog post.  He doesn't know what a "blog" is, he doesn't know what "writing" is.  The whole thing is beyond his comprehension.  Carlton doesn't even recognize that I'm doing anything.  If he watches me working on my laptop, as far as he can tell I'm just starting a glowing screen (we humans do that a lot, counting TV and video games). However, to me, this is one of the most important things I do. I often do work from home and if I didn't I'd be no home to work from.

Now if there's a gulf between Carlton and I, there's an immeasurable gulf between me and God.  There are some things we can both do: think, know, love, create.  I can do none of them as well as God can, but they are recognizably related: perhaps like talking and barking, but still related.  There are things that God can do that I can't and I rely on Him to do them: we call them "miracles".  And then there are things that God does that I can't even recognize because they are so far beyond me.

To push the analogy a little further: Carlton needs me to open the door so he can chase rabbits.  From Carlton's perspective, he'd be better off if I took the door off the hinges.  He could then go out whenever he wants.  He wouldn't get frustrated when there was a rabbit taunting him on the other side of the glass, and he could bring the rabbit back in the house with him, which to him would be a hoot.  He doesn't know that the door keeps the heat out in the summer and the cold out in the winter and he doesn't know that I don't want rabbits in the house (we did have that talk, but I don't think he was paying attention).  Even if I could explain that to him, he might not agree: he likes rabbits and doesn't necessarily object to the weather, either.  The door seems like a nuisance to Carlton but it's for his own good. And then there's all the other stuff he has to put up with like going to the vet and getting a bath.

Similarly, God may miraculously heal someone of cancer and we greatly appreciate that, but it's hard to see why someone gets cancer in the first place.  It'd save a lot of trouble if cancer didn't exist.  Does cancer serve a purpose that's inscrutable to us, in the same way that the door is to Carlton?  We may never know, even in Heaven. 

None of this makes it easier to go through the trials in life.  It's hard to find comfort in philosophical arguments when you're going through an existential crisis.  But it might help to accept our limitations ahead of time so when the crisis comes we can trust that God's will for us is good, even if we don't understand how a specific crisis is "good" for us.

Blessed are the sourpusses

Last year Pope Francis wrote his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium in which he famously lamented the presence of "sourpusses" within the Church.  For a papal document it was notably full of invective, so much so that I still suspect that it was ghost written by Mark Shea.  Pope Francis (or whoever) developed a characteristic, and almost nonsensical, style that I frequently parody among friends.  We call each other "primping neo-Donatist sad sacks".  (It's all in good fun.)

After Evangelii Gaudium threw down the gauntlet against sourpusses, Father Barron picked it up and slapped us again.  In his DVD Catholicism: New Evangelization, he goes to great lengths to describe how if you're not happy, your not saved.  He even finds a pretty, teenaged girl to describe how happiness is equal to joyfulness is equal to holiness.  He fauns over Cardinal Dolan who's shown back-slapping and gladhanding with the parishioners at St Patrick's Cathedral. Well, I'm not so sure.

First of all, I'm not sure that faithful Catholic teenaged girls are the only ones who laugh and smile and enjoy having fun with their friends.  Furthermore, Cardinal Dolan was getting ready to shutter dozens of parishes in New York, which is apparently just fine with the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City, so he doesn't seem to be any more effective at evangelization than the comparatively reserved Bishop Conley who has 44 seminarians in a diocese of 100,000 faithful.

Secondly, everyone wants to be happy, and lots of people seem happy.  The current crop of pop-tarts like Miley Cyrus and Beyonce seem happy as they cavort around half-naked.  Is that our standard? If we're not happier than Miley Cyrus we have no hope of spreading the good news?  Do we need to be happy even it it kills us, just like the old Emerson Lake and Palmer song?

Right before your eyes,
We pull laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries
And he dies, and he dies.

Finally, the idea that "people will want to be like us if they see we're happy" is something that sounds like it should be true, but I've never seen any evidence that it is true.  I've probably watched 200 episodes of The Journey Home, and I've read dozens of conversion stories.  No one has ever said they joined the Catholic Church because Catholics were inexplicably happy.  I've heard several people say they joined because Catholics that they knew were able to remain peaceful during times of trouble, but that's not the same as outward happiness.  Chesterton once said that the Catholic Church has a thousand doors and no two people enter at the same angle, but apparently none of those doors pass through the laugh factory.  There are groups that get members by their outward happiness, but they are either cults or followers of some New Age nonsense.

We read a lot in the scriptures about how you present your self. We are told to make a joyful noise to the Lord (I should forward that to our liturgist. The noise the choir makes isn't very joyful to me). We're told to not look dismal when we fast.   But Jesus also said "blessed are those who mourn", not "suck it up, you jackwagon".  I don't remember St Paul cutting up with Timothy.  I don't remember reading about Peter and John exchanging knock-knock jokes.

People come in all shapes and sizes and temperaments.  The ancients described 4 humors: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic.  Jesus came to save them all.   Had he not, Heaven would have no scientists, engineers, accountants or lawyers or Germans, and would instead be populated entirely by salesmen, sports casters and politicians and Irish.  And that would be a strange place.

Jesus came so that our joy would be complete. But joy is not the same as happiness.  You can have joy even as you mourn the death of a loved one.  You can chase happiness with no trace of joy in your heart.

So grumblebums, westminster crabbies, sourpusses and crabbypants unite!  To you belongs the Kingdom of God.  Jesus will wipe away every tear, and perhaps you can smile about that, but don't hurt yourself!