timeimmortal

Christ endured the whips and taunts of the Romans; he’ll have endured whatever P. Z. Myers saw fit to do to Him as well. That’s right — according to a post on his website (I will not do him the dignity of a link), Prof Myers has carried out his threat to desecrate a Eucharistic host.

Yes, the sad little cracker has met its undignified end, so stop pestering me. The cracker, the Koran, and another surprise entry have been violated and are gone. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the details, what little of them there are. I must quickly apologize to all you good Catholics who were hoping to attend Mass, since you can’t anymore — I have been told many hundreds of times now that cracker abuse violates your right to practice your religion. I guess you’ll have to adapt. Secular humanism is a good alternative, if you aren’t already flocking to join the Mormons.

I suppose secular humanism is a decent alternative, if one wanted to live in an amoral vacuum in which the various social tenets of what constitutes moral behaviour are negotiable based on personal taste. Personally, I prefer something a little…stiffer (which rather emulates my taste in liquid spirits, I might note).

Myers is a sad, sad man and a bigot, rather a lost soul, and rather a textbook example of just how a hatred of God (as opposed to simple non-belief) is a gateway unto madness. He is to be pitied, and one can only pray that he be forgiven; he knows not that which he does.

Related: drunk atheist jerk storms into worship service, berates parishoners. But remember — he is the champion of reason; the parishoners who were insulted by him should have thanked him for enlightening them with his wisdom and rationality.

I’m going to take a day’s break from all the brouhaha that normally percolates through the blog here. It’s Friday, and it’s a good time to turn my thoughts away from the matters that trouble the world which I inhabit, and the orbits I find myself in. It would be nice to start preparing myself for Sunday, for Mass, and for yet another encounter with the Lord.

I’m talking, of course, about Eucharist, the source and summit of Christian faith. And also, both inside and outside of Catholicism, one of the most misunderstood aspects of the faith.

Catholicism makes what seems, initially, to be a very bold claim: that Christ Jesus literally becomes present in the breaking of the bread at each and every Mass, that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine, retaining only the “accidental” (to use the Aristotelean term) of qualities of each — the bread and wine still look like bread and wine, and still taste like it. But, contrary to the “if it quacks like a duck” thinking of the rest of the world around us, Catholics nevertheless boldly assert that despite the fact that the bread and wine seem, by all appearances, to still be bread and wine, they are in fact anything but.

It’s a bold declaration of complete faith…faith not in the Church (as an institution), nor faith in the priest, nor faith in the wafer itself. No, it is a declaration of faith in Christ, an affirmation of the Catholic belief that Christ really is Lord and King of all creation, and the He does so love the world — and everyone in it — that He desires to draw to Him those who profess their need for Him.

Equally, it is a declaration of faith in a Christ whose love and desire to be in communion with those who profess their need for His promise of salvation and forgiveness of sin that He will make Himself present to them, in keeping with His promise that He would be in the midst of any number who gather in His name. We all must die in due course and will, in so doing, end up before the Lord. But prior to that, Christ — out of love — elects to come into our presence too. His love for humanity is so great, and His desire to be in communion with us so powerful, that He will step down, but for a moment, to be with us in our present-tense reality, appearing before us in a guise at once hidden and yet obvious, as surely as He appeared to the disciples walking on the road to Emmaus.

It’s a powerful belief. But then, Christ is Lord and King of all creation — it is proper that a teaching pertaining to the direct intersection of Christ and the world is powerful.

Within Scripture, the first hints of the Eucharist are presented in the Gospel of John, in chapter 6. The close association between the Eucharistic revelation and the Paschal Meal is at once obvious.

[4] Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.
[5] Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?”
[6] This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
[7] Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.”
[8] One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him,
[9] “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?”
[10] Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand.
[11] Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.
[12] And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost.”
[13] So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.
[14] When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!”
[15]Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

These are not usually the verses cited in any apologetic concerning the Eucharist, but I would like to preface my analysis by noting the significance of the event within them. A large multitude has gathered to see and hear the teachings of Jesus, and Jesus — deeply moved — worries after the need of the people to eat. There is precious little food available to achieve that end, of course — to feed five thousand, two loaves and five fishes would amount to mere crumbs per person.

And so Jesus effects a miracle, both as a sign to the people and as a test of faith for the disciples. I’ve always thought the scene’s portrayal in Jesus of Nazareth captured the mood of the disciples perfectly, and I am still struck by the image of the apostle John holding forth an empty basket, apologizing that what little is in it is all he has. And yet, when the camera pans back to the basket, it is overflowing.
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I suppose it was inevitable, with the popularity of Stuff White People Like, that someone would start up a website devoted to Stuff Catholics Like.

Oh, this is good cheese, O Reader.

To wit:

I. Rome

…

1) Go to a Papal audience and get stuff blessed. If you let your friends know about your trip in advance you will find yourself needing an extra suitcase to carry all the rosaries and medals that they want you to get blessed by the Pope. Extra points if you can get past the ninja nuns and actually shake the Pope’s hand.

2) Visit St. Peter’s and stay for Mass. How could you possibly go to Rome and not see St. Peter’s?

3) Stick your hand in the Mouth of Truth and scream. This isn’t really a Catholic thing but Gregory Peck might have been Catholic so it counts.

4) Go to the bone church. This isn’t something everyone does but you get a lot of mileage out of the stories you can tell.

5) Visit the Vatican Museums. Every. Last. Room.

6) Visit one of the catacombs. Ask if it’s where they filmed the Indiana Jones movie.

7) Stop by the Opus Dei headquarters and ask to see the albino monk.

8 ) Throw coins in the Trevi Fountain. See number 3.

9) Visit the church of San Clemente and ask to see the basement.

10) Get your picture taken with a Swiss Guard. Extra points if he cuts off your head with his hauberk. Maybe they’ll stick it in a box like the Church did with St. Catherine’s.

Or how about:

VI. Babies

…

However, if a Catholic family has 5, 6, 7 or more babies, it is seen as a crime against nature and a sin against humanity. In fact, countless Catholic mothers, who have 5 or more babies, have often received flabbergasted looks after having responded “yes” to the question “Are all these yours?” This encounter normally occurs in public places such as supermarkets, department stores, malls, or any other place that makes it difficult for the mother to keep track of every behavioral happening of her babies. The question “Are all these yours?” commonly follows when another person sees a Catholic mother who, with two shopping carts spilling over with groceries, without makeup on, and hair is tied in a pony tail, has one baby in her arms, another in the shopping cart, a third gripped tightly in one hand, the fourth baby clinging dearly to his mother’s dress, while the fifth baby has just knocked an entire shelf of canned peas onto the floor, which by chance startled the baby in the mother’s arms causing him or her to wail like a banshee. She will unjustly be labeled a ‘bad mother’ by outsiders for not having the grace of being born with 5 arms.

Some good stuff at the site — who says there is no humour in Catholicism? Go thou and read it all!

Update: I might have suspected that the Curt Jester had something to do with this.

Powerful reflection from Scott Hahn:

“We don’t have to die to go to heaven,” author and speaker Scott Hahn told more than 800 people packed into Ottawa’s St. Patrick’s Basilica April 12.

“All we have to do is go to Mass.”

The former Presbyterian minister, who now teaches Theology and Scripture at Franciscan University of Steubenville, shared how he slowly came to understand how the Catholics are standing in Heaven during the Eucharist and sharing in the marriage supper of the Lamb as described in the Book of Revelation.

If one really thinks about it, he’s exactly right: in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Catholic faithful stand in the direct presence of Christ, in all His glory. Where else could we be, then, but in Heaven itself, to witness such glory?

The first recorded encounter of humanity with the risen Jesus in the teaching of the Word and the breaking of the Bread. Then, as today, Christ is revealed in the Eucharistic meal.

You know what that means, right, O Reader? Yup…it’s time for another movie about how the Gospels don’t tell us the truth about the life of Jesus and/or his disciples!

The BBC is to screen a new drama about the final week in the life of Jesus Christ which appears to exonerate [Judas Iscariot] and Pontius Pilate.

Producers of The Passion have portrayed the men in a sympathetic light because they believe they have been”very harshly judged” by history.

Judas is portrayed as torn between his loyalties to Jesus and Caiaphas, who organised the plot to kill Jesus.

Pilate, played by James Nesbitt, is shown struggling to manage his wife’s social aspirations and his career as he tried to”keep a lid” on tensions in Jerusalem.

Traditional Christian groups accused the BBC of rewriting the Gospel, but the makers of the series, which will be broadcast over Easter week, said they were simply trying to understand the motivations of the characters.

If the producers want to understand Judas’ motivations, and Pilate’s also, perhaps they should try the more traditional route for gaining such insight — reading the Bible, consulting reliable exegetical commentaries, and attending Mass on a consistent basis (especially during the season of Lent, which began last month and continues for another week and change). Producing glib historical fiction that seeks to portray Judas — the archetypical greedy betrayer — in a positive light is not a path that leads to understanding, but to greater confusion.

It’s so drearily predictable. Oh, one likes to pretend that all these entertainment and media organizations are just driven by profit and care only about the bottom line. And yet, almost like clockwork, something challenging Christian orthodoxy can be counted upon to emerge, from a major media organization, almost every time Easter rolls around. That’s not profit driving…that’s agenda and bias.

Don’t believe me? Let’s wait and see if some “alternative historical fiction” challenging the traditional interpretation of a Koranic story gets released during Ramadan. Then tell me there’s no bias.

Grace (yes, my wife) writes in to try and stimulate a bit of creative thought on my part.

Ken, do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic and in what sense? Just curious.

Grace
Love You

I love you too, sweetheart.

As to whether I consider myself an orthodox Catholic, the short answer is: yes, I do. Now, I will be the first person (though hardly the only one) to tell the Reader that I have not lived anything like an exemplary Christian life; I’m a sinner as sure as anyone else is, and I mean it very literally when I reflect that Christ came into the world to save sinners, “of whom I am first.” If you wrote every sin I’ve committed on a standard yellow sticky note, you could wallpaper Edmonton.

But as the priest at Mass noted yesterday, that heightened awareness of sinfulness is one of the things that separates the people who have entered into the light of the Christian faith (of which Catholicism is the pinnacle) from those still caught up in darkness. That’s not to say that Christians are any more or less sinful than non-Christians…it is merely to remark that they are more aware that they do, in fact, sin. For what does sin, despite its reality, mean to an atheist?

In my faith journey, I try and live by the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Code of Canon Law. I could ask for no better guidelines for living than these three books, and to the best of my ability I try and live a life that follows the tenets outlined in each of them. Of course, I fail at doing so on many accounts, which is why I am eternally grateful that Christ instituted in the Church the glorious and somber Sacrament of Reconciliation (also called Confession). When I am confronted, in my life, with a conflict between my desires and the teachings of the Church, I strive to remember that I am flawed and weak, and that there will never arise a circumstance in which I am correct and the revelation given to (and through) the Church incorrect. And should any occasion arise in which I cannot achieve even that reconciliation in mind, I will still cleave to the faith and my ongoing participation in it, rather than walk away as so many of my family have done.

I rise and fall on the Apostle’s Creed (and the Nicene Creed as well), and that same prayer I would gladly have as my death warrant, if it came to that.

For me, the source and summit of faith is the Eucharist, and ongoing participation in that Sacrament is the most important action I can, will, and do undertake in my life. I find, especially, that I am drawn to, and captivated by, the Blood of Christ during the celebration of the Eucharist. During consecration, I always strive to ensure that I can catch at least a glimpse of the cup holding the Blood, and for me the moment that the wine is consecrated and transformed is the pinnacle of the Mass.

I hope that the above, while short, is an adequate answer to the question posed. It’s a complex question that I could, if I gave myself more time, compose a very lengthy answer to. I’ve tried to hit the main points, at least. And I hope I have done at least that.

Amy Welborn responds to a question posed by Deacon Greg about what sort of things make people want to leave the Church.

The Deacon’s hypothesis is this:

From my experience, most alienated Catholics have wandered away not because of dogma or doctrine, or even discipline. They’re willing to live with the sometimes difficult teachings of the Church, even the ones with which they don’t entirely agree. They’re even willing to forgive (after a lot of prayer and teeth-gnashing and soul-searching) the financial and sexual scandals that seize the headlines.

No, what drives people away is often something far simpler and, in a way, far more sinister.

It’s other people.

It’s the priest who condescendingly tells a grieving daughter, after her mother’s funeral, “Now you can really grow up. You know, we never truly become adults until after our parents die.”

It’s the deacon who refuses to anoint a baby at a parish baptism because the family arrived late.

It’s the pastor who won’t take the time to listen to a teenage girl’s problems because “it’s just hormones.”

These are real examples from people I know — and the people who experienced them walked away from the local parish and, eventually, the Catholic Church. There are many other factors that contribute to religious alienation, I know. But, like the woman at the well in last Sunday’s gospel, people are thirsty. What are we giving them to drink?

And I certainly think there’s a point in all of this, although I don’t think it’s a complete answer (nor do I think it’s necessarily the best of the incomplete ones).

Oh, I know some people who’ve fallen into a “crisis of faith” of sorts over the sexual abuse scandals — setting them firmly in the minority as per the first paragraph cited above — while others have parted ways with the Church not over issues of doctrine directly, but because of the actions of certain members of the Catholic community within their diocese. I do think that many Catholics — both clergymen and laypeople — do more than enough to drive others away from the arms of the Church.

But I think it would be fair to say that for the majority of people I know who’ve parted ways with the Church, their reasons for doing so in general don’t meet up with any of the Deacon’s suppositions. Some of my relatives might have left the Church over the actions of the diocesan office in dealing with a gay church employee, but for the most part the “lapsedness” in my family — and among the people I’ve met over the years who’ve discussed the issue with me — either sources itself in some doctrinal squabble or in…something else. The sexual abuse scandals, while troubling, are definitely a minority reason.

Amy Welborn’s analysis goes a bit further, and better encapsulates something I too have witnessed:

The spiritual shifts brought on by the Second Vatican Council. Follow me carefully here. Remember that in Church Time, 40 years isn’t very long at all. It’s not long enough to measure the true impact of events or responses. But I think what we’re in the middle of is a readjustment that’s a consequence of both the Council and modernity.

To put it simply and simplistically: You saw much higher levels of adherance and external practice among Catholics before the mid-60’s in the West because many people believed they’d go to Hell if they weren’t there.

People don’t believe that anymore.

Just to be clear on what the Church teaches in this regard (something which, I think, Vatican II did throw into a goodly deal of confusion), let’s consult Catholic Answers for a minute:

We do have a grave obligation to attend Sunday Mass. It’s been Church law since, well, long before any of us were around. The reason is simple: We are creatures, and our first duty is to worship our Creator. More than that, we are social creatures, so it is right that we should worship together, and that worship is done best at Mass, which is the highest prayer of the Church. Since the Church has authority from her Founder, we ought to obey whatever strictures are imposed for our spiritual good, such as the requirement to be at Mass on the Lord’s Day.

So, yes, it is a mortal sin to miss Mass knowingly, but not if one has a sufficient reason (such as illness or the incapacity to get to a church). But the writer is wrong to insist that merely forgetting to go to Mass is a mortal sin. Sin arises only through a deliberate act. This is true of any sin. You cannot commit a sin—either mortal or venial—accidentally.

Amy Welborn points out that a goodly deal of Church teaching about the importance of attending Mass was, in part at least, predicated on the above understanding being clear. With Vatican II and the shift in focus that it brought, the laity began to lose sight of this reality, and Church authorities have not shifted their teaching quick enough to reflect the altered understandings that the people now have…which ought not to have been that different from the ones they had before, admittedly, but, well…”if you give a mouse a cookie.”

The Church did the right thing to clarify and delineate between an intentionally missed Mass and an accidentally missed one, but more and more Catholics began to misinterpret what was an honest concession to human nature as an excuse to abstain from something they had already begun to feel certain reservations about over a host of issues (gay marriage, women in the priesthood, etc.). And most priests and ministers did not respond by attempting to underscore that intentionality played the deciding role in weeding out sin from accident; soon the received wisdom became that it “was no longer considered a mortal sin” to miss Mass…which is only a half-truth.

But then, the half-truth is a close ally of the vice, isn’t it?

And so, incrementally, it became more and more acceptable to skip out on Mass, and perhaps even on any manner of participation in the life of the Church, in response to more and more sorts of disagreements between individual members of the laity and Church teaching. Church teaching is not easy to accept or follow all the time, and struggles between a person’s wants/desires and what the Church teaches are inevitable — that’s called concupiscence, the struggle with the tension of temptation.

At the same time, the Catholic faithful and clergy erroneously stopped attaching the stigma of sin to wanton absence from Mass. I’ve been attending Mass almost every Sunday since…well, since before I can remember anything, and in all that time I can recall only one sermon that discussed the sinful nature of intentionally missing Mass — and that was at a Ukrainian Catholic parish, mind. The last time I wound up in a discussion of the subject, even I thought (erroneously) that in the Western Rite there was no longer the peril of mortal sin attached to a Mass deliberately missed.

It turns out I was wrong.

And so, personally, I tend to think that a number of people have let their faith lapse in no small part because they felt they could, in the “eternal life” sense of the phrase, “get away with it.”

As a secondary reason, I also think that the Church has failed, in recent years, to hammer home the point of what is most important to the Catholic faith — that is, the Eucharist. It needs to be communicated, at every stage of a person’s faith development as a Catholic, and at every opportunity every Catholic takes to participate and progress in the Sacramental life of the Church, that the Eucharist is key, and that no other issue takes precedence over participation in the Eucharist. Who can or cannot marry, who can or cannot be ordained, the validity or invalidity of other faiths, and who we can or cannot kill at whatever stage of development or gestation — all of these are secondary considerations next to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And we must take care that we let nothing supersede the priority of the Eucharist in our lives, if in fact we are Catholic.

We don’t really teach that well in the Church, I don’t think. And I think we’re paying for that oversight in the growing ranks of the lapsed.

Update: Welcome, 4 Massketeers readers!

Thin-Skinned Bronze Age Muslim Bullies Boss People Around–Again

This time it’s in Malaysia. A reader writes:
The (Muslim) authorities want non-Muslims to stop using the word “Allah” to describe God.

The suggested alternative is “Tuhan“, but that actually means “Lord“, or at least is used in more or less the same way we use “Lord” in English (which I can verify first-hand, having gone to Midnight Mass this year in Indonesia, where the phrase “Tuhan Allah” turned up a lot).

The linguistics website Language Log has a few posts on the matter, of which this is the most recent.
Any Maronites in Malaysia apparently will have to abandon their ancient tradition in order to accommodate Muslim “sensitivities”, yet again.

I can’t begin to tell you how little I am coming to care about offending Muslim sensitivities.

I cannot begin to describe to the reader just how much that closing sentence resonates with me. I’m also taking it, then, since Christians are not — according to Muslims — supposed to refer to God as ‘Allah’, that we can stop using the tired old argument that God and Allah are the same being, just known by different names?

It isn’t the church’s obligation to change to suit our personal whims or the latest trendy liberal wisdom. We must conform ourselves to church teaching, through humble study and prayer. Or else leave.

I still pray every day, and ask St. Anthony to help me find my house keys. Christ’s presence in the eucharist is as real to me as the computer I’m typing on.

But I can’t present myself to receive Him at mass, because I have estranged myself from His Church. Yes, birth control is “just one teaching,” but then again, it is not. Until I can accept it fully and willingly, I remain an outsider, peeking in through the stained glass windows.

The difference between my teenaged self and my middle-aged iteration is that I’m still returning God’s calls. Where I’ll be five or 10 years from now is what Catholics like to call a “mystery.”

This is why I keep telling friends and relatives who attempt to excuse their exempting themselves from the need to go to Mass that their arguments don’t hold water. Whatever pet issue one might have — , gay marriage, [birth control, the abuse scandals, etc. -- is irrelevant next to the Eucharist and the real presence of Christ therein. If you disagree with the Church, fine; that’s your right. But just because you disagree with the Church doesn’t mean the church is wrong — you could, in fact, be the one that is in error.

And even that’s not the important bit. Eucharist is the important bit. Attending the Mass and being in the direct, real presence of Christ is the important bit. Who can and cannot be ordained, and who can and cannot be married, in the Church doesn’t matter a whit next to being present at the Mass and at the consecration of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood. And to be perfectly honest, one’s personal grievances against the Church also don’t rank second after the Eucharist; that is where humility must go instead. Humility and the understanding that if one’s grievance against the Church is sufficiently grave, one is still obligated to attend Mass, and one must abstain from receiving into one’s own body the Eucharist, that is: Christ.

If you’ve stopped going to Mass, don’t call yourself Catholic. If you’re still going to Mass but have serious issues with the Church, don’t assume that you are automatically correct just because you “feel” you are; pray on it, and understand that perhaps the real problem is your own sinful self. It’s like having problems in math:

That didn’t mean algebra was “wrong.” It meant I was.

Kathy Shaidle’s article is written with her usual bluntness, but its closing reflection struck me as a very profound testament about a person who puts her faith first. Would that more of us could be so honest and bold.