Starting the day off right

A friend who has a blog where she gets absolutely scorching about Francis, enough to make me look like Mary Poppins, usually starts her day of writing off with the following admonition:

Start the day off right: Pater noster, qui es in caelis...

I took the idea and ran around the block with it a few times.

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Crank up your computer speakers, and click this.



Now, stand up and say,

Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio;
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis,
satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute in infernum detrude.
Amen.

Seriously, it does stuff to your head. Like espresso for your soul.



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Crucify them!

Received the following message privately that seems worth passing on:

On a trad board, one of the forum members said the following: "My brother is in the FFI and he has told me that Francis has admitted making a mistake in appointing Volpe and will soon remove him.
He will also overturn the ludicrous ruling of not allowing the FFI from offering the TLM and the Traditional breviary."
I hope I'm wrong but I believe they're overly optimistic.

Our friend Dorothy adds the amusing comment: "Craziness. The president of Harvard is named Faust, and the nimrod in charge of destroying the FFI is called Volpe. Has life turned into a Harry Potter novel or what?"

Another friend comments:

When this ends, if not with total destruction of the FFI, they will have Volpi lift the restrictions under some pretense that his draconian measures have effected some good in the organization. But I fear that nothing short of total destruction will be the end, for this is their purpose, to send a message that traditionalism is fatal. Anything short of this sends the wrong message. The FFI cannot be allowed to survive.

Hard to argue with this. It is certainly a very visible form of public execution. There really can be no doubt that a clear and hard message is being sent by this "pope of mercy and forgiveness". One might almost be inclined to call it a crucifixion.



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No Spooky; No Religion

Today someone who works for a Catholic apologetics website posted a thing saying the "Black Mass" planned by some foolish secularists at Harvard University is just a lot of showy nonsense.

But you see, this is exactly what the secularists believe. The point, they say, is to show that religion is just a load of bosh because, look! you can directly tempt God with his holiest things and, Bazinga! No lightning strikes.

So, my question is not why do the dumb secularists at Harvard think this, but why a man who claims to be a follower of Christ is promoting their agenda.

He writes:

I've been told I have leaden instincts and maybe this is just another example thereof, but I can't get too worked up over the Black Mass (presuming that that there won't be Eucharistic desecration at it) at Harvard. Seems to me that higher academia has for a long time featured plenty of anti-Catholic goings-on, many more grave than this silly pageant they're planning tonight.

Or to put it another way, if a bunch of Ivy-Tower secularists who don't believe in Satan recreate a Satanic rite to get attention, how much attention should we give it?

I suppose he's trying to help people not freak out. Because in our times in the Church, getting worked up about religious stuff is bad form. We're supposed to be as cool as the other guys.

Well, I can't help but remember that Christ wasn't really all that "cool" about the influence of the demon.

I respond by re-posting an old thing on the difficulty modern Catholics, however sincere, have with the crazy, scary, crawling-backwards-up-walls, demons, angels and mystical part of the Faith. They're good with the rules, and can expound (ad nauseam) on the meaning of the latest encyclicals.

But have they fallen into the world's trap? Have they got the details but failed to get the point?

I have often thought that there seems, at least in the way most people practice the faith, two kinds of Catholicism. What I have arbitrarily designated "The Rules" and "Spooky Catholicism".

Of course, a balanced Catholic lives his life according to The Rules because he knows that Spooky Catholicism is real. This is the correct way of looking at it. The supernatural really actually exists in the really real world and therefore things like the difference between good and evil is not merely the subject of dry academic debate but an urgent and immediate reality to be contended with daily.

The reality of the supernatural is something that seems quite difficult for modern people to understand. And this despite the vast and growing proliferation of the occult in popular culture, which seems odd.

As you know, I have just finished reading a series of very dumb teenager vampire romance novels. (Yes, I enjoyed them ... sort of...in a weird way.) One of the things that made them dumb was the fact that the authoress, Stephanie Meyer, did not seem to understand the difference between the natural and the supernatural. She regularly referred to her vampire and werewolf characters as being part of the supernatural world, but then said that tests had revealed that they had a different number of chromosomes in their cells from humans.

She indicated that the change from being a natural human to a supernatural vampire was merely a physiological change, the vampire "venom" (good grief!) would work its way though the body via the bloodstream re-writing the person's DNA to give them super-powers. (No, it really wasn't very well thought out, but that's not why all the teenyboppers are reading it.) And that was it, really, no more to it than that.

I suspect the banality, the flat-universe quality, of her books is a result of Stephanie Meyer's Mormonism, which does not even try to address the issue of "where does the universe come from". Mormonism also doesn't understand or acknowledge the difference between the supernatural world and the natural world. In Mormonism, the gods are more or less just humans with superpowers, and no one ever notices that the question "Who or what is the Prime Mover" is never asked.

At least with Buffy's vampires, there was a supernatural exchange of "souls" and the vampired person would become, essentially, possessed by an incorporeal demonic creature. (This system often broke down in Buffy, but that was the idea). In the Buffyverse, there are any number of "demons", "gods", "oracles" and assorted representatives of classical, pre-Christian and extra-Christian entities of varying degrees of supernaturalness (though perhaps significantly, never any angels. In all of Buffy, I think God only got a mention once or twice). And as the series progressed the rules about them seemed to shift according to the needs of the plot.

I note, however, that in Buffy, and even more later in Angel, the "demons" were again just a different kind of natural being. In Angel, there were actually different "species" of demons who were just modified humans and the damage they could do was not moral damage to a person's soul, but physical damage according to the potency of their super-powers. Plus, you could kill them with a gun or a sword. So ... you know.

It all gets a little fuzzy, really. It's not like I was really looking for theological consistency in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I believe that Harry Potter has solved the literary problem of the supernatural by more or less proposing that the wizards are a different species from the regular humans. A species that can naturally manipulate natural "forces" and that magic is essentially just another physical force like electricity. Again, this kind of breaks down in practice during the course of the books (which I haven't read), but that seems about the gist again. Once again, the modern occult writer does not seem to know what the supernatural really is.

I have noted several times that the universe accepted by the sci-fi writers is dualistic, that there is a distinct split between the physical and the incorporeal, the old mind-body split, but still no actual supernatural. Despite all the story lines of people exchanging bodies with each other and "ascending to a higher plane of existence" and whatnot, all of this is still strictly within the realm of the natural, the physical, the scientifically recordable. It's really just Cartesianism with special effects.

Nothing in, for example, Star Gate SG1's ideas about "ascended Ancients" was remotely supernatural. You just spent a few decades meditating and, pow! you got a pretty, glowy, kind of ghostly-looking body that could fly and control weather or whatever and live in some other "higher plane" that was, essentially, just another "dimension". This seemed to be as close as the sci-fi world could get to the idea of something "outside nature".

Whether we like it of not, we live in a culture that has, for 400 years or more, been rejecting the existence of the supernatural. And now that we're looking for it again, we don't know it when we see it and think we see it when we really don't.

I think that our modern obsession with the occult is not in fact a result of an innate human fascination with the supernatural. Or perhaps the purveyors of the occult pop-culture are so unimaginative that what they are peddling is merely naturalism dressed up in sparkly CGI costumes.

As a result, we Catholics seem to have a hard time understanding what the actual supernatural is. We have popular Catholic literature that talks about things like birth, and sunsets and butterflies as "miraculous". Well, it might be a poetic way of speaking about how great nature is, but it is misleading too. Natural things are not, by definition, miraculous. The supernatural is not just the natural with super-powers.

We really have a hard time with the idea of something that is real, has a will and an intellect and the ability to do things in the natural world, but no body at all. A spirit, in the strictest sense.

We have a heck of a time understanding the thing about God being outside, above and preceding time and space.

Now that the Church has more or less given up talking about the supernatural and continues to justify its existence based on its record of social work projects in the third world, we Catholics have fallen into the habit of thinking naturalistically. So much so, I think, that things like the "Catholic charismatic movement" have sprung up in reaction.

People who are interested in religion are really interested in the Spooky parts. They want to know about the grand movements of Heaven and Hell, of angels and demons and the Great War between them. They want to know that their own moral struggles are about something greater, taller and more grand than global warming or the dangers of smoking. Something better, that is, than what the secular world offers.

It's the real reason movies and books like the Da Vinci Code are so wildly popular. Why Hollywood always dresses its pretend nuns to look more like real nuns than the real nuns have looked in 40 years. And why the Godfather movies all have depictions of the brocade and velvet, pointed arches, gold-curliqued and marble-columned Catholicism of the pre-Vatican II era. No one who is looking for the real, Spooky, Supernatural version of religion wants a priest to dress in a polyester poncho and sing folk songs.

There's The Rules, yes, and we give intellectual assent to the doctrines of the Faith, (which is what "The Rules" is shorthand for.) But what are The Rules guiding if not the supernatural life of the soul?

What is it all for if there's no Spooky?

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Missing friars

So, went to the March for Life in Rome, as you probably know.

Also went last year.

Bit of a difference. One thing that really stood out was the absence of these guys.



It's funny, cause there was a whole flotilla of them last year...


Do you think they were busy?


Scheduling conflict, maybe?

(Someone there who knows them well told me they were there but in civies. 'Cause that's what we've come to. #thefranciseffect)



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Sowing confusion

I've been saying it from the earliest days: "Don't like something Pope Francis has said? Wait 24 hours. He'll say exactly the opposite tomorrow."

"It is one of the cleverest devices of the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) to present their doctrines without order and systematic arrangement, in a scattered and disjointed manner, so as to make it appear as if their minds were in doubt or hesitation, whereas in reality they are quite fixed and steadfast."

Pope Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis



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Beware the demons "tenderness" and "compassion"

Watch out for the people preaching "compassion".

Flannery O'Connor, as usual, has summed up the problem:

“If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.”

We hear a lot of this kind of language from the world. We are to be compassionate, tender, with people who suffer terrible emotional traumas from being denied their rights...

We have heard a great many words about "tenderness" coming from this pontificate. It all sounds just fine on the surface, doesn't it? And it is playing well with the world. It seems to be making people weep with joy to hear about "tenderness" from the pope. "Never be afraid of tenderness..."

Yes, be afraid. Be very afraid.

"Compassion," "mercy" and "tenderness" as well as care for "the poor" seem to be the watchwords. The trouble is that without the correct definition and framework, these concepts come to mean something quite different from the Biblical interpretation.

We have certainly got a lot of the same kind of talk from the world: "Every child a wanted child..."

At the same time, we have heard not much more from this pope than an apparently never-ending stream of invective and insults aimed pretty unmistakably at those Christians who are interested in their eternal destiny and think it's important enough to devote time and energy to.

I am beginning to understand that there is a vast, and perhaps uncrossable, gulf between the goals and interests of NuChurch under this pontificate and the goals and purposes of Christ in founding His Church. These people seem to be completely focused on this world, the material and worldly. The pope talks a good deal about 'tenderness' and "the poor" and the things we need to do about them. Most recently we have been told that there must be an "appropriate redistribution of wealth" so that the poor will no longer be the poor. Won't that be nice? (Please leave your bank account details in the commbox...)

It is making me wonder if he is at all concerned about the salvation of souls. Are we to take away that "the rich" save their souls by giving their wealth to the poor? Doesn't this just mean that there will be new poor? Or maybe "salvation" in the classical sense is just not on the radar at all...

What to do, what to do...? I still don't know.





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Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? With a perfect hatred do I hate them: I account them mine enemies.

The hatred of the Faith quite often seems to include a direct hatred of Scripture. So much so that there has for a long time been a huge impulse among the lily-livered "Christians" of our time (and previous times) to edit it, to make it more palatable to modern sensitivities.

This desire was played upon mightily by the people who "reformed" the Divine Office. The little shreds, shards and fragments of the Faith that are left to us once all the difficult bits are taken out, were all neatly packaged up and re-sold (accompanied by a bunch of unsingable American Jesuit hymns) as the four-volume "Liturgy of the Hours". I was shocked to see that this monstrosity of the Church of Nice is STILL being used by a bunch of "conservative" religious orders. Mostly, I imagine, because the good sisters don't know there is anything else. Sigh...

I note it because I've been having an interesting time with my Benedictine Monastic Diurnal, an older edition of which I was given recently by some nice Benedictine nuns in Tuscany. In using it ever day, I've discovered that a previous owner, presumably a female, has gone through and minutely corrected a bunch of the English translation of the psalms in pencil, crossing out offensive parts and a bunch of the "thees-n-thous" kind of language (the "st" crossed off of "didst" etc.) and carefully re-writing them with "updated" language.

I was amused to note that the REALLY offensive bits of scripture have just been expunged. The scary bit at the end of Psalm 137, for example, is firmly crossed of with a big penciled "X".

"Thou wretched Babylon's daughter, * Blessed be who shall repay thee what thou didst to us!

Blessed be who taketh thy babes, and dasheth them against the rock!"

It's been interesting observing exactly which changes have been made by this unknown female Catholic hippie of the past. One of them that I thought telling was this: "How weighty for me are Thy thoughts, O God, * how imposing is the sum of them!" But "for me" is crossed out. It gives a tiny little insight into that kind of mind that is quite fascinating. Though depressing as all hell.

She pencilled her name in the front page: "Sue C." so maybe someone could say a prayer for her? Perhaps fortunately, she seems not to have persevered in her vocation, because the corrections and annotations can only be found in small sections of the book.

Anyway, I suppose it gives us a bit of a hint about the attitudes of a certain kind of Catholic. It should perhaps not be surprising to us when we see some members of the hierarchy telling Our Lord that His instructions, regarding marriage for instance, are just too much for modern people to handle.

"Truly I tell you that Moses only allowed you to divorce out of the hardness of your hearts..."

"Ah yeah...Thanks, dude, but we'll take it from here..."



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Trouble

Little Winnie is showing some very bad signs today. For some time now she has found it more difficult to jump up onto her chair and to her favourite spot in front of the window, but today she almost can't do it at all, and seems to be having trouble walking. Poor little thing is 13 now, so it's not surprising, but still very hard to watch.

I'll be taking her to the vet, but I fear a bad diagnosis. Do say a little cat-sized prayer today, if not for her, then at least for me. Not looking forward to what might be coming next.



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Ci sei mancato...

I have a question to put to all able-bodied priests and bishops who were in Rome yesterday.

What were you doing while thousands of lay people were Marching for Life?

I went to the front of the March, and stood by the side of the road for the whole procession to sweep past me so I could get an idea of the size and make-up of the crowd. I observed that there were huge numbers of younger people, that in fact, probably the most prominent demographic was people in their 20s-30s, a great many pushing baby strollers. The pro-life movement in Italy appears to be very big with the family set. This is a bit of a contrast with the DC March where the largest single group seems to be teenagers.

The other thing I noticed, and this was a VEry sharp contrast with last year, was the absence of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. There was a small (very small) contingent of the sisters, but not. one. single. friar. Last year, there was an entire flotilla of FFIs. And I can't imagine that they were absent by their own will.

The third thing I noticed was that the number of priests (at least, priests wearing recognisable clerical dress) was - being very generous - about 1 in fifty. In Rome.

ROME.

Where were the clergy?



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Why we're not married

Though I was a Star Wars fan as a child (the first of the three first ones came out when I was 11) and I retain enough nostalgia about it to not be very happy with George Lucas and to be looking forward to the reboot, I find it quite difficult to disagree with Kathy on this.

"Successful, mature men do not play computer games, attend 'cons,' and get excited about overrated science fiction movies from the 1970s...The extension of adolescence throughout the West is a serious matter. The never-ending obsession with Star Wars is but a symptom of this arrested development."

It's fun sometimes to talk about the Star Wars universe as if it matters, or even, as if it's real. It's fun to talk about how I think Palpatine really was justified in declaring martial law (and as we all know, the Jedi totally were planning on taking over!) and to get your fan-friends faux-wound-up when you say that the Empire would have been fine if it hadn't been for the rebel scum and was better off without those meddling Jedi.

But the thing is, it's a game. It's goofing off.

Once you've started to actually care about it, and you're over, say, 10, it's probably a good sign you've got a maturity problem.

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of spending a few hours in Rome with one of England's most venerable and sensible grown-ups. He's a medical doctor and a physician, the father of 5 and grandfather of 13. He watched the entire Catastrophe of the 60s, 70s and 80s settle like a poison cloud over the world. He asked me and my also-unmarried friend what happened to put us off. The first thing she said was that it is very, very difficult to meet men who are grown-ups, who are even interested in living like adult men, with jobs and who are keen to take on responsibility for a family.

I added that this was only one half. There are very few people of our generation and below who are able to leave off trying to recreate the childhood they feel they never had. They are looking for fathers and mothers to look after them, to replace the ones they missed having. Which means they are not interested in becoming those parents for someone else.

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Also, Alec Guinness hated Star Wars, but he took the job anyway. Why? Both for the same reason: he was a grownup, and its a characteristic of grown-ups that they take crappy jobs for the money.


Alec Guinness being a grown-up.



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