Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Church's new liturgical year.
From an elder:-- Henry Kissinger on the POTUS, as quoted here.“He reminds me of a chess grandmaster who has played his opening in six simultaneous games ... But he hasn’t completed a single game and I’d like to see him finish one.”
Quote of the week:“An alcoholic is someone who can violate his standards faster than he can lower them.”
Jesu, joy of man's desiring
Holy wisdom, love most bright
Drawn by Thee, our souls aspiring
Soar to uncreated light
Word of God, our flesh that fashioned
With the fire of life impassioned
Striving still to truth unknown
Soaring, dying round Thy throne
For Catholics and some other Christian traditions, this Sunday is the final Sunday in the liturgical year. On this day, we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King. Next week, a new liturgical year begins with the First Sunday of Advent.
Lara:"That's unfortunate - it feels like "not 100% orthodox" = "knows nil about Catholic doctrine." Why the need to completely disparage people who disagree? I'd like to believe it's possible for two people to be equally serious and intelligent and yet disagree, but here on the Internets it seems like the choices are always either "agree with me" or "you're a moron.""
"Hey, now. Nobody called nobody no moron, and I certainly wouldn’t think that of anyone just because they hold different views from mine. My snotty high church Anglican upbringing precludes name-calling, and predisposes me to welcome joyfully any challenge to my imperfect understanding. Hurrah!
'I'd like to believe it's possible for two people to be equally serious and intelligent and yet disagree.'Precisely the point I'm making is that Sullivan may be serious about many things, but Catholicism is quite obviously not one of them – unless of course “serious about Catholicism” can also mean “serious about reshaping centuries of tradition to suit my own narrow purposes” or “going to start calling my trips to the beach ‘The Eucharist’ (check it out, y’all! it looks like I’m sunbathing, but in fact I’m taking communion!)” Hawaiian Tropic should do a line in holy oils.
Anyway, as does most of Sullivan's writing concerning faith, this particular passage demonstrates a radical departure from basic – like, REALLY basic – doctrine. Even the Catholic Church in its present state isn’t “100% orthodox,” so I don’t expect Sullivan to be. But I’ll bet my hair and yours that an overwhelming majority of Catholics would find Sullivan’s seaside sacraments as hilarious-slash-horrifying as I do.
If you want different answers, or the freedom to behave according to your own set of precepts instead of those set out by your *chosen* faith (yes, we choose) then seek membership elsewhere. Don’t appropriate what has existed for centuries just because it offends your precious sensibilities. That’s the whole point of church, isn’t it? We’re supposed to cleave ourselves to her, not her to us. This, too, is so basic that it hardly need be said.
The Catholic Church isn’t good enough for Sullivan to worship comfortably in, but its respectability, centuries in the making, is good enough for him to arrogate and reprobate by turns, according to the whims of opportunism. I think that’s rude, just for starters. and expecting serious Christians to find common ground with a progressive faux Catholic is, to mangle a phrase, like asking a lamb and a wolf to agree on what to eat for dinner.
Pax vobiscum."
"I've read Sullivan for a while, and I see a man who is constantly struggling in his faith - seeking wisdom and understanding, trying to see how he fits in as part of the Church. I think what I'm reacting to is the way you seem to just completely dismiss what seems to be a very serious and earnest struggle, and one that I suspect many, many Catholics go through.
For instance, I don't get the dismissal of his line about the dunes and the water. Many great Christian writers have found grace in nature (see for instance Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit and poet), and I don't get how allegorizing nature to the sacraments trivializes them. Nor do I fully understand why you claim that Sullivan knows nothing about Catholic doctrine. So all this leaves me with is that you find him boring and his logic irritating. These may be valid responses to him, but I hardly see how this makes him an unserious Catholic.
As for "expecting serious Christians to find common ground with a progressive faux Catholic" - yes, that's exactly what I expect. Is the church truly universal, or is it just a cozy club for like-minded people? Is the goal of church simply to find a comfortable, non-challenging home? If so, then Sullivan should leave for another faith. But if the goal of church is to be a source of inspiration, challenge, and catalyst for spiritual growth (which often means discomfort and struggle), then I'm not so sure we should be trying to kick anyone out. In fact, if you are NOT made uncomfortable and are not challenged in your spiritual home (you general, not specific here), then maybe it's time to look for a new church."
"Here is the passage entire:
(Andrew Sullivan:) 'We all have aspects of ourselves that the church considers inadequate or wrong. They come as a package. In my own accounting of my sins, sex does not feature much at all. Sometimes I seek a space in St Francis' chapel, a saint I have long loved. And I try to listen to God, and pray the Lord's prayer and meditate for a while to center myself before or after mass. I go much less frequently than I used to, which is the main expression of my alienation, I suppose. In the summers I barely go at all. For me the dunes are the sacraments and the water and air the incense, and the reeds the vestments, and the tides a remembrance of the change that persists. I grew up in a rural woodland and always associated it with religion and the presence of God.'
And here is your comment: 'I don't get how allegorizing nature to the sacraments trivializes them.'
If he were merely allegorizing then I might even find his sentiments quite sweet, if a bit threadbare. But he isn’t. In his own words: the dunes ARE the sacraments, the water and air ARE the incense, the reeds ARE the vestments. He is, in other words, quite purposely and *in fact* substituting the holiest act made available to us on Earth with something he has decided is equivalent. It’s not quite nature worship. It’s worse. He returns to the Eucharist when summer is over, or when the fancy (which he calls "need") takes him, whichever comes first. His needs, not God’s. “I grew up in a rural woodland and always associated it with religion and the presence of God.” As if that explains anything.
You read Sullivan and perceive an “earnest Catholic … constantly struggling in his faith.” I read him and perceive a man struggling desperately to convince himself (and no doubt his readers) that his self-centered life works better than a God-centered life. 'In my own accounting of my sins, sex does not feature much at all' says it all. His rules, not God’s.
To address your point about spiritual challenges, help me understand something: you believe the role of the Church in our lives is to provide spiritual growth in being made uncomfortable by the likes of Andrew Sullivan? If not, I’m sorry for misunderstanding you. If so, how bizarre. You go to church to be made uncomfortable by your fellow parishioners? Poor you! Or do you go there to make others uncomfortable? Such a pity! One should first contend with God-given challenges before presuming to assert oneself as a source of challenge and struggle to the Church and one's fellows, no?
And who said anything about kicking people out? If God says believing in space aliens is a sin, and I then go about proclaiming my unrepentant belief in space aliens in church and to fellow Christians, do I not remove *myself* from their fellowship and God's, even if no person bodily "kicks me out"?"
"I think my fellow believers are, and ought to be, a constant challenge to me. For instance, right now I'm having to think and consider more, by having this conversation, than I would otherwise. If I am to take seriously the idea that God speaks to us through the church, and that the church consists of all of our fellow believers, then I must take your understanding of faith and spirituality seriously. And in doing so, yeah, it's challenging and uncomfortable - it'd be much easier if you were to just agree with me.
Likewise with Sullivan. I can't just dismiss him - not if I am earnest about taking my fellow believers' faith seriously. I believe God speaks, not just through the liturgy, but through our fellow believers (indeed, through our fellow human beings).
As far as whether or not people remove themselves, perhaps it's just the way it comes across to me, but it sure *seems* like there's a lot policing of the gates going on here. The tone feels very much like "don't let the door hit you on the way out." Perhaps that's not the intention, but it comes across that way."
"I was thinking a bit more about your last paragraph and people removing themselves, rather than being kicked out. I think I have a better illustration of my problem with that.
Let's apply that standard consistently across the board to Roman Catholics (that's what I know - can't say much about Anglicans). Anyone who consistently and unrepentantly holds to beliefs that contradict Catholic teaching has kicked themselves out.
Let's start with the church's ban on all forms of birth control (except NFP). That removes something like 60 -70% of Catholics, maybe more, at least in America. Actually, expand that to sexual teachings in general, and most Catholics world-wide have "removed themselves."
What about abortion? According to some rather vocal American bishops, that excludes any Catholic in the Democratic party.
Torture? Most Catholics in the Republican party have removed themselves as well.
That doesn't leave too many people. And I've only touched on the obvious, relatively cut and dried topics where the Catechism explicitly forbids certain activities.
So is this the vision of the universal church, a place too small for anyone but a tiny handful to find a spiritual home?"
"I really don't get your thing for Andrew Sullivan, Pav. Bad enough he's totally self-referential in his irritating illogic, why must his writing be so desperately boring in the bargain? Anyone who calls himself a "religious secularist" with a straight face can't be taken seriously for even a moment. On top of all that, he knows less about Catholic doctrine than I do about cold fusion (which is to say, nil). Just goes to show, Oxford plus Harvard plus a blog plus some name recognition demonstrably do not equal goodness, rightness, or intellectual rigor.
And where's your love for the last great Christian writer, Clive Staples Lewis, who perhaps had the likes of Mr. Sullivan in mind when he wrote "Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil"?
The Eucharist is the only means by which new life is transmitted to us, and the Sacrament is the most holy object we encounter in this life. There is no substitute. But your Andrew Sullivan sees with eyes that make "dunes the sacraments, the water and air the incense, and the reeds the vestments, and the tides a remembrance of the change that persists." I laughed when i read this, then stopped when the seriousness of his mistake came into view.
He calls himself a Catholic, but I discern no evidence of it in his outpourings. All he wants are bells and smells, all the ritual and genuflection, without the nuisance of having to embody Christian precepts. It's evil, man. Just evil."
Film critic A.O. Scott penned a piece for yesterday's New York Times Magazine about his "Screen Memories" from the years 2000-2009. (This first decade of the new millennium is coming to a close believe it or not.)... There is something profoundly regressive in the vision of a civilization stripped down to an essentially violent core, so it is perhaps not surprising that regression of another kind provided the movies of the era with their richest vein of humor. Devotion to playthings and playmates, a fascination with bodily fluids and a queasy obsession with sex — these were what defined a movie hero not preoccupied with killing bad guys. Traditional romances and sex farces were supplanted by comedies of arrested male development, defensive glorifications of the right of boys to be boys, occasionally informed by the serious question of what it might mean to be a man.
Some of these — “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” “Step Brothers,” “Nacho Libre” — were among the funniest movies of the decade, but like the geek-revenge dramas and the child-friendly fantasies with which they shared box-office ascendancy, they pushed women to the edge of the frame. Movies seem to be, increasingly, for and about men and (mostly male) kids, with adult women in the marginal roles of wives and mothers, there to be avenged, resented or run to when things get too scary. ...
The image above is from here."... it also true that absence from the sacrament of communion is for me an unbearable thing after too long. Perhaps this answers something unanswerable and helps explain how many of us actually do try to live faith rather than merely assert it."
The days grow short. The liturgical year grows old.
Why remain a Catholic?-- Andrew Sullivan, earlier today.... Maybe I am too weak to leave and be done with it. But in my prayer life, I detect no vocation to do so. In fact, in so far as I can glean a vocation, it is to stay and bear witness, to be a thorn in the side, even if the thorn turns inward so often, and hurts and wounds me too.
I stay because I believe. And I stay because I hope. What I find hard is the third essential part: to love. So I stay away when the anger eclipses that. But the love for this church remains through the anger and despair: the goodness of so many in it, the truth of its sacraments, the knowledge that nothing is perfect and nothing is improved if you are not there to help it.
Hat-tip: Sully"In today's wars, there is not always a simple ceremony that signals our troops' success - no surrender papers to be signed, or capital to be claimed. But the measure of their impact is no less great - in a world of threats that no know borders, it will be marked in the safety of our cities and towns, and the security and opportunity that is extended abroad. And it will serve as testimony to the character of those who serve, and the example that you set for America and for the world."
In a NYT column this weekend, Thomas Friedman stated that it is time for the United States to get out of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés — and that no one believes any of it anymore. There is no romance, no sex, no excitement, no urgency — not even a sense of importance anymore. The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen. And yet, as much as we, the audience, know this to be true, we can never quite abandon hope for peace in the Holy Land. It is our habit. Indeed, as I ranted about this to a Jordanian friend the other day, he said it all reminded him of an old story.
“These two guys are watching a cowboy and Indian movie. And in the opening scene, an Indian is hiding behind a rock about to ambush the handsome cowboy,” he explained. “ ‘I bet that Indian is going to kill that cowboy,’ one guy says to the other. ‘Never happen,’ his friend answers. ‘The cowboy is not going to be killed in the opening scene.’ ‘I’ll bet you $10 he gets killed,’ the guy says. ‘I’ll take that bet,’ says his friend.
“Sure enough, a few minutes later, the cowboy is killed and the friend pays the $10. After the movie is over the guy says to his friend, ‘Look, I have to give you back your $10. I’d actually seen this movie before. I knew what was going to happen.’ His friend answers: ‘No, you can keep the $10. I’d seen the movie, too. I just thought it would end differently this time.’ ”
This peace process movie is not going to end differently just because we keep playing the same reel. It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home. ...
Mass-goers will have widows on the brain today. Both the first reading and the Gospel passage mention them.
This morning, it occurred to me how great a year it has been for professional sports Between The ‘Burgh and The City.
My move to Little Italy earlier this year meant that, today just before 9 a.m., I cast my first ballot as a resident of Manhattan’s 34th Election District.
If you live in New York City, please consider the candidacy of Alex Zablocki for NYC Public Advocate. I have had the chance to meet Alex (pictured at right) and think he would serve us well in this important watch-dog / mayor-in-waiting role. By now he certainly knows the city backwards and forwards as he’s been campaigning hard in all five boroughs.
Kevin (pictured at left), an attorney and community activist, is running for mayor as an Independent. He was a generous supporter of my PA State House race. I’m proud to support his efforts today.
The Mass was beautiful. And, it was quite fitting that the author of the bestseller "My Life with the Saints" professed his final vows on the Solemnity of All Saints.
