mea culpa

I have decided to stop blogging. I don’t feel that I am doing a good enough job at it to keep it going. If I had to summarize this blog it would be: read your Bible, the Catechism (or the Compendium), the Fathers, and the Pope.
So, until I decide to start blogging more purposefully, adieu.

Anyway, all that other reading you have to do should keep you busy….

Corpus Christi

Ten years ago, on the Feast of Corpus Christi, I was confirmed into the Episcopal Church. This feast will always have a special significance for me. It was because of the Eucharist that I entered the Episcopal Church and it is for the same reason that I became Catholic.

It’s been almost year since I moved to Chicago, in order to attend St. John Cantius, be formed by the Canons Regular and finally be confirmed by the Bishop. For most Anglo-Catholics the conversion process is a difficult one (especially in regards to the Novus Ordo, whether abusively celebrated or not, it is seen as greatly inferior to what is celebrated in most Anglo-Catholic parishes). There can be no question that the Anglo-Catholic tradition is a beautiful one, both in its music, hymns, and English translations of the Bible (eg. KJV and Coverdale’s Psalms) and the Mass. Once I converted and stopped going to the Episcopal parish and started visiting the Catholic parishes in the area where I was living at the time (central PA), I knew for the good of my soul I had to find a traditional parish that celebrated the Traditional Mass and had a rigorous devotional schedule…. Thanks to the internet, NLM and Daniel’s “The Lion and the Cardinal,” I found out about St. John Cantius. I wanted to attend the most Catholic parish in the US and St. John Cantius (if I may say so) is probably it. (It is at least in the top 10). So I moved.

For me the transition from Anglo-Catholic to Roman Catholic has been very easy, to be honest. This is partly because I was such a bad Anglican and because I am able to attend such a good Catholic parish. I do not miss that much about the Anglican/Episcopal church. Yet, I must confess that I still read my Anglican Breviary. And although this book has not been approved for use in the Church there is actually not much Anglican about it (when the Prayer Book Collects vary from the Roman Rite it gives both). I do, however, miss the 1940 hymnal. I was raised to sing in church and sometimes I find the recessional hymns (even at St. John’s) fairly lame. (That just means I have to learn how to read square notes).

I didn’t really care about Merrie Olde England (one of the reasons I was such a bad Anglican). I was (am) a Francophile not an Anglophile (thus my appreciation for Traditional Catholicism). The reason I supported the Anglican Communion was because I thought it was catholic (universal), transcending national and cultural boarders not because it was English. I was eventually relieved of that illusion, for there is no Communion in the Anglican Communion (in any sense of the term). The so called “genius of the Anglican tradition,” the Via Media, is the wide road that leads straight to Hell. If I shared anything in common with the Catholic Church as an Anglo-Catholic it was despite of the Anglican Communion, not because of it.

This is not to say that I have any illusions about the lack of communion (or other very serious issues) in the Catholic Church. God knows there is a battle to fight, but this is the only Church that can do it. The “gates of hell will not prevail against it.” This means we are the ones storming the gates of hell. By the grace of God, we will continue to lay siege to Hell until the last of the elect are fighting with us. Are you with us?!

The Yeoman Farmer/Novelist/

One of my favorite bloggers just published a novel. Mr. Blunt, with the same self-sufficient attitude with which he runs his family farm, wrote and published his own novel. I don’t buy books anymore (I’ve been spoiled by The Book Thing) but perhaps I will ask the library to order it… Anyway if you don’t read the novel at least check out his blog.

Congratulations to Mr. Blunt.

Congratulations Greg

Congratulations to my brother Gregory who read a paper at Princeton Theological Seminary at the Kuyper Center conference on Civil Society and Sphere Sovereignty. Have a look at the video here. The paper is called “Dooyeweerd’s Conception of Societal Sphere Sovereignty: with an application to the question of the status and tax-based support of education”.

It was also his birthday on May 3.

Guilt and Forgivness

When we read the New Testament attentively, we discover that there is nothing magical about forgiveness.  But neither is it a fictitious forgetting, a refusal to accept the truth, but an entirely real process of change carried out by the Sculptor.  The removal of guilt truly gets rid of something; the proof that forgiveness has come in us is that penance springs up from us.  Forgiveness is in this sense an active-passive event: the creative word of power that God speaks to us produces the pain of conversion and thus becomes an active self-transformation.  Forgiveness and penance, grace and personal conversion are not contradictions but two sides of one and the same event.  This fusion of activity and passivity expresses the essential form of human existence, for all of our creativity begins with our having been created, with our participation in God’s creative activity.

Here we have reached a very central point: I believe that the core of the spiritual crisis of our time has its basis in the obscuration of the grace of forgiveness.  But let us first take note of the positive side of the present: morality is gradually coming back into favor.  It is recognized, indeed, it has become evident, that all technical progress is questionable and, in the end, destructive when there is no corresponding moral advancement.  It is recognized that there is no reform of man or of humanity without moral renewal.  But the call for morality ultimately remains without effect, because the criteria are veiled in a fog of discussions.  In fact, man cannot bear sheer morality, he cannot live by it: it becomes a “law” for him that provokes contradiction and engenders sin.  For this reason, where forgiveness–true forgiveness guaranteed by authority–is not recognized or believed, morality must be cut down to size so that the conditions of sinful action can never actually occur for the individual.  Today’s discussion of morality is making great strides toward liberating man from guilt by precluding the occurrence of the conditions that make it possible.  One is reminded of the mordant aphorism of Pascal: “Ecce patres qui tollunt peccata mundi!” (Behold the fathers who take away the sins of the world).  According to these “moralists”, guilt simply no longer exists.  

[From Called to Communion, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger]

St. Benedict

“The Lord expects us to respond daily with deeds to his holy teachings”, he says (Prol. 35). Thus, the life of a monk becomes a fruitful symbiosis between action and contemplation “so that God may be glorified in everything” (57,9).

In contrast to facile, egocentric self-realization, which is often exalted today, the first and irrenuciable commitment of a disciple of St. Benedict is the sincere quest for God (58,7) along the humble and obedient way shown by Christ (5,13), to whose love nothing and no one should come ahead (4,21; 72,11), thus becoming, in the service of others, a man of service and peace.

In the exercise of obedience as an act of faith inspired by love (5,2), the monk achieves humility (5,1), to which the Rule devotes an entire chapter (7). In this way, man conforms ever more to Christ and attains true self-realization as a creature in the image and likeness of God.

[Pope Benedict XVI about St. Benedict from here. I encourage you to read the whole speech.]

Let’s Make A Visit

Fr. Mark has a good post about spontaneous visits to Christ in the Eucharist (here).

I remember when I got my first place in Baltimore. I went walking around the neighborhood (Bolton Hill). It was a typical summer day in Baltimore, hot and humid. I walked passed the church on the corner and checked the door to see if it was open, it was. Inside it was cool, dark and quite (just as i like it). I took a seat in a pew to cool off and pray. I noticed a man sitting in a pew in front of me, he seemed to have the same idea. He took out a cigarette and lit it… I remember saying to myself, ‘Now that’s what a neighborhood church is supposed to be like, a place of quite prayer where you can share a cigarette with Jesus.’ (I smoked at the time however I resisted the temptation to light up in church even though I had dreams about doing the same)…

As a rule that church was always open during regular business hours. This meant that anything of value was either bolted down or in the safe (which also meant there was barely any decoration). It is a shame that churches have to lock their doors. But as Fr. Mark says, a few years ago churches were barely ever empty…

Alive

[For all the Vampires out there....]

1 And you, when you were dead in your offences, and sins, 2 Wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit that now worketh on the children of unbelief: 3 In which also we all conversed in time past, in the desires of our flesh, fulfilling the will of the flesh and of our thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest: 4 But God, (who is rich in mercy,) for his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, 5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ, (by whose grace you are saved,)

6 And hath raised us up together, and hath made us sit together in the heavenly places, through Christ Jesus. 7 That he might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of his grace, in his bounty towards us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; 9 Not of works, that no man may glory. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them.

11 For which cause be mindful that you, being heretofore Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh, made by hands; 12 That you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the conversation of Israel, and strangers to the testament, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh: 15 Making void the law of commandments contained in decrees; that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace;

16 And might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, killing the enmities in himself. 17 And coming, he preached peace to you that were afar off, and peace to them that were nigh. 18 For by him we have access both in one Spirit to the Father. 19 Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners; but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God, 20 Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone:

21 In whom all the building, being framed together, groweth up into an holy temple in the Lord. 22 In whom you also are built together into an habitation of God in the Spirit. [Ephesians 2]

Vampires Are People Too

I recently read a review of Anne Rice’s new book, “The Road to Cana.” But more importantly I found out that she is not going to publish another vampire story which she initially said she was willing to write.

I have to admit that I am indeed saddened. Of course I respect the consecration of her work to Christ. And I commend her on striving to follow God’s will. I just wish that it included a Catholic vampire story. (But not my will…)

She wants to use her writing as a tool for Evangelism. Well, there is no other genre of literature better equipped for Evangelism than the vampire story. It has only been recently that vampires have suffered from the modern preoccupation of calling what is evil, good and what is good, evil. And do not mistake something which is intrinsically evil as something intrinsically other. Vampires are us, what we become (monsters) when we turn our backs to God and give ourselves over to unbridled passions, our lusts and selfishness, our nihilism. In this way vampire stories are at their core Catholic. Built into the conventions of the genre is Catholic theology; light/darkness, blood/life, life/sacrifice, undeath/damnation, soul/immortality, instinct/vice, sin/slavery, the sacramentals (holy water, crucifixes, rosaries, etc…).

Since vampires represent human nature how is redemption possible? Within the conventions of the genre it is not. Once you are a vampire you are always a vampire, there is no cure, no redemption. But this can lead to fairly one dimensional characters (pure evil, however witty). [This is why Milton gave Satan the best lines.] And why Mrs. Rice let Lestat suffer guilt. Others have tried in different ways to overcome this problem. Take the characters of Angel and Spike. But both characters suffer from what amounts to emasculation or an identity crisis. They are vampires but either can’t be a vampire (Spike’s chip) or do not want to be (Angel’s soul), except when convenient.

When one reads Rice’s Vampire Chronicles you can’t help but ask yourself, would I risk eternal damnation for immortality and vampiric gifts? It is scary to think that I might actually care so much about this “sterile promontory.” The distinction between good and evil should always be clear.

So, it is obvious that in writing a Catholic vampire story one would include a story of redemption. But is a “saved” vampire still a vampire? Aren’t we as baptized Christians made into a new creation? The cruse has been removed and we have been glorified. So the key here is to make the post-vampire character even more powerful and glorious than the conventional vampire but sans the need to kill and all other evil. We are sustained by the once for all sacrifice of Jesus and His flesh and blood. He is Life. We are no longer slaves to sin and our fleshly impulses. We are through Him (and His life, death, resurrection) brought into the life of the Trinity in Heaven.

I think the story of the “Catholic” vampire is viable. It is after all our story. And I think it would be even better if the redemption of the character were to coincide with the Parousia, the final defeat of evil, a new creation of humanity, earth and heaven….

Mrs. Rice pray on it.

Confirmation Names

[updated]

I wasn’t paying that close attention (to anyone else that is), but during the confirmation at St. John Cantius at Easter Vigil, I heard three confirmation names repeated a couple times. For the women it was St. Faustina and St. Teresa and for the men the name used at least twice was St. Augustine.

I chose the name Anthony (after St. Anthony the Great). Ambrose, Joseph and Benedict were my runner up names…. Here is the Life of St. Anthony by St. Athanasius. You can read an older post about St. Anthony here.

Here is the list of names for this year’s confirmations at St. John Cantius:

Anthony
Augustine	(2)
Christopher
Faustina	(2)
Isaac Jogues
Joseph
Marie
Maximilian Kolbe
Philmena
Theresa of Avila (2)