Q: This brings up the relationship between the sacrament of the Eucharist and the sacrament of marriage. How can the relationship between the two sacraments be understood?
A: Eucharistic communion is an expression of a personal and communal relationship with Jesus Christ. Unlike our Protestant brothers and in line with the tradition of the Church, for Catholics this expresses the perfect union between Christology and ecclesiology. So I cannot have a personal relationship with Christ and with his true Body present in the sacrament of the altar and at the same time contradict the same Christ and his mystical Body present in the Church and in the ecclesial communion. Therefore, we can affirm without error that if anyone finds himself in a situation of mortal sin, he cannot and must not receive communion.
This applies not only to the case of the divorced and remarried, but rather to all cases in which there is an objective rupture with what God wants for us. It is by definition the bond that is established among the various sacraments. Because of this we must be on our guard against an immanentist conception of the sacrament of the Eucharist, an understanding founded on an extreme individualism that would make the reception of the sacraments or participation in ecclesial communion dependent upon the individual's needs or tastes.
For some the key to the problem is the desire to communicate sacramentally, as if the mere desire were a right. For many others, communion is simply a way of expressing membership in a community. Of course, the sacrament of the Eucharist cannot be conceived of in a reductive manner as the expression of a right or a communal identity: the Eucharist cannot be a "social feeling"!
It is often suggested that the decision to receive Eucharistic communion should be left to the personal conscience of the divorced and remarried. This argument also expresses a problematic concept of “conscience,” already rejected by the congregation for the doctrine of the Faith in 1994. Before approaching to receive communion, the faithful know they must examine their conscience, something that also obliges them to form it continually and therefore to be impassioned seekers of the truth.
In this unique dynamic, obedience to the magisterium of the Church is not a burden, but rather an aid in discovering the greatly desired truth about the good for oneself and for others.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Tolkien on Romantic Love in a Fallen World: From a letter to Michael Tolkien 6-8 March 1941
A man's dealings with women can be purely physical (they cannot really, of course: but I mean he can refuse to take other things into account, to the great damage of his soul (and body) and theirs); or 'friendly'; or he can be a 'lover' (engaging and blending all his affections and powers of mind and body in a complex emotion powerfully coloured and energized by 'sex'). This is a fallen world. The dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been 'going to the bad' all down the ages. The various social forms shift, and each new mode has its special dangers: but the 'hard spirit of concupiscence' has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell. We will leave aside the 'immoral' results. These you desire not to be dragged into. To renunciation you have no call. 'Friendship' then? In this fallen world the 'friendship' that should be possible between all human beings, is virtually impossible between man and woman. The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones. This 'friendship' has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. Later in life when sex cools down, it may be possible. It may happen between saints. To ordinary folk it can only rarely occur: two minds that have really a primarily mental and spiritual affinity may by accident reside in a male and a female body, and yet may desire and achieve a 'friendship' quite independent of sex. But no one can count on it. The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by 'falling in love'. But a young man does not really (as a rule) want 'friendship', even if he says he does. There are plenty of young men (as a rule). He wants love: innocent, and yet irresponsible perhaps. Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne! as Chaucer says. Then if he is a Christian and is aware that there is such a thing as sin, he wants to know what to do about it.
There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it. It idealizes 'love' — and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, 'service', courtesy, honour, and courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed contrary to) matrimony. Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity – of the old-fashioned 'his divinity' = the woman he loves – the object or reason of noble conduct. This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril. But combined and harmonized with religion (as long ago it was, producing much of that beautiful devotion to Our Lady that has been God's way of refining so much our gross manly natures and emotions, and also of warming and colouring our hard, bitter, religion) it can be very noble. Then it produces what I suppose is still felt, among those who retain even vestigiary Christianity, to be the highest ideal of love between man and woman. Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly 'theocentric'. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of 'true love', as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a 'love' that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).
Women really have not much part in all this, though they may use the language of romantic love, since it is so entwined in all our idioms. The sexual impulse makes women (naturally when unspoiled more unselfish) very sympathetic and understanding, or specially desirous of being so (or seeming so), and very ready to enter into all the interests, as far as they can, from ties to religion, of the young man they are attracted to. No intent necessarily to deceive: sheer instinct: the servient, helpmeet instinct, generously warmed by desire and young blood. Under this impulse they can in fact often achieve very remarkable insight and understanding, even of things otherwise outside their natural range: for it is their gift to be receptive, stimulated, fertilized (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point – and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him. But this is their natural avenue to love. Before the young woman knows where she is (and while the romantic young man, when he exists, is still sighing) she may actually 'fall in love'. Which for her, an unspoiled natural young woman, means that she wants to become the mother of the young man's children, even if that desire is by no means clear to her or explicit. And then things are going to happen: and they may be very painful and harmful, if things go wrong. Particularly if the young man only wanted a temporary guiding star and divinity (until he hitches his waggon to a brighter one), and was merely enjoying the flattery of sympathy nicely seasoned with a titillation of sex – all quite innocent, of course, and worlds away from 'seduction'.
You may meet in life (as in literature1) women who are flighty, or even plain wanton — I don't refer to mere flirtatiousness, the sparring practice for the real combat, but to women who are too silly to take even love seriously, or are actually so depraved as to enjoy 'conquests', or even enjoy the giving of pain – but these are abnormalities, even though false teaching, bad upbringing, and corrupt fashions may encourage them. Much though modern conditions have changed feminine circumstances, and the detail of what is considered propriety, they have not changed natural instinct. A man has a life-work, a career, (and male friends), all of which could (and do where he has any guts) survive the shipwreck of 'love'. A young woman, even one 'economically independent', as they say now (it usually really means economic subservience to male commercial employers instead of to a father or a family), begins to think of the 'bottom drawer' and dream of a home, almost at once. If she really falls in love, the shipwreck may really end on the rocks. Anyway women are in general much less romantic and more practical. Don't be misled by the fact that they are more 'sentimental' in words – freer with 'darling', and all that. They do not want a guiding star. They may idealize a plain young man into a hero; but they don't really need any such glamour either to fall in love or to remain in it. If they have any delusion it is that they can 'reform' men. They will take a rotter open-eyed, and even when the delusion of reforming him fails, go on loving him. They are, of course, much more realistic about the sexual relation. Unless perverted by bad contemporary fashions they do not as a rule talk 'bawdy'; not because they are purer than men (they are not) but because they don't find it funny. I have known those who pretended to, but it is a pretence. It may be intriguing, interesting, absorbing (even a great deal too absorbing) to them: but it is just plumb natural, a serious, obvious interest; where is the joke?
They have, of course, still to be more careful in sexual relations, for all the contraceptives. Mistakes are damaging physically and socially (and matrimonially). But they are instinctively, when uncorrupt, monogamous. Men are not. .... No good pretending. Men just ain't, not by their animal nature. Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of 'revealed' ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh. Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.
However, the essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up 'in the Church'. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it. When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along. Someone whom they might indeed very profitably have married, if only —. Hence divorce, to provide the 'if only'. And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His appearances). It is notorious that in fact happy marriages are more common where the 'choosing' by the young persons is even more limited, by parental or family authority, as long as there is a social ethic of plain unromantic responsibility and conjugal fidelity. But even in countries where the romantic tradition has so far affected social arrangements as to make people believe that the choosing of a mate is solely the concern of the young, only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined' for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life (yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by 'failure' and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean, heart, and fidelity of will.....
My own history is so exceptional, so wrong and imprudent in nearly every point that it makes it difficult to counsel prudence. Yet hard cases make bad law; and exceptional cases are not always good guides for others. For what it is worth here is some autobiography – mainly on this occasion directed towards the points of age, and finance.
I fell in love with your mother at the approximate age of 18. Quite genuinely, as has been shown – though of course defects of character and temperament have caused me often to fall below the ideal with which I started. Your mother was older than I, and not a Catholic. Altogether unfortunate, as viewed by a guardian. And it was in a sense very unfortunate; and in a way very bad for me. These things are absorbing and nervously exhausting. I was a clever boy in the throes of work for (a very necessary) Oxford scholarship. The combined tensions nearly produced a bad breakdown. I muffed my exams and though (as years afterwards my H[ead] M[aster] told me) I ought to have got a good scholarship, I only landed by the skin of my teeth an exhibition of £60 at Exeter: just enough with a school leaving scholarship] of the same amount to come up on (assisted by my dear old guardian). Of course there was a credit side, not so easily seen by the guardian. I was clever, but not industrious or single-minded; a large pan of my failure was due simply to not working (at least not at classics) not because I was in love, but because I was studying something else: Gothic and what not. Having the romantic upbringing I made a boy-and-girl affair serious, and made it the source of effort. Naturally rather a physical coward, I passed from a despised rabbit on a house second-team to school colours in two seasons. All that sort of thing. However, trouble arose: and I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most real fathers, but without any obligation, and 'dropping' the love-affair until I was 21. I don't regret my decision, though it was very hard on my lover. But that was not my fault. She was perfectly free and under no vow to me, and I should have had no just complaint (except according to the unreal romantic code) if she had got married to someone else. For very nearly three years I did not see or write to my lover. It was extremely hard, painful and bitter, especially at first. The effects were not wholly good: I fell back into folly and slackness and misspent a good deal of my first year at College. But I don't think anything else would have justified marriage on the basis of a boy's affair; and probably nothing else would have hardened the will enough to give such an affair (however genuine a case of true love) permanence. On the night of my 21st birthday I wrote again to your mother – Jan. 3, 1913. On Jan. 8th I went back to her, and became engaged, and informed an astonished family. I picked up my socks and did a spot of work (too late to save Hon. Mods. from disaster) – and then war broke out the next year, while I still had a year to go at college. In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in, especially for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage. No degree: no money: fiancée. I endured the obloquy, and hints becoming outspoken from relatives, stayed up, and produced a First in Finals in 1915. Bolted into the army: July 1915. I found the situation intolerable and married on March 22, 1916. May found me crossing the Channel (I still have the verse I wrote on the occasion!) for the carnage of the Somme.
Think of your mother! Yet I do not now for a moment feel that she was doing more than she should have been asked to do – not that that detracts from the credit of it. I was a young fellow, with a moderate degree, and apt to write verse, a few dwindling pounds p. a. (£20 – 40), and no prospects, a Second Lieut. on 7/6 a day in the infantry where the chances of survival were against you heavily (as a subaltern). She married me in 1916 and John was born in 1917 (conceived and carried during the starvation-year of 1917 and the great U-Boat campaign) round about the battle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed as far-off as it does now. I sold out, and spent to pay the nursing-home, the last of my few South African shares, 'my patrimony'.
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. .... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.
There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it. It idealizes 'love' — and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, 'service', courtesy, honour, and courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed contrary to) matrimony. Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity – of the old-fashioned 'his divinity' = the woman he loves – the object or reason of noble conduct. This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril. But combined and harmonized with religion (as long ago it was, producing much of that beautiful devotion to Our Lady that has been God's way of refining so much our gross manly natures and emotions, and also of warming and colouring our hard, bitter, religion) it can be very noble. Then it produces what I suppose is still felt, among those who retain even vestigiary Christianity, to be the highest ideal of love between man and woman. Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly 'theocentric'. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of 'true love', as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a 'love' that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).
Women really have not much part in all this, though they may use the language of romantic love, since it is so entwined in all our idioms. The sexual impulse makes women (naturally when unspoiled more unselfish) very sympathetic and understanding, or specially desirous of being so (or seeming so), and very ready to enter into all the interests, as far as they can, from ties to religion, of the young man they are attracted to. No intent necessarily to deceive: sheer instinct: the servient, helpmeet instinct, generously warmed by desire and young blood. Under this impulse they can in fact often achieve very remarkable insight and understanding, even of things otherwise outside their natural range: for it is their gift to be receptive, stimulated, fertilized (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point – and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him. But this is their natural avenue to love. Before the young woman knows where she is (and while the romantic young man, when he exists, is still sighing) she may actually 'fall in love'. Which for her, an unspoiled natural young woman, means that she wants to become the mother of the young man's children, even if that desire is by no means clear to her or explicit. And then things are going to happen: and they may be very painful and harmful, if things go wrong. Particularly if the young man only wanted a temporary guiding star and divinity (until he hitches his waggon to a brighter one), and was merely enjoying the flattery of sympathy nicely seasoned with a titillation of sex – all quite innocent, of course, and worlds away from 'seduction'.
You may meet in life (as in literature1) women who are flighty, or even plain wanton — I don't refer to mere flirtatiousness, the sparring practice for the real combat, but to women who are too silly to take even love seriously, or are actually so depraved as to enjoy 'conquests', or even enjoy the giving of pain – but these are abnormalities, even though false teaching, bad upbringing, and corrupt fashions may encourage them. Much though modern conditions have changed feminine circumstances, and the detail of what is considered propriety, they have not changed natural instinct. A man has a life-work, a career, (and male friends), all of which could (and do where he has any guts) survive the shipwreck of 'love'. A young woman, even one 'economically independent', as they say now (it usually really means economic subservience to male commercial employers instead of to a father or a family), begins to think of the 'bottom drawer' and dream of a home, almost at once. If she really falls in love, the shipwreck may really end on the rocks. Anyway women are in general much less romantic and more practical. Don't be misled by the fact that they are more 'sentimental' in words – freer with 'darling', and all that. They do not want a guiding star. They may idealize a plain young man into a hero; but they don't really need any such glamour either to fall in love or to remain in it. If they have any delusion it is that they can 'reform' men. They will take a rotter open-eyed, and even when the delusion of reforming him fails, go on loving him. They are, of course, much more realistic about the sexual relation. Unless perverted by bad contemporary fashions they do not as a rule talk 'bawdy'; not because they are purer than men (they are not) but because they don't find it funny. I have known those who pretended to, but it is a pretence. It may be intriguing, interesting, absorbing (even a great deal too absorbing) to them: but it is just plumb natural, a serious, obvious interest; where is the joke?
They have, of course, still to be more careful in sexual relations, for all the contraceptives. Mistakes are damaging physically and socially (and matrimonially). But they are instinctively, when uncorrupt, monogamous. Men are not. .... No good pretending. Men just ain't, not by their animal nature. Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of 'revealed' ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh. Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.
However, the essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up 'in the Church'. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it. When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along. Someone whom they might indeed very profitably have married, if only —. Hence divorce, to provide the 'if only'. And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His appearances). It is notorious that in fact happy marriages are more common where the 'choosing' by the young persons is even more limited, by parental or family authority, as long as there is a social ethic of plain unromantic responsibility and conjugal fidelity. But even in countries where the romantic tradition has so far affected social arrangements as to make people believe that the choosing of a mate is solely the concern of the young, only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined' for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life (yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by 'failure' and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean, heart, and fidelity of will.....
My own history is so exceptional, so wrong and imprudent in nearly every point that it makes it difficult to counsel prudence. Yet hard cases make bad law; and exceptional cases are not always good guides for others. For what it is worth here is some autobiography – mainly on this occasion directed towards the points of age, and finance.
I fell in love with your mother at the approximate age of 18. Quite genuinely, as has been shown – though of course defects of character and temperament have caused me often to fall below the ideal with which I started. Your mother was older than I, and not a Catholic. Altogether unfortunate, as viewed by a guardian. And it was in a sense very unfortunate; and in a way very bad for me. These things are absorbing and nervously exhausting. I was a clever boy in the throes of work for (a very necessary) Oxford scholarship. The combined tensions nearly produced a bad breakdown. I muffed my exams and though (as years afterwards my H[ead] M[aster] told me) I ought to have got a good scholarship, I only landed by the skin of my teeth an exhibition of £60 at Exeter: just enough with a school leaving scholarship] of the same amount to come up on (assisted by my dear old guardian). Of course there was a credit side, not so easily seen by the guardian. I was clever, but not industrious or single-minded; a large pan of my failure was due simply to not working (at least not at classics) not because I was in love, but because I was studying something else: Gothic and what not. Having the romantic upbringing I made a boy-and-girl affair serious, and made it the source of effort. Naturally rather a physical coward, I passed from a despised rabbit on a house second-team to school colours in two seasons. All that sort of thing. However, trouble arose: and I had to choose between disobeying and grieving (or deceiving) a guardian who had been a father to me, more than most real fathers, but without any obligation, and 'dropping' the love-affair until I was 21. I don't regret my decision, though it was very hard on my lover. But that was not my fault. She was perfectly free and under no vow to me, and I should have had no just complaint (except according to the unreal romantic code) if she had got married to someone else. For very nearly three years I did not see or write to my lover. It was extremely hard, painful and bitter, especially at first. The effects were not wholly good: I fell back into folly and slackness and misspent a good deal of my first year at College. But I don't think anything else would have justified marriage on the basis of a boy's affair; and probably nothing else would have hardened the will enough to give such an affair (however genuine a case of true love) permanence. On the night of my 21st birthday I wrote again to your mother – Jan. 3, 1913. On Jan. 8th I went back to her, and became engaged, and informed an astonished family. I picked up my socks and did a spot of work (too late to save Hon. Mods. from disaster) – and then war broke out the next year, while I still had a year to go at college. In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in, especially for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage. No degree: no money: fiancée. I endured the obloquy, and hints becoming outspoken from relatives, stayed up, and produced a First in Finals in 1915. Bolted into the army: July 1915. I found the situation intolerable and married on March 22, 1916. May found me crossing the Channel (I still have the verse I wrote on the occasion!) for the carnage of the Somme.
Think of your mother! Yet I do not now for a moment feel that she was doing more than she should have been asked to do – not that that detracts from the credit of it. I was a young fellow, with a moderate degree, and apt to write verse, a few dwindling pounds p. a. (£20 – 40), and no prospects, a Second Lieut. on 7/6 a day in the infantry where the chances of survival were against you heavily (as a subaltern). She married me in 1916 and John was born in 1917 (conceived and carried during the starvation-year of 1917 and the great U-Boat campaign) round about the battle of Cambrai, when the end of the war seemed as far-off as it does now. I sold out, and spent to pay the nursing-home, the last of my few South African shares, 'my patrimony'.
Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. .... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.
Richard J. Clark writes:
“The Celebration of the Liturgy is the most important act of evangelization.”
The first paragraph of this chapter states extraordinarily simple, yet profound truth with regard to evangelization:
“One result of the liturgy’s vital relationship with the Sacred Scriptures is that the liturgy is a primary source of the Christian faith; it contains and expresses the most constitutive elements of that faith. If the church believes what it prays, then every liturgy is a profession of faith. In particular, every Eucharistic celebration is the highest profession of faith. The faith of a Christian is expressed in a fundamental way in the Eucharistic prayer. There is, then, an indissoluble link between the liturgy and the transmission of faith. We can say, in fact, that the celebration of the liturgy is the most important act of evangelization.” (pg. 209, The Spiritual Meaning of the Liturgy)In citing the “vital relationship” between the scriptures and the liturgy, we gain a greater understanding of the role of sacred music. As the mass is a sung prayer, and scripture the foundation of the liturgy, then it is the scripture that we primarily sing. This is simple, profound, and revolutionary.
In any parish setting, it is incontrovertibly the liturgy that is the front-line of engagement and drawing in the faithful. One generally becomes more involved in a parish after being drawn in by the liturgy. It is a sort of “ministry of first impressions” that matter. This is why preparation is essential which the faithful deserve.
HOWEVER, LET US NOT MISTAKE THE MASS for something that we do or create. It is the Eucharist that unites, not something we do. It is God who lives and acts in us—God who is engaging us—God who is drawing us ever towards Him. We do not draw people into the Church. We can only open the door—a vital thing to do. Therefore, our preparation of the liturgy should point towards God instead of a form of marketing our individual parish. (Yet in doing the former, we may very well happily accomplish the latter as a byproduct.)
Yet to focus on the goal—pointing to God—Boselli warns against gathering in the name of ourselves or sentimentality and “human affections,” He emphatically reminds us that we are people “God, and no one else, has called to himself.”
“It is to your parish assembly to which God calls you…Why? Because that concrete assembly, where you encounter people whom you have not chosen, teaches you what the church is. The church is not a club made up of friends who enjoy spending time together, and the liturgy is not a musical concert (although singing and music of high quality is important). In the assembly of the Church we do not gather in the name of human affections and friendships; rather, we gather ‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’” (pg. 218-219, ibid)But what about those who insist upon “realism”? That it is not possible to evangelize, to engage people (especially young people—the most sought-after demographic) into the liturgy by focusing on God and reverence? Yet there is an interesting paradox that Boselli cites, something we see all around us:
”There is a paradox here: those young people who embrace masses and spectacular liturgies are in fact in search of a greater interiorization of their relationship with God through a more meditative and contemplative liturgy….Presbyters and educators must therefore confront and manage a new form of devotio—no longer moderna but (pg.227 ibid)Boselli further warns of giving into sensationalism for the sake of transient emotional sentiment.
“…we must be vigilant that an exaltation of the feelings and emotionalism does not come at the expense of rational thought, interiorization, spiritual understanding, and personal appropriation of the contents and the meaning of the liturgy. The Christian liturgy, though not solely a matter of rationality, is a loghiké lattreía, a ‘worship in word’ and ‘according to reason, (see Rom 12:1) Easy feelings and superficial affections do not, in the long run nourish the life of the believer; we need solid food of the word of God and the Eucharist, which have been from the beginning the only solid and substantial nourishment of the Christian.” (pg. 229, ibid)If the liturgy is a “worship in word” the emphasis of sacred music, therefore, must be on the word and not sentiment. Again, this does not preclude beauty. In fact, it demands beauty, as the only thing worthy of the Word of God. This beauty therefore must point to God, not towards our personal feelings, sentiments or a self-congratulatory celebration of community.
* * *
HERE IS A DECISION we must make in light of evangelization: Do we focus on ourselves, reaching a mile wide but a centimeter deep, or do we engage fellow Christians one at a time, as we unite in the Word and in the Eucharist? Ironically, if we do the latter, our faith communities will be stronger than ever. Remember, it is God alone who calls us to Himself.
Friday, July 25, 2014
James Kalb writes:
In his speech closing the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI noted that “the trend of modern culture” is “centered on humanity, … the modern mind” is “accustomed to assess everything in terms of usefulness,” “the fundamental act of the human person … tends to pronounce in favor of his own absolute autonomy, … [and] “secularism seems the legitimate consequence of modern thought and the highest wisdom in the temporal ordering of society.”
The Council proposed to deal with that situation, according to the Holy Father, by working with it as much as possible in hopes of eventually getting beyond it. In its deliberations, therefore, “the modern world’s values were not only respected but honored,” so much so that the Church “felt the need … almost to run after [the society in which she lives] in its rapid and continuous change.” The outcome of the discussions was “a simple, new and solemn teaching to love man in order to love God … to love man … not as a means but as the first step toward the final and transcendent goal which is the basis and cause of every love.”
So the ultimate goal did not change: “the effort to look on [God], and to center our heart in Him which we call contemplation, is the highest, the most perfect act of the spirit, the act which even today can and must be at the apex of all human activity.” Nonetheless, the Holy Father seemed to say, the Church must meet and value people where they are, and lead them to God by developing the implications of what they already know, want, and do. Just as all roads lead to Rome, one might say, all human interests and efforts, pursued honestly, consistently, and fully, should lead to God.
Such was the hope, a hope that indeed has much to be said for it. Nonetheless, the process turned out more difficult than expected. As the same pope noted not many years later, the period after the Council saw “the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty.” The problems were severe enough to make him worry that the “smoke of Satan” had somehow entered the Church.
The problems can certainly be understood, as the pope suggested, as the result of “an intervention of an adverse power.” Like God, though, Satan acts through secondary causes, so more concrete readings of the situation are also possible. His Holiness observed that the Council in its “real and deep intentions” proposed honoring the goals of this human world as part of bringing that world to God. That’s a tricky business, though, and very few of us combine great intellectual breadth and acuity with steady sanctity of purpose. For many Catholics it’s been difficult, in the midst of the confusions, ambiguities, and temptations of life, to keep ultimate intentions vividly in mind when it’s easier to fall in line and run after the present world and honor its goals simply as they understand themselves.
The influence exerted by the secular world is very strong, and it’s difficult to harness to higher purposes. That world is not simply waiting to hear our message, because it already has a message of its own based on its own sense of what’s real. It has nothing it calls a religion, but it has something that functions as such, because it has a way of understanding the world that it believes to be true and morally obligatory.
We are all, faithful Catholics and secular humanists alike, members of the faith-based as well as the reality-based community. God is the Most Real Being, the Ens Realissimum, so whatever is most real to us acts as the center of something that serves as our religion. Because our sense of what’s real lies behind everything we think and do, it’s not something we can isolate and decide at will one way or another. Instead, it grows on us from a thousand sources—upbringing, education, personal experience, what those around us and those we take as our authorities treat as a serious matter.
Those sources are largely social because man is social. If people don’t agree on what’s real they have a hard time cooperating, so a common understanding of reality is basic to every society. That principle applies to modern Western society as well, and therein lies a problem. The public discussion that orders today’s society rejects transcendent realities in favor of a stripped-down understanding of the world. In that understanding what’s real is defined by what we can see and measure, together with our feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Those things are treated as self-contained, so that they don’t point to anything beyond themselves.
On such an understanding the human world generates its own meanings, and becomes the source and criterion of what is good, beautiful, and true. The result is that it takes the place of the divine: human society becomes the Most Real Being. That is why we now face, as the pope also noted in his address concluding the Council, a “religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God.”
The philosopher Hegel already noticed the situation two hundred years ago when he observed that “reading the morning newspaper is the realist’s morning prayer.” It’s how a faithful reader of The New York Times reaffirms his place and orientation in the world. Such people can indeed be led from secular concerns to something higher. However, that can happen only if they are willing to be led, and when successful in life they are likely to want to stay where they are. So the self-centeredness of the modern world is not just the result of confusion or ignorance that can be dissolved by appropriately-framed explanations regarding the transcendent implications of realities already visible to everyone. It’s also the result of intentional rejection of those implications by social leaders. The “smoke of Satan” is not only in the Church.
To make matters worse, that refusal to be led beyond this-worldly concerns has come to be publicly identified with all that is good. The highest values publicly recognized today are autonomy, man determining his course and even his nature by his own choice, and equality, the equal standing of all choices that are consistent with equal treatment for the choices of others. Those principles are considered requirements of reason and viewed as the only possible basis of a civilization of peace, progress, and human dignity.
To reject those principles as highest standards, it is thought, is to choose hatred and oppression, so to speak of love is to sign on to them. Expressions like “human rights” and “social justice” are interpreted accordingly, and explaining why the Church means something different requires arguments that not many can present clearly and very few secular people understand or pay much attention to. The result is that the true goals of the Church are confused with those of secular progressivism, and when they seem to differ as a clear practical matter, as with what are dismissively referred to as “pelvic issues,” people feel entitled to assume that the differences are hangovers from the past that will someday change and in the mean time can be dismissed as secondary in importance.
It seems, then, that to retrieve and carry forward the goal of the Council, bringing modern man to God, we need more than ever to emphasize what’s excluded from the secular concerns that are increasingly treated as complete in themselves. We need to insist on opening the windows of the modern world. At the Council the Church emphasized an irenic conception of the Faith that would accept secular concerns, build on them, and complete them. The Apostle Paul, who “became all things to all men, that [he] might save all,” knew how to be irenic in that way. He also knew that he sometimes had to preach the word out of season, and insist on points that were a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Recent experience shows the importance of following him on that point as well. We are nothing unless (to recycle a political slogan) we provide a choice and not an echo.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/world-church
The Council proposed to deal with that situation, according to the Holy Father, by working with it as much as possible in hopes of eventually getting beyond it. In its deliberations, therefore, “the modern world’s values were not only respected but honored,” so much so that the Church “felt the need … almost to run after [the society in which she lives] in its rapid and continuous change.” The outcome of the discussions was “a simple, new and solemn teaching to love man in order to love God … to love man … not as a means but as the first step toward the final and transcendent goal which is the basis and cause of every love.”
So the ultimate goal did not change: “the effort to look on [God], and to center our heart in Him which we call contemplation, is the highest, the most perfect act of the spirit, the act which even today can and must be at the apex of all human activity.” Nonetheless, the Holy Father seemed to say, the Church must meet and value people where they are, and lead them to God by developing the implications of what they already know, want, and do. Just as all roads lead to Rome, one might say, all human interests and efforts, pursued honestly, consistently, and fully, should lead to God.
Such was the hope, a hope that indeed has much to be said for it. Nonetheless, the process turned out more difficult than expected. As the same pope noted not many years later, the period after the Council saw “the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty.” The problems were severe enough to make him worry that the “smoke of Satan” had somehow entered the Church.
The problems can certainly be understood, as the pope suggested, as the result of “an intervention of an adverse power.” Like God, though, Satan acts through secondary causes, so more concrete readings of the situation are also possible. His Holiness observed that the Council in its “real and deep intentions” proposed honoring the goals of this human world as part of bringing that world to God. That’s a tricky business, though, and very few of us combine great intellectual breadth and acuity with steady sanctity of purpose. For many Catholics it’s been difficult, in the midst of the confusions, ambiguities, and temptations of life, to keep ultimate intentions vividly in mind when it’s easier to fall in line and run after the present world and honor its goals simply as they understand themselves.
The influence exerted by the secular world is very strong, and it’s difficult to harness to higher purposes. That world is not simply waiting to hear our message, because it already has a message of its own based on its own sense of what’s real. It has nothing it calls a religion, but it has something that functions as such, because it has a way of understanding the world that it believes to be true and morally obligatory.
We are all, faithful Catholics and secular humanists alike, members of the faith-based as well as the reality-based community. God is the Most Real Being, the Ens Realissimum, so whatever is most real to us acts as the center of something that serves as our religion. Because our sense of what’s real lies behind everything we think and do, it’s not something we can isolate and decide at will one way or another. Instead, it grows on us from a thousand sources—upbringing, education, personal experience, what those around us and those we take as our authorities treat as a serious matter.
Those sources are largely social because man is social. If people don’t agree on what’s real they have a hard time cooperating, so a common understanding of reality is basic to every society. That principle applies to modern Western society as well, and therein lies a problem. The public discussion that orders today’s society rejects transcendent realities in favor of a stripped-down understanding of the world. In that understanding what’s real is defined by what we can see and measure, together with our feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Those things are treated as self-contained, so that they don’t point to anything beyond themselves.
On such an understanding the human world generates its own meanings, and becomes the source and criterion of what is good, beautiful, and true. The result is that it takes the place of the divine: human society becomes the Most Real Being. That is why we now face, as the pope also noted in his address concluding the Council, a “religion (for such it is) of man who makes himself God.”
The philosopher Hegel already noticed the situation two hundred years ago when he observed that “reading the morning newspaper is the realist’s morning prayer.” It’s how a faithful reader of The New York Times reaffirms his place and orientation in the world. Such people can indeed be led from secular concerns to something higher. However, that can happen only if they are willing to be led, and when successful in life they are likely to want to stay where they are. So the self-centeredness of the modern world is not just the result of confusion or ignorance that can be dissolved by appropriately-framed explanations regarding the transcendent implications of realities already visible to everyone. It’s also the result of intentional rejection of those implications by social leaders. The “smoke of Satan” is not only in the Church.
To make matters worse, that refusal to be led beyond this-worldly concerns has come to be publicly identified with all that is good. The highest values publicly recognized today are autonomy, man determining his course and even his nature by his own choice, and equality, the equal standing of all choices that are consistent with equal treatment for the choices of others. Those principles are considered requirements of reason and viewed as the only possible basis of a civilization of peace, progress, and human dignity.
To reject those principles as highest standards, it is thought, is to choose hatred and oppression, so to speak of love is to sign on to them. Expressions like “human rights” and “social justice” are interpreted accordingly, and explaining why the Church means something different requires arguments that not many can present clearly and very few secular people understand or pay much attention to. The result is that the true goals of the Church are confused with those of secular progressivism, and when they seem to differ as a clear practical matter, as with what are dismissively referred to as “pelvic issues,” people feel entitled to assume that the differences are hangovers from the past that will someday change and in the mean time can be dismissed as secondary in importance.
It seems, then, that to retrieve and carry forward the goal of the Council, bringing modern man to God, we need more than ever to emphasize what’s excluded from the secular concerns that are increasingly treated as complete in themselves. We need to insist on opening the windows of the modern world. At the Council the Church emphasized an irenic conception of the Faith that would accept secular concerns, build on them, and complete them. The Apostle Paul, who “became all things to all men, that [he] might save all,” knew how to be irenic in that way. He also knew that he sometimes had to preach the word out of season, and insist on points that were a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. Recent experience shows the importance of following him on that point as well. We are nothing unless (to recycle a political slogan) we provide a choice and not an echo.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/world-church
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Ecclesiastical Narcissists
Few of you read my old blog, which I wrote daily from early 2007 until late January, 2009. That blog was highly political, as I was writing about the growing Marxist agenda in American politics, the problem with Black Liberation Theology, and the exposure of narcissism in American culture.
Dr. Sanity taught me so much about the narcissism imbedded in American politics that year, and she was so disturbed after the last election, she stopped writing.
She warned us for years of the impeding destruction of America because of the number of Gen Xers who had fallen into or been raised to be narcissists. Of course, there are many societal reasons for this, including contraception and the lack of religion. Nurture rather than nature seems to create narcissists.
Dr. Sanity was the first to use this term with regard to the present political personalities, including those who now run Washington.
However, she did not write about narcissism in the Church. Too many Catholics look to politics and see the narcissists at the helm, but ignore the fact that the same cultural evils which created political narcissists has created ecclesiastical ones.
I first met people like this in positions of authority in chancery offices and in Catholic schools, in administration.
The narcissist may be defined as a person who not only thinks he or she is better than everyone else, but one who honestly expects the world to revolve around his or her needs and desires.
The person who is a narcissist lives in an emotional turmoil of feeling hurt and desiring constant attention.
The true narcissist cannot understand the feelings of others and lacks empathy, except towards himself or herself.
Now, one of the obvious signs of narcissism is that the person only wants the best-the best clothes, the best food, the best car, the best vacation and so on. Such a person is never satisfied with second best.
But, the emotions cause the person to see things only from his or her point of view and not others.
A Catholic narcissist, and many are running the Church, refuses to be obedient in large or small things, as he or she only sees the personal point of view as valid.
Sometimes, these persons cannot approach a healthy relationship with God or with others in the community of faith because they simply cannot understand others and the needs of others. One way is which narcissism is very different from healthy self-esteem is found in the emotions. Emotional satisfaction rules the narcissist, and the rational runs a weak second. With regard to healthy self-esteem, there is a true recognition of sin and the need for repentance in that happy, mature state.
Those who decry the usual Novus Ordo Mass as full of false emotion and a playing to the emotions in music and in gestures may be sensing the emotional needs of the many narcissists who go to Mass. not to praise God but for their own emotional fix.
Chancery offices are full to the brim with those who have ruined Catholic school systems and even parish structures because of the overwhelming need, as they see it, for control. Those priests involved in wreckovatons may suffer from this emotional need to have their ideas hold sway over the guidelines and sanity of tradition.
The trouble is that one cannot talk with a narcissist, as all the meaning in his or her life rests in the emotions. How they feel is of the uppermost importance.
They judge only by the need for admiration and a sense of acceptance. Hence, liturgists who consistently ignore Rome's guidelines and rules for what they see as important may be working out of complete self-absorption. The many "we songs" play to the narcissistic tendencies of exaggerated self-importance and emotional satisfaction not only in those who wrote the songs, but those who sing these.
We have created another generation of narcissists by feeding them with songs about me, we, the people, instead of praising God and teaching the real lowliness of the place of the creature, the son, the daughter.
But, sadly, Catholic narcissists can be found among the effete who attend the TLM. Those who have to have the best choir, the best sermons, the best architecture may not be seeking the true spirituality of the TLM, but only the emotional fix. Like a man who only wants a trophy wife, some seek out the TLM as the trophy Mass, which feeds their sense of superiority.
Those who deny the validity of the NO have not only removed themselves from the Teaching Magisterium, but fall into a small group of those determining the entire Catholic religion from their own point of view-a classic narcissist tendency.
How is it that our society has produced so many narcissists in the past fifty years or so? Is it not a sign of the decadence of an entire culture that the narcissists are running the show both in government and in church?
Where egos run liturgies, where egos run interpretations of tradition which never existed, a parish has a huge problem.
Sadly, only the seeking of humility and the constant awareness of sinfulness can combat the rule of those who only love themselves.
Where there is emotional chaos in a parish, look for the narcissist.
I also think that narcissism can cause same-sex attraction, as one is only loving the same and not the different, the other, the other gender. How hard it is to love one who is completely different, such as a woman loving a man and a man loving a woman? But, such is God's plan. And, such is a topic for another post.
Here is the anti-narcissist prayer.
O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ca/2014/05/2007-revisited-ecclesiastical.html
Dr. Sanity taught me so much about the narcissism imbedded in American politics that year, and she was so disturbed after the last election, she stopped writing.
She warned us for years of the impeding destruction of America because of the number of Gen Xers who had fallen into or been raised to be narcissists. Of course, there are many societal reasons for this, including contraception and the lack of religion. Nurture rather than nature seems to create narcissists.
Dr. Sanity was the first to use this term with regard to the present political personalities, including those who now run Washington.
However, she did not write about narcissism in the Church. Too many Catholics look to politics and see the narcissists at the helm, but ignore the fact that the same cultural evils which created political narcissists has created ecclesiastical ones.
I first met people like this in positions of authority in chancery offices and in Catholic schools, in administration.
The narcissist may be defined as a person who not only thinks he or she is better than everyone else, but one who honestly expects the world to revolve around his or her needs and desires.
The person who is a narcissist lives in an emotional turmoil of feeling hurt and desiring constant attention.
The true narcissist cannot understand the feelings of others and lacks empathy, except towards himself or herself.
Now, one of the obvious signs of narcissism is that the person only wants the best-the best clothes, the best food, the best car, the best vacation and so on. Such a person is never satisfied with second best.
But, the emotions cause the person to see things only from his or her point of view and not others.
A Catholic narcissist, and many are running the Church, refuses to be obedient in large or small things, as he or she only sees the personal point of view as valid.
Sometimes, these persons cannot approach a healthy relationship with God or with others in the community of faith because they simply cannot understand others and the needs of others. One way is which narcissism is very different from healthy self-esteem is found in the emotions. Emotional satisfaction rules the narcissist, and the rational runs a weak second. With regard to healthy self-esteem, there is a true recognition of sin and the need for repentance in that happy, mature state.
Those who decry the usual Novus Ordo Mass as full of false emotion and a playing to the emotions in music and in gestures may be sensing the emotional needs of the many narcissists who go to Mass. not to praise God but for their own emotional fix.
Chancery offices are full to the brim with those who have ruined Catholic school systems and even parish structures because of the overwhelming need, as they see it, for control. Those priests involved in wreckovatons may suffer from this emotional need to have their ideas hold sway over the guidelines and sanity of tradition.
The trouble is that one cannot talk with a narcissist, as all the meaning in his or her life rests in the emotions. How they feel is of the uppermost importance.
They judge only by the need for admiration and a sense of acceptance. Hence, liturgists who consistently ignore Rome's guidelines and rules for what they see as important may be working out of complete self-absorption. The many "we songs" play to the narcissistic tendencies of exaggerated self-importance and emotional satisfaction not only in those who wrote the songs, but those who sing these.
We have created another generation of narcissists by feeding them with songs about me, we, the people, instead of praising God and teaching the real lowliness of the place of the creature, the son, the daughter.
But, sadly, Catholic narcissists can be found among the effete who attend the TLM. Those who have to have the best choir, the best sermons, the best architecture may not be seeking the true spirituality of the TLM, but only the emotional fix. Like a man who only wants a trophy wife, some seek out the TLM as the trophy Mass, which feeds their sense of superiority.
Those who deny the validity of the NO have not only removed themselves from the Teaching Magisterium, but fall into a small group of those determining the entire Catholic religion from their own point of view-a classic narcissist tendency.
How is it that our society has produced so many narcissists in the past fifty years or so? Is it not a sign of the decadence of an entire culture that the narcissists are running the show both in government and in church?
Where egos run liturgies, where egos run interpretations of tradition which never existed, a parish has a huge problem.
Sadly, only the seeking of humility and the constant awareness of sinfulness can combat the rule of those who only love themselves.
Where there is emotional chaos in a parish, look for the narcissist.
I also think that narcissism can cause same-sex attraction, as one is only loving the same and not the different, the other, the other gender. How hard it is to love one who is completely different, such as a woman loving a man and a man loving a woman? But, such is God's plan. And, such is a topic for another post.
Here is the anti-narcissist prayer.
O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ca/2014/05/2007-revisited-ecclesiastical.html
Friday, July 11, 2014
Damian John Gauci writes:
"The true contemplative is not less interested than others in normal life, not less concerned with what goes on in the world, but more interested, more concerned. The fact that he or she is a contemplative makes them capable of a greater interest and a deeper concern. The contemplative has the inestimable gift of appreciating at their real worth values that are permanent, authentically deep, human. truly spiritual and even divine. Their mission is to be a complete and whole person, with an instinctive and generous need to further the same wholeness in others, and in all humanity. They arrive at this, however, not by superior gifts and talents, but by the simplicity and poverty which are essential to their state because these alone keep one traveling in the way that is spiritual, divine and beyond understanding.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
The Importance of the Contemplatives of Saint Joseph within Life of the Church
Why we are committed to our lives of deep prayer and contemplation and expressed in our active apostolate and to the Life of the Church is stated beautifully and profoundly by Pope Paul VI:
“The work of contemplation overflows, benefiting the entire Church. The Church needs this work of contemplation that it may protect its life and increase its growth. The Church is in dire need of those who excel in the interior life and are intent upon recollecting themselves in God and be aflame, to their innermost being, with love for heavenly things. If such persons are lacking, if their lives are withered and weak, it necessarily follows that the strength of the whole Mystical Body of Christ is diminished. Consequently, serious damage would be inflicted on the knowledge of divine realities, theology, sacred preaching, the apostolate, and all the Christian life of the faithful”[Pope Paul VI, to the Cistercians, December 8, 1968].
We believe the contemplative life of a member of the COSJ belongs not to himself alone, but to the Life and Holiness of the whole Church. The Church's life becomes fuller because the COSJ join themselves by the gift of their whole lives to Christ in prayer and in firmly following the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.
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