The City and the World

Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine.

2012-02-02T07:30:00.011-05:00

Today's Feast of the Meeting (or Presentation) of the Lord in the Temple is one of the greatest days of the Christian year. The joyful encounter between the Christ Child and the elderly Simeon and Anna that we commemorate today offers much to reflect upon, as I noted in this post from last year. The canticle of praise proclaimed by Simeon upon meeting the Christ Child, widely known as the Nunc dimittis, has gained its own special place in the cultural patrimony of Christendom through its use in the divine office in both East and West and through a wide variety of musical settings composed over the centuries, some of which I would like to share in this post.

First, we have a setting of the Nunc dimittis in traditional Kievan plainchant, performed here in English translation by the Men's Choir of St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary under the direction of Hierodeacon Philip Majkrzak.

Remaining within the Russian tradition but moving forward to the early twentieth century, here is the setting of the Nunc dimittis produced by Sergei Rachmaninov for his All-Night Vigil (1915), sung here by the Moscow State Chamber Choir conducted by Vladimir Minin.

Moving to the Anglican choral tradition, here is a setting of the Nunc dimittis by George Dyson (1883-1964), performed here by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge under the direction of Stephen Cleobury.

Still British, still twentieth century, and still Cambridge: Gustav Holst's setting of the Nunc dimittis dates from 1915 (the same year as Rachmaninov's) and may be heard above in a performance by a group of undergraduate singers from various Cambridge colleges conducted by Dominic O'Connor Robinson.

Finally, a selection from the twenty-first century: Arvo Pärt's Nunc dimittis (2001), performed by the Indiana University Contemporary Vocal Ensemble directed by Carmen Helena Téllez. Posting this piece, I should add a note of gratitude to Michelle Francl-Donnay of Quantum Theology, for the simple reason that she introduced me to the music of Arvo Pärt. It's hard to say which of the above settings of the Nunc dimittis I like best, but I hope that interested readers/listeners of this post can find something here that they appreciate. AMDG.

Millennials and Ron Paul.

2012-01-30T20:27:00.009-05:00

To my mind, one of the most fascinating aspects of the ongoing race for the Republican nomination for president is the enthusiasm of many young voters for the oldest candidate in the race, 76-year-old Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Though his principled libertarianism and outspoken antiwar views set him at odds with many in his party, Paul has done consistently well with Millennials in early-voting states. In Iowa, Paul won 17-to-29-year-olds with 48 percent of the vote, compared with 23 percent for Rick Santorum and 13 percent for Mitt Romney. Paul did nearly as well with young voters in New Hampshire, getting 46 percent of the vote among 18-to-29-year-olds - versus 26 percent for Romney. South Carolina proved to be less hospitable territory for Paul, but he still managed to finish two points ahead of first-place finisher Newt Gingrich among Millennials, winning the 18-to-29 bloc with 31 percent of the vote to Gingrich's 29 percent.

Ron Paul's popularity with Millennials has attracted considerable notice from the media - for a very small sampling of recent articles on this topic, consider these reports from the Dallas Morning News, the Boston Globe, Forbes, and the Baltimore Sun. The reasons for Paul’s appeal to Millennials are easy to identify. For one thing, the Texas Congressman has chosen to emphasize issues that resonate with young voters: Paul's opposition to U.S. military action overseas has a natural appeal to people of military-service age who are willing to enlist but averse to risking their lives for uncertain gains, while his calls for sweeping cuts in the federal budget and for more aggressive efforts to control the national debt make sense to young Americans who are acutely aware that their generation will be paying for the fiscal choices of their parents. Though I suspect that some of the Congressman's young supporters may disagree with specific details of Paul's platform, the candidate's libertarian emphasis on respecting personal autonomy also seems to align broadly with the values of many Millennials.

Of course, Ron Paul appeals to many Millennials not merely because of his message but also thanks to his inimitable personal style. Paul's reputation as a maverick is matched by a lack of pretense that sets him apart from the blowhards and empty suits who often seem to dominate contemporary American politics. Much in Paul's self-presentation proclaims that he is a different kind of candidate, including his oft-referenced background as a practicing physician, his ill-fitting suits and goofy laugh, and his disarmingly matter-of-fact way of answering questions that usually invite a rehearsal of each candidate's tired talking points (for example, when asked during the most recent debate about what he would do if Raúl Castro called him in the Oval Office, Paul answered, "I'd ask him what he called about"). Roger Ebert (of all people!) got it right in a tweet from the night of the Iowa caucuses: "Leaving politics out of it, what sets Ron Paul aside from every other GOP candidate? He's the only one who's cool." Perhaps what makes Paul cool to so many young voters is his evident authenticity - here, for once, is a candidate who is clearly comfortable in his own skin and is unmoved by any compulsion to change his convictions or public personality to conform to media expectations of what a major party presidential candidate should be like.

Lest the effusive tone of the preceding paragraph strike some readers as an endorsement, I should hasten to note that my intent here is not to speak for or against any candidate. What interests me about the 'Millennials for Ron Paul' phenomenon is its broader cultural and social implications. There are many questions here which deserve serious study; for example, I would love to know exactly how many Millennial Paulites supported Barack Obama in the last election - Paul's ability to attract the support of Democrats and independents has been widely noted, so I imagine that a not-inconsiderable number of people who are now for Paul were once for Obama. The reasons for these shifting allegiances also deserve attention: are young voters who have moved from Obama to Paul simply switching from one charismatic 'hope and change' candidate to another, or is this shift a sign of a political coming of age? In other words, I wonder whether some Millennials who supported Obama in 2008 because they liked his image and rhetoric might now be supporting Paul because, on reflection and in light of the past four years, they now believe that Paul better represents their views. Are Millennials supporting Ron Paul as an expression of a youthful idealism that will pass in time, or is their enthusiasm a harbinger of a generational shift that could reshape American politics in coming decades? It's too soon to answer this question, but I'd love to see more polling and analysis on the Millennial Paulites and what they may mean for the future.

Finally, a word on the age issue. As I noted above, the candidate who is currently drawing the most enthusiastic response from young voters is also the oldest person running. Of course, chronological age isn't everything: Paul's energy on the stump and behind the debate podium belies his years, and the unaffected exuberance that he displays when speaking to much younger crowds suggests that Paul is still young at heart. Even so, Baby Boomers should pay close attention to what is going on here: the '60s mantra about not trusting anyone over thirty doesn't apply to many Millennials. Indeed, it is tempting to draw a parallel between young voters' support for Ron Paul and the affection that many young Catholics have for Pope Benedict XVI, an even older man who impresses youthful audiences with his genuine personal humility and his willingness to deliver a challenging yet inspiring message. To say the very least, it is striking that many of the most engaged and committed members of the Millennial Generation are looking beyond the Boomers and taking their inspiration from leaders who came to maturity in the 1940s and '50s. While it is too soon to be sure what all of this means, I look foward to finding out. AMDG.

A Jesuit remembers Joe Paterno.

2012-01-30T07:56:00.001-05:00

I wasn't planning to post here about the death last week of legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, just as I've avoided writing about the tragic circumstances which brought Paterno's six-decade coaching career to an abrupt end last November. As for those circumstances, I'll now say all that needs to be said, which is that I pray for all who have been abused and for their families, as well as for a just resolution of the Sandusky case and for healing in the Penn State community. I also pray for Coach Paterno and for all who mourn him; he was, by all accounts, a very good and decent man, and Pennsylvania seems diminished by his passing.

The reason I'm writing about Joe Paterno at all is this post by Jesuit Father Jack Siberski, a proud Penn State alumnus who writes very movingly about an unexpected personal encounter with the coach. As a young medical resident, Jack once found himself caring for one of Paterno's five children, who had been hospitalized following a serious - and widely publicized - accident:

One night while I was on call for the unit the child developed some difficulty that was going to require an urgent procedure. It was about 3 AM but it couldn’t wait until later in the morning. After I called the attending docs, but before they arrived, I called the Paternos at their room in the inn near the hospital. They arrived in about five minutes. (Yes, I had to dial the number more than once because I was shaking.) When they arrived Mrs. Paterno went into the room and I began to explain to Coach Paterno what needed to be done, why and that we would need signed permission. Though I offered to let him wait until the staff docs came in he said there was no need. In his Brooklyn accent he said something to the effect of Doctor, you’re doing a fine job. We trust you know what has to be done. And he signed the papers.

There was no, "Are you an intern?" or "I wanna talk to the doctor in charge." Just a thank you. And he addressed me as Doctor. That meant a lot, particularly as at the time I had dark hair that brushed the base of my neck and, if not pulled to the side would have obscured most of my vision, was wearing a rumpled scrub after 20 hours with no sleep, and smelt of stale cigarette smoke (I had not yet quit). The staff docs arrived, procedure was done and all turned out well in the end.

For several years before that people would carp that Joe Paterno’s public face was just an image. No. It wasn’t. At 3 AM with a sick child in ICU there was no need to maintain an image. He could have, and many would have, thrown a complete animal act that a young second-year internal medicine resident was seeking permission for a procedure before the “real docs” had arrived (I was not going to be doing the procedure as it was surgical). There was no image. Just a good man who trusted those who knew what had to be done. It was an unforgettable moment.

To read the rest, click here. For more on Joe Paterno's ties to the Society of Jesus, consult these items from the New York Post and the New York Times. AMDG.

Saturday afternoon on Hawk Hill.

2012-01-21T17:15:00.015-05:00

The above photo was taken earlier this afternoon on the campus of Saint Joseph's University; as you may notice if you look carefully at the tree in the foreground, Hawk Hill is now covered with snow (I may be mistaken, but I believe that this is the first snow that Philadelphia has seen this winter - it's certainly the first that I've noticed). Having weathered the first week of a new semester, I went outside after lunch today to capture some photos of the icy snowscape before retreating to the warmth of my room to listen to some great music.

As for the new semester, it's shaping up to be a busy one. Having agreed on short notice to take over a course from a colleague who has had to cut back on teaching in order to take on new administrative responsibilities, I have three preps rather than my usual two. All three of my courses are ones that I've taught before, but I still have to put a lot of time into preparing for them: I believe that good teaching requires regular revision and reconsideration of what you've done in the past, so I'm not one to simply recycle old lectures and hope for the best. The first week was predictably hectic, but I'm excited and looking forward to what I expect will be an enjoyable semester.

In other news, I also expect that I'll be glued to the television and the computer screen tonight following the returns from the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina. Unreformed political junkie that I am, I enjoy the drama and intrigue of a hard-fought primary: a campaign where the outcome is uncertain is always more exciting than a de facto coronation. A couple of posts related to this year's primaries have been gestating in my mind, but I have been too preoccupied with schoolwork to actually write them. As long as there is a real race to write about after South Carolina, hopefully one or both of those posts will appear in the coming days. AMDG.

A day without Wikipedia.

2012-01-18T11:25:00.005-05:00

You may know that this is the day on which the English-language pages of Wikipedia and many other websites have been blacked out in opposition to two bills currently being considered by the United States Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). If you want to know why so many people on the Internet are concerned about SOPA and PIPA, consult this Google resource page as well as the website of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. AMDG.

Jesuit chaplain seeks to reconcile divided House.

2012-01-15T07:02:00.004-05:00

Last May, I noted the nomination of Father Patrick J. Conroy, S.J. as the second Catholic priest - and the first Jesuit - to serve as Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives. New York Times religion reporter Samuel G. Freedman recently caught up with Father Conroy and his Senate counterpart, Reverend Barry C. Black, and offers a profile of the two chaplains focusing on their efforts to bridge the partisan divide on Capitol Hill. Here is a bit of what Freedman has to say about Father Conroy:

The Rev. Patrick J. Conroy invited all the members of the House of Representatives and their families to the holiday reception he was hosting last month as the chamber’s chaplain. He put out hot cider, cookies and a not-quite-functional chocolate fountain, and for the benefit of the children he picked up his folk guitar to perform "The House at Pooh Corner."

Amid the well-organized cheer, though, Father Conroy noticed one subtly disquieting scene. It was apparent that two of his guests, representatives from opposite sides of the partisan aisle, and both sent to Washington to do the nation’s business, had never even spoken directly to each other before.

. . .

Over in the House, Father Conroy prepared for his job in part by reading "American Lion," Jon Meacham’s best seller about Andrew Jackson. The bitter rivalry between Jackson and Henry Clay in Congress has provided him with some assurance that “it’s not an unprecedented thing in American politics for there to be recriminations and a lack of civility.”

Particularly as a Jesuit, though, Father Conroy said he looked to the order’s founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, who taught the importance of recognizing "godliness in the other." (In the saint's time, that meant Protestants, not the Tea Party or liberals.) The chaplain has also been striving to understand why the House can seem so resistant to that generosity of spirit.

"One of the things that's true today that hasn't been true of the past 30 years is that there are fewer civilizing forces," he said in a mid-December interview. "The members’ families don’t live here. It's easier on Friday to get on a plane and go home. So Congressman A's spouse isn't friends with Congressman Z’s. Or their kids don’t play together. You have no social bonding at all. The only relationship those congressmen have is as opponents."

To read the rest, click here. AMDG.

"Patron X" speaks.

2012-01-13T16:14:00.001-05:00

Today's edition of the New York Times includes an exclusive interview with the anonymous New York Philharmonic patron whose unwitting disruption of a concert in Avery Fisher Hall Tuesday evening has been reverberating through the musical blogosphere. As the NYT's Dan Wakin reports, "Patron X" is quite contrite:

"You can imagine how devastating it is to know you had a hand in that," said the man, who described himself as a business executive between 60 and 70 who runs two companies. "It’s horrible, horrible." The man said he had not slept in two days.

The man, called Patron X by the Philharmonic, said he was a lifelong classical music lover and 20-year subscriber to the orchestra who was friendly with several of its members. He said he himself was often irked by coughs, badly timed applause — and cellphone rings. "Then God, there was I. Holy smokes," he said.

"It was just awful to have any role in something like that, that is so disturbing and disrespectful not only to the conductor but to all the musicians and not least to the audience, which was so into this concert," he said by telephone.

"I hope the people at that performance and members of the orchestra can certainly forgive me for this whole event. I apologize to the whole audience."

Patron X said he received a call from an orchestra official the day after the concert. He had been identified by his front-row seat. The official politely asked him not to do it again, he said, and the man took the opportunity to ask to speak to Mr. Gilbert, to apologize in person.

The men talked by telephone (it was a land line) on Thursday afternoon. Mr. Gilbert said he told Patron X, "I’m really sorry you had to go through this," and accepted his apology.

. . .

Both Mr. Gilbert and Patron X found something positive in the episode.

"It shows how important people still feel live performance is," Mr. Gilbert said. "This is something people either consciously or implicitly recognize as sacred."

The patron agreed. The incident underscored "the very enduring and important bond between the audience and the performers," he said, adding, "If it’s disturbed in any significant way, it just shows how precious this whole union is."

To read the rest, click here. AMDG.

Alan Gilbert and the persistently ringing iPhone.

2012-01-11T16:58:00.002-05:00

I have only heard Alan Gilbert conduct once, at the Met premiere of Doctor Atomic, and I was suitably impressed. I wish that I had more opportunity to hear Gilbert's work with the New York Philharmonic, as I have admired some of his more adventurous programming choices, like ending his first season as music director with Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre and planning to perform Stockhausen's Gruppen at the Park Avenue Armory. I now have even more reason to admire Alan Gilbert thanks to this report from Paul Pelkonen on how the conductor handled a particularly thorny problem at a concert last night in Avery Fisher Hall:

Tuesday night's New York Philharmonic performance of the Mahler Ninth was stopped dead by an unusual instrument - the iPhone.

An iPhone (using the marimba ring-tone) went off repeatedly in the fourth movement of Mahler's final completed symphony. According to an eyewitness, the offending phone owner was in the front rows of Avery Fisher Hall when his phone went off, just 13 bars before the last page of the score. In other words, in the final moments of a 25-minute movement, that ends a 90-minute symphony.

"Mr. Gilbert was visibly annoyed by the persistent ring-tone, so much that he quietly cut the orchestra," the concert-goer reports. She related how the orchestra's music director turned on the podium towards the offender. The pause lasted a good "three or four minutes. It might have been two. It seemed long."

Mr. Gilbert asked the man, sitting in front of the concert-master: "Are you finished?" The man didn't respond.

"Fine, we'll wait," Mr. Gilbert said.

The Avery Fisher Hall audience, ripped in an untimely fashion from Mahler's complicated sound-world, reacted with "seething rage." Someone shouted "Thousand dollar fine."

This was followed by cries of 'Get out!' and 'Kick him out!.' Some people started clapping rhythmically but the hall was quieted down. House security did not intervene or remove the offender.

The ringing stopped. "Did you turn it off?" Mr. Gilbert asked.

The man nodded.

"It won't go off again?"

The man shook his head.

Before resuming, Mr. Gilbert addressed the audience. He said: "I apologize. Usually, when there's a disturbance like this, it is best to ignore it, because addressing it is sometimes worse than the disturbance itself. But this was so egregious that I could not allow it."

"We'll start again." The audience cheered.

To read more - including comments from various people who were apparently in the audience last night - click here. Thousandfold Echo also has a post with an eyewitness report and commentary. As a listener who loves Mahler's Ninth, I can appreciate the anger of the audience and conductor at one person's "egregious" disruption of some of the most transcendently beautiful music ever written. I'm also reminded of the following comments from Bernard Haitink, which I've shared here before:

"One of the things I was thinking [in preparing to conduct Mahler's Ninth] was: how can I keep it quiet at the end? Because it's a unique ending, this breaking off of everything and disappearing in the air. And I thought, 'Whatever I do, they [the audience] must be silent.' I don't know what I did, but they were silent! Then you have one or two idiots in the hall shouting 'Bravo!' and the whole thing is broken."

The whole issue of audience noise during concerts is a tricky one, for reasons that Gavin Plumley summarizes well in a recent post at Entartete Musik. One cannot expect audiences to be totally silent, but it is reasonable to actually expect people to turn off their phones during concerts - especially when most concert halls (including Avery Fisher!) explicitly ask them to do so in announcements made before the start of each performance. Individuals who do not or cannot comply with such requests should not be surprised when they receive the strong reaction that Alan Gilbert and the Philharmonic audience offered last night. AMDG.

Reading "Moby-Dick," redux, or "tempus fugit."

2012-01-09T10:35:00.004-05:00

Following up on yesterday's post on New Bedford's sixteenth annual Moby-Dick Marathon, here is an item from today's Standard-Times highlighting the faithful three dozen who stayed at the Whaling Museum for all twenty-five hours of the Marathon. Given that over 2,500 people participated in this year's Marathon, the 36 who stayed for the whole thing are a truly select group:

Melville lovers — many of them looking a bit disheveled and bleary-eyed after pulling an all-nighter — closed the book Sunday on the 16th annual reading of Herman Melville's classic "Moby-Dick."

The 36 people who stayed the course for the marathon's 25 hours — going from noon on Saturday until 1 p.m. on Sunday — were given a compact copy of "Moby-Dick," signed by Peter Whittemore, a great-great grandson of Melville.

Graham Voysey of Brookline, a staff member at Boston University, and his brother, Ian Voysey of Pittsburgh, who is visiting family for the holidays, were both admittedly tired at the end of the marathon.

"It has been awhile since I pulled an all-nighter," Graham said.

He said he can't remember where he heard about the marathon, but he said it sounded crazy and fun and like something he wanted to be a part of it.

Ian Voysey, who works at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, said except for the occasional snoring, it was peaceful in the Whaling Museum during the wee-hours of Sunday morning.

Graham Voysey admitted to grabbing a few winks.

"I can't say how long I was asleep, but I can tell you how many pages I was asleep for," he said.

A couple of others who stayed all night were Cecilia Almeida, a sculptor and educator at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and her friend, David Shaerf, who is in the early stages of producing a documentary about Melville enthusiasts.

Shaerf said the experience was wonderful and they felt welcomed as they conducted their interviews. "It was a community feeling," he said.

"There were people here from all over the world today. I was totally amazed," Almeida said.

Shaerf said the documentary is about two years away from being finished.

If you don't feel like waiting for the documentary but want to know more about the faithful readers who attend the Marathon each year, you may want to take a look at David Dowling's Chasing the White Whale, a book about the 2009 Moby-Dick Marathon. Meanwhile, consider the Standard-Times' list of some of the SouthCoast politicos who read at the Marathon this year:

The list of readers, as it usually does, looked like a who's who of local celebrities. New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, former Mayors Scott W. Lang and John Bullard, Superior Court Judge Raymond P. Veary, Reps. Barney Frank and William Keating, D-Mass., Bristol County District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter and New Bedford City Councilor Jane Gonsalves all read.

For the second consecutive year, former Mayor Frederick M. Kalisz and his son, Ricky, now a freshman at Bishop Stang High School, each read chapters.

The last bit identifying Ricky Kalisz as "a freshman at Bishop Stang High School" is the basis for the tempus fugit in this post's title. I was a volunteer on Fred Kalisz's first campaign for mayor of New Bedford in 1997, and I remember that Ricky was born just before his father won the election. The fact that young Mr. Kalisz is now in high school reminds me of how quickly time passes - and makes me feel a bit old. It's a good thing that some things, like the Moby-Dick Marathon, and Melville's classic itself, are truly timeless. AMDG.

Reading "Moby-Dick" in New Bedford.

2012-01-08T15:32:00.000-05:00

Today's edition of the New Bedford Standard-Times has a report on the sixteenth annual installment of a local tradition, the Moby-Dick Marathon, which I previously discussed in a post from five years ago. Here's more on this year's marathon, courtesy of the Standard-Times:

Some read yellowed, dog-eared hardcovers while others followed along on digital screens.

The young and old, Melville devotees and newcomers, packed New Bedford's historic Seamen's Bethel Saturday as Rev. Dr. Edward R. Dufresne, dressed in 19th century clerical garb, ascended the bow-shaped pulpit to read Father Mapple's famous sermon from "Moby-Dick."

"Shipmates, I do not place Jonah before you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a model for repentance."

For 16 years, Herman Melville's epic novel, the bane of many high school students' existence, has attracted healthy crowds for a marathon reading that has become a cultural phenomenon in New Bedford.

The 25-hour reading of the classic novel began at noon Saturday in the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Lagoda Room when Bristol County Superior Court Judge Ray Veary read the novel's iconic opening sentence.

"Call me Ishmael."

A succession of readers that included Mayor Jon Mitchell, his predecessor Scott W. Lang, local singer Candida Rose and others took turns reading chapters from "Moby-Dick," which critics panned after its publishing in 1851.

The novel — which gives modern readers a glimpse into New Bedford and its waterfront during the city's whaling heyday — did not catch on in literary circles until decades after Melville's death in 1891.

But Saturday, a crowd of at least 200 people gathered in the Lagoda Room while someone at the microphone, standing in front of a large black and white photograph of the city's waterfront in the 19th century, read from the novel.

To read the rest, click here. For more on the Moby-Dick Marathon, including streaming video of this year's event, consult this page on the website of the New Bedford Whaling Museum. AMDG.

Theophany.

2012-01-06T07:39:00.066-05:00

It has been my custom in recent years to post something on this blog for the Feast of the Theophany (or Epiphany) of the Lord, widely celebrated on this date. If you're interested, you may consult my Theophany posts from 2009, 2010, and 2011 for more background.

For this year's Theophany post, I'd like to share a brief video showing part of the Blessing of Waters that occurs on Theophany, filmed here on the banks of the Mahoning River in northeastern Ohio. For me, there is something profoundly moving about the image of a small band of believers gathered by a snowy riverbank to celebrate the manifestation of Christ's divinity and the sanctification of the created world. I hope that some of you will be similarly moved, hence my sharing of the video. My prayers are with all who celebrate this bright feast, either today or in the coming days. AMDG.

Taylor Street.

2012-01-04T08:01:00.008-05:00

Since New Year's Day, I've been staying on Taylor Street, the former heart of Chicago's Little Italy and now a multiethnic and gentrified corridor known for its mix of restaurants and its proximity to the University of Illinois at Chicago. I lived on Taylor Street for a bit more than four months while I was a novice on experiment at St. Ignatius College Prep, and I enjoy returning here whenever I'm in Chicago.

The Christmas lights on these bare trees offer a hint of the charm that makes Taylor Street an enchanting place - even on a frigid, icy winter night like the one on which I took this photo.

In a previous post, I made mention of Chicago's "honorary" street signs. These signs honor a wide variety of people and institutions, but I have yet to encounter one with as long a name as "Honorary 35 Year Teacher Mary Garramone of Riis Elementary School Street."

A few doors down from the St. Ignatius Jesuit Residence, Thai Bowl was a frequent weekend dining destination for me when I lived on Taylor Street. If you like high-quality Thai food served in massive quantities at low prices, this is the place for you.

Named for chef/owner Joël Kazouini, Chez Joël is a Taylor Street restaurant that I sadly have not visited. Every time I come back to Taylor Street, I go by this place and am reminded of my desire to dine there, but the opportunity to actually do so has never quite presented itself. Here's hoping I actually get there at some point.

This photo is here simply because I liked the way these shelves looked in the late-afternoon sun shining through the front window of Gentile's Wine Shop.

Nea Agora Packing Company is a venerable Taylor Street butcher shop - from the way that the phone number is written (HA-1 5130), one can tell that this is an old sign. I've never been inside, but I was intrigued by a Yelp review that says that going to Nea Agora is "like stepping into the movie Moonstruck. Cash only, a few chairs, a refrigerator, a saw, and a cutting board . . . [and] a bunch of old (old!) Italian guys . . . sitting around ordering their lambs for Easter."

Finally, another true Taylor Street institution: Mario's Italian Lemonade, known throughout Chicagoland and beyond for the eponymous product, which matches the description of what most people would probably call Italian ice, and which comes in a variety of flavors beyond lemon. Mario's has no official website - it's not that kind of place - but there is an 'unofficial' website with fan photos as well as a Facebook page. Mario's is only open from May to September, so I didn't get there on this visit - but I hope to go next time I'm in Chicago during the summer. AMDG.

Wernersville in the NYT.

2012-01-01T12:41:00.002-05:00

Today's New York Times includes an intriguing report on a retreat at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, Pennsylvania. Author Susan Gregory Thomas is "neither Catholic nor anything in particular," but thought that a silent retreat at Wernersville might provide "a solid period of quiet to recombobulate" in the midst of a busy life beset by various worries. Priced at $560, a five-day retreat at Wernersville struck Thomas as a bargain - a thought that may induce groans in readers who know how hard it is for retreat centers to stay open at a time when the cost of maintaining large, old buildings is going up and there simply aren't enough retreatants like Thomas to pay the bills.

As a Jesuit who knows Wernersville, I found it fascinating to read Thomas' outsider view of what goes on during an Ignatian retreat as well as to consider some fresh impressions of a familiar place. The paragraphs that I enjoyed the most had nothing to do with Thomas' impressions of the retreat itself but were concerned with the Jesuit Center as a building:

. . . [W]hile I’d had the notion that it would be tough to keep quiet for five days, I realized, on arrival, that I had not developed a textured sense of what I was getting into. The facility itself, an English Renaissance-style building constructed in the late 1920s, was gigantic and dark — attributes intensified by the resident Jesuits’ ubiquitously posted wish to keep the light bills low. Fantasies of sequestered holy men tending to herb gardens and homemade beer stills were combusted by industrial platters of green beans and pigs-in-blankets provided by Sodexo, the integrated food and facilities management services behemoth.

But there was also an ineffable sphinxiness about the place. For example, I got there an hour and a half late the first night, and there was no one to tell me where to go or what I should be doing. The only signpost was a list of names and room numbers tacked to a corkboard, so I found mine and rollerbagged down the building’s spooky, caliginous hallways until I tracked down my assigned spot. I creaked open the lockless door and found a jumbo crucifix resting on the bed pillow. If Stanley Kubrick had found this place, he’d never have shot a movie anywhere else.

The last sentence made me laugh, partly because it made me think of the moment I arrived at Eastern Point Retreat House to make the Spiritual Exercises when I was in the novitiate. Taking a look at this old mansion surrounded by snow, I joked to another novice, "This reminds me of The Shining." It reminded me even more of The Shining when, during the retreat, we were literally housebound for three days after a particularly severe Nor'easter dropped enough snow on the property to cut us off from the outside world and the staff advised us not to go outside to avoid the danger of exposure.

The Kubrick comparisons end there, but I'm glad that Thomas picked up on the spookiness that I've also noticed in more than one retreat house. For the rest of her views on Wernersville, click here. AMDG.

An der schönen blauen Donau.

2012-01-01T08:03:00.020-05:00

Continuing the Viennese theme of my last post - and because I simply miss Vienna - here is some harmless nostalgia for the start of a new year: the classic waltz "An der schönen blauen Donau" by Johann Strauss II, a staple of the annual Neujahrskonzert of the Wiener Philharmoniker, heard here at last year's concert conducted by Franz Welser-Möst. The Kinderballett that begins around 1'48" is the sort of cutesy thing that I usually don't care for, but in this context I find it kind of charming. Since my time in Vienna was a great personal highlight of 2011, it seems right to me to begin 2012 with something that reminds me of the place. To all readers, I once again extend my prayerful best wishes for a happy and prosperous new year! AMDG.

Leopold Hawelka, 1911-2011.

2011-12-30T07:58:00.003-05:00

Some sad news in the closing days of the year: Leopold Hawelka, a legendary fixture of Vienna's great coffee house culture, died yesterday at the age of 100. If you read German, check out the tributes to Herr Hawelka published in Vienna's two main dailies, Die Presse and Der Standard; for an English-language obituary confirming the international reach of the Hawelka name, take a look at this remembrance published in the Washington Post.

The news of Herr Hawelka's passing moved me in a particular way for the simple reason that I frequently visited his storied coffee house during my time in Vienna. Café Hawelka's location in the heart of Vienna's touristy Innere Stadt makes this venerable establishment a popular stop for foreign visitors, but I found that if I came in at the right time (typically in the early evening) the place was empty except for two or three local regulars, which meant that I could quietly sit with a cup of coffee (or, sometimes, a tall glass of beer) and peruse the assortment of newspapers or do my German homework without too many distractions. Though Leopold Hawelka had long since ceded oversight of day-to-day operations to his son and grandsons, the old Cafetier was still rumored to appear occasionally to see how things were going. I harbored hopes that I might catch a glimpse of this living legend on one of my visits to Café Hawelka, but it was not to be. Friede seiner Asche!

I am on the road again, currently at a retreat house northwest of Chicago for a gathering of young Jesuits in formation, after which I'll be visiting friends in various places. Posting will be sparse for the next few days, but I hope to make an appearance from time to time. Since I probably will not post again in 2011, I wish all readers a very happy new year. AMDG.

A new and wondrous mystery.

2011-12-25T02:15:00.004-05:00

Having returned from Midnight Mass (which really did start at midnight, and where I took the above photo), I wish to repeat the annual tradition of this blog by extending to all readers my prayerful best wishes for Christmas and by sharing a portion of a Nativity sermon preached by St. John Chrysostom:

I behold a new and wondrous mystery.

My ears resound to the Shepherd's song, piping no soft melody but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn.

The Angels sing. The Archangels blend their voice in harmony. The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise. The Seraphim exalt His glory.

All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead here on earth, and man in heaven. He Who is above, now, for our redemption, dwells here below; and he that was lowly is raised up by divine mercy.

Bethlehem this day resembles heaven: she hears from the stars the singing of angelic voices; in place of the sun, she enfolds within herself on every side the Sun of Justice.

Ask not how - where God wills, the order of nature yields. He willed, He had the power, He descended, He redeemed, and all things move in obedience to God.

This day He Who Is is born, and He Who Is becomes what He was not.

Christ is born! Glorify him! AMDG.

On Christmas Eve.

2011-12-24T15:00:00.002-05:00

Though my 'official' Christmas post will be coming in a few hours, here is a little something for readers stopping by on Christmas Eve: James Montgomery's "Angels, from the Realms of Glory," sung here by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge under the direction of Stephen Cleobury. The tune is that of an old French carol, Les Anges dans nos campagnes, while the words are as follows:

Angels from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o'er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation's story,
Now proclaim Messiah's birth:
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

Shepherds, in the fields abiding,
Watching o'er your flocks by night,
God with man is now residing,
Yonder shines the infant Light:
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great desire of nations,
Ye have seen His natal star:
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

Saints before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear,
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In His temple shall appear:
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!
Gloria in Excelsis Deo!

Peace, joy and consolation to all who read these lines. Merry Christmas! AMDG.

The child God.

2011-12-22T17:10:00.001-05:00

As Christmas approaches, we may do well to reflect on these words from Father Alexander Schmemann, posted recently at Synaxis:

The Child as God, God as Child... Why does joyful excitement build over the Christmas season as people, even those of lukewarm faith and unbelievers, behold that unique, incomparable sight of the young mother holding the child in her arms, and around them the "wise men from the East," the shepherds fresh from night-watch in their fields, the animals, the open sky, the star? Why are we so certain, and discover again and again, that on this sorrowful planet of ours there is nothing more beautiful and joyful than this sight, which the passage of centuries has proven incapable of uprooting from our memory? We return to this sight whenever we have nowhere else to go, whenever we have been tormented by life and are in search of something that might deliver us...

It is the words "child" and "God" which give us the most striking revelation about the Christmas mystery. In a certain profound way, this is a mystery directed toward the child who continues to secretly live within every adult, to the child who continues to hear what the adult no longer hears, and who responds with a joy which the adult, in his mundane, grown-up, tired and cynical world, is no longer capable of feeling. Yes, Christmas is a feast for children, not just because of the tree that we decorate and light, but in the much deeper sense that children alone are unsurprised that when God comes to us on earth, he comes as a child.

This image of God as child continues to shine on us through icons and through innumerable works of art, revealing that what is most essential and joyful in Christianity is found precisely here, in this eternal childhood of God. Adults, even the most sympathetic to "religious themes," desire and expect religion to give explanations and analysis; they want it to be intelligent and serious. Its opponents are just as serious, and in the end, just as boring, as they confront religion with a hail of "rational" bullets. In our society, nothing better conveys our contempt than to say "it’s childish." In other words, it’s not for adults, for the intelligent and serious. So children grow up and become equally serious and boring. Yet Christ said "become like children" (Mt 18:3). What does this mean? What are adults missing, or better, what has been choked, drowned or deafened by a thick layer of adulthood? Above all, is it not that capacity, so characteristic of children, to wonder, to rejoice and, most importantly, to be whole both in joy and sorrow? Adulthood chokes as well the ability to trust, to let go and give one’s self completely to love and to believe with all one’s being. And finally, children take seriously what adults are no longer capable of accepting: dreams, that which breaks through our everyday experience and our cynical mistrust, that deep mystery of the world and everything within it revealed to saints, children, and poets.

Thus, only when we break through to the child living hidden within us, can we inherit as our own the joyful mystery of God coming to us as a child. The child has neither authority nor power, yet the very absence of authority reveals him to be a king; his defenselessness and vulnerability are precisely the source of his profound power. The child in that distant Bethlehem cave has no desire that we fear him; He enters our hearts not by frightening us, by proving his power and authority, but by love alone. He is given to us as a child, and only as children can we in turn love him and give ourselves to him. The world is ruled by authority and power, by fear and domination. The child God liberates us from that. All He desires from us is our love, freely given and joyful; all He desires is that we give him our heart. And we give it to a defenseless, endlessly trusting child.

Prayers and good wishes for all. AMDG.

Slices of life on the SouthCoast.

2011-12-22T08:01:00.002-05:00

As I head home to Massachusetts for Christmas, here are three videos from my hometown newspaper offering varied slices of life in Southeastern Massachusetts. In the first video, Tri-Town landmark Salty the Seahorse (previously seen here) gets into the spirit of the season with the addition of a Santa hat.

For a sampling of local accents, listen to the school official and the students interviewed in this humorous story on reactions to changes in school lunch menus mandated by new federal legislation.

Finally, here is a look at a facet of rural life known to me in my small-town youth: the Grange. Though I've never belonged to the group, I know one of the Grange officials interviewed in this video from my political days. More SouthCoast accents, plus a glimpse of a venerable community institution seeking to respond to changing times.

My prayers and good wishes are with all who are traveling at this time to be with loved ones, and I also pray that all of us who await the Feast of the Nativity may do so in a spirit of hope, joy, and sincere repentance. AMDG.

A new Russian Catholic priest.

2011-12-20T21:08:00.007-05:00

Making the rounds of the blogosphere today, here is news of the ordination last month in Novosibirsk of a Russian Greek Catholic priest, Father Pavel Gladkov, translated by me from the original French report found on the Fides et Ratio weblog:

Today [on Tuesday, November 8th], Father Pavel Gladkov was ordained to the priesthood at the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Novosibirsk for the service of the Apostolic Exarchate of Eastern Catholics in Russia. Father Gladkov was ordained by Bishop Milan Šašik, Greek Catholic Eparch of Mukachevo (Ukraine), acting at the request of Bishop Joseph Werth, Latin Bishop of Novosibirsk and Apostolic Visitor to the Exarchate.

Father Gladkov was born in 1982 in Kaluga and grew up in an Orthodox family, becoming Catholic in 1999. Between 2003 and 2011, he studied for the priesthood in the Eastern Rite at the Holy Spirit Theological Academy in Lviv (Ukraine), at seminaries in Novosibirsk and St. Petersburg, and at the Blessed Theodore Romzha Theological Academy in Uzhgorod (Ukraine). He was married to Miss Gayane Valerovna Manvelyan on August 13th of this year and was ordained a deacon on October 14th. Thus, we congratulate him on his marriage and his ordination to the diaconate and the priesthood, all within four months!

The Fides et Ratio post sadly offers no further details on Father Pavel's personal story; it would be very interesting to know about what led him to become Catholic and then to pursue a vocation to the priesthood. As Fides et Ratio notes, Father Pavel will be serving 'a minority of a minority of a minority': Catholics of any kind are a minority in Russia, Greek Catholics are fewer still, and Russian Greek Catholics are even fewer (most Greek Catholics in the country are Ukrainians who found themselves dispersed throughout the former Soviet Union). For more on the history of Russian Catholics both inside and outside Russia, click here.

The above video offers a closer look at Father Pavel's ordination to the priesthood; the narration is in Russian, but the visuals will be self-explanatory to anyone familiar with the rites of ordination. There are some Jesuits in this video: one is Bishop Werth himself, and among the concelebrating priests I recognized an American Jesuit who works in Russia and whom I know from his periodic visits to the United States; I suspect some of the other concelebrants are also Jesuits, as there a few working in Bishop Werth's diocese. Whatever your views may be on larger issues regarding relations between the Churches, I hope you'll spare a prayer for Father Pavel Gladkov and for the small and scattered flock that he has set out to serve as a priest. AMDG.

Blumen für Kim il-Sung (und Kim Jong-il).

2011-12-20T20:14:00.008-05:00

The recent death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il has me thinking about one of the most unusual art exhibitions that I've ever seen, a show that I saw in Vienna in August of 2010 called Blumen für Kim il-Sung: Kunst und Architektur aus der Demokratischen Volksrepublik Korea ("Flowers for Kim il-Sung: Art and Architecture from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea"). The exhibition was put on by the Museum für angewandte Kunst, an institution that specializes in "applied arts" like furniture, housewares, and, in this instance, art influenced by politics. Given my interest in the relationship between art and politics, I naturally found the whole thing fascinating.

Billed as the first exhibition of North Korean art in the West, Blumen für Kim il-Sung aimed for political neutrality, though the fact that all of the works on display were lent by the North Korean government implies that Pyongyang exercised strong veto power over the curators' choices. That being said, the works were surprisingly varied: in addition to the expected socialist realist tableaux of happy workers and smiling children, one also found paintings influenced by older Western styles like French Impressionism. Putting style aside, though, all of the people in the paintings were either smilingly cheerful or stoically determined, all the landscapes were pristine and all the cities were vibrant, with no evidence of the grimness of life in a hermit state ruled by a brutal family dynasty.

To make your own judgment on Blumen für Kim il-Sung, take a look at the above video produced by the Museum für angewandte Kunst. For another outsider's view of a strange and reclusive dictator, why not have a gaze at Kim Jong-il Looking at Things, an oddly compelling Tumblr photoblog that has gone viral in recent days. AMDG.

O Sapientia.

2011-12-17T16:10:00.004-05:00

For Roman Catholics who pray the Divine Office, this is the evening when the first of the seven 'O Antiphons' is recited at Vespers. In the above video, you can hear tonight's antiphon, O Sapientia, sung by CantArte Regensburg under the direction of Hubert Velten.

Addressing the expected Messiah with the various titles given to him in the Old Testament - 'O Wisdom, who came from the mouth of the Most High,' 'O Lord and Ruler of the House of Israel,' 'O Root of Jesse,' 'O Key of David,' 'O Dayspring,' 'O King of the Nations,' 'O Emmanuel' - the O Antiphons help create a sense of heightened anticipation in the last seven days preceding the Feast of the Nativity. To learn more, consult Fr. Z's "O Antiphon" Page for details of the history, scriptural sources and spiritual significance of these treasured prayers.

Having given the last of my three final exams, I am now deciphering blue books and beginning to calculate cumulative semester grades for all of my students. Given the task that I'm focused on this weekend, the invocation found in the antiphon O Sapientia strikes me as particularly apt: O Wisdom, who came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly, come and teach us the way of prudence. AMDG.

Sankta Lucia.

2011-12-13T08:57:00.003-05:00

For today's feast of the fourth-century Sicilian martyr Saint Lucy, here is some music from Sweden, where St. Lucy's Day is celebrated with great mirth as a kind of festival of light in the midst of winter darkness. The above video shows part of the annual Luciakonsert at the Storkyrkan, Stockholm's Lutheran cathedral. The Swedish carol sung here as Sankta Lucia, ljusklara hägring is set to music borrowed from a traditional Neapolitan folk song, which seems appropriate given the Italian origins of this feast. The girl marching at the head of the choir wearing a crown of lighted candles represents Saint Lucy herself, whose very name, coming from the Latin lux, identifies her as a bearer of light.

Taken from the same concert at the Storkyrkan, here is a tune that needs no introduction, the traditional Advent hymn Veni, veni Emmanuel. As we await the bright Feast of the Nativity, whether we do so in the darkness of a Northern winter or, in the Southern Hemisphere, in the middle of summer, may the light celebrated today on St. Lucy's Day be for us a source of consolation and hope. AMDG.

On the Holy Ancestors.

2011-12-13T08:54:00.004-05:00

In the Byzantine tradition, the second Sunday before the Feast of the Nativity is the Sunday of the Holy Ancestors, commemorating the human forebears of Jesus Christ. As Father Stephen Freeman noted yesterday, this reminder that Jesus had ancestors challenges those of us who live in a culture in which, to borrow from the title of a book on a different, but not unrelated, topic, many are 'without roots':

Such feasts [as this one] are absent in most of Christianity – as though Christ had come at a point in time without preparation – without ancestors. Just as many Christians refuse to recognize the blessedness of Mary, from whom Christ took flesh, so do they also refuse to recognize that "flesh" involves ancestry. It is a bothersome aspect of the incarnation of Christ. It would be so much easier for many to speak of Christ’s humanity if His humanity did not involve any other humans. Thus there are Christians who worship a God made man, who is no man at all.

The traditional title for the grandparents of Christ (the parents of the Virgin Mary) is "the holy and righteous ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna." They are honored at every liturgy, being invoked as part of the dismissal. If the title, "Mother of God," can be tolerated by some, the title, "holy and righteous ancestors of God," is yet more problematic.

In many ways this is not surprising. The modern world is largely devoid of ancestors. Ancestors are inherently part of tradition, and modernity despises tradition – it rebels against tradition. Living in America, I am deeply aware the many of the current generation cannot cite their ancestors further back than grandparents. It is as though we were a culture that came from nowhere. Perhaps this has an element of truth.

To come "from somewhere," is to come with restrictions on freedom. It is to come with a history – perhaps a history of friends and enemies. This can, indeed, be destructive and counter-productive. But it also means that we come into the world without identity, and thus find the need to "invent" ourselves. And so it is that modern Christians think nothing of inventing their own version of Christianity – for they themselves have no inheritance – no received tradition.

To read the rest of Father Stephen's post, click here. AMDG.

St. John Climacus on everyday asceticism.

2011-12-10T16:14:00.001-05:00

Over at Synaxis, a blog of Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Father Philip Rogers recently presented some thoughts from Saint John Climacus on everyday asceticism:

One of the greatest monks in history, St. John Climacus, wrote a 30-step treatise called The Ladder of Divine Ascent. This book was written specifically for those who were monks and laid out step by step the way to the Kingdom of God. Though he wrote it in the 7th century, it is still read today during Great Lent in many of the monasteries in the Orthodox world. In this work, St. John doesn’t just address the monks, however. He was presented with this same question over 1500 years ago: "Do I have to be a monk?" He responded by saying:

"Some people living carelessly in the world have asked me: 'We have wives and are beset with social cares, and how can we lead the solitary life?' I replied to them: ‘Do all the good you can; do not speak evil of anyone; do not steal from anyone; do not lie to anyone; do not be arrogant towards anyone; do not hate anyone; do not be absent from the divine services; be compassionate to the needy; do not offend anyone; do not wreck another man’s domestic happiness, and be content with what your own wives can give you. If you behave in this way, you will not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.'"

Notice that St. John doesn’t start off by mentioning what we should avoid and not do, but what we should actually do. "Do all the good you can" is very different from "avoid doing bad." If the answer was to avoid doing bad, we would be better suited to stay in our homes and be alone as much as we can; or, if we are outside our homes, to focus on the task that we are doing and not pay attention to anyone else that is around us. St. John is encouraging all of us to pay attention to the moment that we are in and look for the good that we can do. How often do we drive down the road talking on the phone or listening to the radio and mindlessly make our way to our destination? In my case, too often. In attempting to "do all the good you can," try instead to pay attention to where you are going, your surroundings. You might notice an opportunity to do good. . . .

To read the rest, click here. AMDG.

A Jesuit and a chemist?

2011-12-08T08:32:00.005-05:00

As a semi-sequel to my recent post featuring an interview with Jesuit geneticist Kevin FitzGerald, today I'm pleased to present another Jesuit (and another Kevin, no less) who finds God in the sciences: New Brunswick native Kevin Cormier is a Jesuit scholastic of the New Orleans Province who has done graduate work in chemistry at Saint Louis University and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In the above video, Kevin talks a bit about how the example of Saint Francis Xavier has helped him to see his work in chemistry as a missionary endeavor.

The fall semester at Saint Joseph's University is rapidly coming to an end: tomorrow is the last day of class for most students, and final exams will be given next week. I'll be occupied for the next couple of weeks grading papers and exams, so posting will be light. Please pray for all students and teachers at this busy time. AMDG.

Notes on the Feast of St. Nicholas of Myra.

2011-12-06T07:25:00.028-05:00

Widely celebrated on this date, the Feast of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, is one of my favorite days of the church year, in part because of the many wonderful traditions associated with this feast. One such tradition is the enthronement in some English cathedrals of boy bishops like the young prelate seen above; typically chosen from among the ranks of the cathedral choristers, the boy bishops traditionally took office on St. Nicholas' Day, retaining their honorary prelacies until the Feast of the Holy Innocents three days after Christmas. For more on boy bishops, consult this post from two years ago.

Here is some video footage of another annual tradition involving St. Nicholas, this one from the Netherlands. As seen above, Sinterklaas annually arrives (purportedly from Spain, and preferably by boat) in mid-November to inaugurate several weeks of festivites leading to the exchange of gifts on the eve of St. Nicholas' Day. I offer this video chiefly for the edification of my sister Liz, who was once on hand in Amsterdam to greet Sinterklaas on his arrival in the city.

Here's one more video from Amsterdam, showing Sinterklaas on parade through the city, accompanied by his traditional - and nowadays quite controversial - assistant Zwarte Piet. My sister has told me that at the time of Sinterklaas' arrival one finds hordes of Zwarte Pieten in the streets giving away homemade cookies - a fine act of generosity and an acknowledgment of community that, for various reasons, one would be much less likely to encounter during analogous celebrations in the United States.

Finally, something from Pennsylvania: a fragment of the traditional Carpatho-Rusyn hymn O kto kto Nikolaja l'ubit, heard here at Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church in Harrisburg. On this Feast of Saint Nicholas of Myra, celebrated so brightly and with such great variety by Christians throughout the world, I pray that the holy Bishop Nicholas may intercede for us before Christ our God for the good of all and for the salvation of our souls. AMDG.

What does it mean to live a spiritual life?

2011-12-02T19:56:00.023-05:00

Earlier this week, Father Stephen Freeman offered some thoughts on living a spiritual life, beginning with a nod to those who claim to be 'spiritual but not religious':

It has become a commonplace to hear someone say, "I’m spiritual but not religious." Most people have a general understanding of what is meant. I usually assume that the person holds to a number of ideas that are considered "spiritual" in our culture, but that they are not particularly interested in "organized religion." I understand this, because organized religion can often be the bane of spiritual existence.

Regular readers will recall that I wrote about the 'SBNR' phenomenon in early September and that I've promised to revisit the topic. The post that you are now reading is not that promised follow-up, which I still hope to produce once I feel free enough from other responsibilities (namely, teaching and everything that comes with it) to pull together the various thoughts on the whole SBNR business that have been percolating in my mind since that initial September post. Stay tuned.

Though I plan to say more on issues related to the SBNR phenomenon in another post, for the moment I would like to remind readers of my skepticism regarding the 'spiritual' part of the term 'spiritual but not religious.' I'm sure that Father Stephen is correct in suggesting that some SBNRs "hold[] to a number of ideas that are considered 'spiritual' in our culture," but I also have the impression, based on reading as well as various personal encounters, that some other SBNRs are wholly indifferent to anything that might be labeled as 'spiritual' and simply embrace the SBNR label because it sounds better (or more thoughtful, or less judgmental) than simply admitting that they aren't interested in the realm of the transcendent.

In any event, the real reason that I decided to call your attention to Father Stephen's post is to highlight some paragraphs that explain very well what SBNRs are missing out on:

I am an Orthodox Christian – which is not the same thing as saying that I have an interest in "organized religion." There is much about organized religion that I dislike in the extreme, and I occasionally see its shadow seep into my experience within Orthodoxy. But I repeat unashamedly that I am an Orthodox Christian and admit that one clear reason is that I am not very "spiritual." Without the life of the Church and its Tradition – I could easily drift into a shapeless secularism – living a mediocre existence, marking time until my time is done.

The shapeless contours of spirituality often reflect nothing more than the ego within. How can I escape the confines of my own imagination? It is, of course, possible to ignore the question of the ego’s input and be satisfied with whatever we find comfortable as our "spirituality." But, as noted above, I do not think I am an inherently "spiritual" man.

The Church is spiritual – indeed it is far more spiritual than "organized." It is standing in the midst of the holy (whether I am aware of it or not) and yielding myself to that reality that largely constitute my daily "spirituality." I pray and when something catches my heart, I stop and stay there for a while.

The point that Father Stephen makes here about tradition is critically important. Life with other religious believers can be messy and difficult, frustrating and even disillusioning, but it also provides the only context in which being 'spiritual' makes sense. As Lillian Daniel wrote in the article that prompted my first SBNR post, "There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself." Without the support and guidance of authority and tradition, 'spirituality' can too easily turn into navel-gazing solipsism.

All of this leads me to the following question: what do we actually mean when we use the term 'spirituality'? One of the reasons that I insist so strongly that 'spirituality' is inseparable from religion is that, without religious moorings, 'spirituality' comes to mean whatever its speaker wants it to mean, losing any stable sense of meaning that can be shared with others. I have sometimes found it easier to establish common ground with adherents of other religious traditions than to do so with 'SBNR' types. People of different religious necessarily disagree on foundational matters, but we can at least agree that foundations are essential. By contrast, the SBNR position seems to treat all foundations as superfluous.

At times, I have jokingly labeled myself as 'religious but not spiritual,' if only to emphasize the critical grounding that religious practice provides for those who wish to live a spiritual life. If I were not rooted in a particular religious tradition that includes concrete beliefs and rituals, I would not be capable of the kind of inner movements that might be termed 'spiritual.' Thus, it may be hard for me to appreciate the motives that some might have for labeling themselves as SBNRs. Nevertheless, I do take the SBNR phenomenon seriously as a pastoral problem, and that is the dimension that I intend to focus upon next time I write about this issue. AMDG.

Happy families are all alike...

2011-11-30T23:39:00.024-05:00

Readers who know Tolstoy's Anna Karenina will probably recall the second part of the sentence quoted in the title of this post: "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This line came to mind when I learned that Lana Peters, aka Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Joseph Stalin, died last week at the age of 85 at her home in Wisconsin. As you can surely glean from her obituary, Mrs. Peters lived a turbulent life: making a high-profile defection to the United States in 1967, she later returned to the Soviet Union only to reverse course a second time and go back to America, finally settling in small-town Wisconsin. As journalist Doug Moe noted yesterday, Svetlana Alliluyeva Peters died knowing that she would always be "a political prisoner of [her] father's name."

Though the young Svetlana, her brother Vasily, and father Iosif are all smiling in the above snapshot from the 1930s, their life together was far from idyllic. Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide in 1932, when her daughter was six. Vasily Dzhugashvili dealt with the pressures inherent in being a dictator's son by turning to alcohol, dying from its effects two days before what would have been his forty-first birthday; Stalin's other son, Yakov, died in a German prison camp during the Second World War. While Stalin apparently spent little time with his two youngest children after their mother's death - he was perhaps too preoccupied with the doings of his enemies, both real and imagined - it seems impossible to deny that the tragic turns in each of their lives had much to do with his actions.

What was it like to be one of Stalin's children? What did Svetlana think of her father? For some insight into these questions, here is an excerpt from an interview that Svetlana Alliluyeva Peters gave to the Wisconsin State Journal in April of 2010:

Peters was asked if she thinks often of her father.

"No," she said. "He broke my life. I want to explain to you. He broke my life twice."

She said she had fallen in love with an older man, a writer and filmmaker named Aleksei Kapler. Her father did not approve.

"I was 17," she said. "He put to jail, and then to labor camp, the man who I loved. I saw for the first time that my father could do that."

Kapler had introduced her to the arts - giving her books, taking her to galleries - and Peters said the second time her father "broke" her life came when she applied at a university to study the arts.

Josef Stalin scoffed. "Bohemians," Peters recalled him saying. "You want to be with Bohemians?" He insisted she study history and become "an educated Marxist."

Peters was asked: "Do you think your father loved you?"

"Oh, yes," she said. "I looked like his mother. I had this red hair, which I still have. It's not colored. It's my own hair. I have freckles all over, like her."

She continued: "He was a very simple man. Very rude. Very cruel. There was nothing in him that was complicated. He was very simple with us. He loved me and he wanted me to be with him and become an educated Marxist."

It would be easy to treat the above lines as further evidence of how evil Stalin was, but are the basic details of the story that Svetlana tells really that unusual? Stalin was hardly the first or last father to disapprove of his daughter's choice of boyfriend or her proposed course of study, though few fathers in comparable situations have had the ability to react as he did. Morever, I'm sure that many otherwise tolerant parents would express some concern if their seventeen-year-old daughter made plans to marry a much older man. Could an infamous tyrant, responsible for widescale persecution and countless deaths, also have been, in at least some respects, a fairly ordinary human being?

One other anecdote concerning Svetlana Peters' relationship with her father struck me as worthy of attention. A Guardian profile published yesterday includes Svetlana's memory of the time that she took her father for a ride in a car; Stalin never learned to drive, but he was proud that his daughter had acquired this skill. "He sat next to me, beaming with joy," Svetlana later recalled. "My father couldn't believe I knew how to drive."

What are we to make of this? Should we be surprised that a paranoid dictator took joy in the fact that his daughter had learned how to do something that he could not do? On another level, how do we handle the fact that a man like Stalin was also capable of showing love for his family, even if he often treated them badly? Some well-intentioned people would urge us not to ask questions like these, suggesting that any move to 'humanize' perpetrators of evil is a first step toward efforts to rationalize and perhaps even excuse their evil actions. I can appreciate the basis for this concern, but I also think that the 'anti-humanization' approach can be a way of avoiding more difficult - and ultimately more important - questions about what it means for us to be rational beings who are capable of doing monstrous evil as well as great good.

As the world remembers Svetlana Alliluyeva Peters, I pray that in death she may find the peace that was often denied her during her earthly life, and I pray that her memory may be eternal. AMDG.

WaPo: Hoyas study Chinese nuclear program.

2011-11-30T21:03:00.001-05:00

This Washington Post article both made me proud to be a Georgetown alumnus and excited my latent nostalgia for certain aspects of the Cold War:

The Chinese have called it their "Underground Great Wall" — a vast network of tunnels designed to hide their country’s increasingly sophisticated missile and nuclear arsenal.

For the past three years, a small band of obsessively dedicated students at Georgetown University has called it something else: homework.

Led by their hard-charging professor, a former top Pentagon official, they have translated hundreds of documents, combed through satellite imagery, obtained restricted Chinese military documents and waded through hundreds of gigabytes of online data.

The result of their effort? The largest body of public knowledge about thousands of miles of tunnels dug by the Second Artillery Corps, a secretive branch of the Chinese military in charge of protecting and deploying its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads.

A few paragraphs later, my favorite part of the article appears:

Beyond its impact in the policy world, the project has made a profound mark on the students — including some who have since graduated and taken research jobs with the Defense Department and Congress.

"I don’t even want to know how many hours I spent on it," said Nick Yarosh, 22, an international politics senior at Georgetown. "But you ask people what they did in college, most just say I took this class, I was in this club. I can say I spent it reading Chinese nuclear strategy and Second Artillery manuals. For a nerd like me, that really means something."

To read the rest, click here. Hoya Saxa! AMDG.

One that went straight up.

2011-11-30T21:01:00.008-05:00

A longtime professor of classics at Georgetown University, Father Edward W. Bodnar, S.J. died yesterday morning at 91. I never had Father Bodnar as a teacher - he retired from the classroom in 1991 - but he was still very active on campus during my college years: he regularly said Mass and heard confessions in Dahlgren Chapel, and he also offered words of advice and encouragement to students of Latin, myself included. After I graduated, I invariably ran into Father Bodnar whenever I returned to the Hilltop; he always remembered my name, and I hope that I will remember to pray for him now that he has gone to his reward.

For more on Father Bodnar's life and legacy, here are some words from Georgetown Provost Jim O'Donnell, posted today by Vox Populi:

Father Bodnar was born in 1920 in West Point, New York, where his father played in the post band before moving family to Washington to join the US Marine Band. Edward Bodnar graduated from Gonzaga and came to Georgetown but left after two years to enter the Jesuit novitiate. He was ordained in June 1952 and so passed away just a few months shy of 60 years in the priesthood. With a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1958, he concentrated his scholarship on the work of the indefatigable Cyriac of Ancona, a merchant traveler from Italy in the 15th century who studied ancient Greek inscriptions in Athens during the last years before the Turkish conquest of Constantinople. That work filled a rich lifetime of scholarship and it was a particular privilege for some of us to attend the "book launch" in 2004 of his edition and translation of Cyriac’s later writings. Fr. Bodnar came to Georgetown in 1967 and remained as professor of classics until his retirement in 1991. In his honor, the department hosts an eminent scholar each year to deliver the "Bodnar Lecture," and it is sad to think we will not see again the twinkle in his eye when he regularly remarked on that occasion that he was surprised that it was not yet a posthumous honor. We will refresh that celebration in a few months.

Priest, scholar, and Hoya, his gentle way, his keen intellect, and that distinctive twinkle will be remembered by many, including a Provost for whom he has been his "oldest" Georgetown friend, dating from our meeting in Woodrow Wilson’s living room 35 years ago. A friend and admirer of his of very long standing remarked this morning, "Well, he’s one that went straight up," and many of us know exactly what she meant. Requiescat in pace.

May he indeed rest in peace, and may his memory be eternal. AMDG.

Thanksgiving in Tri-Town.

2011-11-27T22:29:00.025-05:00

Having returned to Philadelphia, I would like to share some photos taken on Thanksgiving Day in the Tri-Town Area, a group of mostly coastal communities in Southeastern Massachusetts comprised of my (non-coastal) hometown of Rochester and the adjacent (coastal) towns of Marion and Mattapoisett. Rochester is the oldest of the three towns - it was first settled in 1638 - but it is also the smallest of the three in terms of population and the most rural. The fields seen here represent a typical Rochester landscape; as you can see, I really did grow up in the country.

As a child, I was fascinated by this stained glass window in my home parish - in fact, the experience of staring at this window from a nearby pew is one of the three most vivid religious memories of my childhood, the second being the ringing of the handbell at the consecration (I wasn't yet tall enough to be able to see the kneeling altar boy who rang the bell, so I wondered where the sound came from) and the third being the sensory impressions that accompanied my first confession (the dark yet comforting environment of the confessional, the feeling of my knees on the cushioned prie-dieu, and the pastor's silhouetted profile seen obscurely through the mesh of the grille). In other words, my earliest religious memories are all linked to confession or transubstantion - make of that what you will.

This is not my home parish, but rather the First Congregational Church of Rochester and its vestry, which dominate the historic town green. The physical prominence of this church building offers a reminder that Congregationalism was once the established religion of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; thinking of this church and its heritage leads me to recall the description that Nathaniel Hawthorne gave of his Puritan ancestors in The Scarlet Letter - "bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats" - for I imagine that Rochester's founders were men like these.

Here is another view of the First Congregational Church, captured in the sun and shadows of a bright Thanksgiving morning.

The American flag seen here is reflected in a window of Rochester's Town Hall, which is next door to the church vestry seen earlier. For more photos of the Town Hall and other highlights of 'downtown Rochester,' consult this post from May 2009.

This photo wasn't taken in the Tri-Town Area, but rather in Wareham, a larger town immediately east of Rochester and Marion where many Tri-Town residents shop and work. This new liquor store opened just a few weeks ago in a space formerly occupied by a Borders bookstore. When I saw Wines & More for the first time, I remarked to my sister that, while the book business may be suffering, plenty of people are apparently still willing to spend money on alcohol.

Getting back to Tri-Town, this is Marion's Silvershell Beach. Residents of landlocked Rochester have water rights in Marion, so this is the beach that I went to growing up. The strip of land visible at left, across the Harbor, is also part of Marion; though it's hard to tell in this photo, in person one can also see Cape Cod in the far distance.

Here are two seagulls at play, seen from Silvershell Beach. If you look very closely, you can also see a narrow strip of land on the horizon, across Buzzards Bay - that strip of land is Cape Cod, more specifically West Falmouth.

Moving on to Mattapoisett, the youngest and most populous of the Tri-Town communities, this is Salty the Seahorse, who has loomed over U.S. Route 6 in central Mattapoisett since the 1950s. Mattapoisett businessman Henry Dunseith built this 36-foot-tall sculpture to draw passing motorists to a small store he ran specializing in nautical souvenirs; appropriately enough, the store was called the Sea Horse Gift Shop. Following Dunseith's death in 1988, the Mattapoisett Land Trust assumed responsibility for Salty's care. The dilapidated remains of Dunseith's home and store were later torn down to make room for a public park now known as Dunseith Gardens, offering locals a pleasant place to relax in Salty's shadow.

Finally, this is the place where my Thanksgiving Day came to a close: Gilda's Stone Rooster, a venerable Marion bar where I had a midnight drink with my sister (note her purse at right, next to my Red Sox cap) before taking her to a nearby shopping center where she sought to take advantage of early-bird Black Friday bargains. In case you're curious, the "Stone Rooster" moniker is derived from the Italian surname of the bar's owner, Gilda Pietragalla, who is still going strong - and running the Stone Rooster on her own - at the age of 87. To learn more about Gilda and the Tri-Town institution over which she presides, read this June 2010 story from the Wareham Observer.

I hope that readers who may have been traveling for Thanksgiving have made it safely back to the places where they normally reside. I also hope that those readers who live according to the academic calendar are ready for the final weeks of the semester. Lastly - and most importantly - prayers and good wishes for all readers who begin the Season of Advent this weekend; may this time of preparation for the Feast of the Nativity be spiritually fruitful for us all. AMDG.

On Thanksgiving Day.

2011-11-24T07:30:00.093-05:00

This post comes to you from Massachusetts, where I'm spending Thanksgiving with my family. As I do each year, I wanted to post something for this quintessentially American holiday. Aaron Copland's 1944 ballet score Appalachian Spring is a distinctively American piece of music, though it may be hard to explain exactly what makes it such beyond Copland's use of a series of variations based on the nineteenth-century Shaker tune Simple Gifts. For what it's worth, when feeling homesick while spending extended periods outside the United States, Appalachian Spring is the piece that I've turned to for comfort.

In this video, Appalachian Spring is performed in Copland's original chamber arrangement by the Sydney Camerata, conducted by Luke Gilmour. Given this work's status as an icon of musical Americana, it may seem strange that I chose to showcase an interpretation by an Australian ensemble, but, after all, great music belongs to the world. To all readers celebrating Thanksgiving today, I offer my prayers and good wishes for a blessed and happy holiday. AMDG.

A priest and a scientist?

2011-11-22T16:07:00.006-05:00

I suspect that regular readers who are scientists (you know who you are) will like this video featuring Jesuit Father Kevin FitzGerald, a molecular geneticist and bioethicist who holds the David Lauler Chair for Catholic Health Care Ethics at Georgetown University. In this video, Father FitzGerald explains how his two callings as a priest and scientist complement one another and talks about how his research helps the Church. I have never felt drawn to a scientific career, but I have written before about how the presence within the Society of Jesus of "hyphenated priests" who found God in various academic disciplines helped me to find my own vocation as a Jesuit. If you know someone who might be similarly inspired by the existence of priest-scientists like Father FitzGerald, you might suggest that he take a look at the above video. AMDG.

+Sviatoslav at Fordham.

2011-11-22T16:01:00.001-05:00

In the midst of a pastoral visit to Ukrainian Catholics in the United States, Patriarch Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) stopped at one of my old stomping grounds, as reported here:

Fordham conferred an honorary degree on the new head and father of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and honored his predecessor on Nov. 20 at the Rose Hill campus.

His Beatitude Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the new 41-year-old patriarch of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, received a doctorate of humane letters, honoris causa, at a ceremony in the University Church. More than 800 members of the Fordham, Catholic and Ukrainian communities filled the sanctuary to capacity.

In the same ceremony, Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan unveiled and blessed a newly installed marble mosaic coat of arms of Ukraine’s patriarch emeritus, His Eminence Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, GSAS ’66, major archbishop of Kyiv-Halych. Due to ill health, the cardinal was unable to attend.

. . .

Patriarch Shevchuk, in accepting the honorary degree, made light of his age: He is one of the youngest prelates in the world and has been credited with attracting young, educated and invigorated believers to his church.

"One of my Angelicum professors in Rome used to joke that honorary doctorates are usually given to those people for whom it is too late to get an ordinary one," said the prelate, who holds a doctorate in theology from Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and speaks several languages.

The prelate insisted that, while such an honor hardly befitted him, it did indeed befit "the martyred church that I have been called to carry on my shoulders."

"I personally experienced this church when she was despised, scorned and humiliated," said the prelate, who grew up under Communist rule. "But despite all of this, she remained the authentic church of the Risen Christ. So it is this church, to her Christian wisdom and her intellectual life, that these honors befit."

To find out more, click here. AMDG.

Notes on the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple.

2011-11-21T07:02:00.018-05:00

For today's Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, known in the West as the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, here are some reflections by Father Alexander Schmemann, taken from the third volume of his collected sermons:

Here we have the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple. Its subject is very simple: a little girl is brought by her parents to the temple in Jerusalem. There is nothing particularly remarkable about this, since at that time it was a generally accepted custom and many parents brought their children to the temple as a sign of bringing them into contact with God, of giving their lives ultimate purpose and meaning, of illumining them from within through the light of higher experience.

But on this occasion, as the service for the day recounts, they lead the child to the "Holy of Holies," to the place where no one except the priests are allowed to go, the mystical inner sanctum of the temple. The girl's name is Mary. She is the future mother of Jesus Christ, the one through whom, as Christians believe, God himself came into the world to join the human race, to share its life and reveal its divine content. Are these just fairy tales? Or is something given to us and disclosed here, something directly related to our life, which perhaps cannot be expressed in everyday human speech?

Here was this magnificent, massive, solemn temple, the glory of Jerusalem. And for centuries it was only there, behind those heavy walls, that a person could come into contact with God. Now, however, the priest takes Mary by the hand, leads her into the most sacred part of the Temple and we sing that "The most pure Temple of the Savior is led into the temple of the Lord." Later in the Gospels Christ said, "destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up," but as the Evangelist added, "He spoke of the temple of His Body" (Jn 2: 19, 21).

The meaning of all these events, words and recollections is simple: from now on man himself becomes the temple. No stone temple, no altar, but man - his soul, body and life - is the sacred and divine heart of the world, its "holy of holies." One temple, Mary - living and human - is led into a temple made of stone, and from within brings to completion its significance and meaning.

With this event religion, and life even more so, undergoes a complete shift in balance. What now enters the world is a teaching that puts nothing higher than man, for God Himself takes on human form to reveal man's vocation and meaning as divine. From this moment onward man is free. Nothing stands over him, for the very world is his as a gift from God to fulfill his divine destiny.

From the moment the Virgin Mary entered "the Holy of Holies," life itself became the Temple. And when we celebrate her Entrance into the Temple, we celebrate man's divine meaning and the brightness of his high calling. These cannot be washed away or uprooted from human memory.

Prayers and good wishes for all readers on this bright feast. AMDG.

Two perspectives on Christians in the Mideast.

2011-11-21T07:01:00.080-05:00

The Sunday Review section of yesterday's New York Times included two op-ed pieces reflecting on the troubled present and uncertain future of Christians in the Middle East. In the first, André Aciman considers the current prospects of Egypt's Copts following a recent upsurge in violence against them and suggests that a Christian exodus would be bad for all Egyptians:

The friendly army that Copts embraced during the Arab spring has turned its guns on those who embraced it. Your pal today, your killer tomorrow.

There are no rules and there is no trust. The poor man on the street, if he is to think for himself — which is a tall order in a country that has no history of free speech — must either wear warped lenses to see through wholesale agitprop or surrender to blind fanaticism.

Copts represent approximately 10 percent of Egypt’s population and are the direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians. Yet, sensing danger while everyone else in Egypt and in the West was busy celebrating the fall of Mr. Mubarak during the much-heralded Arab Spring, 93,000 Copts have already fled Egypt since March. In light of the events in Maspero, it is thought that another 150,000 Copts may leave their ancestral homeland by the end of 2011.

When Mr. Mubarak was in power, the Copts were frequently the victims of violent attacks and official discrimination — the New Year’s bombing of a Coptic Church in Alexandria that left 21 dead is the most recent instance. Now, with Mr. Mubarak gone, Copts fear that an elected Muslim majority is likely to prove far less tolerant than a military dictatorship.

. . .

What doesn’t occur to most Egyptians is that the Copts represent a significant business community in Egypt and that their flight may further damage an economy saddled with a ballooning deficit.

But this is nothing new for Egypt. The Egyptians have yet to learn the very hard lesson of the post-1956 departure of its nearly 100,000 Jews, who, at the time, constituted one of the wealthiest Jewish communities in the Mediterranean region.

The Egyptian economy never recovered from this loss. While blaming Zionism and the creation of Israel or turning to Islamic leadership may take many people’s minds off the very real financial debacle confronting Egypt and help assuage feelings of powerlessness, the hard lesson has not been learned yet.

The Arab Spring was a luminous instance of democratic euphoria in a country that had no history of democracy or euphoria. What happened to the Copts this fall cast a dark cloud, which the interim government, whatever its true convictions, would do well to dispel.

Egypt should not lose its Copts. For if that is what autumn brings, then, to paraphrase Shelley, winter may not be far behind.

In the second piece, Anthony Shadid situates current concerns about the future of the Christian communities of the Middle East in a broader cultural and historical context, arguing that the fate of Arab Christians has deeper implications for the Arab world's sense of self:

Fear is . . . a sentiment voiced often these days by Arab Christians, a sad refrain for an ancient community that was so long a force in politics and culture in the Arab world. These days, a community that still numbers in the millions — with the largest populations in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories — finds itself little more than a spectator to events reshaping a place it once helped create, and sometimes a victim of the violence that those events have unleashed. In all the narratives that the Arab revolts represent — dignity, democracy, rights and social justice — many Christians hew to a far bleaker version of events: that their time may be running out.

. . .

Worries about the fate of Christians in the Middle East are often thrust uncomfortably into the conflict between the West and the Muslim world; in the American presidential campaign, Newt Gingrich regularly warns of an “anti-Christian Spring,” as he did in a Republican debate last weekend.

But focusing on that conflict, and the bigotries that beset it, misses the nuances of what Christians represent to the region, and the lessons that their history in other times of tumult might offer the future. In the 19th century, they ushered in a renaissance of Arab culture. Just generations ago, they helped articulate the ideologies that seized the Arab world’s imagination. The fate of Arab Christians today will help define the unresolved struggle within the Arab world about its own identity — how universal, fair, just and equal its societies turn out to be.

To read the rest, click here. AMDG.

On the strange beauty of trees.

2011-11-19T08:30:00.033-05:00

The inspiration for these photos came to me very suddenly. One day last week, during the short walk from the building where I have my office to the Jesuit residence, I took a look overhead and thought, "I should really take some pictures of these trees, while they still have their leaves." On the afternoon and the one following it, I took many pictures of the trees that I see whenever I walk between my home and my office; some of the best of those images - or at least my favorites - are presented here.

Though I don't always pay attention to the trees that I pass each day, I know some people around here who are avid tree-watchers. Having made an effort in recent days to look more carefully at trees that I would otherwise would tend to ignore or to take for granted, I've come to better understand why some regard trees with such great affection.

Trees really can be quite beautiful, especially at this time of the year and in this part of the Northern Hemisphere. These photos show trees in the process of losing their leaves; silhouetted against a late afternoon sky with their trunk and branches increasingly exposed, these trees look very fragile. Appearances can be deceptive, though, for we know that these strong and hardy trees have survived many winters - and will hopefully survive many more.

The longevity of trees has long impressed me. Recalling, for example, of the trees that I saw at the Garden of Gethsemane - trees that do not go back to the time of Christ, but are nonetheless many centuries old - it's hard not to feel a sense of awe at all of the human events that have come and gone in the lifetime of the oldest trees. The trees seen in these photos probably aren't that old in the grand scheme of things, but generations of human activity have nonetheless gone by while they have maintained their inscrutable silence; at the very least, realizations like this should give us a greater dose of humility.

Of course, part of what makes trees so beautiful at this time of the year and in this part of the world is their foliage: many people drive hours for a brief glimpse of trees that are said to have particularly vivid colors on certain fall weekends. I've never gone out of my way for great foliage - why should I, after all, when I can see it in my own backyard?

One thing that particularly caught my attention as I was taking these photos was the effect of the late-afternoon light on the campus trees. For example, take a look at the glow that the sunlight bestows on this tree's trunk and and on its leaves.

The influence of the afternoon sun is also seen in this image, which I like for the particularly intricate, vein-like branches lined with leaves so delicate that they look like they might as well have been applied by hand.

Of course, all of the leaves on these trees eventually find their way to the ground - in fact, at the time of writing, all of the trees in these photos have become bare. Leaves can be quite beautiful on their own, especially when they have colors as vivid as the red in the maple leaves seen here.

I took this photo solely because I liked the way that the colors of the leaves seem to match the chipped and fading paint on the old wooden gate seen here.

Finally, here are many more of those vivid red leaves lying on the ground, waiting to be raked up and taken away by university groundskeepers. Thank you for your indulgence of this unusual photo essay - more typical posting will resume soon. AMDG.

More on married Melkite priests.

2011-11-18T16:25:00.004-05:00

Earlier this month, I shared a report from Orthocath indicating that Melkite Bishop Nicholas (Samra) of Newton (pictured above) intends to ordain married men for priestly service in his eparchy. Yesterday, Orthocath posted a follow-up with more information from a Catholic News Service story on Bishop Nicholas' proposal - and how it has been received in Rome.

The CNS report notes that Rome's policy on the ordination of married Eastern Catholic priests in the West remains unchanged - that is, such ordinations are still not generally permitted, though dispensations may be granted on a case-by-case basis. The reaffirmation of this de facto 'ban' may be news - many had thought that such dispensations were no longer required - but Bishop Nicholas' viewpoint on the issue certainly should take no one by surprise, as the CNS report notes:

In a Nov. 9 telephone interview with Catholic News Service, Bishop Samra said his comments should not provoke any surprise at the Vatican.

"This is not new that I said this. I've said it before. They must have known this when they named me (bishop)," he said, adding he has even published his views in a book. "I know a copy went to Rome and I'm sure they saw that."

"I haven't hidden the fact that it's a necessity for our church," he said, noting that any such initiative would need to be "properly managed, and not just ordaining somebody who thinks they have a vocation."

In my earlier post on this topic, I discussed some of the practical considerations that American Melkites would have to deal with if they had more married clergy. In his comments to CNS, Bishop Nicholas has more to say about two of these issues, namely the thorny questions of formation and finances:

"We have a bunch of people who want to be ordained, yeah, but we need to have men who have the credentials," [the Bishop] said, adding there are priests in the diocese who have complained, "If I had to go through all that training to get it (ordination), why shouldn't they?" To that end, Bishop Samra said he planned on meeting with representatives of the Byzantine Catholic seminary where Melkite seminarians are educated to work out those issues.

There are some married priests serving the diocese; four are assigned to small parishes that struggle to pay the expenses incurred by the priests' families. To address that, Bishop Samra said he would like to reinstate a dormant philanthropic arm of the diocese, and apply 30-40 percent of the funds raised as an escrow account to have the dioceses pay the costs of a priest's family, leaving the individual parish to pay the same costs whether the priest is celibate or married.

Last but not least, I liked these lines at the end of the CNS report, in which Bishop Nicholas offers a wry reference to the words with which bishops are greeted in the Byzantine liturgy, Eis polla eti, Despota! ("Many years to you, Master!"):

Melkite parishes have been closed, not for a lack of priests but for a lack of parishioners, according to Bishop Samra. He said Melkite Catholics without a priest will typically worship at a Latin-rite church, but that the longer they attach themselves to a Latin-rite parish, the harder it is to bring them back to the Melkites once a priest becomes available.

"I haven't had people calling me up complaining they have no priest. They just don't understand modern-day assignment procedures," Bishop Samra said. "I'm a bishop, but that doesn't mean I can be a dictator. ... Although they sing 'despota' in the liturgy, I can't be a despot."

He added, "God provides, and that's my faith. We're working on it."

For more on the larger issues involved, read the latest report from Orthocath. AMDG.

Koopman and Lisiecki play Bach.

2011-11-17T16:01:00.007-05:00

Some music for a November afternoon: J. S. Bach's choral prelude Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 645, which Bach adapted from the fourth movement of his own sacred cantata of the same title (BWV 140, featured in an earlier post on this blog). The fleet-fingered account heard above is performed by Ton Koopman.

For a very different approach to the same work, consider the above performance of Ferruccio Busoni's piano trancription of BWV 645 by Jan Lisiecki. Others may disagree, but I like both versions equally; the first may be more reflective of the composer's intentions (even though some may contest Koopman's choice of tempo), but I'd like to think that Bach would have approved of Busoni's transcription as well. I hope that you enjoy the music. AMDG.

On the purpose of fasting.

2011-11-15T07:33:00.049-05:00

For Eastern Christians following the New Calendar, today is the first day of the Nativity Fast, sometimes called St. Philip's Fast because it begins the day after the Feast of St. Philip the Apostle. Like the Season of Advent in the Western churches, the Nativity Fast serves as a time of spiritual preparation for Christmas; the beginning of the Nativity Fast offers a reminder that the Feast of the Nativity is a mere forty days away - a fact that leads me reflect soberly and with some surprise on how quickly 2011 has gone by!

As its name implies, the Nativity Fast is intended to be a time of fasting, which has traditionally meant that those who are able to do so should abstain completely from meat, poultry and dairy products and consume fish, oil and wine only on specified days. Of course, there is a great deal more to fasting than merely watching what one eats. In a recent post on the start of the Nativity Fast on his blog Glory to God for All Things, Father Stephen Freeman explains the true purpose of fasting:

I read recently (though I cannot remember where) that the rejection of Hesychasm was the source of all heresy. In less technical terms we can say that knowing God in truth, participating in His life, union with Him through humility, prayer, love of enemy and repentance before all and for everything, is the purpose of the Christian life. Hesychasm (Greek Hesychia = Silence) is the name applied to the Orthodox tradition of ceaseless prayer and inner stillness. But ceaseless prayer and inner stillness are incorrectly understood if they are separated from knowledge of God and participation in His life, union with Him through humility, prayer, love of enemy and repentance before all and for everything.

And it is this same path of inner knowledge of God (with all its components) that is the proper context of fasting. If we fast but do not forgive our enemies – our fasting is of no use. If we fast and do not find it drawing us into humility – our fasting is of no use. If our fasting does not make us yet more keenly aware of the fact that we are sinful before all and responsible to all then it is of no benefit. If our fasting does not unite us with the life of God – which is meek and lowly – then it is again of no benefit.

Fasting is not dieting. Fasting is not about keeping a Christian version of kosher. Fasting is about hunger and humility (which is increased as we allow ourselves to become weak). Fasting is about allowing our heart to break.

I have seen greater good accomplished in souls through their failure in the fasting season than in the souls of those who "fasted well." Publicans enter the kingdom of God before Pharisees pretty much every time.

Why do we fast? Perhaps the more germane question is "why do we eat?" Christ quoted Scripture to the evil one and said, "Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." We eat as though our life depended on it and it does not. We fast because our life depends on the word of God.

. . .

Why do we fast? We fast so that we may live like a dying man – and that in dying we can be born to eternal life.

To read the rest, click here. AMDG.

Tintin and the eternal search.

2011-11-13T07:15:00.197-05:00

I have been a fan of The Adventures of Tintin for much of my life: I discovered the classic comic books of the Belgian graphic artist George Remi (alias Hergé) in public libraries in Massachusetts when I was a child, and I went on to amass a respectable collection of books by or about Hergé; I can even say that I've seen every episode of the early '90s Ellipse/Nelvana Tintin cartoon series. As an adult, I have had much less time to read The Adventures of Tintin than I had in my boyhood, but Hergé's creation has still influenced my life in small and subtle ways: on the day of my law school graduation, for example, I wore a Tintin necktie.

Despite my history with Tintin - or perhaps because of it - I am ambivalent about the new Tintin film directed by Steven Spielberg, which reaches these shores in December. I share Gavin Plumley's concern that Spielberg's film "seems to have bypassed the central charm of Tintin" by eschewing the unique style of Hergé's illustrations in favor of flashy, computer-generated 3D effects. Of course, I also face the classic dilemma of the fan who is used to thinking about cherished literary characters in particular ways and does not wish to see those views forever altered by Hollywood.

An interesting side effect of the hoopla surrounding Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin has been the publication of at least a couple of articles in the Catholic press considering the potential place of faith and transcendence in the Tintin books. First, in the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, we find French journalist Denis Tillinac explaining why Tintin may be seen as "a Catholic hero":

Tintin is not a Catholic identifiable as such: he never prays to God during his brushes with death and you never see him in a Church. A brief allusion to St. John the Evangelist hints at a residue of the Catechism. The guardian angels of Captain Haddock and Snowy, at war with an imaginary devil, make you smile. Religion – Incas, sun cults, Buddhists, Muslims – is that of others, to be respected as it perpetuates a culture. On this level, Hergé is something of a relativist. The treasure of the Incas (The Temple of the Sun) or the burial of pharaohs (The Cigars of the Pharaoh) should not be the object of Western curiosity. Only twice does Tintin utter, “May God have his soul!” when he learns of the death of a evil Japanese man (The Blue Lotus) and of the two scoundrels on the high seas (Red Rackham’s Treasure). As for millenarianism, it got what it deserved from the enlightened one in The Shooting Star, who announces the end of time by striking his gong.

Yet Tintin is a hero of Catholicism, imbued with the ideal of the scouts, which was important in Hergé’s formation and which is seen in his first works, Jo, Zette and Jocko and Popol Out West. He is ageless, does not even really have a sex or ordinary yearning, he has a job which allows him to wander around and an art of disguise which hides his identity: he is an angel, or almost one. Curious, adventurous, helpful, like Chesterton’s priest detective Brown, he seems to have come to earth to defend widows and orphans. He is Roland crossed with Mermoz and Saint-Exupèry, who has, like Durendal, a dog that speaks and reasons. He challenges the arrogance of the powerful, the veniality of colonizers, protects the weak and the oppressed. . . .

. . . Tintin is a Western knight of modern times, an unstained heart in an invulnerable body. He crosses through common humanity like a meteor – his geography, his psychology – doubly exalted by his profane taste for mystery and a sacred moral imperative: save the innocent, defeat evil. He loves life too much to be a saint, his curiosity ties him to humanity, sometimes he awards himself with a cruise or a beach to rest in the bucolic refuge of Marlinspike Hall, from where, around the corner, you can see the bell tower of the village. This double for the castle of Cheverny, seat of Haddock’s ancestors, reclaimed (with its treasure) thanks to the generosity of Prof. Calculus, is more or less the time of a Grail. If paradise existed in this world, Marlinspike Hall would be its headquarters. But he needs to leave it to go rout out evil, to gather the crumbs of exoticism here and there like the crusades that Tintin revives (without their warmongering) and like the missionaries (without their proselytism). He is the guardian angel of Christian values that the West denies or constantly denigrates. Without fear, without blame, Hergé’s creation unites with candor the virtues which they tried to teach me in the Catechism. . . .

Tillinac's passing reference to Hergé's background in the Catholic scout movement invites a further consideration of the influences and ideas that motivated Tintin's creator. In a recent article in The Tablet (regrettably unavailable to non-subscribers) entitled "Tintin and the eternal search," Brian Morton notes that Hergé began his career in the 1920s as an illustrator for Le Vingtième Siècle, a Catholic newspaper edited by the outspokenly right-wing Abbé Norbert Wallez, who was later jailed as a Nazi collaborator. As Morton writes, scholars have tended to forgive Hergé for his youthful ties to Wallez as they seek to mine the illustrator's work for deeper meanings:

Posthumous revisions of Hergé’s reputation – he died in 1983 – initially centered on his political defaults. It was as if a generation that had grown up on Tintin suddenly discovered that a much-loved uncle had a murky past. A comic strip once read by torchlight became the subject of PhDs. Young academics wanted the character to grown up with them and move into the same sober contexts. So, over time, a “psychoanalytic” Tintin emerged, and a “Derridan,” and inevitably a “postmodern.” Above all, a Tintin who had begun in conservative error morphed into a liberal hero.

. . .

One sensed in the 1980s that revisionists only debunked Hergé in order to forgive and rehabilitate him, writing off many of his attitudes as specific to time, place and circumstance, opportunistic distortions of his “natural” liberalism. The reality is not quite as straightforward as that and Wallez’s influence – and that of Catholicism – cannot be easily written off.

News that Steven Spielberg has made a film version of Hergé’s greatest creation is unsurprising but potentially uncomfortable, given the uniform failure of most previous attempts to bring Tintin to the screen. The young reporter is almost a Spielberg ready-made: an eternal boy, lonely, innocent but alert to darker realities. We can assume high-class entertainment from Spielberg, something worthy of the source material, but one doubts whether it will capture the original’s multiple levels: boxes within boxes, narratives within narratives; those dark-lined, flat-coloured images seem deceptively literal but are laden with subtexts, spiritual or agnostic, sexual or asexual.

As far as the "spiritual or agnostic" bit goes, Morton does not follow Tillinac in anointing Tintin as a "hero of Catholicism," but he still manages to find "some possibility of the numinous" in Hergé's work:

It is hard to say what Tintin is, what he stands for, what he (or Remi) believes. The stories almost always lead from the revelation of a secret into Melvillean blankness, which might be the face and front of God or the revelation of a cosmic nullity. When Tintin flies to the moon, it is not covered in oases and peopled with small green aliens, but realistically blank and empty, a tabula rasa. In one of his most radical and celebrated frames, Tintin looks out of [Bianca] Castafiore’s bedroom window at Marlinspike and says (reassuringly?) “Nothing here, signora. Absolutely nothing.” The night outside is flat black.

Yet, we always sense in Tintin that there is some possibility of the numinous, that God – and Hergé stands in his place, as Remi stood as the head of the increasingly collaborative Hergé studio – has not absconded but is simply inexpressible. Never a passionate Catholic, Remi does not make a convincing atheist, either. Tintin’s escape from prison and other confinements – from human relations, from death, torture and sex – are an escape from meaning, or rather from any specific meaning. “Tintin” itself is a name packed with ambiguity. It suggests nothing or everything, a sonorous tintinnabulation or the empty tinkling of bells, most likely on cash registers.

In holding back the ultimate secret, though, he only convinces us that the secret must be there, out of reach of rockets and telescopes, close analyses of text, radio waves, treasure hunts. It would be a stretch to recast Georges Remi as a mystical Catholic (some irony now in a Jewish movie director turning to a character whose first sponsor, Abbé Wallez, was a fervent anti-Semite) but as Hergé he addressed ultimate questions in an ultimate and irreducible way.

I don't think that it ever occurred to me before to consider questions of belief and ultimate meaning in The Adventures of Tintin, but I'm glad that others have done so. As a Jesuit who is also a longtime Tintin fan, perhaps I should think more about this; I don't think that I'm likely to revisit this topic on this blog - I doubt it would interest most of the readers who lurk or comment here - but if you are interested in more about God and Tintin, please feel free to drop me a note. AMDG.

All Saints Day at Georgetown.

2011-11-13T07:10:00.018-05:00

Some readers will already have seen this, but I thought I would pass along this NLM report on All Saints Day at my alma mater:

There [at Georgetown University], on that feast, Fr. Stephen Fields, S.J., celebrated a Mass for the students in the usus antiquior (a Missa Cantata). In point of fact, there were two Masses celebrated for the students on All Saints, one according to the ancient liturgical books, and one according to the modern Roman liturgical books. . . .

For more photos and comments, click here. AMDG.

Harry Patch (In Memory Of).

2011-11-11T15:02:00.002-05:00

Each year on this date, I post something for the anniversary of the end of the First World War, widely observed as Remembrance Day (or, in the United States, as Veterans Day). This year, Remembrance Day is a bit different than it has been in the past: with the death of Royal Navy veteran Claude Choules in May, no one who served in combat during the Great War remains alive. I've written before what the loss of "the last of the last" might mean in cultural terms, and I don't want to repeat myself by writing more on that theme in this post. Instead, I'd like to offer something different for this Remembrance Day: the Radiohead song "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)," presented above with the visual accompaniment of film footage from the Great War.

As Thom Yorke explains, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" was written as a tribute to the eponymous British veteran, who was the last living survivor of the trenches of the Western Front. The song was recorded shortly before Patch's death in 2009; the lyrics, which were based on comments that Patch himself made in a 2005 interview with the BBC, are presented below:

i am the only one that got through
the others died where ever they fell
it was an ambush
they came up from all sides
give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
i've seen devils coming up from the ground
i've seen hell upon this earth
the next will be chemical but they will never learn

As Thom Yorke commented at the time of the song's release, "It would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of Harry to remind us. I hope we do not forget." I share this hope; may we never forget the sacrifices made by the countless millions who fought in the wars of the past century, and may their memory be eternal. AMDG.

SJU has a new leader.

2011-11-10T19:48:00.002-05:00

Here is some very good news from Hawk Hill, announced late this afternoon:

The Saint Joseph’s University Board of Trustees today elected C. Kevin Gillespie, S.J., Ph.D. as its 27th president. A Saint Joseph’s alumnus (’72) who currently serves as associate provost for University Centers of Excellence at Loyola University Chicago, he will be introduced to SJU students, faculty and staff at a special gathering of the campus community tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 11, at 11:30 a.m. in the Campus Commons on the University’s Maguire Campus.

"It is truly an honor for the Board of Trustees to introduce Fr. Gillespie as the next president of Saint Joseph’s University," said Robert Falese ’69, chairman of Saint Joseph’s Board of Trustees. "He is an accomplished, and acclaimed, scholar with a commitment to academic excellence and a fervent dedication to advancing his alma mater and Catholic, Jesuit education in the region and indeed around the globe."

"He is the right Jesuit to lead Saint Joseph’s forward and into the future at a time of great momentum for the University."

To read the rest, click here. My congratulations and good wishes are with Father Gillespie as he prepares to become the 27th President of Saint Joseph's University, and I hope that you will join me in praying for him as he returns home to Hawk Hill. AMDG.

An Irish abbot in Jerusalem.

2011-11-09T07:45:00.012-05:00

Dormition Abbey is a German-speaking Benedictine monastery in Jerusalem that I've written about before; visiting this monastery during both of my two stays in Jerusalem had a profound effect on me (halfway between those two visits, Dormition Abbey actually came up in my dreams during the Spiritual Exercises). Thus, it seemed right to report the following news: in July, the monks of Dormition Abbey elected a new abbot, Father Gregory Collins of Glenstal Abbey in Ireland. The above video offers a glimpse of the solemn blessing of the Belfast-born abbot, which took place early last month.

For those who may be interested in learning more about Abbot Gregory, the interview in this second video offers a bit more detail on his background. It will be interesting to see how the new abbot's roots in Northern Ireland inform his approach to the situation in Jerusalem: though he arrives as an outsider, his lifelong experience living in a land divided by political and religious conflict may prove highly instructive. I was surprised, yet somehow edified, by Abbot Gregory's admission that he is not yet fluent in German: one must be both humble and courageous to agree to lead a community in which the common language is a tongue that one speaks imperfectly.

Reading about Abbot Gregory's election inevitably leads me to wonder when I may be able to return to Jerusalem; it also leads me to reflect on the mysterious pull that the Holy City in general and Dormition Abbey in particular have exerted on my heart and mind. My thoughts and prayers today are for the monks of Dormition Abbey and their new leader: may God grant them peace, and may they be a sign of God's peace to others. AMDG.

Bishop Nicholas (Samra) on the priestly ordination of married men in the Melkite Church.

2011-11-07T22:06:00.023-05:00

Orthocath reported on Saturday that recently-enthroned Melkite Bishop Nicholas (Samra) of Newton intends to ordain married men for priestly service in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in the United States. This news has been making the rounds of the blogosphere, but as far as I know it has not yet drawn the attention of the news media.

Like most other Eastern Catholic churches, the Melkites have a long tradition of married clergy in their patriarchal territory (in this case, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine) but in North America they - again, like other Eastern Catholic churches - have been compelled by Rome to accept Latin discipline regarding clerical celibacy at the insistence of the local Roman Catholic hierarchy. Orthocath has a detailed and well-sourced post giving more historical background on all this, which you should read if this topic is new to you.

Frankly, this really should not be news: Bishop Nicholas is merely upholding the traditions of his Church, and, as Orthocath notes, the Melkites (and, for that matter, the Ukrainians and, in at least one instance, the Ruthenians) have already ordained married men for priestly service in North America, though they have generally done so discreetly. If there is anything newsworthy about Bishop Nicholas' statement, it is the fact that he is willing to speak forthrightly and publicly on a topic that Eastern Catholic hierarchs in North America have generally been very reticent about. If you want to know what the Bishop actually said, here is the key paragraph, as quoted in the initial Orthocath report:

God calls men and women to religious vocations. And I believe he also calls married men to the priesthood. We need to study this situation in our country and develop the proper formation for men who are truly deemed worthy of this call. The Deacon Formation Program is a good program; however is not the backdoor to the priesthood. Married men who are called to priesthood need the same formation as those celibates who are called. I have already discussed this issue with those involved in priestly formation and hopefully soon we can see the growth of properly formed married clergy. Of course there are also major financial issues to be looked at and we will embark on this also.

The above text suggests to me that Bishop Nicholas is taking a very careful, cautious and realistic approach to this issue. I'm particularly glad that the Bishop mentions finances, as this is a real problem that needs to be discussed; the salary of a parish priest is not adequate to support a wife and children, and trying to raise priestly salaries to make them adequate for the needs of families could impose crippling financial burdens on parishes and eparchies. All of the married priests that I know have had to work full-time jobs in addition to their church positions in order to make ends meet; invariably, their spouses work as well. The time that a married priest spends attending to family responsibilities and to his necessary second job means that he has less time to devote to his parish - and that is a reality that must be faced in a church with more married priests.

So, while this shouldn't be news, Bishop Nicholas has given his flock a lot to think and pray about. If this story does become news, I fear that some in the media will misinterpret the facts to try to present this as a new challenge to the discipline of priestly celibacy in the Latin Church (for the ground of my fear, read this post). Clearly, Bishop Nicholas is not challenging the longstanding Latin tradition of clerical celibacy; he is merely affirming the Melkite tradition of ordaining both married and celibate men to the priesthood. I pray that Bishop Nicholas' intentions will be clearly understood, and I pray that all of his efforts to foster spiritual renewal will bear great fruit in the life of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. AMDG.

A Jesuit philosopher reflects.

2011-11-07T07:40:00.005-05:00

This story from the (New Orleans) Times-Picayune is two months old, but it's still relatively new to me as I discovered it last week on the U.S. Jesuit Assistancy news blog. In a profile marking his fiftieth year as a Jesuit, Loyola University New Orleans philosophy professor Father Stephen Rowntree, S.J. explains how he found his vocation:

The Rev. Stephen Rowntree was 17 when he joined the Society of Jesus in 1961. He saw it as a chance to seamlessly pair his faith with his desire to be a college professor.

"The thought was, I can do what I want, which is to be a college teacher, and I could be a priest, which is what God wants," he said. "My identity was set. I would reflect now that God wanted what I wanted most deeply, and that is why this has been such a charmed life for me."

Fifty years later, the Loyola University philosophy professor is celebrating a half-century as a Jesuit. Rowntree's teaching style has been driven by his engaging and energetic personality during his 35 years in the classroom. He said he likes to try to "rattle students' cages" a little bit, but he does so with a purpose.

I can relate to Father Rowntree's explanation of how he found his vocation, as my own discernment followed similar lines: I felt called to be both a priest and a professor, and I knew that life as a Jesuit offered an opportunity to combine those two callings. I was also attracted to the international dimension of the Society of Jesus, something that Father Rowntree has also experienced firsthand:

. . . From 1994 to 2001, [Rowntree] helped found Arrupe College, a four-year integrated philosophy, religious studies and humanities program for English-speaking African Jesuit scholars in Harare, Zimbabwe. Before that, he taught [Jesuit] seminarians at Loyola for 10 years.

"It was a great adventure. We started out with an empty field, and within a couple of years, we had a fully functioning campus," he said about his time at Arrupe College.

When he returned to Loyola, Rowntree gained an enhanced appreciation for free markets and the capitalist economic model. Many of his more recent writings have centered on law and economics focusing on the moral aspect of economics.

He said he hopes to continue teaching for many years. Although Rowntree, who was born in Massachusetts, has traveled the world and worked with students from every walk of life, he is struck by what people have in common.

"My overwhelming experience over the 35 years of teaching is that we're all human beings. We all have a similar developmental process of maybe maturing one day. I think the continuities have always struck me as being more obvious then the discontinuities," he said.

To read the rest of the profile, click here. To learn more about Arrupe College in Harare, visit the AC website. AMDG.

Die Karlskirche in Wien.

2011-11-04T21:17:00.023-04:00

The Roman Catholic liturgy for today includes the commemoration of Saint Charles Borromeo, the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan who played a significant role in implementing the reforms of the Council of Trent, particularly in the realm of priestly formation. All Catholic seminarians owe something to this sixteenth-century cardinal, insofar as the academic structure that Borromeo and his contemporaries gave to priestly formation has essentially endured to the present day, albeit with adjustments and adaptations to account for the concrete needs of the Church in different historical periods and in diverse places.

Since my time in Austria this past summer, I can't hear the name of Charles Borromeo without thinking of the Karlskirche in Vienna. The Karlskirche was built as an act of thanksgiving for the end of an early eighteenth-century plague outbreak; construction of this massive Baroque church began in 1716 and was completed twenty-one years later. The church was dedicated to Saint Charles Borromeo both on account of his status as the patron saint of plague victims (Milan faced a major plague epidemic during his episcopate, and Borromeo spent a lot of time caring for the plague's victims) and for the very practical reason that Borromeo was the patron saint of the Habsburg emperor who commissioned the church, Charles VI.

In light of today's feast, I thought this might be a good time to post some photos of the Karlskirche. I took these pictures on a beautiful summer evening in mid-July - actually, it was the same evening that I attended an open-air performance of Don Giovanni at the TU Wien, which is next door to the Karlskirche. The large plaza in front of the Karlskirche (the Karlsplatz) provided an ideal place to mill around before the opera started.

The gold-lettered inscription above the entrance to the Karlskirche reads: Vota mea reddam in conspectu timentium Deum - "my vows I will pay before those who fear God" (Psalm 21:26 in the Latin Vulgate, numbered as 22:25 in most modern translations of the Bible).

Another view of the front of the Karlskirche; note the people sitting on the steps, enjoying evening at the Karlsplatz. The Karlsplatz is close to the center of Vienna, but I got the impression over the course of several repeat visits that this plaza has not been taken over by tourists in the way that, say, the Stephansplatz has been; the people gathered here on summer evenings seemed more often than not to be locals, with a good mix of university students chatting excitedly in small groups, teenagers skateboarding or playing basketball, and pensioners sitting quietly and watching the passing scene.

I saw and heard this quartet of female musicians playing opposite the Karlskirche; note the open case poised to accept donations. They were actually playing string transcriptions of '80s and '90s pop songs - sadly, I can't remember any of the specific tunes involved. (Ironically, I do remember wondering at the time whether or not I should make a note of what they were playing in order to remind myself later, but I dismissed the thought on the unwarranted assumption that I would easily remember the titles even if I didn't write them down!)

This is the view that the people sitting on the steps of the Karlskirche a couple of photos ago were enjoying: the reflecting pool in front of the church, with the sunset sky in the distance. I must say that it is photos like this one that most remind me of how much I want to go back to Vienna - a desire that I have consciously felt at least once a day since I left the city.

To end this post, I would like to return the focus to Saint Charles Borromeo by sharing an anecdote about him that Father Tim Finigan offered earlier today on his blog The Hermeneutic of Continuity:

I recall another incident from [Borromeo's] life, in which, having now been recognised as a no-nonsense reformer, he visited a religious house where the Fathers tried to put on a good show of keeping the rule and being obedient to the Council of Trent. At the close of his visit, they asked him for a memento. He said that he had left one in the chapel. After his departure, they went to the chapel and saw on the prie-dieu for the priest to prepare for Mass, that St Charles had signed his name in the dust.

May Saint Charles Borromeo continue to intercede for all priests and seminarians; by his prayers and good example, may we more faithfully live out our vocation of service. AMDG.

Dies irae, dies illa.

2011-11-02T13:10:00.029-04:00

For your prayerful reflection on All Souls Day, here is the sequence traditionally associated with this feast, the Dies Irae from the Latin Requiem Mass, performed here by the Kölner Domchor. Attributed to the thirteenth-century Franciscan Thomas of Celano, the Dies Irae enjoys a very special place in Western musical culture thanks to the memorable settings of the Requiem text by composers ranging from Mozart to Verdi to Britten, among many others. For All Souls, I chose to avoid any 'classical' setting of the Dies Irae in favor of the one heard above, because some days only Gregorian chant will do.

If you're interested, below you can find the Latin text of the Dies Irae followed by my own English translation. I decided to translate the text myself out of a sense of dissatisfaction with the various translations that I found online, and perhaps also as a salutary spiritual exercise for All Souls' Day - and, finally, to practice my cobwebbed Latin! The translation was done hastily and could certainly be improved, so I welcome comments and criticism; my goal was to convey the sense of the original faithfully and in a style that flows well in English without trying to reproduce the poetic meter of the original. So here goes:

Dies irae! Dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla:
Teste David cum Sibylla!

Quantus tremor est futurus,
Quando iudex est venturus,
Cuncta stricte discussurus!

Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Per sepulchra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum.

Mors stupebit, et natura,
Cum resurget creatura,
Iudicanti responsura.

Liber scriptus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus iudicetur.

Iudex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet, apparebit:
Nil inultum remanebit.

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
Quem patronum rogaturus,
Cum vix iustus sit securus?

Rex tremendae maiestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis.

Recordare, Iesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuae viae:
Ne me perdas illa die.

Quaerens me, sedisti lassus:
Redemisti Crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus.

Iuste iudex ultionis,
Donum fac remissionis
Ante diem rationis.

Ingemisco, tamquam reus:
Culpa rubet vultus meus:
Supplicanti parce, Deus.

Qui Mariam absolvisti,
Et latronem exaudisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti.

Preces meae non sunt dignae:
Sed tu bonus fac benigne,
Ne perenni cremer igne.

Inter oves locum praesta,
Et ab haedis me sequestra,
Statuens in parte dextra.

Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis:
Voca me cum benedictis.

Oro supplex et acclinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis:
Gere curam mei finis.

Lacrimosa dies illa,
qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:

Pie Iesu Domine,
dona eis requiem. Amen.

---

O day of wrath, that day
when the earth will be reduced to ashes,
as David and the Sibyl both testify!

What great fear there will be,
when the judge comes
to judge all things strictly.

A trumpet casts a wondrous sound
into the realm of the tombs,
calling all [to come] before the throne.

Death and nature will both marvel
as the [human] creature rises
to answer its judge.

A book will be brought forth
in which all things are recorded –
all that for which the world will be judged.

When, therefore, the judge appears,
all that is hidden will appear,
and no ills will remain unavenged.

As miserable as I am, what am I say?
whose protection may I invoke,
when even the just lack security?

O most majestic King,
who freely saves those to be saved,
save me, source of mercy!

Remember, merciful Jesus,
that I am the one for whom you came:
may I not be lost on that day!

Seeking me, you sat down tired:
to redeem me, you suffered the Cross –
may your toil not be in vain!

Just and avenging judge,
may you grant remission [of sins]
before the day of reckoning.

Guilty, now I sigh,
my face red with shame:
save thy petitioner, o God!

Having absolved Mary [Magdalene],
and heard the plea of the thief,
may you give me hope as well.

Though my prayers are not worthy,
be kind to me, o Good One,
that I may be spared the eternal fire!

Place me among the sheep,
and separate me from the goats,
setting me at your right hand.

When the wicked are confounded
and given over to bitter flames:
call me among the blessed.

Meek and humble, I pray,
with a heart contrite as ashes:
Help me reach my final end.

How tearful that day will be,
when from the ashes will arise
the guilty man for judgment.
Therefore spare him, O God!

Merciful Lord Jesus,
grant them rest. Amen.

To some contemporary ears, I suspect that some of the above lines may seem a bit harsh; the familiarity of the Latin text and the beauty of its poetic form can easily distract us from the admonitory content of the Dies Irae. As stern as these words may be, though, they also remind us that God is merciful - indeed, the very source of mercy - and they call on us to pray: first for our beloved dead and for our own repentance, but also that we may offer to others the same mercy that we seek for ourselves. May all of us who celebrate this Feast of All Souls - including your sinful scribe - take these words in the right way, and take them to heart. AMDG.

"We think that saints are very rare . . ."

2011-11-01T07:46:00.157-04:00

This is an old photo of me with the late Father Tom King, which I post here in observance of All Saints' Day. Many who knew Tom during the forty-one years that he spent at Georgetown University would unhesitatingly describe him as a saint, precisely the kind of saint that this day is meant for: one who has not been formally raised to the dignity of the altar, one remembered chiefly by God and by those who knew him during his mortal life. "Not a bad public, that," as Robert Bolt had Thomas More say in A Man for All Seasons.

Thomas More is now a saint himself, in the 'official' sense of the word, but the sentiment that Bolt attributed to him is one that exalts all the unofficial saints - all those who, like Tom King, did great things for God in relative anonymity. On All Saints' Day, we remember these anonymous saints in a special way, asking them to intercede for us before the One who knows and has called each of them by name.

For another perspective on these anonymous saints, with particular attention paid to the saintliness of Father Tom King, I would like to share some reflections by my fellow Georgetown alumnus Joseph Grieboski, published not long after Tom's death in June 2009:

The term "saint" is used quite often these days, referring to a good person or a kind person or someone who pulled us out of a jam.

We think that saints are very rare and especially hard to find, especially in this day and age. In fact, there are many unrecognized men and women of holiness around us each day.

In recent days, we laid one such man to rest. A man who exemplified holiness, demonstrated an intimate love of God, and was a model for each of us to follow to salvation.

Grieboski summarizes some of the highlights of Father King's long career as an academic theologian and university professor, notes that he also offered the legendary 11:15 pm Mass in Dahlgren Chapel six nights a week for 40 years, and points out that Father King also lived 'on corridor' as a Jesuit-in-residence in student dormitories for 21 years. Grieboski then seeks to sum up the contribution that Father King made to the lives of generations of Hoyas - and others:

. . . Father King’s life was a guide for so many of us. His laughter, his brilliant and witty sense of humor, his ability to make both scholarship and divinity accessible to anyone and everyone, Tom was quiet and unassuming, friendly and disarming. All of which added to his ability to fulfill his mission of bringing Christ to every student, faculty, staff and person he met. Remaining faithful to that mission, for the past several years Father King would cross the Potomac on Monday evenings to offer Mass for inmates at the Arlington County jail.

In 1999, The Hoya, Georgetown's student newspaper, declared Father King "Georgetown's Man of the Century", noting that "no one has had a more significant presence on campus and effect on students than Father King."

Ten years later, that remains fundamentally true. Tom King’s impact was not just on Georgetown. The thousands of students whose lives he touched over the years are better men and women as a result. His inspiration and model led countless men to enter the priesthood and women to enter the convent; his love of scholarship and his approach to Truth provided a guide for countless students to become professors; his love for life and all God’s creations molded the worldviews of so many who became physicians; and his undaunted courage and strength for all that is just and right guided so many – me included – who fight for justice thanks to Tom.

On this Feast of All Saints, I pray that the anonymous saints that each of us remembers and cherishes may remember us in turn. AMDG.

Quaerere Deum: The Monks of Norcia.

2011-11-01T07:44:00.108-04:00

Yesterday, NLM shared a video looking at life within the Monastery of San Benedetto, a new community of Benedictine monks based in the Umbrian town of Norcia, the birthplace of Saints Benedict and Scholastica. This video is actually a trailer for Quaerere Deum ("To Seek God"), a documentary film on the Benedictines of Norcia set for release next month. Here is more on the monks and the film, courtesy of Quaerere Deum director Peter Hayden:

On December 2, 2000, a tiny band of American monks with faith and courage and not much else re-founded monastic life in Norcia, Italy at the birthplace of St. Benedict. Powerful forces hostile to the faith had expelled the monks in 1810 and almost two centuries were to pass before Providence brought them back.

Inspired by the Holy Rule, these monastic pioneers are going back to the roots of the Benedictine tradition. Chanting the Divine Office in Latin by day and by night at the very place where their holy patron was born, they are able to return to the spirit of their founder, as Vatican II urged all religious to do, in a very tangible way.

As a result, something extraordinary is happening in Norcia. Young men from around the world, leaving home and country for the love of Christ, are drawn to the new monastery and commit themselves to stability, conversion of life and obedience at the birthplace of their founder. Their goal is focused and compelling: to prefer nothing whatever to the love of Christ!

I'll confess that I can't hear about the Monastery of San Benedetto without thinking of a friend's quip about the place being like "a study-abroad monastery," an English-speaking community of mostly American monks dropped into the middle of Italy. Of course, one makes a stronger commitment in opting for the monastic life than one makes in choosing to study abroad for a time, and I admire those who are able to answer the call to be missionary contemplatives of a kind. I hope and pray that the Benedictines of Norcia may grow and thrive in the fertile soil that produced the great father of Western monasticism.

Though I don't know what form the 'release' of Quaerere Deum will take, I do hope to see the entire film. The director of the film, Peter Hayden, happens to be an eighteen-year-old from Ontario; as impressed as I am by the aesthetic sensitivity and technical skill that Hayden displays in the trailer for Quaerere Deum, I am also deeply edified that this talented young filmmaker has chosen such a worthy project. To learn more about Peter Hayden's work, check out his website. AMDG.

Isang Yun.

2011-11-01T07:42:00.113-04:00

Thanks to The News from Wabu-eup, the blog previously responsible for my discovery of Ksitigarbha, I just made my first acquaintance with the music of Isang Yun, a South Korean composer of the last century who led a very interesting life:

Yun Isang (尹伊桑), more often known as Isang Yun, is South Korea’s most internationally celebrated composer. Born in 1917 in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, Yun initially studied composition in Japan. While there, he got into trouble with the Japanese authorities over his pro-Korean Independence activities and was imprisoned. He resumed his musical career and later moved to Germany where he resumed his studies.

He quickly made a name for himself among the European avant-garde. His works were performed at some of the most prestigious festivals. In the early 1960s, Yun made a trip to North Korea. This was definitely illegal for South Korean citizens. Eventually, the KCIA (now known as the National Intelligence Service) caught up with him and kidnapped him in Berlin. He was taken back to Seoul, put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to death. His death sentence was eventually commuted. Thanks to a great deal of outrage on the part of Germany and many prominent musicians, including the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, he was returned to Germany but permanently barred from visiting South Korea. He would never see South Korea again. His works were banned here. Yun Isang was not the only composer to run into trouble with the South Korean government. One of Korea’s greatest masters of traditional music, Hwang Byungki, found one of his works banned by the authorities, as they deemed it “too shocking”. Hwang writes both traditional-style music and very avant-garde compositions.

Meanwhile in North Korea, Yun became celebrated and well known. He was granted German citizenship and travelled between Germany and North Korea several times. A research institute into his life and work was subsequently set up by the North Korean government. His works have been performed there, something which is puzzling, as Communist countries really don’t care for avant garde music. . . .

Yun died in 1995 in Berlin, where the Internationale Isang Yun Gesellschaft was subsequently established in his memory. Yun has enjoyed a posthumous rehabilitation in his home country, where an annual performance competition and a musical composition prize bear his name. Even so, as The News from Wabu-eup notes, Yun's ties to Pyongyang still make him a controversial figure in South Korea.

The above video presents one of Yun's late works, Tapis pour cordes (1987), performed here by a group of Korean musicians. For some words on Yun's compositional style, here is an earlier report from The News from Wabu-eup:

Yun’s music uses the avant-garde technique he learned in the 1950s and 1960s in addition to those of traditional Korean music. If you listen to any traditional Korean music, you will notice that vibrato features heavily in the work. A given note begins with a grace note and once it is established, it is given vibrato and intensified finally ending with an ornament. Yun would adopt this technique in his own work calling this technique Hauptton. In Yun’s work, there is a main note in a given phrase surrounded by other grace notes and ornamental notes. As with traditional Korean music, microtones feature in his work as well. The main note gains intensity, is affected by vibrato or differing rhythms, or is affected by changes in dynamics.

All of this makes me eager to learn more about Isang Yun's life, with its odd political twists and turns and Cold War resonances, as well as about the apparent blend of European and Korean elements in his music. Once again, I find myself grateful to The News from Wabu-eup for a wonderfully unexpected broadening of my horizons. AMDG.

Panikhida.

2011-10-30T21:45:00.004-04:00

The above video presents part of the Byzantine memorial service for the dead, known as the parastás in Greek and the panikhida in Church Slavonic, celebrated here in both Slavonic and French at the Paroisse catholique russe de la Très-Sainte Trinité in Paris. If you would like to read an English text of the panikhida, click here; for more background on the service itself, click here. (And if you're viewing this post using Google Reader and cannot see the video, click here.)

Even if you don't understand the languages heard in the above video, I hope that you will be able to appreciate the intrinsic beauty of the service and its music. For example, starting at the 8'15" mark in this video, you can hear the traditional Kievan melody for the Kontakion of the Departed, which, in my particular judgment, may be the single most beautiful piece of music ever composed - at the very least, it's certainly the most beautiful music that I've ever heard.

At this time of the year, many Christians pray in a special way for the faithful departed. Roman Catholic readers will likely know that the Feasts of All Saints (November 1) and All Souls (November 2) fall this week. In the Russian tradition, too, this is a time of remembrance: Demetrius Saturday, a special day of prayer for the dead, is observed annually on the Saturday preceding the Feast of Saint Demetrius; said feast falls on October 26 on the New Calendar and November 8 on the Old, making this year's dates for Demetrius Saturday October 22 (New) and November 5 (Old).

In these days when many of us take time to pray for those who have fallen asleep in Christ, we might choose to make our own the words of the Kontakion of the Departed: With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the souls of your servants, where there is no toil, nor grief, nor sighing, but everlasting life. AMDG.

On the loss of sunset skies.

2011-10-28T17:06:00.031-04:00

The Pittsford Perennialist reports that Upstate New York received the season's first snowfall yesterday; it hasn't snowed yet in Philadelphia, but weather reports suggest that it will tomorrow. The change of seasons is already perceptible in other ways: last night's overnight temperatures came close to freezing, while today was the first day of the semester that I felt compelled to wear a wool jacket when I went outside. Until recently, the walk around the Saint Joseph's University campus that I take most evenings after dinner afforded views of sunset skies likes the ones visible in this set of photographs; as the daylight hours become fewer, my evening walk now takes place after dark. Winter isn't here yet, but summer is definitely gone.

The intent of this post isn't merely to note the change of seasons, but also to share a series of photos that I took one evening on my regular walk around Hawk Hill. Though I didn't get around to downloading them from my camera until today, these photos were taken just over a month ago - when the daylight hours still lingered long into the evening. I offer these images as a kind of visual elegy for the loss of summer, a memorial to a time of year that has regrettably gone by.

As Jack Siberski once observed in one of his photo-filled posts from Australia, "The challenge of taking photos at sunrise or sunset is time." The moments when clouds and sunlight combine in a way that makes for a good image tend to pass by quickly, so one must be ready to capture them while one can. There were several evenings before the one when I took these photos that I set out for my walk, noticed the beauty of the sky along the way, and I thought, "I really should bring my camera with me sometime." When I finally did bring my camera, it was basically an afterthought: I was halfway down the driveway leading to the Jesuit residence when I looked at the sky, realized it was now or never, and went back to the house to get my camera before I proceeded any further. These photos are the result of that premeditated yet ultimately impulsive decision.

The railing, lamps and tower visible here are part of an elevated footbridge that connects the two parts of the Saint Joseph's University campus that are separated by City Avenue, a major thoroughfare that cuts between Philadelphia and its Main Line suburbs.

The building visible in silhouette on the right side of this photo is McShain Hall, a large freshman dormitory. I like the way that McShain and the trees to the left look here with the different bands of color in the sky behind.

McShain and trees again, with the sky in the background. One can see that I liked the way these elements went together at sunset!

That's still McShain on the right, but here you can also see City Avenue, if only barely. In this photo, I like the contrast between the fading light of the sunset sky and the headlights and traffic lights at street level.

This is St. Mary's Hall, another SJU domitory. Designed to look like an English country house, St. Mary's was built as a private residence and later became a nursing home run by the Sisters of Bon Secours; with the expansion of the SJU campus, the building was purchased by the university and converted into student housing. An old article in the student newspaper suggests that St. Mary's might be haunted, though I've never heard anyone talk about this in my time on Hawk Hill. In any event, I think the many-chimneyed silhouette of this building looks neat with the evening sky as a backdrop.

This is the one photo is this set in which the sky is seen only in reflection, mirrored in the windows of Bronstein Hall on the SJU campus.

This spire caps the former chapel of Episcopal Academy, a private day school that used to be located next to Saint Joseph's University along City Avenue. In 2008, Episcopal moved to new premises further out in the suburbs, selling its old campus to SJU. When I arrived on Hawk Hill, the old Episcopal chapel still contained some of its former trappings - pews, communion rail, choir stalls - even though it had been officially deconsecrated when its former owners left. Since then, the old chapel has been gutted and transformed into a multipurpose meeting space. All things must end, I suppose, but I still can't pass this old chapel without feeling some sadness that a space that was once sacred to many has been given over to entirely secular use.

Not far from the old Episcopal chapel, here is Merion Hall, a classroom and office building that is busy during the day but eerily vacant as the sun finally disappears below the horizon.

This is the O'Pake Recreation Center, formerly the Episcopal Academy school gym. The date on the building's cornerstone is 1962; though much of the structure is blandly functional in the way that postwar school buildings typically are, O'Pake does have some attractive architectural elements, such as the gently arched roof seen here.

I'd like to write more on the passing of the seasons, but I must head off to Mass and dinner. After that, I'll be heading downtown for a concert - which means that I will not be taking my usual postprandial walk tonight. Next time I take that walk, however, I'll be walking in the dark and not in the glowing sunset you've seen in these photos - and as I do so, I'll likely be mindful of the loss of the sunset skies of summer. AMDG.

The Way.

2011-10-25T16:09:00.002-04:00

Over at Dominicana, Brother Dominic Mary Verner, O.P. posted some thoughts today on the experience of making the ancient Christian pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Verner begins by describing "the usual eclectic assortment of pilgrims" that he encountered on the way - devout Catholics were apparently vastly outnumbered by secular 'seekers' of various types - and goes on to consider what the Camino de Santiago may have to offer to postmodern pilgrims:

Knowing that many saints and generations of faithful Christians from every corner of Christendom have hallowed the pilgrim route to the tomb of Saint James, one might well be disappointed by the motley band of atheists, lapsed, and spiritual seekers that tread the path today. But after having met everyone from a nominal Jew fascinated by Galician paganism to Pablo the Nietzschean spiritual atheist, I believe that there is something tragically beautiful happening on the Camino today.

The tragedy of the spiritual yet faithless pilgrim is not unlike the tragedy of a character who has forgotten his story. As if at the very foot of Mount Doom, Frodo Baggins were to suddenly forget everything about this whole Ring business, and be stuck standing still with a sinking feeling that there was something terribly important for him to do that he just couldn’t remember. The faithless pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago is such a character, walking through a beautiful medieval tapestry whose biblical messages he cannot decipher. Without the cosmic narrative of the Christian faith to give a transcendent meaning to his journey, the pilgrim has the tragic burden of either creating a story for himself or just struggling from one story to the next, looking for something that fits.

Within this tragedy is revealed the beauty of the restless soul wounded by sin that cries out in desperation for a second chance and the transcendent hope that a secular post-Christian culture cannot offer. This cry itself is a sign of the presence of the Creator, who has made our hearts to be restless until they rest in Him. . . .

To read the rest, click here. AMDG.

The photo that illustrates this post was found here.

Orthodox Hoyas in the news.

2011-10-25T16:08:00.006-04:00

Today's edition of The Hoya has an article on Georgetown students who worship off campus, focusing largely on one Orthodox Christian Hoya's Sunday routine:

It is a crisp Sunday morning in mid-October, and Ivan Plis (SFS '12) is awakened sharply by the sound of his 7 a.m. alarm. He dresses, says his prayers, laces up a comfortable pair of shoes and prepares for his mile-and-a-half walk to St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church [sic: 'Cathedral'] for a morning service.

When he arrives at St. Nicholas, Plis enters through one of the side doors, making the Sign of the Cross while venerating icons along the walls.

"It is like coming into a house and greeting family members," he said.

He proceeds to take his seat in the upper section of the church where he sings tenor for the choir. As he walks in, the congregation mills around him, since the worshiping space lacks traditional pews and possesses few chairs.

For Plis, the walk up Massachusetts Avenue with a few other Orthodox Christian Georgetown students is just part of his weekly routine.

"I made the effort to find other students of Orthodox background as soon as I knew I was going to Georgetown," Plis said.

. . .

From his seat in the choir, [Plis] recognizes the familiar faces of fellow Georgetown students and faculty in the congregation. But for Plis, getting out of his Georgetown comfort zone is the greatest draw to St. Nicholas'.

"Being connected to an off-campus worship space has put me in touch with people I otherwise would not connect with," he said.

After liturgy Plis oftens meets with student parishioners from nearby American University for a weekly breakfast.

He is also working with other Orthodox Christians to increase their presence at Georgetown.

"More recently, some fellow students and I have held talks to see if once a month we can have Divine Liturgy on campus," he said.

To read the rest of the article, click here. Orthodox Hoyas may not have a regular Divine Liturgy on campus (at one time, a weekly Divine Liturgy was apparently offered in Dahlgren Chapel for Greek Catholic students, but that ceased decades ago), but Georgetown's Orthodox Christian Fellowship does gather on Tuesdays in term time for Vespers in Copley Crypt.

The Hoya article notes that a number of Georgetown students and faculty regularly attend services at St. Nicholas Cathedral, which also happens to have been served by a number of clergy with ties to the Hilltop: Georgetown's longtime Orthodox chaplain, Father Constantine White, is also a former dean of the cathedral; another former dean, the late Father Dmitry Grigorieff, also taught Russian at Georgetown; and veteran Georgetown philosophy professor Father Denis Bradley is also an Orthodox priest attached to St. Nicholas. Come to think of it, the Georgetown/St. Nicholas connection goes back a long way - but perhaps that could (or should) be a topic for another article, or at least another post on this blog. AMDG.

Lisiecki plays Liszt.

2011-10-22T12:40:00.002-04:00

Franz Liszt (or, if you like, Liszt Ferenc) was born two hundred years ago today in what was then the Hungarian village of Doborján, which now lies in Austria and goes by the name of Raiding. To mark this anniversary, here is Jan Lisiecki (previously seen and heard here) performing Un sospiro from Liszt's Trois études de concert. AMDG.

AsiaNews: Catholicism growing in Nepal.

2011-10-21T07:30:00.069-04:00

AsiaNews yesterday reported that the Roman Catholic Church has been experiencing rapid and dramatic growth in predominantly Hindu Nepal, despite occasional attacks on Christians and government efforts to thwart religious conversions. Here is an excerpt from yesterday's report:

Catholics in Nepal are growing, despite the anti-conversion laws proposed in parliament. According to the latest estimates there are over ten thousand, four thousand more than in 2006, the year of the fall of the monarchy and the proclamation of a secular state.

AsiaNews sources emphasize that the Hindus and Buddhists [who are] eager to learn about Christianity, and for this reason attend Sunday Mass, now even match the number of Catholics in attendance. Enrollment in catechism classes for the years 2011-2012 have exceeded the places available. This is a challenge to conservative politicians who have recently proposed a series of laws in parliament to put a halt on conversions. They dismiss any act of communicating one's faith to another person as proselytism and more serious cases considered carry a penalty of five years in prison.

Bhim Rai, a catechist at the Catholic Cathedral of the Assumption in Kathmandu, said that this year the number of young people and adults of other faiths has increased. "The students," he says, "come from all social classes. Most of them are of Hindu tradition, but there are many Buddhists. At Easter 2012, 25 young catechumens will be baptized."

To read the rest, click here. For more information on the Roman Catholic Church in Nepal, take a look at this March 2010 interview with Bishop Anthony Francis Sharma, a Nepalese Jesuit who four years ago become the country's first Catholic bishop. AMDG.

P.S.: If you're wondering whether or not there are any Nepalese Orthodox Christians (I was wondering, so I did some Googling), the answer is apparently yes, though the Orthodox presence in the Himalayas is both very new and very small. There doesn't seem to be much on the Internet about Orthodoxy in Nepal, but you can find some information on the topic here and here.

Are Egypt's Copts "democracy's collateral damage"?

2011-10-21T07:25:00.000-04:00

Ross Douthat poses the above question in this op-ed published last Sunday in the New York Times:

The Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, tracing its roots to St. Mark the apostle and the first century A.D. Coptic Christians have survived persecutions and conquests, the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam. They have been governed from Constantinople and Ctesiphon, Baghdad and London. They have outlasted the Byzantines, the Umayyads and the Ottomans, Napoleon Bonaparte and the British Empire.

But they may not survive the Arab Spring.

Apart from Hosni Mubarak and his intimates, no group has suffered more from Egypt’s revolution than the country’s eight million Copts. Last week two dozen people were killed in clashes between the Coptic Christians and the Egyptian Army, a grim milestone in a year in which the Coptic community has faced escalating terrorist and mob violence. A recent Vatican estimate suggests that 100,000 Copts may have fled the country since Mubarak’s fall. If Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood consolidates political power, that figure could grow exponentially.

This is a familiar story in the Middle East, where any sort of popular sovereignty has tended to unleash the furies and drive minorities into exile. From Lebanon to North Africa, the Arab world’s Christian enclaves have been shrinking steadily since decolonization. More than half of Iraq’s 1.5 million Christians have fled the country since the American invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

To read the rest, click here. As always, please join me in praying for the Copts and for all of the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East - and do what you can to let others know what is happening to them. AMDG.

Iesous Ahatonnia.

2011-10-19T07:01:00.004-04:00

For today's Feast of the North American Martyrs, here is a hymn attributed to one of the martyrs: the hymn "Iesous Ahatonnia," also known as the "Huron Carol," believed to have been written by Jean de Brébeuf sometime betwen 1641 and 1643. "Iesous Ahatonnia" ("Jesus is born") is a Christmas carol, with words in the indigenous language of the Wendat ("Huron") people whom the North American Martyrs served, set to the tune of a traditional French folk song, "Une jeune pucelle." In the above video, "Iesous Ahatonnia" is performed by Quire Cleveland under the direction of Peter Bennett, following a choral arrangement by Ross W. Duffin.

Below, you may find the Wendat text of "Iesous Ahatonnia" attributed to Jean de Brébeuf, followed by a modern English translation by John Steckley; I have made a few minor stylistic changes to Steckley's text, none of which alters the sense of the original. The Wendat text and Steckley's translation (absent my modifications) may be found in the January 2011 bulletin of the Franco-American Collection at the University of Southern Maine.

Estennailon de tsonoue Iesous Ahatonnia
Onnaouateoua d'oki n'onouandaskouaentak
Ennonchien skouatrihotat
n'onouandilonrachatha
Iesous Ahatonnia, Iesous Ahatonnia.

Aloki onkinnhache eronhialeronnon
Iontok ontatiande ndio sen tsatonnharonnion
Ouarie onnaouakoueton ndio sen
tsatonnharonnion
Iesous Ahatonnia, Iesous Ahatonnia.

Achink ontahonraskoua d'hatirihouannens
Tichion halonniondetha onhoua achia ahatren
Ondaie te hahahakoua tichion halonniondetha
Iesous Ahatonnia, Iesous Ahatonnia.

Thoi chien stahation tethotondi Iesous
Ahoatatende tichion stanchiteaouennion
Ahalonatorenten iatonk atsion sken
Iesous Ahatonnia, Iesous Ahatonnia.

Onne ontahation chiahonalen Iesous
Ahatichiennonnianon kahachiahandialon
Te honannonranouannion ihontonk oërisen
Iesous Ahatonnia, Iesous Ahatonnia.

Te ekouatatennonten ahekouachiendaen
Ti hekouannonronkouannion de sonouentenrade
Outoleti skouannonhoue ichierhe
akennonhonstha
Iesous Ahatonnia, Iesous Ahatonnia.

---

Have courage, you who are humans, Jesus is born.
Behold, the spirit who held us captive has fled.
Do not listen to it, as it corrupts our minds.
Jesus is born! Jesus is born!

The angels are spirits, coming with a message for us,
They are coming to say, "Rejoice!"
"Mary has just given birth - rejoice!"
Jesus is born! Jesus is born!

Three elders have left for such a place,
A star that has appeared over the horizon leads them there.
He who leads them there will seize the path.
Jesus is born! Jesus is born!

As they arrived where Jesus was born,
The star was stopping, he was not far past it.
They told themselves to come close to the star.
Jesus is born! Jesus is born!

Behold, they have arrived there and have seen Jesus.
They praised him, saying, "Hurray, he is good in nature!"
They greeted him with reverence, saying, "Hurray!"
Jesus is born! Jesus is born!

We will give him praise for his name.
Let us revere him, as he comes to show us compassion.
It is providential that he should love us and wish to adopt us.
Jesus is born! Jesus is born!

Some readers may know that I have a special devotion to the North American Martyrs, and that the religious name I took at the time of my First Vows in the Society of Jesus comes from one of them, Saint Isaac Jogues. On this bright Feast, I pray that Saints Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, and their Companions may intercede for us all and remember our individual needs and intentions. AMDG.

At home in the world: In memoriam F. J. v. Beeck.

2011-10-17T19:40:00.027-04:00

The above photograph was taken from a balcony at the back of a Jesuit residence in central Amsterdam, where I stayed for a few days (not all of them consecutive) on my way to and from Jerusalem in June of 2008. Summer evenings in Northern Europe are very long: the above photo was taken around ten o' clock. I find this lingering twilight captivating and even bewitching, and when I recall my too-brief visit to the Netherlands, I think of that evening sky and the effect that it had - and still has - on me.

When I think of the Netherlands, I often think also of Frans Jozef van Beeck - or "Joep," as I and many others knew him. A Dutch Jesuit who spent over thirty years teaching theology in the United States, first at Boston College and then at Loyola University Chicago, Joep died last Wednesday at the age of eighty-one; his funeral was held today in the Netherlands. I got to know Joep a bit while I was a candidate for the Society; during the occasional weekends that I spent with the Jesuits at Loyola Chicago, Joep and I typically crossed paths late at night in the community rec room, where I had gone to read and where he had gone for a nightcap. Our chance encounters invariably turned into long conversations about culture, theology, and life in the Church; I usually came away from these chats with new ideas for reading and listening (Joep and I shared a love for music), as well as a slightly deeper sense that the Society of Jesus was a good place to be.

Declining health led Joep to retire to the Dutch Jesuits' infirmary in Nijmegen in 2006, and I regret that I did a poor job of keeping in touch with him after that. Even so, I did see him once more after he left the States: three years ago, during the aforementioned trip to the Netherlands, I went to visit Joep in Nijmegen in the company of a friend and fellow Jesuit who knew him well from his years in Chicago. A bit frailer and slower, noticeably more forgetful and scattered, Joep was still very much himself; he didn't offer any great words of wisdom during that visit, but I'm still glad that I saw him one more time.

Joep van Beeck was, to say the very least, a singular individual. He had his flaws and shortcomings, as we all do, but he had strong points to compensate for them. As Father Robert Imbelli wrote in a recent tribute published at dotCommonweal, Joep "was, in every way, an out-sized personality who wrote voluminously, conversed pungently, and enjoyed life with great verve." I would add that Joep was an ebullient contrarian, one who routinely went against the grain but did so with a sense of joy that was both disarming and infectious. Joep also seemed to like the double-outsider status that came with being an expatriate: he had great affection for both his native country and his adopted one, but he also regarded both with the critical distance of one who knew that the grass wasn't always greener on the other side.

As a Jesuit, Joep van Beeck was at home in the world. By this I don't just mean that he had made his peace with his surroundings and with the vicissitudes of human existence - no, what I'm getting at goes deeper than that: Joep van Beeck lived out the implications of early Jesuit Jerónimo Nadal's statement that "the world is our house." Part of what Nadal meant by this was that the Jesuit vocation is meant to be lived not in isolation or in opposition to the world, but publicly and in dialogue with the cultures that surround us. Matteo Ricci did this by adapting to Chinese society in the interest of spreading the Gospel in a place where it was unknown. Many Jesuits in the United States do the same today by assimilating into the "publish or perish" culture of American academia in the conviction that our presence in higher education is worth maintaining. On another level, many Jesuits learn that "the world is our house" as we travel abroad and find a fraternal welcome in Jesuit communities around the world, where markers of the universal culture that is the Society of Jesus remain present despite differences in language, geography and local traditions.

As a Jesuit whose ministry and study took him to various continents and countries, Joep van Beeck understood very well that "the world is our house." Joep also knew that his experience was not unique: in an autobiographical essay entitled "Not for the Kennel," he admitted, "I am by no means the sole Jesuit for whom the Society of Jesus is in the first place and very palpably something international." In the same essay, published in his final book (Driven Under the Influence: Essays in Theology, 1974-2004), Joep also had some thoughtful things to say about the specifically international character of the Society of Jesus, the early modern literary culture that helped to shape the Order, and what all this means for the spiritual life of the Jesuit. Prompted by a visit that Joep made to Spain in the 1970s, these reflections are worth quoting at length:

About three days after leaving Seville I am staying in Madrid, at the Calle Almagro Jesuit community. Time for a day trip to the Escorial, the colossal building ordered by Philip II: monastery, school, palace, all in one. . . . So this is where he lived and where he died, a Spaniard through and through, and over there, in the chaise longue, he lay reigning to the bitter end, his eyes fixed on the tabernacle in the church, just visible through a paneled opening. Ruling, administering. By mail. Philip II was the architect of the first modern government, based on correspondence: folders, archives, portfolios. The written word as the nervous system of a global empire. . . .

Something dawns on me. Did Ignatius have a similar insight? Franciscans and Dominicans are organized as provinces: their respective general superiors are not so much leaders as coordinators, presiding over federations of independent provinces. That just might be a relic of the age-old abbatial stability traditions. The preaching and mendicant friars do roam town and countryside, but they are at home in a province. For Ignatius the Society is at one as the wide world is one. Could it be that he felt the same relationship between being worldwide and being literate? For him, at any rate, letters amounted to a lot more than tools to issue orders; his letters form the largest body of correspondence that has come to us from the sixteenth century - about eight thousand of them. He insisted that Jesuits keep each other posted as to what was going forward wherever they were. Writing letters, he thought, was something "constructive" or "edifying" - hence the name literae aedificantes: letters of edification.

No wonder Jesuits have always been enormous letter-writers; just look at the letters that fill the volumes of the Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu. Ever seen the Relations, that enormous series of letters, reports, and narratives of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries in Nouvelle France, which consisted in a long ribbon of settlements from Quebec to New Orleans? Thus, writing as they went, Jesuits have been experiencing the whole world as their world. In their own way, letters also accommodate the Ignatian culture of obedience: well-thought-out, balanced, realistic accounts of matters and of consciousnesses and consciences, followed by orders and recommendations that do justice to those data.

That leads me to another idea. A learned American Jesuit, the late Walter J. Ong, professor in the humanities at Saint Louis University, spent at least thirty of his years teaching the world that the modern Western mind largely goes back to literary developments in the mid-sixteenth century. In those critical decades the Society, too, saw the light of day. This was when the Western world made the change-over from a largely speaking and dialoguing and remembering ("oral-acoustical") culture to an evermore writing and reading and learning-by-accumulating ("visual") culture. This, of course, had everything to do with the printing press. It enabled concentration on (largely printed) texts - a new phenomenon. It also enabled (to name only one thing) natural science; not even the best memory can keep up with the ever-accumulating scientific data - for that, you need books (and eventually computers), in which you can "literally" store your (objective!) truths in order to retrieve them later.

But this new learned literacy also succeeded in putting enormous pressure on the whole world of inner human experience and stretching it to the utmost. Just think of all the classical authors newly edited by the humanists; all at once, it became impossible to read them the way the Christian Middle Ages had done. Even the Bible changed: the modern study of the Scriptures started, but at the same time every heretic started to find his own favorite text. Such an intensely developing world of reading demands the utmost in interpretation - i.e., an ever-developing inner world of imagination: the bigger and more brimful the libraries, the more massive the data to take into account and process and discern inside. Add to this, in due time, so sheer a quantity of news and information and products from distant parts as well as the distant past. Th world blossomed into a fullness. To contend with this kind of new world, you have a lot of inside labor to go through. Increasingly, the New Learning began to regard as prejudice what an earlier, more naive world had accepted as faith and loyalty. The New Learning began to demand as much freedom of exploration as the voyagers of discovery did. Ever since the mid-sixteenth century, research and study have demanded pride of place and gotten away with it. No wonder a tempest of discord and disharmony was the result. No wonder the inside world turned troubled on the rebound. Inner openness to the whole world is a lot more challenging than staying at home - or (what really amounts to the same) tourism.

Joep van Beeck was many things, but he was not a tourist: in my experience, he was a Jesuit who managed to retain the "inner openness to the whole world" which he writes of here. In the above reflections, Joep leaves out a lot that would undermine his optimistic thesis: he says nothing of the "provincialism" that too often restrains our decision-making, and he says nothing about the reality of Jesuit subcultures, though he certainly had his fair share of experience with both of these phenomena. Even so, I believe that Joep's words on the oneness of the Society contain a great deal of truth. On this, the day of Joep van Beeck's funeral, may these words stand as an appropriate memorial to a truly memorable Jesuit. AMDG.

Tim Kelleher on Patriarch Sviatoslav and renewal in the UGCC.

2011-10-14T16:14:00.020-04:00

Yesterday at On the Square, a blog on the First Things website, Tim Kelleher offered some thoughts on Ukrainian Catholic Patriarch Sviatoslav (Shevchuk) and some of the challenges presently facing the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. As I've noted before, Tim is an old acquaintance of mine: we share a common mentor in Father Tom King, and we were companions on a trip to the Holy Land that Tom led a bit over a decade ago. Tim and I chatted a bit about Eastern church matters during that trip, so I was not surprised when I later heard that he had formally become Greek Catholic and was studying at a Ukrainian seminary. Commenting on Archbishop Sviatoslav's election earlier this year as leader of the UGCC, Tim starts by offering some historical perspective:

To begin, the election entrusts to his care the souls of some four and a quarter million Christians, all heirs to a lineage of tragedy that spans centuries and includes the Soviet-perpetrated monstrosity of the Holodomor, in which an estimated three to ten million people were programmatically starved to death in the single year, 1932-1933. Throughout this and other episodes of national suffering, the UGCC acted largely to protect the people and lead in the resistance to both Nazi and Soviet tyranny.

During the turbulence of the twentieth century, Shevchuk’s predecessors distinguished themselves as heroic, sometimes pugnacious leaders—more prophets than princes of the Church—who regularly placed themselves at personal risk. The names Sheptytsky, Slipyj, and Husar come quickly to mind.

It is in the stead of such giants that Shevchuk now stands—at the remarkable age of forty. Such youth comes with its share of advantages and liabilities. Among the former, one may assume there is energy. He’ll need it.

Tim goes on to discuss some pressing issues, principally the rise of "Putinism" and attendant efforts by the Moscow Patriarchate to increase its influence in Ukraine to the detriment of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which has enjoyed an impressive revival in its ancestral homeland over the last twenty years after spending decades underground during the Soviet era. After touching on this, Tim moves on to another problem - one that affects the Ukrainian Catholic diaspora just as much it does as the Church in Ukraine:

Since 2001, the bishops of the UGCC have held at least fifteen international synods, at a considerable expense of time and money. From them, one word perennially emerges to express the collective discernment and serve as the clarion call for going forward: Evangelization.

I should admit that mine is a somewhat unusual point of view. I wasn’t born into the UGCC. Neither was I drawn to it by any outreach on its part. In fact, I stumbled into an intimacy with it that, in addition to reception into the Church, has included the privilege of entering one its seminaries.

There are many things to say from this perspective. Preparing to serve a people whose faith I shared but whose story I did not know has been humbling. But as my appreciation for the Church’s gifts has grown, so too has my discouragement when failure to adapt, develop and share them seems willful. In countless conversations, cradle-born members of the UGCC have expressed incredulity at my enthusiasm for the Church, while seeming to view their own participation as a form of ethnic fealty.

Any non-"cradle-born" person who is drawn to the Eastern churches and has spent time with Eastern Christians must sooner or later confront the "ethnic fealty" phenomenon. I recall a particularly cutting example that once appeared in the combox on Wan Wei Hsien's sadly defunct weblog Torn Notebook. The story goes that a convert to the Greek Orthodox Church was being interviewed by a radio host who was an ethnic Greek. Apparently, the host's first question was, "How did you become interested in our Greek culture?" Some presume that ethnicity and religion necessarily go hand in glove, even going so far as to confuse religious practices shared by several churches for ethnic customs limited to a particular national tradition; to offer just one example of this, I've sometimes heard January 7th referred to as "Ukrainian Christmas" - as if only Ukrainians used the Julian Calendar!

Don't get me wrong: I believe that ethnic pride is a very good thing. Particularly in the diaspora, people should be very concerned about preserving the particular customs and cultural practices that provide them with a unique heritage and identity. Many nations possess distinctive religious cultures that have been shaped by national influences, but these cultures nonetheless remain a part of something greater and more universal. Ukrainians are rightly proud of the Kievan tradition, but that tradition is also part of the broader tradition of Byzantine (and global) Christianity. For all its cultural and historical particularity, the Kievan tradition has much to offer the whole Church: it can provide a spiritual home for people who are not Ukrainian by birth or ethnicity, just as the Latin tradition of the Church of Rome provides a spiritual home for many who are not Italian or have no familial connection to lands that were once within the territory of the (Western) Roman Empire. (For another perspective on this, that of Patriarch Sviatoslav himself, click here.)

With all of this in mind, let's consider what Tim Kelleher says next about the problems - and promise - facing the UGCC and other Eastern Catholic churches today:

In many parishes, a sense of desolation is palpable, with services attended by a startling disproportion of elder faithful. This graying — or ghosting – of the parishes is a crisis to which innovative remedies seem noble exceptions rather than the broad harvest of episcopal action matching synodal rhetoric.

On the same soil, Orthodox Churches, dealing with formidable challenges of their own, are finding ways to grow communities true to their lineage and attractive to those outside it, cooperating in projects designed to engage the wider culture.

To be sure, these impressions are anecdotal. Yet, I can’t think of a single person in formation with me who would fault these observations, except perhaps for being too restrained. Within its walls one often hears the frustration that the UGCC is essentially a Latin Church in Byzantine clothing, burying its distinctive gifts like the talents of the Gospel parable. Indeed, not long ago, Rome itself issued a rather stringent exhortation to the Eastern Churches in communion with it to commit themselves to the realization of the charisms unique to their traditions.

Although I have presented what may seem a gloomy forecast, we know how quickly things can change. And I remain hopeful.

The Eastern Churches bear an aspect of the Christian faith that is profound and astonishingly rich, with the power to amaze a culture that wrongly presumes it has seen it all. I also believe our culture is in urgent need of the vast treasure and deep beauty that have been entrusted to these Churches.

Amen to all that. I hope and pray that Tim's optimism is well-founded. The challenges facing Patriarch Sviatoslav and his flock are many, but with God's help - and with a great deal of creativity and ingenuity on the part of the faithful - they can surely be overcome. AMDG.

Tough times for Friendly's.

2011-10-14T07:45:00.003-04:00

I was saddened to read last week that Friendly Ice Cream Corporation has filed for filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Since its founding in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1935, Friendly's has grown from a single small ice cream shop to a chain of several hundred sit-down restaurants offering trademark sandwiches like the Fishamajig and Big Beef hamburgers and unique ice cream specialties like the Fribble, the Cone Head Sundae, and the summer-only Wattamelon Roll. Though Friendly's restaurants may be found up and down the East Coast and as far west as Ohio, the chain has long enjoyed a special place in the culinary culture of Massachusetts: Friendly's is a place that many Bay State natives (myself included) frequented growing up, a place blessed by its association with positive childhood memories of childhood. The idea that Friendly's may soon cease to exist - or might simply be changed beyond recognition through corporate restructuring - fills me with sorrow and dread.

Yesterday's edition of the Boston Globe carried an article in which various marketing and restaurant industry professionals offered "some Friendly advice" on how the venerable chain could emerge from bankruptcy in better shape. All of the pros more or less suggested that Friendly's should dramatically reinvent itself: two advised cutting out meals and focusing on ice cream, another proposed moving to a "fast business casual" model (which apparently necessitates higher prices - I guess that more expensive food is meant to project a certain kind of image), while a fourth proposed turning Friendly's into a sort of glorified Starbucks with ice cream. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I don't care for any of those ideas: I want Friendly's to stay as it is.

Though they offered different prescriptions, each of the Globe's interviewees spoke of Friendly's in the same glib and condescending terms. One suggests that restaurants like Friendly's offered "great concepts during the day. But our lives have changed." Another airily dismisses Friendly's longtime business model: "That parade has passed." The third - and harshest - assessment is this: "Average is over. For a time, average is what Americans wanted. The Gap. Chevrolet. Friendly's. Average is totally over. Make Friendly's fresh and fun instead of tired, boring, predictable, and dirty with food that stinks."

As a person who generally doesn't care much about what's new, fresh, or trendy, I'll admit that I'm probably a marketing professional's nightmare. At any rate, the sort of shtick that one finds in articles like the one cited above tends to imply that opinions like mine don't matter - which naturally makes me less than receptive to suggestions that organizations need to constantly reinvent themselves to stay 'current' or 'relevant.' To try to express my objection in more charitable terms, I would say that arguments for change and innovation are value-laden: they tend to presume that innovation is a positive good, but they seldom stop to articulate the values that underlie this presumption or seek to defend them.

The point that I'm trying to make here goes beyond the fate of Friendly's. The same problem appears in many other contexts, including religious ones. Some use "open to the Spirit" as a synonym for "open to change," as if the Holy Spirit would never favor keeping anything as it is. Of course, all of us in the Church are called to ongoing conversion, to a continual work of spiritual renewal; to paraphrase a comment attributed to Mother Teresa of Calcutta and cited recently by Pope Benedict XVI, the first thing that needs to change in the Church is you and me. None of us is exempt from the difficult task of self-examination, of asking how we must die to ourselves on a deep, interior level in order to be more faithful to the Gospel and to the tradition that has been entrusted to us. As a part of this process, we must recognize that, in a world of constant change, some things are worth clinging to and preserving - some things are, in fact, timeless: O Beauty, ever ancient, ever new...

The above paragraph may seem a bit tangential; I'm somewhat surprised to have wandered from Friendly's to Saint Augustine ("ever ancient, every new") in a single post, but I suppose that such moves come with the territory when one is committed to finding God in all things. On the religious or theological side of things, there are ideas here that perhaps should be presented in greater detail, but that's a task for another time. I certainly would not attribute anything like timelessness to Friendly's, but I do think that this venerable restaurant chain is worth preserving in something like its present form. Though I'm not optimistic, I hope that the Friendly's I know and love will endure. AMDG.

A Dominican considers "Picasso's sublime tragedy."

2011-10-12T07:53:00.042-04:00

Earlier this week, I discovered Dominicana, a blog written by a group of young Dominican friars in formation at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington. Somewhat in the same vein as Godzdogz, the blog of the English Dominican Students at Oxford, Dominicana offers daily postings on culture, philosophy, theology, and related topics. As a sample of what you'll find at Dominicana, consider this post by Brother Reginald Mary Lynch on Pablo Picasso's 1903 painting Tragedy. Here is an excerpt:

The subject of Picasso’s work is something that should be inherently undesirable. There is nothing beautiful about tragedy. Although we may be slow to say so, the sight of others’ suffering has the power to repulse and to send us searching for a distraction. Nonetheless, there is something intuitively beautiful about Picasso’s Tragedy that strikes us as paradoxical only on second thought. The painting seems to exert an immediate draw that transports us directly onto Picasso’s gray-blue beach, bringing us close to the figures and to their nameless tragedy as well; it is only on further reflection that we realize how strange it is to be attracted by something so plainly awful.

Picasso draws our attention directly and simply to their pain itself, with no outside referent to distract or to offer impartial resolutions. When considered critically, there seems to be nothing attractive about this. And yet Picasso has presented tragedy simpliciter, and we are drawn by it not as we might be by a depiction of pleasant scenery, but as a father might be drawn by the suffering of his son. Picasso has portrayed the human experience of tragedy in such a way that we feel no revulsion – no burning need to distract ourselves from the human suffering before us. Tragedy is here framed in such primary and universal terms that it necessarily resonates with us all, evoking not pious sympathy, but real empathy.

To read the rest, click here. AMDG.

Deir Mar Musa.

2011-10-10T07:45:00.051-04:00

In a comment on a recent post on Syria, Macrina mentioned Deir Mar Musa, a Syriac Catholic monastery about fifty miles north of Damascus. The original monastery on this site dates to the sixth century, but the monastic community that currently makes its home here was founded in 1991 by an Italian Jesuit, Father Paolo Dall'Oglio. The above video by Canadian filmmaker Yasmin Fedda offers a brief introduction to Deir Mar Musa, focusing on the monastery's efforts to foster cooperation and dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

Yasmin Fedda returns to Deir Mar Musa in this twenty-five minute film entitled Milking the Desert, which looks at life in the monastery as experienced by a seasoned Syrian monk and a young Frenchman who becomes a novice of the community. If you want to know where the community at Deir Mar Musa stands on the current situation in Syria, take a look at the monastery website, which includes some recent statements emphasizing the need to pray for reconciliation and non-violent solutions to conflict.

If you'd like to hear more detailed comments on the Syrian situation from the monastery's founder and leader - and if you have some time on your hands - watch this lecture by Father Paolo Dall'Oglio, delivered earlier this year at the University of Scranton. The actual lecture is fairly brief, but it is followed by a long and frank question-and-answer session in which Father Dall'Oglio offers interesting and provocative comments on many different topics (for example, he explains that he chose to embrace the Syriac Rite in part because "it never was the culture of an empire . . . just a local church, never in power"). Like me, you may find yourself in disagreement with some of what Father Dall'Oglio says, but I hope that you'll agree that his perspective is worth hearing. AMDG.

More on Syria's Christians.

2011-10-10T07:36:00.026-04:00

Recently, I offered a post on the response of Syria's Christians to the ongoing unrest in their country. More recently, I've read a troubling report from CNS suggesting that Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai may have been denied a meeting with President Obama during a U.S. visit this month because the Maronite leader disagrees with White House policy on Syria. The above video report from Al Jazeera dates from July, but I suspect that the snapshot of public opinion presented here still accurately reflects views held by many Christians in Syria; given what has been going on in Egypt, I don't see how one could blame Syrian Christians for being wary of regime change. AMDG.

Egyptian protests: "It is chaos."

2011-10-10T07:18:00.010-04:00

Last night, Egypt was rocked by a night of violent protests that the New York Times calls "the worst spasm of violence since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February." The protests apparently began as an expression of Egyptian Christians' anger and frustration following over a recent attack on a Coptic church, but media reports suggest that last night's clashes offered a further flashpoint for sectarian tensions. Here's a brief summary of what happened, courtesy of Toronto's Globe and Mail:

The protest began in the Shubra district of northern Cairo, then headed to the state television building along the Nile where men in plainclothes attacked about a thousand Christian protesters as they chanted denunciations of the military rulers.

"The people want to topple the field marshal!" the protesters yelled, referring to the head of the ruling military council, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi. Some Muslim protesters later joined in the chant.

Later in the evening, a crowd of ultraconservative Muslims known as Salafis turned up to challenge the Christian crowds, shouting, "Speak up! An Islamic state until death!"

Armed with sticks, the Muslim assailants chased the Christian protesters from the TV building, banging metal street signs to scare them off. It was not immediately clear who the attackers were.

Gunshots rang out at the scene, where lines of riot police with shields tried to hold back hundreds of Christian protesters chanting, "This is our country!"

Security forces eventually fired tear gas to disperse the protesters. The clashes then moved to nearby Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising against Mubarak. The army closed off streets around the area.

The clashes left streets littered with shattered glass, stones, ash and soot from burned vehicles. Hundreds of curious onlookers gathered at one of the bridges over the Nile to watch the unrest.

After hours of intense clashes, chants of "Muslims, Christians one hand, one hand!" rang out in a call for a truce. The stone-throwing died down briefly, but then began to rage again.

A protester quoted by the NYT may have offered the best summary of last night's events: "It is chaos." At the start of a new week, I hope and pray that the coming days will be better - for Egyptian Christians especially, but also for all in the Middle East seeking to find their way through a confusing, unstable and often violent period. AMDG.

UPDATE (3:25 PM, 10/10/11): A story on the aftermath of the protest posted this afternoon on the New York Times website includes this paragraph:

In a statement, the Coptic Church, which represents about 10 percent of Egypt's 85 million people, accused military and police forces of allowing anti-Christian instigators to turn what had been a peaceful protest into a sectarian riot, then used the violence as a pretext for deadly force directed largely against the Coptic protesters.

Sad if true, but also unsurprising: Egypt's security apparatus has never been particularly evenhanded in its treatment of the country's different religious communities. Elements of the military could be sympathetic to anti-Christian forces or merely indifferent to the rights of religious minorities, though some military leaders may want to play up religious divisions simply to excuse a broader crackdown on dissent and freedom of expression. All the more reason to pray for peace and unity in Egypt. Kyrie, eleison.

Friede ihrer Asche!

2011-10-08T15:25:00.028-04:00

Earlier this year, I offered a post on Jewish Innsbruck. Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, so I thought this might be an appropriate time for a post on a related subject. In early August, two days before I left Vienna, I visited the old Jewish section of the Wiener Zentralfriedhof, the largest cemetery in Austria (with over three million interments, the Zentralfriedhof is also one of the largest cemeteries in Europe). Between 1880 and 1938, nearly eighty-thousand Viennese Jews were laid to rest here. Desecrated on Kristallnacht and heavily damaged by aerial bombing during World War II, this part of the Zentralfriedhof has seen few burials since 1945 (newer Jewish graves are located in another part of the cemetery) and has decayed steadily over the succeeding decades.

Before the Second World War, Vienna was home to a large and prosperous Jewish community, whose members made a significant contribution to the cultural and political life of their country. For example, consider this memorial to Michael Kulka, who served as k.k. Gewerbeoberinspektor (Senior Trade Inspector for the Imperial and Royal Government), received the Order of the Iron Crown from the Emperor, and was declared an honorary member of the Jewish community of Leipnik (a Moravian village that now lies in the Czech Republic). Similarly impressive inscriptions are etched on nearby tombstones, but many are no longer legible due to long neglect.

The neglect of this part of the Zentralfriedhof is part of the legacy of the Shoah. Many of the children and descendants of the people laid to rest here perished in the Holocaust, while others who survived the War often chose to rebuild their lives elsewhere. As a result, the graves here have largely been orphaned: those who would otherwise care for them are gone.

Beyond the general state of decay, there is little direct evidence here of the Holocaust: some tombstones include newer inscriptions remembering victims of the Nazis (the grave of the Buch family, seen above, is one example - click on the photo to enlarge the image, and you'll learn that Hermann Buch died at Auschwitz), but these are very few. More common are inscriptions like that honoring Ignatz Nathan Blumka, "a most dearly beloved, unforgettable, faithful spouse" who died at age 61 in 1910, or the one remembering Lazar Bromberg, "snatched away by inexorable fate in the nineteenth year of his hope-filled life" in 1921 - memorials to individuals whose earthly lives were untouched by the monumental horrors of a later time.

Pictures and symbols often tell vivid stories. The tombstones in the first and third photos of this group bear the image of two hands associated with the Nesiat Kapayim, a traditional Jewish blessing reserved to the priestly caste of the Kohanim. (Star Trek fans may recognize a similarity to the "Vulcan salute," which Leonard Nimoy based on the Nesiat Kapayim that he remembered from his Orthodox Jewish upbringing.) The use of this symbol here is presumably meant to invoke a blessing upon the dead.

A symbol of a very different kind appears on the grave of Julius Löwy, seen in the second of these three photos. The Masonic Square and Compass suggests that Löwy was a Freemason; I suspect that Diese Kette reiße nie (which translates to "this chain will never be broken," or something similar) is the motto of a particular Masonic Lodge, but I haven't been able to find more information.

I've included photos of the above tombstone largely because of its unique design. The decorative motifs seen here are really striking - a golden sun with beams emanating from the top of the headstone, and what appears to be a Greek temple surrounded by flowers at the bottom - and I encourage you to click on the middle photo for a closer look. The identity of the family buried here is also a real mystery to me: the name looks like Spessl or Speßl, but I have not been able to locate either name (or several related variants) in the searchable database on the Friedhöfe Wien website. I'm sure that there is an interesting story here, but so far it remains elusive.

Of course, there are many stories in the Zentralfriedhof. I wonder, for example, why the tombstone of Friedrich Porges (seen in the first photo of the above group) identifies him as "der Brasilianer." Was Porges born in Brazil? Did he spend a significant portion of his life there? Did the "Brazilian" title have a special meaning for Porges and his friends - a meaning mysterious to others, and now lost to history? I may never know. In the absence of such knowledge, I will end this post with a wish and prayer akin to one found on many tombstones in the Zentralfriedhof: Friede ihrer Asche! - "Peace to their ashes!" In other words, may they rest in peace. AMDG.

The Voice on Schall.

2011-10-06T16:01:00.009-04:00

This week's issue of the Georgetown Voice features a glowing profile of Father James V. Schall, S.J., who was also recently seen on film in a post on this very blog. Voice writer Aodhan Beirne begins his profile with a consideration of Father Schall's distinctive pedagogy:

In the moments before his Elements of Political Theory class, Father James Schall, S.J., stood in the hall, chatting with early-comers about the weather, the readings, and other courses. Schall not only knew all of his current students by name, but also recalled almost all of his recent students. He made introductions among the students standing in front of him, and a large, comfortable conversation started.

This conversation seemed to carry over into class. The period involved little group discussion, but was rather a series of conversations between Schall and individual students.

To Schall, this conversational teaching style fosters students’ intellectual engagement.

"College students learn most from talking to each other. You have to have ways for students to converse," he said. "That’s why education is fostered by a good campus."

When class began, Schall asked if he had failed to call on anyone during the course so far. "I don’t want anyone to feel left out," he said. With 100 students crowded into a large White-Gravenor classroom, it would seem easy to be left out during a 50 minute class period.

However, Schall’s custom of pacing the aisles — addressing questions and comments to students at random — makes it difficult to shirk participation. Despite his sniper-like questioning style, his students appeared calm, seemingly unfazed by the possibility of being called on at his whim.

Although his quiet voice could easily be drowned out by coughing, his students remained attentive and prepared to be called on. The conversations ranged from Plato, to the etymology of names of the months, to Shakespeare.

Later on, Beirne quotes Schall on the nature and purpose of liberal education and the role of the professor:

Schall is wary of the loaded schedules most Georgetown students take on, weighted with extracurricular activities and internships, in addition to their academics.

"All universities should build walls, not to keep people in, but to keep the world out," he said. A confined campus is conducive to traditional learning, based on discussion and contemplation. His ideal education is a comprehensive experience that includes conversation, studying, and socializing.

"The point of a liberal education is not preparing you for business," he said. "It’s giving you the freedom to learn about the ultimate questions."

. . .

Schall’s view of the role of a professor is simple, but profound.

"A professor is a person to whom people come because he has studied his way and can say, 'Okay you will do this,' or 'We can read this together.' Students are being guided to read things, but in a sense, they are being prodded to believe that this thing is more important than this thing," he explained.

There is a certain level of trust students must have in their professors, he said but he quoted a friend who warned, "The worst thing that can happen to a student is to give his soul to an unworthy professor."

. . .

He will continue to teach — and teach in the manner he see most purposeful — in spite of the trends most other Georgetown professors are following, because to him it is always about the students.

"I do not think students ever change that much, thank God," he said. "All 20-year-olds are 20-year-olds. I do not believe in progress in this sense. We cannot bypass free will and basic good sense. Basically education is not about Georgetown, it’s about truth and honor."

Schall relates this to his life as a Jesuit. "As a priest, you have to do the same thing, get them to see the kind of life they should live and why. But they have to see it. You cannot force them," he said.

To read the rest, click here. Though the Voice does a fine job of summing up Schall's vital contribution to the Hilltop, there was one paragraph in Beirne's profile that made me cringe:

Schall is the last of the old guard: one of the few remaining Jesuits who still shape Georgetown students’ intellectual, spiritual and personal education in the mold of classic Catholic tradition. As the University becomes more secular, global, and pre-professional, some students yearn for the traditional education that seemingly only Schall can still provide.

Why do I cringe at this? It's partly a question of language: references to "the last of the old guard" and "the few remaining Jesuits" give the impression that members of the Society of Jesus are on the verge of disappearing from the Hilltop. I will readily admit that diminishment is a reality: the number of Jesuits at Georgetown and other Jesuit-sponsored universities has dropped sharply in recent decades, and we no longer have the level of influence that we once took for granted in institutions founded by the Society of Jesus. That being said, it is important to emphasize that the Jesuits are still committed to having a presence and a voice on campus: there are young Jesuit faculty members on the Hilltop who are in a position to "shape Georgetown students’ intellectual, spiritual and personal education in the mold of classic Catholic tradition" for decades to come. They may not do things exactly as Schall does, but that's to expected: we're all unique. In short, the Jesuits are still right where you need them. AMDG.

Black Robe.

2011-10-06T15:58:00.036-04:00

On Tuesday, The Pittsford Perennialist offered an appreciation of Bruce Beresford's 1991 film Black Robe. Based on a novel of the same title by Brian Moore, Black Robe tells the story of Father Paul Laforgue, a (fictional) French Jesuit missionary in seventeenth-century Canada. As the Perennialist writes, Black Robe "is a story of conversion, not so much of the Indians but of the priest, and not to some politically correct relativistic eco-religion as you might expect, but to the hard gospel of love as preached by Jesus Christ." That's a fairly accurate summary of the film as well as the novel on which it was based; I won't reveal exactly how Laforgue's conversion takes place because I want readers to discover Black Robe for themselves. See the movie and read the book - you won't regret having done so.

As an incidental sidenote, the Perennialist's linking of Black Robe and The Last of the Mohicans sent me on an affectionate journey down memory lane. The American literature curriculum at my public high school laid heavy emphasis on nineteenth-century classics: we read Hawthorne and Melville, Emerson and Thoreau, Longfellow and Whittier - and little written after 1900, the most notable exception being The Great Gatsby (to this day, incidentally, I've read only one book written by John Steinbeck and none by Ernest Hemingway). We also dipped into James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, on which account we viewed the then-recent 1992 film adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans starring Daniel Day-Lewis. I haven't seen the film again since, so I don't think that I could accurately say that it made a lasting impression on me. On the other hand, I still remain sincerely grateful for the quality of the education that I received in the public schools of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I agree with the Perennialist when he writes that Black Robe is a better film than The Mission, but we part company in our views on the latter film: this may seem like a surprising admission for a Jesuit to make, but I've never cared for The Mission. I didn't see The Mission until I was in the novitiate, but I was biased against the film before I ever saw it. As a long-time fan of Black Robe, I resented the fact that The Mission was much more popular; the ubiquity of Ennio Morricone's "Gabriel's Oboe" (sorry, folks - it's schmaltz) also gave me certain preconceived notions about the film for which that piece was written. Much like "Gabriel's Oboe," The Mission proved too sentimental for my taste - and, for lack of a better way to put it, too 'heroic' in a purely secular sense. Compared with The Mission, I find both the film and novel versions of Black Robe to be stronger and more realistic in their depiction of spiritual struggle.

In tandem with something I once wrote about the idea of suggesting Of Gods and Men as an "introduction to Christianity," I would not recommend The Mission as an introduction to the Jesuits or to anything else; on the other hand, I might very well recommend Black Robe in such a context. Of course, Black Robe also deserves to be appreciated on its own merits and not merely as an "introduction" to something else. If you have not seen the film or read the novel, I urge you to give both a try. AMDG.

Notes on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.

2011-10-04T21:15:00.010-04:00

As I wrote last year, I have never been particularly taken with Saint Francis of Assisi, whose feast falls on this date. I was confirmed under the name of one of Francis' twentieth-century followers, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, but the fact that Kolbe was a Franciscan had no bearing on my choice. My real-life encounters with Franciscans have been relatively few, most taking place in an academic context: one of my professors in law school was a Franciscan priest (and a doctor utriusque juris to boot), and a few of my classmates in graduate courses at Fordham were Franciscans of various sorts. While they are known more widely today for their work with the poor, the Franciscans also have a significant intellectual tradition represented historically by such luminaries as Saint Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham, so one should not be surprised to find members of the Order laboring in the groves of academe.

Perhaps inevitably, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi leads me to reflect upon my own encounters with members of the Franciscan family. The most vivid of these was not one of the 'academic' encounters noted above, but rather an experience I had as a Jesuit novice. Like many other Jesuits, I made a 'pilgrimage' as part of my novitiate. The pilgrimage is often imagined by people outside the Society as a period during which all novices are sent out to wander for a fixed period of time, begging for food and shelter and discovering their absolute dependence on God's providence in the process. Not all pilgrimages are like this, of course: the cultural and geographic circumstances of individual novitiates and the different ways of thinking of particular novice masters mean that the pilgrimage can take a variety of forms. I know of a Latin American novitiate that typically sends its novices to live and work with migrant farmworkers; I also know of a novitiate in Europe that has sent novices to the Holy Land in imitation of Saint Ignatius (unlike Ignatius, as far as I know, none have been expelled by the Franciscan Custos). In some novitiates, and for very sensible reasons, the pilgrimage has been dispensed with altogether.

I mention the novitiate pilgrimage because mine took me to a Franciscan community: for a few days, I lived with a group of friars in the American Midwest. In exchange for room and board in the cloister, I did odd jobs around the house and at an adjacent shrine church run by the friars - I cleaned bathrooms, replenished the stock of candles provided for pilgrims to light in the church, and counted the dimes, quarters, and crumpled dollar bills that pilgrims left as offerings. Attending prayer, meals, and recreation with the friars, I also learned something about the Franciscan approach to community.

Coming from another religious order, I found some aspects of life among the Franciscans a bit surprising. For example, in contrast with my novitiate - and all of the Jesuit communities I've known since - this Franciscan community had retained the old monastic practice of sitting in assigned places at a U-shaped table, with the religious superior seated in the center. At the same time, the Franciscans had not retained the practice of reading and silence during meals, so there was conversation at table; the refectory and the dining table itself were both relatively small, so the sixteen or so members of the community could all hear one another quite well during meals. The effect of all of this was that conversation at table had to involve all members of the community - in consequence, all talk during meals was rather formal and (or so it seemed to me) somewhat superficial.

Another experience from my days with the Franciscans remains deeply etched in my memory. One of the friars suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which had advanced to a point at which he could no longer move his limbs and had difficulty speaking. The Franciscans that I stayed with during my pilgrimage had nothing like a province infirmary, so the friar with ALS remained in the same community he had lived in before he was ravaged by disease - the alternative would have been to send him to a nursing home, to effectively put him out of the community, and that was something no one wanted. With the help of a live-in caretaker, the friars of the community cared for their infirm brother at home - feeding him, bathing him, changing his clothes, and generally going out of their way to make sure he was able to participate as fully as possible in the life of the community.

Though the Franciscans took these extraordinary steps partly out of necessity, it appeared to me that they did so with real joy - not 'joy' of the effusive and outwardly ecstatic variety, but rather the quiet satisfaction of people who were confident that they were faithfully living out the vocation that God had given them. When they became Franciscans, none of these men knew that living out this vocation would mean devoting countless days and hours to the physical care of one of their own - the sort of ministry that attracts no public notice, a way of preaching the Gospel (not necessarily with words, as Francis would have it) that leads to the conversion of no one, except perhaps the caregiver himself. My brief experience with the Franciscans on pilgrimage taught me an enduring lesson about the nature of ministry and religious brotherhood; on this Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, I give thanks for that. AMDG.

The photo that illustrates this post was taken at the Kapuzinerkirche in Innsbruck.

The Protecting Veil.

2011-10-01T07:15:00.019-04:00

For many Byzantine Christians following the Gregorian (or Revised Julian) Calendar, October 1st is the Feast of the Protection of the Theotokos, about which I've written before. In observance of this feast, I would like to share a modern musical composition inspired by the Protection of the Theotokos, John Tavener's The Protecting Veil. A convert to Russian Orthodoxy, Tavener described The Protecting Veil as "an attempt to make a lyrical ikon in sound" and an effort "to capture some of the almost cosmic power of the Mother of God." Premiered at the BBC Proms in 1989, this composition for cello and strings is heard here in a 1996 recording featuring Yo-Yo Ma on cello and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Zinman. If you would like to learn more about The Protecting Veil, click here; for more about John Tavener, visit his official website. AMDG.

Of airborne monasteries and boy Benedictines.

2011-09-29T16:01:00.015-04:00

The above photo is one that I took over the North Atlantic during a late June flight from Philadelphia to London, on my way to Vienna for a month of language study. I've been waiting for the right opportunity to use this image here, and it seemed like a good fit for a post that Michelle Francl-Donnay offered earlier this week on Quantum Theology about the contemplative dimension of intercontinental air travel:

It might be the modern day equivalent of a medieval monastic enclosure. Everyone sleeps in a common dormer; we sit in our assigned places, as if in choir; once the doors are closed, you can't leave; you eat what is served, when it is served; we have made temporary promises of obedience; bells ring and we tighten our belts. There are no cell phones, no landlines, no wi-fi. It is a remarkably silent place, and I imagine not a few of us are praying.

No, I'm not on retreat, I'm on a China Air 747 somewhere between New York and Osaka, traveling with my students and two colleagues to Japan. We're off to see and experience Buddhist practices of mindfullness and meditation in particular, but we are also keeping our eyes open to the ways in which silent spaces are constructed. What constitutes a sacred architecture of silence? of solitude? of stillness? How many of these constructs, physical and metaphorical, cross traditions?

I am intrigued by the parallels that Michelle identifies here, and by the questions that she poses. I'm not used to thinking of air cabins as contemplative spaces, but in some sense flying does move me to contemplation. Though I enjoy travel, I don't particularly like being cooped up in the cramped confines of an air cabin; I also find enough distractions and discomforts on planes to thwart attempts to do serious reading or to get any real rest. To make the experience of flying more bearable, I invariably withdraw into myself, closing my eyes and thinking about various things - rummaging through the past, or thinking about my destination and what I'll do there - and, yes, doing a bit of prayer.

My approach to all of this has been informed by a piece of advice that I once received from an older Jesuit who regularly flew back and forth between Europe, North America, and the Far East. How, I wondered, did this well-traveled Jesuit deal with the tedium and discomfort of intercontinental flights? "I become an object," he said, meaning that he found a way to disengage from his immediate environment and relaxed his body and mind in such a way that both were basically inert. The spiritual discipline that this requires is obvious: 'becoming an object' in this context is essentially a form of meditation. I can't say that I'm very good at this - quieting my mind is particularly difficult - but I nonetheless offer this approach to air travel for any readers who may find it helpful.

---

The second item that I'd like to call to your attention this afternoon is unrelated to Michelle's post on airborne monasteries but does serve to justify the "boy Benedictines" part of my title. By way of this post from The Hermeneutic of Continuity, here is a charming anecdote from a young mother in England:

We've had a really nice Benedictine Brother visiting our parish recently, much to the interest of my eldest son who is 9. After Mass this morning I reminded my son - as always - that it's anti-social to walk around with the hood of his jumper worn up.

"Sorry mum, you can't ask me to put my hood down any more..." was his reply "... I'm practising to be a Benedictine."

This is one way that vocations to religious life are born. I hope that this boy remains open to the idea of becoming a monk as he grows older; I also hope that I and others in religious life can take to heart the message here about the critical role that visible witness plays in promoting vocations. For more on this theme, consult this post from 2008, which still accurately captures my thinking on this subject. More importantly, please pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life - and invite others to consider them. AMDG.

Georgetown's Tocqueville Forum.

2011-09-27T16:29:00.002-04:00

Today's edition of The Hoya reports on a program at Georgetown that I wish had existed when I was an undergraduate:

Since its inception, the Tocqueville Forum has served as an arena for students interested in government to unearth the fundamental causes behind contemporary Western society and theological thought.

Every year as part of its quest, government professor and forum director Patrick Deneen leads a group of students off campus in a retreat to reflect on the foundation of such values.

"We break bread together, we discuss books, we hike. We try — just for a weekend — to experience college as it once was, spending hours inside and outside seminar rooms discussing ideas and truth."

It has been five years since Deneen founded the Tocqueville Forum on the Roots of American Democracy in the hopes of mirroring the intellectual project of Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, who strove to define the foundation of American democracy, culture and intellect. Since 2006, Deneen has grown its number of undergraduate fellows to over 70 students.

"What has always been the case and what interested me from the very beginning was that the Tocqueville Forum is very welcoming to all students and that there is a rich intellectual dialogue that is often missing on campus," said Erik Wind (SFS '09), who was involved with the program in his undergraduate years.

As a teacher and as a Georgetown alumnus, I was most edified by the following paragraphs of The Hoya's report on the Tocqueville Forum:

The perks of fellowship in the Tocqueville Forum — dining with some of the country's most highly regarded minds while conversing about the condition of democracy and liberty — attract students to the program, but what the fellows discuss among themselves appears to spark the most excitement.

"My favorite is the reading group — it's run by post-doctoral fellows and is basically an opportunity for students to get together over some cookies and discuss a good book without any worries about grades or being judged," Michael Fischer (SFS '13) said. "It's a very liberating experience to discuss and enjoy a piece of literature or philosophical thought purely for its own merit."

To read the rest of The Hoya article, click here. Better yet, pay a visit to the Tocqueville Forum website to learn more about the program and its offerings. AMDG.

Fearing change, many Syrian Christians back Assad.

2011-09-27T16:27:00.069-04:00

In the past, I've expressed some concerns about the effect that the 'Arab Spring' would have on Christians in the Middle East, and I've relayed at least one 'on the ground' perspective on the issue. Following up on this topic, here is a newly-published report on Christian responses to the protests in Syria from the New York Times:

Abu Elias sat beneath the towering stairs leading from the Convent of Our Lady of Saydnaya, a church high up in the mountains outside Damascus, where Christians have worshiped for 1,400 years. "We are all scared of what will come next," he said turning to a man seated beside him, Robert, an Iraqi refugee who escaped the sectarian strife in his homeland.

"He fled Iraq and came here," said Abu Elias, looking at his friend who arrived just a year earlier. "Soon, we might find ourselves doing the same."

Syria plunges deeper into unrest by the day. On Tuesday, government troops attacked the rebellious town of Rastan with tanks and machine guns, wounding at least 20 people. With the chaos growing, Christians visiting Saydnaya on a recent Sunday said they feared a change of power could usher in a tyranny of the Sunni Muslim majority, depriving them of the semblance of protection the Assad family has provided for four decades.

Syria’s Christian minority is sizable, about 10 percent of the population, though some here say the share is actually lower these days. Though their sentiments are by no means monolithic — Christians are represented in the opposition, and loyalty to the government is often driven more by fear than fervor — as a group they help explain how President Bashar al-Assad has held onto segments of his constituency, in spite of a brutal crackdown aimed at crushing a popular uprising. For many Syrian Christians, Mr. Assad remains predictable in a region where unpredictability has driven many of their brethren from war-wrecked places like Iraq and Lebanon, and where many have felt threatened in post-revolutionary Egypt.

They fear that in the event the president falls, they might be subjected to reprisals at the hands of a conservative Sunni leadership for what it saw as Christian support of the Assad family. They worry that the struggle to dislodge Mr. Assad could turn into a civil war, unleashing sectarian bloodshed in a country where minorities, ethnic and religious, have found a way to co-exist for the most part.

To read the rest of the NYT article, click here. Meanwhile over at AsiaNews, Iraq's Ambassador to the Holy See, Habib Mohammed Hadi al-Sadr, offers a commentary on the Christian reaction to the Arab Spring. As Ambassador al-Sadr observes, there are competing schools of thought on this issue, with some arguing that the Arab Spring may make things better for Christians in the Middle East by encouraging greater openness in civil society, while others note that historically outspoken and political active Christian minorities have become wary of any regime change that might threaten their already precarious position. In response, Ambassador al-Sadr has this to say:

The reality calls for a neutral and realistic analysis of the differing positions. So then we must first recognize an important fact: the Arab Christian component is a minority within the society in which they live. There is no denying the importance and weight of their role, through different historical periods, but the number counts, and the weight of the majority is completely different from that of the minority. This minority is alarmed. It fears that the political, social and economic turmoil which erupted unexpectedly, motivated by emotions rather than clear programs, and which does not take account of internal and international conditions, can have serious consequences on the lives of minorities, and open the way for an unknown and terrible future.

The first Arab revolts received the full support of the Arab world, but today this is no longer the case. For example, the societies in countries where there is a revolt - Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain – are divided on how the prospect of change and demands for democratic reforms. In some places there are calls for a peaceful solution, and protests against foreign interference, but elsewhere there are those who use violence and confrontation, and there are those who rely on armed protests and use foreign forces to overthrow the regime. The situation is made more difficult by the attitude of the international community and the UN Security Council. Each party is acting according to his own interests, analysis and strategies to operate in the present and future of the region. And this situation means that Arab Christians should wait before committing themselves, to avoid any errors in assessing all probabilities.

It is also only natural that Christians should mistrust these protests, fearing that they will be led by radical Islamic forces who want to seize power, based on the fact that they are more organized and have a greater, more effective ability to shuffle the cards. These are forces that have shed blood and desecrated Christian churches. As a result Arab Christians find themselves having to choose between accepting authoritarian systems, but with a certain amount of secularism, which guarantee freedom of religion, or a totally different type systems. They choose what seems to them the lesser of two evils.

To read the rest of Ambassador al-Sadr's commentary, click here. As always, I ask you to join me in praying for the Christians of the Middle East in a time of great struggle and uncertainty. AMDG.

Our little group has always been, and always will until the end.

2011-09-24T15:07:00.013-04:00

Exactly twenty years ago, on September 24, 1991, Nirvana's second studio album Nevermind was released to the public. The Seattle-based grunge band was not widely known at the time, so Nevermind initially attracted very little notice; nonetheless, Nirvana and Nevermind would steadily grow in popularity over the last few months of 1991, largely thanks to the success of the album's lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Nevermind went on to sell over 30 million copies, conferring celebrity on Nirvana and its lead singer Kurt Cobain and exercising a strong influence on popular music and popular culture at large.

The fact that all of this happened twenty years ago makes me feel somewhat old. Yesterday, I asked some of my students if they knew what significant album was released twenty years ago this weekend; no one was able to provide the correct answer, though one suggested an album by The Beatles - which made me realize that, for today's college students, Nirvana is just as much a part of history (and just as absent from living memory) as The Beatles. Naturally, coming to that realization made me feel older still.

To understand why many regard Nevermind as "the last album to drastically change the course of popular music," read this article by Tony Sclafani. To find out why some have gone further, declaring Nevermind "the most important rock album of all time," consult this piece by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd. AMDG.

The Pope speaks to the Bundestag.

2011-09-24T15:02:00.010-04:00

On Thursday afternoon, Pope Benedict XVI delivered an address to the Bundestag as part of a state visit to his native Germany. As one who once authored a lengthy term paper analyzing Joseph Ratzinger's writings on the identity and vocation of Europe, I read this speech with great interest. Though the content of this address is consistent with Benedict's earlier writings on the same and similar topics, I believe that the particular context makes a difference: Benedict isn't addressing his audience simply as pope or as a Catholic theologian, he is also speaking as a German citizen given an unusual opportunity to address the parliament of his home country. Here is some of what he had to say on Thursday:

For most of the matters that need to be regulated by law, the support of the majority can serve as a sufficient criterion. Yet it is evident that for the fundamental issues of law, in which the dignity of man and of humanity is at stake, the majority principle is not enough: everyone in a position of responsibility must personally seek out the criteria to be followed when framing laws. In the third century, the great theologian Origen provided the following explanation for the resistance of Christians to certain legal systems: "Suppose that a man were living among the Scythians, whose laws are contrary to the divine law, and was compelled to live among them … such a man for the sake of the true law, though illegal among the Scythians, would rightly form associations with like-minded people contrary to the laws of the Scythians."

This conviction was what motivated resistance movements to act against the Nazi regime and other totalitarian regimes, thereby doing a great service to justice and to humanity as a whole. For these people, it was indisputably evident that the law in force was actually unlawful. Yet when it comes to the decisions of a democratic politician, the question of what now corresponds to the law of truth, what is actually right and may be enacted as law, is less obvious. In terms of the underlying anthropological issues, what is right and may be given the force of law is in no way simply self-evident today. The question of how to recognize what is truly right and thus to serve justice when framing laws has never been simple, and today in view of the vast extent of our knowledge and our capacity, it has become still harder.

In one of the more intriguing sections of his address, the Pope offers a critique of the dominant culture of legal positivism and cites the environmental movement as an example of a more holistic approach to politics. Benedict begins by seeking to explain how the positivist conception of the basis of legislation has supplanted an earlier approach to jurisprudence grounded in natural law:

Fundamentally [this shift occurred] because of the idea that an unbridgeable gulf exists between "is" and "ought." An "ought" can never follow from an "is," because the two are situated on completely different planes. The reason for this is that in the meantime, the positivist understanding of nature and reason has come to be almost universally accepted. If nature – in the words of Hans Kelsen – is viewed as "an aggregate of objective data linked together in terms of cause and effect," then indeed no ethical indication of any kind can be derived from it.

. . .

The positivist approach to nature and reason, the positivist world view in general, is a most important dimension of human knowledge and capacity that we may in no way dispense with. But in and of itself it is not a sufficient culture corresponding to the full breadth of the human condition. Where positivist reason considers itself the only sufficient culture and banishes all other cultural realities to the status of subcultures, it diminishes man, indeed it threatens his humanity.

I say this with Europe specifically in mind, where there are concerted efforts to recognize only positivism as a common culture and a common basis for law-making, so that all the other insights and values of our culture are reduced to the level of subculture, with the result that Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of culturelessness and at the same time extremist and radical movements emerge to fill the vacuum. In its self-proclaimed exclusivity, the positivist reason which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions, being no longer willing to obtain either from God’s wide world.

And yet we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that even in this artificial world, we are still covertly drawing upon God’s raw materials, which we refashion into our own products. The windows must be flung open again, we must see the wide world, the sky and the earth once more and learn to make proper use of all this.

But how are we to do this? How do we find our way out into the wide world, into the big picture? How can reason rediscover its true greatness, without being sidetracked into irrationality? How can nature reassert itself in its true depth, with all its demands, with all its directives?

I would like to recall one of the developments in recent political history, hoping that I will neither be misunderstood, nor provoke too many one-sided polemics. I would say that the emergence of the ecological movement in German politics since the 1970s, while it has not exactly flung open the windows, nevertheless was and continues to be a cry for fresh air which must not be ignored or pushed aside, just because too much of it is seen to be irrational. Young people had come to realize that something is wrong in our relationship with nature, that matter is not just raw material for us to shape at will, but that the earth has a dignity of its own and that we must follow its directives.

. . .

Yet I would like to underline a further point that is still largely disregarded, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he listens to his nature, respects it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.

At the close of his address, Pope Benedict XVI returns to a theme that has been a regular feature of his public discourses and writings on public affairs in Europe - the need for a more vigorous appreciation of the continent's cultural, intellectual, and religious roots:

Let us come back to the fundamental concepts of nature and reason, from which we set out. The great proponent of legal positivism, Kelsen, at the age of 84 – in 1965 – abandoned the dualism of "is" and "ought." He had said that norms can only come from the will. Nature therefore could only contain norms if a will had put them there. But this would presuppose a Creator God, whose will had entered into nature. "Any attempt to discuss the truth of this belief is utterly futile," he observed. Is it really? – I find myself asking. Is it really pointless to wonder whether the objective reason that manifests itself in nature does not presuppose a creative reason, a Creator Spiritus?

At this point Europe’s cultural heritage ought to come to our assistance. The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness.

The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history.

To read the rest of the address in English translation, click here. Der ursprüngliche Text findet sich hier. AMDG.

"Spiritual but not religious," continued.

2011-09-22T12:13:00.017-04:00

Following up on my "spiritual but not religious" post from nearly three weeks ago, I would like to share a few media items that have caught my eye in recent days, all related in some way to the phenomenon of people identifying themselves as spiritual but not religious (SBNR). I intend to add further thoughts of my own at some point, but in the meantime I hope that the following articles may be of interest.

First off, here are some thoughts from Congregational minister Tony Robinson, written in response to the piece by fellow Congregationalist Lillian Daniel that I linked in my first SBNR post. Robinson agrees with Daniel that some individuals who claim the SBNR label come across as smug and arrogant and that being 'spiritual but not religious' isn't the daring assertion of nonconformity that it is sometimes made out to be but instead "dovetails all too easily with the reigning, often self-centered, ethos of American culture." Even so, Robinson suggests, some SBNRs may be looking for truth and meaning but have been turned off by negative experiences with organized religion. Next, Robinson seems to propose that churches should acknowledge the sincerity of these SBNRs and offer them a stronger case for the value of belonging to religious institutions:

These days lots of people, for good reasons and not so good ones, are turned off by institutions, perhaps religious institutions in particular. I get that. And I regret it.

Institutions do often fail us by becoming self-serving (though religious institutions have no corner on that). But institutions also draw us into community and relationship, put us in touch with traditions and purposes larger than ourselves, and help us to do with others things we can't do alone. They provide continuity in a rapidly changing world. They can be a source of strength, funding acts of real courage.

We’re in danger of overlooking the positives of older traditions and institutions — or if you prefer the softer word, "communities." One day we may wake up to discover we’ve lost something of value.

Of course, effective outreach to SBNRs demands more than simply convincing them that religious traditions and institutions have value; as a first step, we may have to take a look at 'values' in general. This would appear to be the conclusion reached by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith and the team behind a new study of American 18-to-23-year-olds entitled Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood. Summarizing the contents of Lost in Transition in a recent New York Times op-ed, David Brooks describes a generation of individuals who often come across as alarmingly inarticulate and incoherent when discussing moral matters:

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. "It’s personal," the respondents typically said. "It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?"

Rejecting blind deference to authority, many of the young people have gone off to the other extreme: "I would do what I thought made me happy or how I felt. I have no other way of knowing what to do but how I internally feel."

Many were quick to talk about their moral feelings but hesitant to link these feelings to any broader thinking about a shared moral framework or obligation. As one put it, "I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong."

Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism. Again, this doesn’t mean that America’s young people are immoral. Far from it. But, Smith and company emphasize, they have not been given the resources — by schools, institutions and families — to cultivate their moral intuitions, to think more broadly about moral obligations, to check behaviors that may be degrading. In this way, the study says more about adult America than youthful America.

Given that I teach ethics to 18-to-23-year-olds, I should probably comment more on this. My instant reaction: I have known students who express the attitudes presented above, but I've also known others who are much more serious and grounded in their moral thinking than Brooks' words suggest. Smith and his colleagues seem to suggest that churches and universities have a lot to answer for; as an individual embedded in both sorts of institutions, perhaps I should offer some answers. I'm going to hold off on saying more, though, until I've had a chance to read Lost in Transition for myself.

Christian Smith himself offers some thoughts on the religious import of his findings in a recent piece for The Huffington Post on what he calls "liberal whateverism":

. . . This outlook reacts against sectarian conflict by dramatically discounting the claims of religion. The more aggressive side of this view asserts that religion per se is pernicious and should be eliminated or radically privatized. The more accommodating side says religion is fine as a personal lifestyle commodity, but that religious inclinations are ultimately arbitrary and should not be taken too seriously.

. . . In our recently published book, "Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood," my co-authors and I describe the larger world in which liberal whateverism makes sense. Many emerging adults have few considered moral bearings, are devoted to mass consumerism, routinely become intoxicated and engage in casual sexual hook-ups, are civically and politically uninformed and alienated. . . .

Liberal whateverism was obvious among most of the emerging adults we studied. About 10 percent were militantly atheistic. But the vast majority opted for the more accommodating "whatever" default. Anyone could take religion or leave it. It was an individual "opinion" that didn't matter much.

One practical implication of this "take religion or leave it" approach comes in the apparent increase in the number of weddings conducted by what an article in last Friday's Washington Post describes as "nontraditional officiants," typically friends of the bride and groom who takes the presiding role formerly reserved to members of the clergy or representatives of the state. The WaPo article needs to be read with a grain of salt: the only statistics cited are based on the users of two websites and may not be a reliable indicator of larger trends, while the only people quoted belong to a close-knit group of self-described "hippies" who met as students at American University and have remained friends since graduation. Though the opinions offered in the article generally confirm smug SBNR stereotypes, the following paragraphs caught my attention:

Members of the American University crew shared a love of jam bands, including Phish and Moe, as well as a passion for environmentalism and nature. Their wedding ceremonies often reflected those interests.

Some of them talked about vigorously scrubbing the word "God" from their rituals; instead readings came from environmental poet Wendell Berry or novels, such as "Einstein’s Dreams," which explores human beings’ relationship to time passing.

Most of them also came from families with interfaith marriages, and some followed suit.

Andrew Butcher was raised Jewish, while his wife, Julie Butcher Pezzino, grew up in a big Catholic family until college, when she told her parents she felt most spiritual and contemplative in nature, not church. For their wedding, Butcher and Pezinno broke a glass and had a huppah (or canopy), both Jewish traditions, but they also created a table of ritual items, including sand from the Cape Cod beach where she summered as a child and a brick from their home in Pittsburgh.

What struck me about these paragraphs is the importance that the people described accord to ritual. Having rejected religion, they are apparently trying to craft elements of form and structure that can take the place of traditional religious practices. This may involve the outright appropriation of some religious traditions (the huppah, for example) with references to the transcendent carefully expunged (or "vigorously scrubb[ed]" away, as the article puts it), or it may involve creative new practices like the "table of ritual items" described above. All of this strikes me as very sad, as it suggests that the individuals in question are still grasping for a sense of meaning and transcendence but don't know how to go about finding it.

On the other hand, the attitude toward 'ritual' expressed here could be nothing more than an empty aestheticism - the mentality of people who collect idiosyncratic "ritual items" and select Wendell Berry poems to be read at Phish-themed weddings may not be far removed from that of individuals who don't like to read but nonetheless enjoy buying old books simply because they look nice on the shelf. In any event, the whole phenomenon described in the WaPo article strikes me as terribly banal and tacky - so if you're planning on getting married on the beach by a college roommate who became a Universal Life minister "for the occasion," you might think twice about sending me an invite.

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So where do we go from here? What do we do about all of this? Here is a proposal from Lost in Transition author Christian Smith, offered in the HuffPo piece mentioned above:

I think we need to reject both sectarian conflict and liberal whateverism and commit ourselves instead to an authentic pluralism. Genuine pluralism fosters a culture that honors rather than isolates and disparages religious difference. It affirms the right of others to believe and practice their faith, not only in their private lives but also in the public square - while expecting them to allow still others to do the same. Authentic pluralism does not minimize religious differences by saying that "all religions are ultimately the same." That is false and insipid. Pluralism encourages good conversations and arguments across differences, taking them seriously precisely because they are understood to be about important truths, not merely private "opinions." It is possible, authentic pluralism insists, to profoundly disagree with others while at the same time respecting, honoring, and perhaps even loving them. Genuine pluralism suspects the multi-cultural regime's too-easy blanket affirmations of "tolerance" of being patronizing and dismissive. Pluralism, however, also counts atheist Americans as deserving equal public respect, since their beliefs are based as much on a considered faith as are religious views and so should not be automatically denigrated.

Smith's words strike me as at least somewhat congenial to the way of thinking of another keen social critic, Pope Benedict XVI, who had this to say earlier today at the start of an official visit to Germany:

. . . we are witnessing a growing indifference to religion in society, which considers the issue of truth as something of an obstacle in its decision-making, and instead gives priority to utilitarian considerations.

All the same, a binding basis for our coexistence is needed; otherwise people live in a purely individualistic way. Religion is one of these foundations for a successful social life. "Just as religion has need of freedom, so also freedom has need of religion." These words of the great bishop and social reformer Wilhelm von Ketteler, the second centenary of whose birth is being celebrated this year, remain timely.

Freedom requires a primordial link to a higher instance. The fact that there are values which are not absolutely open to manipulation is the true guarantee of our freedom. The man who feels a duty to truth and goodness will immediately agree with this: freedom develops only in responsibility to a greater good. Such a good exists only for all of us together; therefore I must always be concerned for my neighbors.

Freedom cannot be lived in the absence of relationships. In human coexistence, freedom is impossible without solidarity. What I do at the expense of others is not freedom but a culpable way of acting which is harmful to others and also to myself. I can truly develop as a free person only by using my powers also for the welfare of others. This holds true not only in private matters but also for society as a whole. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, society must give sufficient space for smaller structures to develop and, at the same time, must support them so that one day they will stand on their own.

To be continued, I hope. AMDG.

Father Schall on film.

2011-09-20T07:20:00.097-04:00

Having recovered from the jaw cancer that temporarily sidelined him last year, the celebrated and legendary Georgetown government professor Father James V. Schall, S.J. has returned to teaching. In the short film presented above, you can see Father Schall in action in the classroom and listen as he speaks with interviewer Mark Judge about such topics as Pope Benedict's Regensburg Lecture, the relationship between reason and revelation, the importance of reading the classics, and the real value of education.

As I've noted before, many Georgetown alumni over the last three decades have been proud to say that they "majored in Schall" - that is, that they took as many courses taught by Father Schall as they possibly could. Father Schall was certainly one of the greatest teachers I've ever had, not simply on account of the lessons he imparted in the classroom but because of the way he lived his life: more than anything else, it was the example of Jesuits I knew precisely as teachers, Father Schall among them, that led me to enter the Society of Jesus. Seeing this one-eyed 82-year-old as he is today - still vigorous despite a recent battle with cancer, still teaching and writing - I feel glad that the newest generation of Hoyas still has the opportunity to learn from him and gain inspiration from his example. Ad multos annos! AMDG.

Consubstantiálem Patri.

2011-09-20T07:18:00.174-04:00

This is the first time that I have posted anything on this blog regarding the new English translation of the Roman Missal, which recently came into force in the United Kingdom and will be introduced in Roman Catholic parishes in the United States at the beginning of Advent. One of the aims of the new translation is to make the English text of the Mass more faithful to the Latin of the Missale Romanum; thus, for example, the congregational response Et cum spiritu tuo will now be more accurately rendered in English as "And with your spirit," instead of "And also with you," while the English rendering of the Creed's affirmation that Christ is consubstantiálem Patri will shift from the current "one in being with the Father" to the more precise "consubstantial with the Father."

How will the new translation be received by the people in the pews? I am sure that the changes will take some getting used to, but I hope that many Roman Catholics will take the opportunity to engage with the text of the liturgy in more deliberate and intentional way and thereby come to a deeper understanding of their faith. Lex orandi, lex credendi.

The opportunity for engagement that I suggest above is one that is available to practicing Catholics of all ages - not simply to mature and seasoned churchgoers, but also (and perhaps especially) to the young, who should be able to approach the new translation without the baggage and hang-ups of their change-averse elders. Consider this anecdote provided by Father Tim Finigan, a parish priest in the London suburb of Blackfen, on his blog The Hermeneutic of Continuity:

The mother of a young family was talking to me today about the new translation of the Mass. She said that her children have really latched onto the word "consubstantial" and look forward to it in the Creed. They were disappointed last week because we did not say the Creed at the school Mass (it was a weekday).

I know that the younger ones may not yet understand what the word means. They probably like it because it is a long word that is difficult to say and to spell, and there is a sense of achievement in getting it right so that they can say it at Mass (actuosa participatio n'est-ce pas?). With that enthusiasm, it is quite likely that when they are old enough to understand a little trinitarian theology, they will be keen to know exactly what "consubstantial" means.

It is not a good idea to shield children from difficult words. Better that they know them and are fascinated by them and then learn more about them as they grow older.

As I look forward to the introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal in the United States, I pray that many adults can learn from the example of the children that Father Finigan mentions. May the awe and enthusiasm of children discovering exciting new words help Catholics of all ages come to a fuller understanding of the mysteries of faith. AMDG.