Pilgrimage for Advent

Today, under the cerulean California sky, we marked the first day of Advent: and it seemed perfect, a very peculiar kind of perfect. Our donkey was a Volvo, a rather temperamental motorized donkey of a car. It doesn’t like me; won’t start for me when its owner is in the passenger seat (so he has to get out and start it for me). We were setting out on a pilgrimage, and I hadn’t been to my hometown in fifteen years- a farming town in the San Joaquin (“Joachim”?) Valley of California- and it was sort of on the way to our object, a small Vietnamese Catholic church in Sacramento (“Sacrament”), where it is said a statue of Our Lady is weeping.

We began our pilgrimage at the Mass, in St. Joseph’s Shrine of Santa Cruz (“Holy Cross”), and drove our donkey/ Volvo through the mountains; one hundred miles later, I saw the town where I’d suffered into adulthood. It had been such a prison to me, even though there were people there I’d loved. Everything was there, but changed, and it seemed broken down and sad, a trashed and empty sort of place. The only spot of beauty was St. Mary’s Church, and I was so happy to come back there with my new Catholic eyes, and see the shrine to Fatima and the small Catholic ecclesial estate nestled into that sad little town. I also remembered with new force my sinful and desperate existence there, those ten or so years. Seeing old places like that can bring anew the state one was in when last there- and my memories, although full of the angst of a young person searching for love and comfort, were of a sinful life.

Leaving there, we traveled on to Sacramento. On our way, we saw a sign for a new housing development: “Anatolia”, it said, in large, curly letters. We looked at each other in some wonder, because our daughter’s name is Anatolia. What are the chances? So we thought perhaps this was a glimmer of a star for us and we kept on in the gathering dusk.

Finally, the midnight blue donkey got a rest as we stood in front of the large, white, cement statue of Our Lady. It was cold in that parking lot, in the rural darkness south of Sacramento. Suburbans full of Hispanic families and Cadillacs with Vietnamese families pulled in behind us, to join the small crowd in front of the statue. The many-belled sounds of the “Hail Mary” in Vietnamese blended in strangely with the sounds of Spanish. I waited by the car for awhile, and stared at the statue, and wept for the life I’d led, and for all those who were still enslaved in lives like that: desperate, alone, submerged in shadows of guilt and anger that can’t be waved away except in the great grace of repentance and conversion. I just wept for my sins while the back of my mind wondered why a statue would be weeping tears of blood at a Vietnamese church in Sacramento, out in the fields. Why not St. Patrick’s on Fifth Ave? And I wondered if it were true. But from a distance, I could not see the tears of blood, I could only see the crowd of people, looking and praying and holding candles in the air. I could only see the white figure of Our Lady, not looking cement-and-paintlike, but ethereal and simple; and I lived that sadness for sin, my own mostly- how many people had I hurt or helped to lose-and for the blindness of the world.

I went closer and saw the rivulets of dried blood, where the tears had come down. It seemed so-so earthy. But the dried blood brought me, brought us, brought all these people, to pray. And I didn’t worry too much about gawkers- after all, there is so much else to gawk at, why would you choose a statue and The Church of Catholic Martyrs, a Vietnamese parish? And I didn’t worry too much about fanatical sign-seekers: aren’t we all that, really? And I didn’t worry too much about the blood and whether it was a hoax or not, because I remembered Fatima, and Lourdes, and La Salette: that the Lord is sad, and offended- and asks us to do reparation for others and ourselves.

Advent: coming: the coming of the Lord in mercy, as a babe in a small-town stable. Joseph and Mary, beginning their journey to Bethlehem, traveling on a non-descript donkey back to that small town, that sort-of hometown to Joseph. The darkness of the rural roads, the small houses and huts and the smell of dung; the Holy Family picking their way through the crowds of Bethlehem: a Savior has come into the world, to this dark and sad place. Advent is a time for penance, and gratitude, for He wishes to be born in the sad and small places that are our hearts without Him.

A Meditation on Silence

St. Pio at Consecration

The Faces of Silence

There is the Empty Silence: 

when the little hands waving out the car window disappear down the road 

and suddenly the home seems a loosely-knit box of nothingness 

and it must be filled by music or the washing of dishes; 

when the streets are empty at three am 

and there is still a long way to go; 

when train times come and the station is suddenly bereft of its purpose; 

the long winter months in age and illness.

There is the Full Silence: 

when last note of the piano has dissipated 

on a particularly beautiful piece 

and before the applause begins; 

the silence around the dying person’s bedside, 

just as the soul leaves the pupils lax; 

in a crowd when everyone is waiting in solidarity 

for the TV to flicker 

and for the talking head to explain what has happened; 

the longer the silence, the more profound the moment.

The Full Silence is essentially the Silence of Prayer. 

The Holy Spirit revolves in a circle around the Full Silence, 

as the Logos descends, the Silence increases. 

The priest bends low over the bread and wine, 

his voice lowers into the Secrets, 

and the altar servers carefully take the books back and forth, 

the water and wine, 

and their very attempts at quiet movement tell us 

that the centrifugal is closing in 

on the spot on the altar over which the priest is bowing, 

becoming the naval of the universe. 

The bells ring out,

 like a best man tapping his wine glass with a knife.

This is a moment of grace, 

when we can match the air of our inner self 

to all those around us, and to  the Silent Lord;

for those who have cultivated the silence of the heart, 

which is to listen to God,

recognize immediately that it is the same silence,

the same atmosphere of the Full Silence 

They can put their hearts there too, on that altar,

know they are in the presence of fullness of being.

A Primer on Catholic Social Teaching

By Michael Turner

My Friend,

Glad to help out a little with cash flow - please don't make a big deal out of it.

In my cultural milieu, this open sharing of our needs and the ability to open up a little bit with the cash represents a closeness and brotherhood I want to be a part of. From my own messed up family background, I am more open (and needy) for Catholic family. Our baptism has made us closer then my own blood brothers and we don't even know each other that well!

A little sharing of cash represents for me a way to put flesh on my deep belief that we are supposed to share more with each other as Catholics. Part of the problem with nominal Catholics is that they fall into the '“worship of nothing' culture and one aspect of this in the Wild West is a very lonely rugged individualism. Every one of us is supposed to be on our own outside of some head-trip of "community" in Church. It has been very disappointing for me to experience in the last couple of years people who I had expected to be my brothers or sisters when every thing was going good and "charismatic", walk away from our "friendship" when times got tough for me.

It is a dance for me between yearning for Heaven where we will all be sharing everything and recognizing the righteous limits and separateness of our families here. In an ideal context, which has been glimpsed a few times in history, I believe we should share everything in common. Nobody wants to go there, but I still think it has to be the ideal we strive for. If one is broken, we should all come alongside and help him out until he is made whole. When your barn burns down- that is, when, not if, because hard times come to each of us- I want to be in a position to come over right away and help you rebuild. Who thinks like this in the Catholic world?

It is a radical Gospel call I hear, so hard to live out in practical ways, but a clarion Gospel call for me. How can I get myself into a position where my life is well-organized enough- as in the Amish concept of Ordnung -"0rder"- that I can respond freely when others need my help?

We had a big flood here in Santa Cruz in 1982. Mennonite farmers from the plains of Canada heard about the flood and drove their tractors and trailers down here to help dig out mud-filled homes. I have always wanted to have it so together that I could do something like that for Jesus.

So...we "Catholics" make a lot of money on each other and live these superficial lives in "Catholic Communities" with each other but there is no teeth to our Gospel. The worship of the nothingness has held most of the field amongst us. We are very weak and self-serving and frankly quite useless in the hands of Almighty God. If He called would we hear? If we could hear, are we ready to respond?

Come Lord Jesus,
Pierce our selfness,
Blow away our worship of nothingness
Fill the temple of our souls,
With the glory of your Presence.
Come to fill our houses of worship
With the Splendor of your Truth.
Have Mercy on us
Return us again to our first love.
As you crack us open,
Make permanent our new relationship of dependence on You
In your great mercy,
Allow us not back into the seclusion of our own ways.

In Christ,

Your Catholic Brother

Narnia and "Mere Christianity"

Are the Chronicles of Narnia good reading for Catholic youth? Some might look at this askance: “What? With all the other junk out there? If my child wants to read these, of course!”

Can we take a step back from judging everything based on the reality that the culture is so bad? Relative judging has its place, but perhaps when we do this, we miss the reality of the thing itself that we are judging- and we accept more than we should. Therefore, we look at these books for the good that they offer, the richness of awakening faith; the beauty of a majestic Christ-figure- and for the weaknesses they hold; which, I think are important for Catholic parents to be aware of in reading the books with their children, and in going to the movie coming out 9 December.

The Chronicles of Narnia do not portray the fullness of the faith, because in large part, their author never, as his friend JRR Tolkien lamented, “…came all the way into the Church.” C.S. Lewis was born into a Protestant Irish family in 1898. Culturally, and religiously, this means that he grew up in a milieu of Christian hating Christian, in an era when people walked on the other side of the street from the local Catholic Church so as not to ‘get too near the idolatry’.

Lewis himself lost his faith as a young man; perhaps it was largely a cultural faith and not imbedded in his soul. But as Tolkien said later, “It seemed that he never quite lost the Ulster Protestant in him, and could not get past seeing anything but the negative from a priest” (my paraphrase). Yet perhaps the memory of the battling between Catholic and Protestant in the neighborhoods of Ireland lay buried in his memory, awakening later with his own awakening in faith. Lewis was a middle-aged bachelor and Professor of Literature at Oxford or Cambridge (honestly- I can never remember this tidbit!) when he met Tolkien. Among other things, it was their literary group and a late-night conversation about the reality of ‘mythos’ with Tolkien that changed Lewis’ soul. He suddenly saw everything as spiraling outward from the Great Myth, the True Myth of Christ; everything suddenly only made sense in the Light of the Lamb.

Lewis, passionate, supremely intelligent and of strong will and purpose, went on a Crusade of his own: like St. Francis of Assisi, he wanted to go and preach peace: especially among Christian folk. He crafted an idea of Christianity called “Mere Christianity”. He preached this on radio, book and lecture- and became quite famous in the process. Tolkien, meanwhile, Catholic genius that he was, describes both the genius of Mere Christianity and its weaknesses in one great play on one of Lewis’ own images. “Mere Christianity”, he said, “like the hallway running the length of a great house, does not encompass the rooms off itself. Instead of attempting to open those doors- to the Orthodox, Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, etc- it prides itself on being too simple for those conflicts of ‘complicated doctrine’. Yet, it remains in the hallway, missing perhaps the fullness and richness of Truth and Faith behind one of those doors.” I would extrapolate further to say that Lewis’ ultimate understanding of 'Mere Christianity' is what St. Paul calls "the milk of infants". The Apostle further calls us to grow beyond that simple milk, to eat the Food of Christ: the Eucharist, the Traditions and fullness of the Church: these being proper food for the maturity of Faith- the Faith of the Saints.

Thus, the Chronicles of Narnia are beautiful, but as milk for infants in the Faith. That is to say that the books are real tools for a child’s understanding of Christianity- the use of allegory (using symbolic figures to stand for real events and people) and the inclusion of cultural things like “Father Christmas” in the first book make the basic message of the Faith understandable to baby Christians (adults included).

Thus, there are many important things missing that will produce a stunt-growth effect, if the reader is not moved past Narnia. The idea of a Church, or priesthood continuing the Sacrifice of Christ are missing; the notion of intercessory prayer; the Mother of God; if one starts thinking of all the things not contained in the books, even symbolically, it is easy to understand the weaknesses of the Chronicles.

But do not, I think, underestimate the beauty, and the majestic presentation of Christ. Also, Lewis knows how to portray evil in its selfishness and banality, even so that children can be disgusted without being scandalized. My weakened faith kept its small spark alive, in large part, because Narnia had been a real place to me as a child; and I was in love with Aslan, and yet understood whom the lion was meant to portray. So whilst critiquing Lewis, I remain indebted to him and he has my prayers- prayers that he finally understood Tolkien when they met again- hopefully both in the right place!

Read the books, go to see the movies (if they are faithful renditions without any Disney Funny Business). But point yourselves and your children out of the hallway and into the door of Fullness: The Catholic Faith, by graduation to the great Catholic novels, the stories of the saints, and the spiritual classics.

Finally, talk about what is missing with your seven-year-olds and older. This will elicit their first experience in Catholic apologetics!

The Landscape of Traditionalism: Part Four

It was 1969, and the rain pelted the little car as it sped through the Brazilian countryside. It was night, black as it only gets out in the country on a rainy night. In the little car there was a bishop, driving erratically. He was weeping with great sobs hacking at his chest, and with that and the rain and the dark, he was having trouble finding his way to the seminary. Finally the headlamps caught the edge of a simple stone building, and the weeping bishop tried to wipe his face fruitlessly in the rain as he parked the car and hurried into the foyer of the building. There, in the gaze of astonished professors and seminarians, he sank into a chair. They had never seen him like this, and they rushed to him in one movement. "Senor- Padre- Que-"

Bishop Castro del Mayer, a true and firm, loving Shepherd of the Brazilian diocese of Campos, raised his wet cheeks to them and asked for a glass of water. In the ensuing busy fluttering of cassocks, the head of the seminary sat down next to the Bishop. "Que ha pasado?" he asked softly. The Bishop, who for years now since the Council, had tried to maintain stability and faith in his poor diocese, who had endured ridicule and contempt at the Brazilian Bishops Council for his cautions on the new developments coming out of the documents of Vatican II, looked back sadly at his old friend. "The Holy Father has promulgated a New Order of Mass. How could this be done to the Holy Sacrifice?"

The Second Vatican Council, ecumenical and pastoral, had produced many documents relating to the directive of Pope John XXIII, the directive of "aggiornomento". It is this which I think is now called "The Spirit of Vatican II". What is it? An opening to the world: the Catholic Church had, especially since the days of Martin Luther's 99 theses, been seen as a fortress, a Mother with her arms crossed tightly to her breast, in defense of doctrine and Tradition alike. But the modern world, in the 1950's, had drifted away from a frontal attack and in the West was complacently buying everything it could get its hands on, and in the East, constructing its own fortresses, satanic ones. Perhaps one could say that Catholics in that era might have been a bit institutionalized- perhaps not. There are differing opinions.

At any rate, Pope John XXIII was an optimistic man and he wanted the Church to reach out to the world. There are, though, two senses of aggiornomento- one is to come out of your fortress and invite people in, to show the joy of Christ as it flows within what is peculiarly Catholic- the other way is to begin to tear down the walls of the fortress in hopes that the world will welcome you as "leaven".

How can I, a sort-of educated laywoman, judge which is the better? So I take the example of another layman, Mr. Davies and I look at the Spirit of Vatican II in light of Tradition. What we see then, is that no council was ever called for pastoral reasons in a time where there was no crisis to be attended to; and that the manner of rejecting the schemata and then writing creatively in committees was also never done before. It seems that although the Council was a true Council, it was an occasion perhaps, for devilry.

Mr. Davies calls this devilry "time bombs"- and as I understand him, he meant that the documents, although containing no heresy in terms of Faith and Morals, contained loose ends- or ambiguities which could later be exploited. By whom? Those who, although within the fortress, were bent on rebuilding the Church in their own images. Thus, although the Council may have been called with much hope and potential for mission work to a secularized West, the type of "aggiornomento" which was adopted was the tearing down of the walls, obstensibly to help Catholics become leaven and open the inner rooms of God's Church to those who did not understand Her. The danger of course, which has come to pass, is that Her identity would become actually hidden, that She would begin to appear like everything else around Her.

Thus began a process of making all the aspects of the Church more palpatable to the world- and most importantly, the centerpiece of Catholic life, the Mass. Protestant advisors were brought in to make suggestions on how the liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice could be edited to be more agreeable to ecumenical services with Protestants, and so the ensuing directive from the Council for the Novus Ordo Missae was in effect, a banishing of the Traditional Latin rite. Within the document, therefore, was a rather ambiguous directive that the Novus Ordo should itself contain options which would make the rite more specific to the culture and to the occasional Protestant who might stop in.

Pope Paul VI was following the ambiguously stated directives buried in the official documents of the Vatican II when he promulgated the Novus Ordo Missae. It contained no error, or heresy: Mr. Davies makes it abundantly clear that the Novus Ordo is indeed a valid Mass, and legally promulgated by a Pope. Even further, if one goes to a Novus Ordo Mass done as Pope Paul VI promulgated it, it is hard for the casual observer to see the difference between this and the Traditional Latin Rite. But there are some tragic differences, like the loss of the Last Gospel and the prayers at the foot of the altar, and it is the novelty and the sweeping away of the divinely-crafted Traditional rite, this novelty introduced into the very fabric of the Novus Ordo through the instructions and 'options', that is the fundamental problem. Also, there have been many, many abuses and heretical practices that have been illicitly introduced into the liturgies: Altar girls, communion in the hand, changes of the prayers, and worse-much worse: most of which have gone without reform and disciplinary action from the proper hierarchy.

Why did Bishop Castro del Mayer weep?

It was the reasons for the Novus Ordo, it was the Spirit of Vatican II mentality that had begun to take hold everywhere in the Church by 1969; and the intelligent Bishop saw the handwriting on the wall when he saw the options and the open doors contained within the instructions for the Mass. He saw, in the future, priests and liturgists crafting the clothes of Christ to fit their liking.

In 1969, the promulgation of the New Mass was like a lit match dropped on dry tinder, and the education of future Catholics of the true nature of their faith was the wood. This fire signaled a fracturing within the Church, and now we have a landscape of different kinds of Catholics, each not sure whether the other is still Catholic; there are many who've fallen off Peter's barque altogether for various reasons, mostly grounded in confusion and bitterness, in a sense of abandonment akin to despair. And of course, there are those who have simply become indistnguishable from the secular culture around them. They think they are Catholic, but they are not in form or essence. This seems to me to be the greater tragedy.

It is a tragic landscape; and yet Pope John Paul II used to talk about a new springtime in the Church. But I think that there was more to what he was saying than what appears to be a statement totally out of touch: once again, we look at both his statement and at the landscape of the Church in the light of Tradition. In Christian history, in the Tradition of the Church, God brings a new springtime out of hardship and loss. The new flowers of spring, the uncountable blades of new and sweet grass grow from a soil watered by the blood of martyrs. It has always been thus. Resurrection is born out of Crucifixion.

I have read somewhere, perhaps in the writings of St. John Bosco, that the Church has a life in the world as did Christ. It had its infancy and childhood, it's flowering of teaching and spreading- and perhaps now, we are witnissing the Crucifixion. The Church was left open to enemies by Her own, is now not known by Her own. Her apostles are fleeing, the devastation and ignomy is too great to bear: but Mary is there, still, and the Apostle of Love. A Catholic has to see the Blood of Our Lord poured out from a pitcher into cups; and another Catholic has to wonder if his chapel is really part of the Church; priests have to suffer the loss of their rightful place, their sacrificial role which defines them: and Our Lord has to wait patiently in a Tabernacle that no one can find, in a Eucharist in which eighty percent of His children have no faith or real understanding- mainly because the liturgies tell them nothing about Him there, Body and Blood.

But Resurrection comes out of Crucifixion, in the Right-side up Kingdom of Christ, hope is ever born anew even in the wreckage. St. Joseph is there, Guardian of the Church, Guardian of the Faithful. Our Lady is there, in the surety of the Triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. "But those days will be shortened, lest even the elect be deceived, if that were possible." And what, Traditionally, marks the elect(they are called saints, too)? Look back in the Tradition to learn from the saints: Dependence on Our Lord, the intercession of His Mother, and above all: humility. Never to presume to pass judgment on Christ's Vicar, but to have the courage to speak out humbly to defend and to protect the vulnerable. To reach out to the people in the world, indeed, but with the "aggiornomento" of the peculiarly Catholic. To love the Tradition and to suffer for even the smallest thing which is Our Lord's.