Love & Matrimony

I have gotten a lot of comments on my post from last week on courtship and dating that took issue with my statement that love was not necessary for the sacrament of marriage. I feel that I must clarify this position and address some criticisms of it.

When I say that love is not necessary for marriage, I emphatically do not mean that true love (charity) is not requisite to have a happy marriage, or a good home, or that it is not commanded by Christ, not only to our spouses, but for everyone. In fact, it is indeed commanded by St. Paul in the context of marriage ("Husbands, love your wives"-Eph. 5:25). So, I am definitely not downplaying the importance of love in a marriage.

But it is nevertheless true that sacramentally, love is not necessary to bring forth the sacrament of marriage, which is the point I was getting at. The sacrament of marriage can be brought about without love. All it that is required for the form and the matter is a Catholic man and a woman free of any impediments, public vows, and a witness of the Church. That is the nuts n' bolts of a sacramental marriage. So, while I agree that love is essential for the practical working out of a good marriage, I maintain that it is not necessary in the least way for bringing about the sacrament of matrimony. I don't think this needs any "proofs" but I will submit two.

First, if we look at annulments (and yes, we all know they are abused) we will see that an annulment regards impediments to marriage that were in place at the time the marriage was celebrated, so that though the couple thought they were getting married in good faith (i.e., putative marriage), they were in fact not getting married at all due to the presence of an impeding or diriment impediment. Now, if "lack of love" was essential either as matter or form to bring about the sacrament, then "lack of love" or "He didn't really love me" would be grounds for an annulment. Of course, even in our modern Church where annulments can be granted for a variety of reasons, lack of love is not one of them. This may be an element in the "psychological" reasons for an annulment, but this alone is not grounds for an annulment and never has been. Therefore, since lack of love cannot annul a marriage, we have to assume that love is not (strictly) necessary to bring the sacrament about.

Second, if love were requisite for the sacrament, none of the world's many politically arranged marriages throughout history would have been valid. Consider in the Middle Ages, where a monarch might bargain with another monarch and receive the other king's daughter in marriage. He would have never seen her, and even the marriage itself was contracted over long distance, via a proxy (an odd rite where the king would ceremonially lay down in bed with a minister of the other family to symbolize comsummating the marriage). The King would meet his new bride for the first time after they were already married legally and sacramentally and then would proceed to consummate the union with a woman who was practically a complete stranger. This was the norm for Christian marriage among the upper nobility in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, a type which everybody, including the popes, recognized as valid. For example. Pope Julius II regarded the marriage of Arthur Tudor to Catherine of Aragon as valid, though the two had never met and were married by proxy. If love were a strict requirement, the pope could not have done this.

There is, however a degree of fidelity or truthfulness that is required to bring about the sacrament. The vows have to be said in good faith, and the vows of course state that the man promises to love and care for the spouse. We must notice something: in the vows, the man swears that he will love his wife, not that he already does. And how is the love to be manifest in these vows? By what comes next: in swearing to take care of her, defend her, care for her in sickness and in the raising up of children, etc. In other words, this love is presumed not by the affection that the husband bears the bride, but by the practical things he promises to do on her behalf.

So long as the husband promises these things in good faith, the sacrament occurs. But let us not confuse the promising of the things with the things themselves. It is necessary that the hubsand and the wife vow to care for each other in love (which is seen in this sacrament as the practical supporting of each other's physical needs and the raising of children), but it is not necessary that they possess that love at the time of the ceremony. In fact, the marriage rite's conception of love is very different from the modern idea of love as an emotive affection ("romantic fondness"). Therefore, traditionally speaking, it is possible for the paradox to arise of a man loving his wife but not liking her, because his matrimonial love is manifest in the tending to practical and material needs.

Now, let me be frank about something historically: it was always seen as ideal and beneficial for the spouses to have true affective attachment to each other. That was seen as a given. You get married, go off with your spouse and learn to love and cherish them as time goes on. However, people who married "for love" were considered to be fools, ignorant of how their union would affect their later lives. If someone did have a marriage for love that worked out well, it was considered a happy (but rare) occurrence. Thus the sister of Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, when she married the Duke of Suffolk Charles Brandon for love, was considered rash and foolhardy, and Henry even considered prosecuting against her for marrying without his consent. But he later relented and Mary and Charles had a happy marriage - that is not unusual, but we must look at how it was perceived, and the people of the day perceived their union as extraordinarily fortuitous, for usually such unions "for love" wound up ruinous, as in Romeo and Juliet, for example. Obviously the play is not a true story, but it demonstrates how people thought: though romantic unions for love were passionate, enticing and sometimes envied, in the end (it was thought) they were bound to turn out poorly.

Therefore, yes, of course we want to have love in our marriages. I never insinuated otherwise. But however much we may want to exalt marital love, we are bound to admit that strictly speaking, it is not necessary to bring about the sacrament of matrimony.

The tired old "fruits" argument

Here is a comment from a reader on a recent post I did on news from Rome that the Pope was going to announce some new (stricter) guidelines for dealing with alleged apparitions. Here is what this reader said:

Mathew [sic] 7:16 "You will know them by their fruits"

Despite opinions to the contrary, Medjugorje is bringing souls to Catholicism and Christ, including me. I was not interested in Catholicism until my wife dragged me there and I had an unexpected and uncoerced conversion. I'm now in RCIA, attend the Mass regularly and listen to the Catholic Channel on XM and EWTN whenever I can. No one can truly understand Medjugorje unless they visit there.

Medjugorje statistics for 2008:

Holy Communions distributed 1,357,100
Concelebrating priests - total: 31,724
Evening Holy Mass: 12,375
Largest number of languages in which the Gospel was read during the Evening Mass: 16
Meeting for leaders 125 participants
Meeting for priests 233 participants
Meeting for married couples 90 couples
Youth Festival more then 50,000 participants
Peace March 3,000 participants

Anniversary of the Apparitions Mass 50,000 participants
Mass on Cross Mountain 20,000 participants
New Year’s Vigil 10,000 participants
Statistics - “Domus Pacis” Retreat house
Fasting, prayer and silence seminars 21 seminars - 790 participants
Franciscan Youth Fraternity 10 seminars - 335 participants
Altar Boys 1 seminar - 32 boys
Seminars for young girls 7 seminars - 213 girls
Other seminars 13 seminars - 462 participants

First of all, I do want to congratulate this gentleman on his reception into the Church, but I find serious fault with this "fruits" argument. This is the same old canard that Medjugorje enthusiasts have been throwing around for decades now when any sensible criticism is leveled against the alleged apparitions: It must be from God because of all these good "fruits." This is an argument I totally reject, and I intend to give a thorough rebuttal to this oft made assertion here.

1) To borrow from Mr. Edmund Burke, these numbers would be great evidence for Medjugorje's authenticity, if the Kingdom of Heaven were a matter of mathematics.

This argument amounts to saying that it must be right because everybody is doing it. Sheer numbers do not mean anything at all. The Kingdom of Heaven is qualitative, not quantitative. On the last day it is not about how many people said "Lord, Lord," but about how many have done the will of the Father Who is in heaven. It has often been remarked by many theologians that the love of God is so magnanimous that Christ would still have come and died upon the Cross even if He knew that but a single soul would respond to His grace.

The fact that many people are buying into something, even within the Church, doesn't mean anything to me. In the Old Testament (and the New), one could make a strong argument that the Faith usually is preserved and handed on by what the Bible calls a "remnant." The theology behind the idea of the "remnant" is very interesting, but I will not go into it here. Suffice it to say that we must heed the warning of Christ: the true path is narrow. So don't come throwing around statistics about how many people go to Medjugorje. The Mormon Church has over 13 million members and 52,000 missionaries too, and I'm sure a lot of them are led to lead decent, moral lives by means of their faith. Are we going to apply this same argument to them? After all, they're making lots of baptisms!

2) Numbers especially do not matter if the message is wrong; i.e., the quantitative loses all value if the qualitative is errant.

This is the reason why nobody would make the same case about the Mormons - sure they have 52,000 missionaries and thousands of baptisms every year, but we all understand that the missionaries are spreading error and the baptisms are into an errant faith.

Now, Medjugorje is not as errant as the Mormons, don't get me wrong. But it is a fact that when people go to Medjugorje and defend it, they are defending a phenomenon that (1) Has been condemned by the local ordinary many times (2) Is in a manifest state of disobedience (3) Promulgates questionable doctrines via the alleged seers (4) Promotes a type of pseduo-spiritual emotionalism (5) Is radically different from anything in Catholic Tradition.

So, when you quote how many seminars and conferences, I must ask, "And what is being taught at these conferences?" If you point to the Youth Festival, I say, "So what? The NCYC Youth Festival had over 20,000 people there and it was hardly Catholic and had lots of heresy and was probably positively harmful to many souls." The fact that lot's of people participate in this stuff is meaningless if the content is bad. So you had 1,357,100 Holy Communions distributed? How many of these were done in the hand, by lay ministers, to people who had not fasted, were in a state of sin or did not believe in the Real Presence? Maybe many; maybe none -we have no way to know this, but in general, the bigger the gathering, the larger the abuses and the greater the margin of people who will receive with inappropriate dispositions.

3) Baptisms, conversions and seminars, while good, are not proof of supernatural activity.

This is one of my biggest hang-ups with Medjugorje. When I say that the apparitions are false, people say, like our reader, "I was not interested in Catholicism until my wife dragged me there and I had an unexpected and uncoerced conversion." Well, praise the Lord! But let me ask you, does that establish the supernatural nature of the apparitions? Is the fact that lots of people chose to amend their lives mean that Mary really appeared? The two have nothing to do with each other.

Remember the Millerites? William Miller preached that the end of the world was imminent and that Christ was about to return. Many people reformed their lives, had conversions and began to "get religion." Of course, when Christ did not return to earth in 1844 as Miller had predicted, his followers suffered disillusionment and what has been known as the "Great Disappointment." Many people had converted and amended their lives - but of course, that has nothing to do with whether or not the apparition or prediction is actually supernatural.

4) The fact that God uses something as a tool does not mean that it is good in itself or is to be promoted.

Now, let's give everybody the benefit of the doubt here. Let's say that our reader is truly and sincerely converted, and that he has a real relationship with God (which I do not doubt), and furthermore that this was in fact attributed to graces received through Medjugorje. Still, this does not establish Medjugorje's authenticity.

Let's look a simple biblical principle: God often uses things as tools to prod people to repentance that are not in themselves good. Take Assyria. God deliberately sent Assyria to conquer the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC so that they might repent of their sins. I guess some could say, if we lived back then, "Wow! Ever since the Assyrian conquest, we have seen people repenting of their sins in the street, amending their lives, praying more and returning to God! Isn't Assyria wonderful?" Well, no, of course not. Though the Assyrian conquest brought about repentance and conversion (it's purpose), we understand that it is not in itself good. It is being used by the Lord as a rod to chasten the people. It says so much in Isaiah 10, when God promises to turn and judge Assyria for its haughtiness:

Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!...Does the ax raise itself above him who swings it, or the saw boast against him who uses it? As if a rod were to wield him who lifts it up, or a club brandish him who is not wood! (v.1,13)

God is using Assyria as a "rod" to accomplish His purpose, but that does not mean the "rod" is in itself good. In fact, in this verse God is specifically saying that though He used the rod for a time, He is now going to turn against it and judge the rod because it has grown haughty.

Applied to Medjugorje, we could say that though God may use Medjugorje, as a rod, to move people to repentance and bring about conversion, that does not mean that Medjurgoje is in itself good, or true, nor does it mean that He will not in fact turn and judge it one day when it becomes too haughty (as in disobeying the local ordinary, for example) or when its purpose is accomplished.

5) God uses many means to bring us to where He wants us, some good, some bad.

This is an elaboration of point 4. Consider this: I had a conversion back to Christianity through the agency of a vibrant, Pentecostal Non-Denominational Protestant church. I actually owe my salvation to people from that Church. But under no circumstances would I refer people to it now. I was first introduced to Catholicism by a schismatic group (not the SSPX, another more obscure group). It is because of them that I am Catholic - but there's no way I'd ever defend them now or send people to their doors! Just because you had a conversion through the agency of something doesn't mean you are in the right place. It just means God wanted to touch you, nothing more nothing less. It's just the way things are. Everybody is on their own journey, but we have to disassociate our own journey essentially from any of the steps on that journey. A step is a step - it may not be a good one, but God may use it to get you where He wants you to go.

The Didache, which deals with discerning prophecy, tells us that one may even speak with the Holy Spirit but still bear a false message if He is not living in obedience to God. "Yet not every one that speaketh in the Spirit is a prophet, but only if he have the ways of the Lord" (11:12).

6) The fruits admonition in Matthew refers primarily to false prophets being signaled out by their nature of rapaciousness - i.e., being "ferocious wolves."

The entire verse from Matthew 7:15-20 reads:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Regarding Medjugorje, I would make two points. First, based on much of what I've said above, I don't think Medjugorje as a movement has good fruits. There may be good stories, just as I am sure there are good stories from some people who went to NCYC, but overall the phenomenon I think has negative fruits.

Two, using Christ's symbolism that a false prophet is a ferocious (or in some translations, "ravenous") wolf has to do with their desire to profit from their ministry - St. Peter fills this in for us in by attributing their deceptiveness to greed: Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up (2 Pet. 2-3). St. Paul tells us that these deceivers live to fill only themselves: many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach (Php. 3:18-20). So, using the Scriptures, we can see that one sign of a false prophet is a desire to make money or a sign of greed.

The Didache tells us plainly: "[B]ut if he ask money, he is a false prophet" (11:9). Now, to anyone who does not know, the seers of Medjurgorje (unlike St. Bernadette or Sr. Lucia) are fabulously wealthy and continue to profit by the Medjugorje phenomenon. This has been well documented, and if you do not believe it, do the research yourself. But some some will say, "But Boniface, they did not ask for the money - they just receive it when it is freely offered!" Well, okay. A technicality. But, in the Scriptures, simply receiving money for prophecy or spiritual things is condemned, even if you did not technically ask for it. Let's look in 2 Kings 5. This is the story of Naaman the Syrian who was cleansed by Elijah from leprosy by bathing in the Jordan seven times. After his healing:

Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and he came and stood before him. And he said, "Behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel; so accept now a present from your servant."But he said,"As the LORD lives, before whom I stand, I will receive none." And he urged him to take it, but he refused (2 Kings 5:15-16).

See? Elijah positively refused any material compensation, even though it was freely offered to him and he did not ask for it. But Elijah's servant, Gehazi, was greedy for the gifts that Naaman wanted to offer, and so went back and took advantage of Naaman's good nature to secure the gifts for himself. When he returned to Elijah, the prophet told him:

Did not my heart go when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, male servants and female servants? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever." So he went out from his presence a leper, like snow (v.26-27).

Granted, Gehazi lied to get the money. But here is the point: Elijah considered it wrong to receive any payment for his prophecy and his miracles, even swearing by God that he would not take anything. Elijah chastises Gehazi not for lying to Naaman, but for thinking it was a prudent time to accept money and for doing so. Therefore God struck him with leprosy.

Conclusion

The numerical value of what goes on at Medjugorje is meaningless, especially if the substance of the visions is errant or doubtful, which it is, as I have documented in other posts. Even true conversions do not prove supernatural origin - a man could be converted just from a good homily, but that doesn't mean God inspired the homily supernaturally. Sometimes God uses external things (people, churches, movements) to move us by His grace towards some further end, but that cannot be taken as a validation of the agents (the "rods") that God uses to do so. Furthermore, the Medjurgorje seers are fabulously rich because of their "apparitions," and in the same verses where Christ says we shall know false prophets by their fruits, He also tells us to beware of greedy "wolves," and from the story of Elijah, Naaman and Gehazi we can see that it is not necessary to ask for money to incur condemnation - to simply accept money freely offered for a prophecy or spiritual good is reprobated.

So no more of this "fruits" argument please!

Definition of a Trad

This was pulled off the Catholic Answers Forum and sent to me - it is entitled "Definition of a Trad." Take it with a grain of salt; it's meant to be humorous. Thanks to Mr. S for sending it to me.

A traditional Catholic is not a person who "prefers" the old Latin Mass. Neither are they people simply passed Catechism class.

They are people who adhere to a type of spirituality that is largely lost in the 21st Century Catholic Church.

Truthfully, it's easier to describe their outward signs than their character: the old Latin Mass is the biggest identifier... though there are certainly traditional Catholics who are marooned in Novus Ordoland; there are likewise non-traditional Catholics who go to the TLM.

Trads are people who listen to Catholic Radio... skeptically. They might have a blog. They can list their "top-five" favorite Ecumenical Councils... none of which will rhyme with "Attican Shoe". Their friends think they're fuddy-duddys. They've got Holy Water fonts in all the bedrooms and by the front door. They quote the Douay Rheims bible. They have an opinion on offering Mass in baroque vestments while in a gothic chapel. They're tired of tinfoil hat jokes. They may not like Bishop Williamson, but concede that sometimes he's right, and when he's right, he's really right. They can tell you about Assisi. When they're at a Novus Ordo Mass, they've got their hands folded like a Catholic during the Our Father. The women have an extra mantilla in the van-- just in case. The men have an opinion on the best type of pipe tobacco for any occasion. The boys have their own cassock and surplice hanging in the closet. The girls know how to play Dies Irae on the organ. They wear a t-shirt while they go swimming so their brown scapular doesen't float away. They're willing to drive an hour to go to Mass... every Sunday. They know the confession times of at least 4 churches. They invite priests over to play cards and smoke cigars. They pray to saints that you think may not really exist. They ask you to finish the sentence when you say "John Paul the Great"... the great what? They might own a live chicken.

When they're at a Novus Ordo Mass, everyone watches them to figure out why they're hitting themselves during the "Lamb of God". They're kneel after Mass to pray... and miss out on the fun gladhanding with Father by the parish gift shop. They scoff when they pass the Masonic Lodge. They cross themselves when they pass a Catholic church. They mutter something about the "poor souls" when they pass a cemetary. They mutter something about St. Michael when an ambulance passes them. Their girls' first names are Mary. Their boys' middle names are Mary. Cappa Magna doesn't sound like a drink at Starbucks to them. They'll tell you at length why being "charitable" isn't always being nice and friendly.

It's complicated. Trads are not easily defined. You just kind of know them when you see them

Courtship & Dating

This is a post that is a response to an inquiry by a long time reader of this blog. The basic question was this: what is my opinion on courtship, on dating, on how a young Catholic man should go about wooing a woman and about acceptable courting practices. This is going to be a very in depth answer, and it is going to be hard to disentangle it from my own subjective experiences in this matter, but as a man married for almost eight years who has not “dated” for almost ten, I think I can reflect on it with some type of objectivity. But I must stress two things before I launch into this topic:

(1) All of the following is my opinion only. I do not profess it to be the Church’s ideas or even anybody’s ideas but my own. They are just my opinions, formed by a historical study.

(2) I have to warn everybody, my opinions on this issue may diverge from several commonly accepted notions, even notions accepted within the Traditionalist and Homeschooling communities. My opinions on courting/dating and marriage are simply part of a larger worldview, which I am not at this time able to clearly articulate for various reasons. However, because I am going to in this post threaten some sacred cows, I anticipate getting some disagreement. So be it.

So first, let’s come to terminology. Wooing a female. Well, it does not matter one bit to me what you call this process. Some homeschool parents get all bent out of shape about the terminology. My child will not “date”; they will “court.” Okay, well what really matters is the substance of what is going on at these liaisons, not what you call them. You can call it courting, dating, keeping company, going steady, (or, my mother’s annoying phrase from the 1960’s, “going with”), or whatever you want. Don’t get all upset about the name. I know of some families who don’t let their kids “date,” but allow their daughters to be in situations with other boys that would be tantamount to dating, but they for some reason allow it because it’s not called dating and because “we know their family,” as if that makes concupiscence and passion any less intense!

But let’s look at the definitions: courting or courtship, in a romantic sense, first appears in 1596. It grew out of the idea of medieval courtly love, and the idea of courting a woman came from the phrase “paying her court,” which originally meant a knight visiting the court of a noble lady whom he wished to woo. This phrase originally had nothing to do with how the visit was carried out; i.e., whether you visited the woman alone, or with her family present. Generally, this would have been a public display of affection for a lady followed by a solitary (and often amorous) encounter. I have news for people who think the term courting is somehow intrinsically better than dating: medieval courts could be some of the most immoral places on earth, especially from the time the term originates (late Renaissance, early modern period). Even in France, the home of courtly love, the courts of the French kings were known to be rottenly immoral sexually. Sexual promiscuity and adultery were so commonplace in the French courts that syphilis (first introduced into Europe around this time from the New World) was known as the “French Disease.”

Here’s my point (1) Courting, traditionally, had nothing to do with how a liaison was arranged (with family or without) but concerned itself rather with paying a visit to a lady at her court (2) These courts were rampant places of immorality. Therefore, we ought to not be all excited about saying we prefer “courting” to dating.

However, courting later did come to take on a more respectable tone: paying a lady a visit in her home (i.e., her court), presumably in the presence of her family, with a stated or unstated romantic intention. Talking with my grandmother, however, (who is now 90 years old), I am told that even in the old days among traditional families (mine was Sicilian Catholic), it was still common place for the boy and girl to go off alone. The boy might pay the girl a visit at her home, spend a little bit of time chatting with the family, then take the girl off for a picnic, bicycle ride, walk in the woods or boat ride. This modern idea that a boy and a girl who are interested in each other never spend any time alone is (a) not historical or traditional at all (b) stifling to any real intent of getting to know the other. Parents along time ago knew that for a boy to get to know a girl, they needed the opportunity to get to know each other one on one.

Therefore, the emphasis wasn’t on whether time was spent alone or not, but whether the two were put into any compromising positions. Therefore, though the two would be left alone, it would be outdoors, in public, etc., places where they could talk freely but would not be able to act on any temptation. I know two people definitely intent on fornicating cannot really be stopped – there is always a way to sneak off into the woods or go into a Port-a-Potty, like they used to do when I was in Basic Training, but the basic idea is sound: two persons together in a boat or on a walk in the park are much less likely to think about any shenanigans than two persons alone in a bedroom. That would have never been permitted nor do I think it should be.

Interestingly enough, the term dating first comes from the Victorian era (around 1898), a period of much stricter morals than the late Renaissance. Dating had an innocuous meaning originally: simply having a date or appointment set with someone. Therefore, if we are going to look at the eras that the terms dating and courtship came out of, I think dating had a much more wholesome and moral bent to it, since Victorian manners (on a whole) were much more moral and reserved than late Renaissance French morality. But this again just has to do with terminology, which is not the entirety of the argument at all. Dating, of course, has a bad name because it is at the end of the Victorian era that the automobile enters the picture and the date is transformed, with all the silliness about “Make Out Point” and that kind of thing. Like it or not, the automobile is now a factor in romantic liaisons, though it need not have the sinister connotation that it sometimes does.

Therefore, how should a Catholic boy go about in his relations with his female prospect? I’m going to try to be as systematic as I can in this, but because this is such a weighty topic, I’m going to take it for granted that the boy is of age to drive. If he’s not, he probably shouldn’t be worrying about it yet (although, traditionally boys were considered of marital age around 16 or 17. Therefore, let’s not push back dating/courtship until age 20 and pretend like we are being traditional. We might be being prudent, but let’s not deceive ourselves and say that is traditional. If we were really following tradition, we’d be giving our daughters in marriage at age 15).

I reject (my opinion) this modern fascination with “discerning who God wants you to marry.” Obviously we want to discern God’s will in all things to the best of our ability, but what exactly are we discerning and how precise can we be with our discernment? In my extensive reading of history, here is how it has always been done:

The discernment process has always been whether or not to get married, not to whom one gets married.

That is, in the Middle Ages and beyond there is a great focus in spiritual writings on discerning whether you are called to celibacy or the married state. But once one discerns they are called to the married life, there is almost nothing like we see nowadays about “figuring out who God wants you to marry.” There is a lot written, however, about how to best “pick” your spouse. That is to say, the choice of a spouse was not seen as a matter of God’s will but as a matter of human prudence, much like picking a good house or picking a good piece of fruit from the market. Love was never seen to be the basis for a marriage, though it was sought after to arise after the fact by mutual affection and sharing of a common life. The woman (or man) who married simply out of love was considered a fool, and there are no records that I know of any person being taught to ask who God wanted them to marry. It was seen as something that a person was supposed to use their human judgment (common sense) on and not try to be all vocationally oriented with. A man chose a wife based on several factors, and once the marriage was consummated, love was seen to be a worthy thing that could grow on the basis of that union, but it was not deemed essential. My RCIA classes always marvel when we get to the class on the Sacrament of Matrimony and they see that “love” is not required for either the form or matter of the sacrament.

But I want to stress this: the “discernment” came when you decided whether or not to be married at all. That is because, of course, there used to be a great emphasis on the superiority of the celibate state. However, nowadays, pop-Catholic culture would have everybody spend as much time discerning their spouse as they would the question of whether or not to remain celibate. This is because in the past 40 years, marriage has been stressed more and more as a “vocation,” or a calling. This has always been admitted, but the emphasis was different before. In the past, there was those called to virginity, and then there was everybody else. Nobody spoke of being “called” to marriage – marriage was referred to, with virginity, as a “state in life”; i.e., a state that you may find yourself in, not necessarily some heavenly calling. Obviously God has a will for everybody, and you are fulfilling that will to the extent that you conform to God’s design for your life. Therefore, God has a will or a call as to what career I should pursue in life, for example. But people don’t usually refer to their jobs as “callings” in the religious sense. God has a will for everything we do, but we don’t always apply the words “calling” and “vocation” to them. I think in the modern Church, because of the drastic decline in consecrated virginity, people are over-anxious to apply the terms “vocation,” “discernment” and “calling” to other endeavors besides consecrated virginity, in an attempt to make it seem like everybody is still seeking God’s will even though there are a drastic reduction in vocations. God, however, has not stopped calling people – but people have stopped listening.

But that is a digression. So, what criterion does one use to pick a good spouse? Traditionally, the pick of a spouse was foremost an economic decision, and I don’t think this was an entirely bad idea. Economics are very important in marriage, and a home is more likely to be happy if it was financially stable. Therefore, a bachelor might look for qualities in a woman that would lead him to believe she could help him establish a financially secure home. Did she have good work habits? How did she bear up under trials? Was she patient? In some cases, did she have strong arms and a sturdy back? Because a husband wanted his wife to be respectable as well, she had to be of solid moral character: Was she devout? Was she loyal? Would she make a good mother? Therefore, the husband did not so much choose a wife because of an intense love or a desire to do God’s will, but of practical considerations based on what the addition of the wife to the husband’s household would bring to the family collectively; children, financial security, a pious atmosphere and respectability. Of course, all men wanted their wives to be attractive. Attraction is the basis for all of these things, and it was the most fundamental type of desire from which true love could grow. After a man secured a wife who would fulfill all of these requirements, he was considered happy and blessed if, in time, he came to truly love her and she him. But love was seen as secondary and in the end non-essential. It was an ideal to be strived for, not a building block that everybody felt like they had to have to get started.

To some sense, I applied these principles in my own life when I was dating my wife, though I was only 19 and still pretty ignorant. When I was dating my own wife, I looked at her and admired certain qualities about her: her fidelity, joy, industriousness, beauty and virtue. Therefore, based on these factors, I approached her and informed her that I thought we ought to get married. It is kind of amusing: I never asked her to marry me, nor did she ask me, nor did I ever ask permission from her father. If I could do it over, I would no doubt do so. But at the same time, there is a simple logic in the way I went about it: I simply approached her like it was a mathematical formula and said, “Based on X, Y, and Z factors I think we are a good match and ought to get married.” And she agreed (she was young and ignorant, too: only about 18 – that’s the only reason she agreed to marry me!).

That brings up another point: if you are trying to discern whom you should marry, the worst time to do that is while you are already dating them. How can a person make an objective judgment about this when they are already emotionally involved with another person? Just like in college, guys who joined the pre-Theologate program were forbidden from having girlfriends. The reason was obvious – one has a hard time hearing a call to the priesthood if you have a girlfriend distracting you. In the same way, you can’t figure out if you should marry a person after you are already involved with them. This is why so many people get married while they are infatuated, fail to see their partner’s flaws and then accuse them bitterly of “changing” after the marriage is complete.

Here’s how I think it should work: a man ought to observe a woman from afar, from a vantage point of friendship only, and a remote friendship at that. He should look at her objectively, asking himself questions about her virtue, modesty, industriousness, etc. Only if she fulfills all of these requirements ought he to go ahead and pursue a romantic relationship – and even then I don’t think he has to say for sure “yes, this is the person I think God wants me to marry,” but she should at least be a potential. By the way, you will never know if the person you marry is the one you should have until you are old and ready to die. Only then can you look back on your life and really reflect on it. J.R.R. Tolkien said that all marriages were, in a sense, a gamble, and that most were probably mistakes. Here’s what he wrote to his son on the issue:

"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 be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to."

The last line emphasizes my thought exactly. Instead of worrying about who God wants you to pick (because you’ll never be able to be sure, and even if you are, you’ll second guess yourself as soon as things get hard and then start blaming God for your poor judgment), use the same common human prudence, enlightened by grace, that you would use if you were making any other long-term commitment. Date and marry based on this, and realize you are not marrying to make yourself happy but to make another happy and to establish a home – and in that your happiness will arise, and with it love.

Is it appropriate to be alone together while you are dating? Absolutely - in controlled environments. How can you really get to know a girl if you’re sitting around with her mom and dad all the time? You can’t, and though you want to get to know the family, you’re interested in the girl, not in her family. If you do marry her, you’ll see enough of them in the future anyways (haha), so pay your visits to her, show deference and respect to the family, enjoy some family gatherings, but make sure there is time for you and her to get on alone. There’s plenty of opportunities, besides just going to Mass together: go out for coffee together, take her out to dinner, go for a walk in the park or just down her street. Until you get to know her better, probably she should meet you at these places and drive separately (unless of course she has no car). If these are not options, a good middle ground is doing things together with her friends. This way, you are not alone with her, but neither is she in the company of her parents, and she will be freer to speak and be forthright with you in the company of her friends. Probably shouldn't spend a lot of time just driving around aimlessly, though. If you want to do something aimless, walking is a lot more wholesome than driving.

I have to throw out a closing gripe here: I dislike when people presume they are following traditional morality when in reality they are pursuing novelties. I’ve said this before: withholding your child from dating until they are 18 or 19 is not traditional morality. Talking about discerning whom God wants you to marry is not traditional morality. Adhering to the novel “courting” ideal where a boy and girl spend all their time together hanging out with the family is not traditional either. I’m not saying these are bad ideas – in our society, they may be necessary to protect chastity. But let’s stop pretending that we are going back to some lost moral code with these things, because we are not. We are simply adapting to the times and slapping the “traditional morality” label on it. If we were really being traditional, the father would find a husband for the daughter with no spiritual discernment at all, would base his judgment on financial factors, would betroth the two of them and marry her off around age 16. The wife would be expected to run the husband’s household and prosper him financially, and maybe down the road they would grow to love each other. That’s tradition. I’m not saying it’s the best way, but that is the traditional way – and anything else that claims to be “traditional” is really just a novelty. Maybe a good novelty, but a novelty nonetheless.

In closing: courting or dating? Doesn’t matter. Spend time alone? Sometimes, but not in imprudent circumstances. Hang out with the family constantly? If you can stomach that kind of thing. How to make your choice? Virtue, Industriousness, Beauty, Piety. Who does God want? You can’t really know – just do the best you can.

These are just my opinions, and I only post them here because someone made the foolish mistake of asking me what I think!

Click here for a follow up to this post on Love & Matrimony

Breaking News! Pope to Crack Down on Alleged "Apparitions"

This was sent to me today from reader of this blog: it is an English translation (done by Fr. Philip Pavich, OFM) from the Italian of an article that just came out today on the Italian website Petrus (view the original Italian article on the link). It is rumored in this article that Benedict XVI will soon make public a "Directory" for the examination of alleged apparitions to be used by Bishops' and Diocese's around the world. The Directory will contain stricter guidelines for discerning such apparitions and will assist the hierarchy in weeding out some of the less credible ones more quickly - foremost on this list is Medjugorje, cited in this article. The article also points out that the Pope has had Medjugorje removed from the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi (one of the most important agencies of religious tourism which belongs to the Vicariate of Rome), though it does not say when this happened and it may be old news.

If this Directory is made public soon, it would mean that Medjugorje would be subject to a new rigorous, standardized scrutiny approved by the Vatican, the failure of which would mean as definitive rejection of its authenticity, if I am understanding this article correctly (it is somewhat awkwardly rendered from the Italian). Anyhow, here is the article:

In a “Vademecum” the crackdown by Benedict XVI on Marian apparitions, with a ‘pool’ of theologians, psychiatrists and exorcists at the service of the bishops for exposing false visionaries

VATICAN CITY [January 8, 2009] - Civitavecchia and Medjugorje represent the most recent and sensational cases: places where the alleged visionaries say they have had and continue to have apparitions of the Virgin, even if Our Lady would simply give them absolutely inconsistent messages from a theological and spiritual point of view . The result: the faithful are bewildered because of the display that the Church not only has not yet recognized them as truthful, but will hardly approve them in the future.

As we know, however, the caution of the Church is very great in the matter: there are hundreds of cases of apparitions rejected and branded as false in the past fifty years. Nevertheless, there are those who continue to swear to see Madonna, drawing to their places crowds of desperate faithful, many times in search of a miracle or a grace that, however, does not come. How then, to deal with this phenomenon? How to prevent the spreading of untruthful messages of the Mother of Christ to mankind?

The answers to these and other questions are contained in a ‘directory’ Benedict XVI has made to instruct the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and that will soon be made public and sent to the diocesan bishops of the whole world. With this document, which integrates the Instructions already issued in 1978 by the Vatican, the Pope calls for the greatest severity in the verifications related to the establishment of the truthfulness Marian apparitions.

The bishops, having set up a commission of psychiatrists, psychologists, theologians and educators, should impose silence on the pseudo-visionaries. This will be a first test: history teaches, from Lourdes to Fatima, from Guadalupe in La Salette, that those who really have the gift of being in direct contact with the Madonna, follow the directives of the local Church, even in the face of enormous sufferings. Therefore, one who will not remain silent but causes the news of these alleged apparitions to circulate freely, attracting around themselves the presence of the curious, journalists and the faithful in search of a particular grace will have already given a sign that shows the falseness of their mysticism. Mary herself, in fact, would never validate an act of disobedience against a bishop, even if they were in error.

The second point: the pseudo-visionaries will be visited by psychiatrists and psychologists, possibly either atheists or Catholics, to certify their mental health and to verify whether or not they are suffering from diseases of a hysterical or hallucinatory character or from delusions of leadership.

The third step to do: determine the level of education of the one being proclaimed a ‘mystic’ so as to avoid one who might mislead the church authorities and the faithful after having carefully studied writings on theology and Mariology. In that sense, one who is under investigation by church authorities will be called upon to deliver to the Commission established by the Diocese the informational equipment in his possession, including personal computer, to make it possible to verify whether he has ever done research in the field of apparitions on the Internet, a wealth of information for those wishing to copy or learn the theological meaning of heavenly messages from true visionaries.

In the directory, also, the bishops are asked to determine whether pseudo-visionaries have direct or indirect economic interests in connection with the pilgrimages and in the inevitable sale of religious souvenirs in the places where they say they see the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Then there is the question of respect for orthodoxy: all that is revealed by the apparitions should not result in being contrary either to the Gospel or doctrine of the Church but be in harmony with them. Needless to say, therefore, that if a visionary attributes to the Madonna phrases or concepts contrary to the Magisterium, he or she is to be considered false.

If directly from the analysis nothing abnormal should result, and then the visionary be considered credible, ultimately that visionary will have to be questioned by one or more demonologists and exorcists to exclude the possibility that Satan (as has happened already so many other times in the history of Christianity) is hiding behind the apparitions in order to deceive the faithful.

Under the new instructions ready to be issued by the Holy See on behalf of Benedict XVI, who already had to deal with the phenomenon of Marian apparitions during his more than twenty-year mandate as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one can therefore expect a real crackdown with longer, more meticulous and strict processes on the part of the Dioceses, also in order to provide correct information to the faithful, so that no more events will take place like those in Civitavecchia and Medjugorje, where thousands of people continue to come even though the Vatican has never recognized as true and supernatural the phenomena reported there.

Of course, according to the ‘Vademecum’ which the Pope had written for the competent Congregation, the same investigative practice will be used if someone should claim to see and talk to Jesus, the angels or the saints, or even (a recent case is in the province of Salerno) manifest the stigmata or say they have statues and sacred images that shed tears in the house.

To know the mind of Benedict XVI on the subject, it suffices to remember what he said, while still a Cardinal, to the journalist and author Vittorio Messori:

“In this field, more than ever before, patience is a fundamental element. No apparition is indispensable to the faith, Revelation ended with Jesus Christ.”

The well-known theologian Rene Laurentin, after years of research, has recorded over 2,450 Marian documented events in the history of the Church. But out of almost 300 requests for investigation initiated in the last century, church authorities have officially certified as true only a dozen appearances. The most recent recognition is that of Our Lady of Laus, in France, which took place May 8, 2008, but the faithful had to wait three centuries before obtaining it. The other approved apparitions are mainly concentrated in Europe (Fatima, La Salette, Tuy, Beauraing, Banneux, Syracuse), but also in Egypt (Zeitun), Syria (Damascus) and Rwanda (Kibeho.

At the beginning of this article we mentioned Civitavecchia and Medjugorje; in the first case it is a little girl that claims to have had apparitions of the Virgin. In that context, a statue of Our Lady of Medjugorje placed in the garden of her home would have wept blood; the same phenomenon was supposed to have been repeated in the presence of then Bishop Girolamo Grillo, who was initially skeptical. John Paul II himself, when made aware of what happened, wanted that statue in his private chapel for several hours, but the Vatican has never come out in favor of the apparitions and the tears as being supernatural.

More complex is the case of Medjugorje: for more than a quarter of a century, the Madonna would appear every day to the visionaries, and once a month would speak a message for mankind. But Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope's right-hand man, has never hidden his skepticism: "Since 1981, Mary would have appeared tens of thousands of times in Medjugorje. This is a phenomenon that cannot even be compared to other Marian apparitions”. For this reason, the Vatican has asked Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi (one of the most important agencies of religious tourism which belongs to the Vicariate of Rome) to delete from their catalogue visits to the most famous place in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where, nevertheless, more than two million faithful are visiting every year.

Where is the problem? Two factions have been created: one in favor of the apparitions, and therefore on the side of visionaries; the other one openly sided with the diocesan bishop, Msgr. Ratko Peric, who like his late predecessor, does not believe in the truthfulness of these phenomena, and after never having been listened to, already some time ago requested the alleged visionaries to live a hidden life and not disclose any message attributed to the Madonna.

This failure to obey the Bishop would already be enough, according to the ‘Vademecum’ devised by Benedict XVI, to declare the apparitions of Medjugorje to be false.

[Amateur translation from the Italian by Fr. Philip Pavich OFM]

Chaldean Rite (part 3)

I hope you are enjoying these posts on the text of the Chaldean rite liturgy. The first time I read through them I was very moved - but at any rate they do not take very long to post on and I am using some spare time I have to put together a rather in depth post on the subject of courtship & dating upon request from a friend. Keep an eye out for that in the next week or so. In the meantime, let's get to the next section of the Chaldean Mass: the Creed, the consecration and the epiclesis.

The first thing we must notice is that the Creed recited is the Apostles' Creed instead of the Nicene Creed. I can think of two possible reasons for this: one, that the liturgy dates from a time prior to the Council of Nicea, or two, that because the Chaldeans were once Nestorians, they rejected the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed on doctrinal grounds and were permitted to retain the use of the Apostles' Creed upon reunion. It would be interesting to look into, though I admit I know very little about it.

Notice also the words of the deacon at the sign of peace. He tells everybody to make the sign of peace, but then goes on and tells them to cast down their pride and be attentive to what is going on at the altar. From the text I am uncertain whether the sign of peace is actually given by the congregation or whether the deacon says it but it is not actually carried out.

It is also interesting that in the words of consecration the word "all" is used in the consecration of the chalice. I don't know if there are any nuances in Chaldean between the words "many" and "all" or anything like that, but this is the way this English translation has rendered it.

Here we pick up with the Creed:

People: [Here the people recite the Apostles' Creed]

Servers: Let us pray in memory of our Spiritual Fathers; patriarchs, bishops, priests, deacons, and all the consecrated; the laity and the youth and all those who have departed this world in faith. Let us also pray for our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, and for all leaders. May our sacrifice be accepted and sanctified by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, that it may be for our benefit and salvation, and life everlasting in the kingdom of heaven through the grace of Christ.

Priest: To You Lord we offer glory, honor, thanksgiving and worship; now and forever.

People: Amen.

Priest: Peace be with you.

People: And also with you.

Deacon: Let us give peace to one another in the love of Christ. Let us praise and beseech the Lord in purity and penance. Reverently look at what is taking place before you; the consecration of these sacred mysteries. The priest has approached to pray that through his mediation peace may increase among you. Cast down your pride and life your thoughts to heaven. Be attentive, and pray that peace be with us.

Priest: May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the joy of the Holy Spirit be with you all, now and forever.

People: Amen.

Priest: Lift up your thoughts.

People: Unto You, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the King of Glory.

Priest: This sacrifice is offered to God, the Lord of all.

People: It is right and just.

Deacon: Pray that peace be with us.

Priest: Worthy of glory from every tongue and adoration from all creation is Your glorious name; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You have created the world and its inhabitants in Your goodness and mercy. Your love has redeemed us and brought unto us a wonderful grace. Myriads of angels cast themselves down before Your majesty; offer adoration to Your holy Name; crying out, praising without ceasing and proclaiming to one another [all kneel]:

People: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, Almighty God, Heaven and earth are full of His glory. Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is He who came and will come in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest,

Priest: When the time was drawing near for Jesus to suffer and meet His death, on the night He was betrayed, He took bread in His sacred hands, raised His eyes to You God, His Almighty Father, and gave You thanks and blessing. He broke the bread, gave it to His disciples and said:

Take this, all of you, and eat it: THIS IS MY BODY, which will be given up for you, so that sins may be forgiven.

People: Amen.

Priest: In the same way, after the supper, He took the cup in His sacred hands, and gave You thanks and blessings. He gave the cup to His disciples and said:

Take this, all of you and drink from it: THIS IS MY BLOOD, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. The mystery of faith which will be shed for you and for all, so that sins may be forgiven.

People: Amen.

Priest: Whenever you do these, call to mind the memory of me.

People: Amen.

Priest: As we have been commanded O Lord, we are gathered here in Your name to celebrate Your great mercy towards us. In return for all Your help and blessings, we offer You glory, honor, thanksgiving and praise; now and at all times and forever.

Deacon: Let us pray, peace be with us.

Choir: [sings a Eucharistic hymn]

Priest: [The following prayer is recited silently by the priest] Lord, God Almighty, accept this sacrifice which we offer You for all Your blessings bestowed on our Lady, the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, to all the just and pious fathers who have been pleasing to You, to all the prophets and apostles, martyrs and confessors. We offer it also for the Holy Catholic Church, and for our Holy Father Mar Benedict, the Supreme Pontiff and Pope of Rome, Mar _____________ our Patriarch and Mar ___________, our Bishop, and for all the bishops, priests and deacons. We offer it also for all those who are in sorrow or distress, the needy and the weary, the sick and the afflicted, for all who have departed from our midst, for this people who gaze and await for Your mercies, and for me, a sinner. Lord God, we are Your people who are gathered in Your name ad stand here before You at this moment; we have received joy through handing on the order of Your Son. Therefore, it is with joy, praise and exaltation that we remember this great, revered, holy, life-giving and divine mystery which is the memorial of the passuon, death, burial and resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Priest: [out loud] May Your Holy Spirit come, O Lord, and rest upon our sacrifice. May it be blessed and hallowed to become for us the forgiveness of our sins, the hope in the resurrection of the dead, and the new life in the kingdom of heaven with all who have pleased You. For Your wondrous graces towards us, we praise and glorify You in Your Church, redeemed by the precious blood of Your Son Jesus Christ.

Deacon: Remain silent and with respect, pray that peace be with us.

Priest: With pride and delight let us give praise, honor, glory and worship to Your life-giving and holy name; now and forever.

People: Amen. In Your goodness O God have mercy on us. In the greatness of Your compassion wipe out our offenses. For we acknowledge our faults and our sins are always before us. Let us hear the sound of joy and gladness. Turn away Your face from our sins and blot out all our guilt. A clean heart create for us O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within us. Cast us not from Your presence, and Your Holy Spirit take not from us. Give us back the joy of Your salvation and a willing spirit sustain in us.

Next time we'll get to the breaking and signing, the elevation and the communion of the people. I think I should be able to wrap it up in the next post.

Chaldean Rite (part 2)

Today we'll be looking at the readings, the prayers of the faithful and the presentation of the gifts. Two things I like about this section of the Mass: first, the lector, before reading, asks for the blessing of the priest, which I believe (though I may be mistaken) is an element in the Byzantine Catholic rite as well. Another similarity with the Byzantine rite is the exclamation before the Gospel to "let us be attentive," which hearken to the Byzantine "Wisdom! Be attentive!" prior to the Gospel. Perhaps Anselm would know more since he frequents that liturgy.

Also I like the traditional prayers for good weather and a fruitful harvest, which hearken back to another age. If there is one thing that is probably not pertinent to the modern age, it is prayers for a good harvest - not that farming is not important, but only 2% of the US population at least are involved in agriculture and many kids in the cities don't know where milk and bread come from. If anything merite dbeing removed or "updated" it would have been this. But did they remove it? Nope. It sits tenaciously where it has sat for centuries and probably will remain for centuries more. That's why we should still have prayers for the Holy Roman Emperor in our rite! Well, I digress...

Also interesting is the way the Eucharistic elements are referred to as the Body and Blood of Christ long before the consecration, at the period when they are simply being set out on the altar. I don't know anything about this, so if anybody has any insight please let me know.

We'll pick up from the beginning of the readings:

Priest: Enlighten our thoughts, O Lord and God, that we may savor the sweetness of Your life-giving and divine words; and give us through them love, hope, salvation and all the benefits needed for our bodies and souls, that we may ever sing Your praises, O Lord of all; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, forever.

Reader: A reading from the letter of St. Paul to ____________________. (Bless me Father).

Priest: May Christ enlighten you with His teaching (and make you His worthy messenger for those who hear you).

After the Reading

Reader: The Word of the Lord.

People: Thanks be to God.

All Stand

People: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Deacon: Let us be attentive and hear the Gospel of the Lord.

Priest: Peace be with you.

People: And also with you.

Priest: A reading from the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to __________.

People: Glory to You O Christ, glory to You.

At the conclusion of the Gospel

Priest: Glory to God forever.

People: Glory to Christ our Lord.

Priest: Homily

Deacon: Let us all stand well, with joy and gladness let us implore and say: Lord have mercy.

People: Lord have mercy.

Deacon: O Father of mercies and God of every consolation; we implore you...

People: Lord have mercy.

Deacon: For peace and harmony in all the Churches throughout the world; we implore You...

People: Lord have mercy.

Deacon: For good weather, a fertile season, the abundance of fruits and for the wll being of the whole world; we implore You...

People: Lord have mercy.

Deacon: For the good health of our Spiritual Fathers: Mar Benedict the Supreme Pontiff and Pope of Rome, Mar ______________ our Patriarch, Mar ______________ our Bishop, for all our priests and deacons and for all those who serve with them; we implore You...

People: Lord have mercy.

Deacon: For all our beloved brothers and sisters who passed away in the hope of the resurrection, grant them eternal joy in Your kingdom; we implore You...

People: Lord have mercy.

Servers: Together let us entrust ourselves to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Priest: We ask and beseech You Almighty God, to fill us with Your grace. May your divine mercy bring pardon to Your people and forgiveness of sins to the faithful that are chosen byYour goodness and compassion, O Lord of all; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forever.

Servers: Let us bow our heads and pray for God's blessing.

Priest: Grant us in Your mercy, Lord, that together we may please Your majesty in good works of righteousness all the days of our lives, and that our service may be pleasing to You. And with the help of Your grace, may we always be worthy to offer You glory, honor, thanksgiving and praise, O Lord of all; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forever.

Servers: Our hope is in the Lord.

People: The precious body and blood of Christ are being set upon the holy altar. Let us draw near, in reverence and love, and with the holy angels let us raise a joyful cry unto the Lord: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, Almighty God.

Servers: Our hope is in the Lord.

People: The precious body and blood of Christ are being set upon the holy altar. Let us draw near, in reverence and love, and with the holy angels let us raise a joyful cry unto the Lord: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, Almighty God.

Priest: May Christ who was sacrificed for our salvation and who also ordered us to celebrate the memory of His death, burial and resurrection, accept this sacrifice from our hands by His mercy forever.

By Your command, O Lord and God, these glorious, holy, life-giving and divine mysteries are set upon this holy altar until the coming of our Lord from heaven. To Him be glory at all times and forever.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Let us remember the Virgin Mary, Mother of God upon this altar.

People: From the beginning and unto all ages, amen. Holy Apostles, and beloved of the only begotten, pray that peace be throughout the world.

Priest: Let us all say "amen." Our holy patron, St. ________________, we remember you upon this holy altar with the just who have triumphed and with the martyrs who have been crowned.

People: All the departed are resting in hope that through Your glorious resurrection You will raise them up in glory.

That's enough for now - next time we'll pick up with the Creed and the consecration. It is interesting how towards the end (if I am understanding it right) the sacred elements are set upon the altar and the expected transubstantiation that will soon occur is referred to as a "coming" of the Lord from Heaven. This is very much in keeping with the New Testament idea of the "coming" (parousia) of Jesus as an abiding presence among the Church gathered in Eucharistic worship.

Chaldean Rite (part 1)

I've been laying plans recently to take my Youth Group down to Southfield to participate in a High Mass done according to the Chaldean Rite in the Chaldean language. Chaldeans are groups of Christians in Iraq and Turkey who were once part of the Nestorian schism but were first reconciled to the Church in the year 1247 and then finally fully reconciled in 1692. I drove down to the Chaldean Church and prayed in their sanctuary for a while (a newer building constructed in the romanesque style with a modern but aesthetically pleasing look to it) and spent some time going through their liturgy. As I read through the liturgical pamphlet, I was very impressed and knew I had to come back and blog about it!

The first thing that impressed me about the Chaldean Mass was the fact that they are eminently proud of its antiquity. When you open the Mass booklet up, on the first page the title simply say, "The Mass of the Apostles: written by Mar Addai and Mar Mari, Blessed Apostles of the East." Mar means "saint," and Mar Addai is none other than St. Thaddeus the Apostle. Mar Mari was his most important disciplie, St. Maris. It is to Addai and Mari that we attribute the Edessa story about King Agbar being healed by means of a picture of Christ presented to him by one of the disciples. As far as I know the story is not taken to be historical, it is shows at least the great antiquity which the Chaldeans would like to ascribe to their rite, so much so that they boast of it being written by St. Thaddeus. A more realistic date for it may be in the 7th century (around the same time the Gregorian form was developing in the west), but some date it to the middle-patristic period around the Church of Antioch. Either way, it is of great antiquity, and reading this first page alone impressed me much more than when I pick up the little red NO books that say "The Mass of Vatican II" or "The Mass of Pope Paul VI," which almost boast of being "the latest thing."

Another thing I never thought about too much but liked was that the entire Mass is called "The Eucharistic Liturgy." In the Chaldean Mass, there is no breaking of the liturgy into a Liturgy of the Word and a Liturgy of the Eucharist. The enitre Mass is referred to as the liturgy of the Eucharist. I know that even if we have two separate names for the parts of the Mass it is still one single act of worship, but the Chaldean rite expresses this better by calling the whole Mass by the name of the Eucharistic sacrifice.

Now I'm going to transcribe the entire liturgy, though of course I won't do it all at once. I'll try to resist the urge to comment too much. You'll notice how this liturgy, from start to finish, is a liturgy of pure praise and adoration. Please be aware that at times this liturgy will repeat itself (as with the Our Father). It is not a typo-it really does repeat itself like this. Notice also how the servers have parts, too, just like in the TLM. In cases where there are alternate prayers (very few), I have opted for the longest form. Forgive me if you already know all about this liturgy, but I am sharing with you the enthusiasm I feel as one who has come across something wonderful for the first time.

Today I will do just the introductory prayers and the penitential rite, though they do not seem to divide it up by those names.

Priest: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; Amen. Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and hope to all forever.

People: Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Holy, Holy, Holy are You. Our Father who art in Heaven, heaven and earth are full of Your glory, angels and people cry out to You: Holy, Holy, Holy are You.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, now and forever. Amen.

Priest: Strengthen O Lord our weaknesses by your mercy, that we may be worthy to celebrate the Holy Eucharist given for our renewal and redemption through the great mercy of Your Beloved Son, forever.

People: Amen.

Priest: For all the blessings You have given us, we thank You Lord and praise You in Your Holy Church forever.

People: Amen. To You Lord of all, our thanksgiving. To You, Jesus Christ, our praise. For You are the giver of life to our bodies and savior of our souls.

Servers: It is good to thank the Lord and praise His Holy Name.

People: To You Lord of all, our thanksgiving. To You, Jesus Christ, our praise. For You are the giver of life to our bodies and savior of our souls.

Servers: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, forever and ever, amen and amen.

People: To You Lord of all, our thanksgiving. To You, Jesus Christ, our praise. For You are the giver of life to our bodies and savior of our souls.

Deacon: Let us pray that peace be with us.

Priest: Lord You are truly the giver of life to our bodies, the good Savior of our souls and the guardian of our lives. It is right to adore, glorify and praise You forever.

People: Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us.

Servers: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

People: Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us.

Servers: From the beginning unto all ages, amen and amen.

People: Holy God, Holy Mighty One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us.

Deacon: Let us pray that peace be with us.

Priest: O Holy, Mighty and Immortal, who delights in the company of His holy ones, turn to us, O Lord and have mercy on us as always; Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forever.

People: Amen.

Of course, this is all done in the Chaldean language, which unless I am mistaken, is some form of Syriac. If you are curious about what Chaldean sounds like, here is a transliteration of the phrase "To You Lord of all, our thanksgiving. To You, Jesus Christ, our praise. For You are the giver of life to our bodies and savior of our souls" that you can say out loud to yourself:

La-khou Mara d-khoul-la maw-de-nan, ou-lakh Isho' Mshee-ha mshab-hee-nan datto mnah-ma-na dpagh-rain watto Pa-ro-qa dnaw-sha-than.

J.R.R. Tolkien on the Post-Conciliar Church

As I was plowing through the massive Letters of JRR Tolkien this week I came across a little gem that I'm sure many people have read but I have never heard any commentary on. This gem is a lengthy letter from Tolkien to his grandson Michael in which he expresses his views on the chnages to the Catholic Church within his lifetime. The letter was written in 1967, before the Novus Ordo had come in but while a lot of the crazy post-Conciliar implementation was going on. In the letter, Tolkien appears to be answering an inquiry from his grandson about the nature of the "trends" in the 1960's Church. It would definitely be something worth forwarding to Traditionalist Tolkien fans. I'm not going to offer any commentary on his thoughts, but I will put certain phrases in bold which I find particularly interesting.

The letter in number 306 in the Tolkien collection:

"'Trends' in the Church are...serious, especially to those accustomed to find in it a solace and a 'pax' in times of temporal trouble, and not just another arena of strife and change. But imagine the experience of those born (as I) between the Golden and Diamond Jubilee of Victoria. Both senses of imaginations of security have been stripped away from us. Now we find ourselves nakedly confronting the will of God, as concerns ourselves and our position in Time. 'Back to normal' - political and Christian predicaments - as a Catholic professor once said to me when I bemoaned the collapse of all my world that began just after I achieved 21. I know quite well that, to you as to me, the Church which once felt like a refuge, now often feels like a trap. There is nowhere else to go! (I wonder if this desperate feeling, the last state of loyalty hanging on, was not, even more often than is actually recorded in the Gospels, felt by Our Lord's followers in His earthly life-time?) I think there is nothing to do but pray, for the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and for ourselves; and meanwhile to exercise the virtue of loyalty, which indeed only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it.

There are, of course, various elements in the present situation, which are confused, though in fact distinct...The 'protestant' search backwards for 'simplicity' and directedness-which, of course, though it contains some good or at least intelligible motives, is mistaken and indeed vain. Because 'primitive Christianity' is now and in spite of all 'research' will ever remain largely unknown; because 'primitiveness' is no guarantee of value, and is and was in great part a reflection of ignorance. Grave abuses were as much an element in Christian 'liturgical' behavior from the beginning as now. (St. Paul's strictures on eucharistic behavior are sufficient to show this!) Still more because 'my church' was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history - the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the 'mustard seed' and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up., for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree. Very good: but in husbandry the authorities, the keepers of the Tree, must look after it, according to such wisdom as they possess, prune it, remove cankers, get rid of parasites, and so forth (with trepidation, knowing how little their knowledge of growth is!). But they will certainly do harm, if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth of the plant when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unaffected by evils.

The other motive (now so confused with the primitivist one, even in the mind of any one of the reformers)" aggiornamento: bringing up to date: that has its own grave dangers, as has been apparent throughout history. With this 'ecumenicalness' has also become confused. I find myself in sympathy with those elements that are strictly 'ecumenical,' that is concerned with other groups or churches that call themselves (and often truly are) 'Christian.' We have prayed endlessly for Christian reunion, but it is difficult to see, if one reflects, how that could possibly begin to come about except as it has, with all its inevitable minor absurdities. An increase in 'charity' is an enormous gain."

After this Tolkien goes off into a reminiscence about his own Catholic upbringing and offers a brief reflection on the legal changes to the status of Catholics in England from the time of his birth (1892) up until then. What a great statement from one of my favorite authors on some of the pitfalls of the post-Conciliar reform!

Conciliarism Revisted

I have been reflecting on what Athanasius said in his recent post about the Synod on the Word of God and the “Talking Church” and it brought to mind a very interesting paradox. How often is the accusation leveled against the pre-Vatican II Church that it was an impersonal bureaucracy out of touch with the common people? This assumption lies behind many of the shallow arguments in favor of things like Mass versus populum, multiple Eucharistic prayers, etc. “The old Church was so bureaucratic and impersonal! The new Church is so much more friendly, blah blah...”

So let's look at this faceless bureaucracy idea. What is the number one thing that ineffectual bureaucracies are known for? If nothing else, I'd say the perennial mark of the bureaucracy is endless mountains of documents and paperwork. Isn't this the case? There are many more marks of a bureaucracy of course, but let's just stick with the “document overkill” idea for a moment, as it relates to the topic at hand. Now, which era of the Church do we associate with mounds of useless documents, pre-Vatican II or post-Conciliar? Obviously the modern Church wins the award for the most copious amount of documents. Both the rate at which documents are churned out and the length of individual documents are greater in the post-Conciliar Church. Fides et Ratio and Familiaris Consortio are novellas. Even a relatively large pre-Vatican II encyclical (like Divini Redemptoris or Rerum Novarum) is thin in comparison.

Catholic theologian attempting to keep abreast all of the Church's post-Conciliar statements

Now I do not care personally if a document is long or verbose. It's not that I can't or won't read them because I'm lazy or dumb (although, for a Church that insists so strongly on being pastoral, the post-Conciliar documents are very inaccessible to the average Joe because of their excessive verbosity and philosophical jargon – how is a layman to approach works with titles like “On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church?” The faithful are too dumb to understand “ineffable” but are supposed to get interested in a document with a sub-title like that?). My irritation is that the current Magisterium feels like it always needs to be saying something. And saying is all, because as Athanasius pointed out, it really isn't doing a whole lot. Perhaps the idea is that by issuing so many statements and documents people will see how compassionate, relevant or in-touch the Church is. Isn't there a Proverb about not being too eager to speak? Ah, yes: “He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from trouble” and “He who guards his mouth protects his life; to open wide one's lips brings downfall” (Pro. 21:21, 13:3). It is a biblical principle that it is much better to act more and say less, and yet in the current Magisterium we see the opposite: a lot of talk and very little action.

In the 15th century, a radical movement within the Church that has come to be known as Conciliarism attempted to force an ecclesiology on the pope which demanded a submission of Pope to Council and the creation of a permanently sitting Council, a kind of ecclesiastical parliament. The popes zealously denounced this as a heresy and had completely triumphed over it by the early 16th century. But like other heresies, this one has crept back into the Church through the back door, winning many adherents in the hierarchy. But it is not so much a formulated dogma as it is a praxis which is taken for granted; i.e., The pope should always be saying something about something, making statements, going over talking points, etc. Perhaps this is supposed to create the illusion of action – perhaps the Magisterium thinks this sort of endless talk really is action. Whatever you attribute it to, what we are left with is a de facto permanent Council churning out documents year after year that are hastily put together (the working document for the Synod on the Word of God is a disaster), overly wordy, of an ambiguous nature, questionable in their authority and their veracity and seldom implemented or followed up on. If anything, this sort of routine does nothing but conditions the faithful to ignore Rome. Isn't that how we treat a person who talks too much – we shut them out?

Contrast this with the impact that short yet succinct documents are able to have – consider the firestorm that was set off by the Syllabus or Errors, a document that can be printed in three pages. Or, to take even a post-Conciliar example, look at Humanae Vitae. Compared to the tomes of JP2 it is quite short, and yet we'd have to agree that this encyclical has been the most consequential of modern times. A brief statement can be full of power and clarity.

Well, I'm sure we'll revisit this in the future, but check out this post if you want to read some analysis of the working document itself. Long story short: the Magisterium needs to issue documents that are brief, concise and theologically accurate, not rambling booklets that are dense, theologically sloppy and way too long.

Critique of Obsession

Like many other Catholics I have talked to, I recently received a complimentary copy of the DVD Obsession: Islam's Radica; War Against the West in the mail from the Clarion Fund. For the most part this DVD was very good - it had some great eye-opening scenes of radical Muslim clerics inticing their followers to become suicide bombers and of children in Muslim schools being taught hatred for Jews and Christians. It also showed the duplicity of certain Muslim spokemen is claiming to be moderate and pluralistic in public while privately holding violent anti-Western views. This is an example of the practice of al-Taqiyya, or lying to the infidel, and the video catches some Muslim cleric right in the act. Most of those who read this blog already know this stuff, but it was refreshing (and chilling) to see it again in this video.

However, I have to take this DVD to task for an assumption that lays beneath much of what it exposes about Islam. It presents the radical jihadists in their native element and shows how dangerous they are, and then gives the viewer several warnings about radical Islam's desire for world domination. We are rightfully supposed to be concerned about the desire of jihadist Islam to dominate the world, but what is it about their intended domination that we object to and what does it say about our own beliefs when we object to it?

For the conservative, pop-Catholic, neo-conservative mentality, the desire of radical Islam for world conquest is one of the most offensive things about Islam. When they look at radical Islam, they say, "Isn't that terrible! Those people want the whole earth to convert to their religion and they won't stop at anything until they rule the world!" Too often I think we just nod our heads and say, "Yeah, that's awful."

But what are we objecting to? Is it the principle of one religion dominating the world? Or is it a question about the nature of the religion that wants to dominate the world? I would argue that as Catholics, we cannot object to the concept of a religion wanting to dominate the world. This is the objective of the Catholic Church in the end, after all. This very weekend at my parish one of the general intercessions was , "That the entire human race may be converted to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Gospel spread to the ends of the earth." How can we say "Lord, hear our prayer," to a petition like that and then huff and puff when Islam says it wants to take over the world?

Well of course, the nature of Islam's dominance and the type of dominance that the Church desires are entirely different - one is based on submission and one on charity. But the idea is similar: each religion is evangelistic, believes it is the only true faith, and sees its mission as to convert the entire world. Let's be clear about this: Catholicism is a religion that seeks world domination. But it is a domination based on the proclamation of the Good News, the movement of grace, and the free joining of peoples into the Kingdom of Christ, a kingdom which is built on charity and is not of this world.

When neo-cons object to Islam on the basis that it wants to dominate the world, what they are really saying in effect is that religious pluralism is the ideal state of affairs, something no person who loves the Lord Jesus could say. Christ said to preach the Gospel to all men, to the very ends of the earth, and promised through the Spirit that in the end "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father" (Php. 2:8-10). But the neo-con ideal is a world in which different religions coexist and no one is put forward as being more right than any other, because after all, religion is a private affair.

Catholics need to be aware that this is what we are implying whenever we take issue with Islam's desire to dominate. Instead, we ought to say, "Yes, it is horrible to think about that religion dominating the world, but let us pray instead that Christ's Kingdom is established to the ends of the earth." Our issue should be not with Islam's will to dominate, but with the type of domination Islam proposes and the nature of the religion of Islam.

It is tempting to simply accept religious pluralism as the ideal just because that is what we have in America - this is an ideal that was condemned as "Americanism" by Leo XIII in the bull Longinqua, where he stated:

"[I]t would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced." (Longinqua, 6)

So, when we approach the question of Islam, do we take it for granted that our own state of affairs here in the normative one? If so, we are in for failure. A pluralistic society has never managed to stand up to the assault of a culture that demands total religious conformity. In opposing Islam, we have to take as our fixed point not the religious status quo of America, as Sean Hannity would have us believe, but the perennial vision of the Church: a vision that culminates in the establishment of the kingdom to the uttermost ends of the earth.

So, Obsession is a pretty good video. But don't be lulled into taking the default position that it seems to adopt. It also tries to show how only some Muslims are violent and that the peaceful Muslims are the "real" Muslims. Well, whatever. It certainly makes it more easy to convert them if they are peaceful, but conversion is the end goal. Let's not forget that!

Here's an earlier article I wrote on this same topic and an explanation of the Muslim "duty" to lie in the cause of religion.