The "Truths We Could Not Otherwise Endure" Come to Us "Transfigured By Ceremony"

Colm Sinclair sends home [a letter] to explain to his parents why he took the unthinkable step of becoming a Catholic: “What saves us is ceremony … Ceremony makes everything bearable and beautiful for us. Transfigured by ceremony, the truths we could not otherwise endure come to us … It is this saving ceremony that you call ‘idolatry’ and ‘mumbo-jumbo’.”
This salvific “ceremony” was of course the Mass. Completing the letter, Colm walks to a nearby church to experience the beauty of the liturgy: “The celebrant entered … Once again, for the thousandth time, Colm watched the ancient endless beautiful ceremony, the exchange of gifts between earth and heaven, dust and spirit, man and God. The transfigured Bread shone momentarily in the saffron fingers of the celebrant.”

Never heard of George Mackay Brown before, need to learn more.
Stunning
When did I stop reading?
I literally cannot remember the last time I read a novel, and I used to be omnivorous, with the emphasis on novels.
What happened?
Look at this, from Brown's "An Orkney Tapestry" -

“There is a new religion, Progress, in which we all devoutly believe, and it is concerned only with material things in the present and in a vague golden-handed future. It is a rootless utilitarian faith, without beauty or mystery … The notion of progress is a cancer that makes an elemental community look better, and induces a false euphoria, while it drains the life out of it remorselessly.”

Brilliant, and dead on.
Where would we be without converts?

That all may be one.

As if the author heard His voice, "Behold - I make all things new..."?

Oscar Wilde was certainly a case study in Redemption.

Any Catholic parent (or aunt, or unlce, or older sibling, or godparent,) who has not read this to his child? Do.

     One winter morning [the Giant] looked out of his window as he was dressing. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.
     Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.
     Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.
'Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the Giant; 'tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.'
     'Nay!' answered the child; 'but these are the wounds of Love.'

Playboy Magazine and the Episcopalian Priest Who's a Big Fan of Abortion

What? you ask....
I read a little blurb about a woman who was ordained in the Episcopal church and believes God is "on the side" of those who favor a woman's right to dismember her unborn child, and filed an Amicus brief with the Supremes regarding the Texas law placing more stringent requirements on "health" facilities where unborn children are done away with.
Her letter of recommendation, (that killing an unborn child be considered hunky-dory and should therefore be expedited,) begins on pg 27 of the PDF.

Killing her child effected the usual Good Things. It kept it from being impossible to finish Divinity School, which carrying the child a few more months and giving him up for adoption would have put the kibosh on.
Not sure why - shopping for maternity clothes and a few days in the hospital and a few more recuperating would have put her that far behind in her studies? or Divinity schools in those days frowned on public immorality and might have suspected her guilty of fornication, or adultery or some such?

Probably not the latter, as the pregnancy was "accidental", (as in, slipping on a banana peel and landing on some guys gamete.)

Anyway, thanks to discarding her child she was able to lead Three Capital Campaigns (!!!) engage in various forms of activism, and, (this was the phrase that struck me, "help the enormous number of people whose lives she has touched."
One Little Life  vs. An Enormous Number of People.
Off one person who you don't really know, to contribute to the happiness of a whole bunch you do know, yourself first of all.

Hmm....
Sound familiar?
Of course it does!
Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella were in a movie a few years back, there was a Twilight Zone episode on tv, apparently a radio play (who knew there were radio plays in the 1970s?) and the germ of the idea actually traces back to Chateaubriand, (not the steak. What would Jesus eat?)

But Richard Matheson's short story is probably most responsible for the resonance the plot has today.

You know it, even if you think you don't - a couple, or family, or divinity student in dire straits. A sinister stranger offers the way out of all difficulties.
Only one thing is needful.
See this button? Push it, and all your worries will magically disappear!
The catch?
Someone will die.
Don't worry, someone you don't even know.
A stranger.
A "Chinaman" thousands of miles away.
A baby in your womb.
Does it really matter who?
YOUR WORRIES WILL BE GONE.

Push the button.

The Matheson story dates from 1970.
It was a gentler, less inclined to look favorably on the convenient murder of the inconvenient or inconsequential, and I doubt anyone read it without thinking the person who made the offer was the Devil, and taking the deal was to do evil.
In 1970, I'll bet even the readers and editors of Playboy, which first published the story, thought so.

Yeah. Playboy.

Think about that. The vanguard of the Consequence-free Sex Movement, "An Ye Harm None Have Fun, Do What Ye Will."

Even Playboy knew that not knowing the innocent person you would kill to make your own life easier didn't make a heinous act somehow all right.

Don't tell me you don't see the irony in that....

"Com'on, Hugh, push the button. You'll be famous, have a mansion, beautiful women will pretend to love you, you'll be wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. Just push the button.... oh, don't worry, Anne, I have a button for you, too. YOU, my dear, will be able to become a priest and  'help' people, like Mrs Jellyby did...."

Is Frodo the Virgin Mary?

On the way to Mass this morning, I had something on the radio, not sure what the program was, one voice, of several, I recognized as Scott Hahn. (They were having one of those "discussions" where everyone seems to already know what everyone else has thought of, and thoroughly agrees with it - more like a multi-voice lecture than anything else.)
They were discussing the "story" of the Nativity, and mentioned that the Hero, being a baby, is pretty passive, and it made me question: if we do approach the birth of Christ as a story, a drama, is He the hero of it?

Isn't the Blessed Mother? It is her fiat that sets the story in motion, or at least the part of the story that is open to human perception, the part that occurs in time and space and history, instead of unchangingly out of time and space and history.
And this girl alone is there from the beginning, from the angel's shocking announcement.
It is her willingness to make the journeys, some literal, some metaphorical; her willingness to suffer, a sword piercing her heart, as Simeon was to prophesy, for what for she alone of all human creatures bears no responsibility; her willingness to take on the appearance of transgressive behavior for which the punishment is death; her willingness to trust in the Lord with no assurances of how it all will end except that it is what He wills...

The small, seemingly insignificant character; essentially powerless, an onlooker might suppose; destined to be a supporting player at best in a story that would be of interest to anyone else... on whose shoulders the fate of all the earth rests?

Doesn't that pretty much describe both Blessed Mary Ever Virgin and the little hobbit?

Ooh, wasn't that Dante guy a judgey sort?

In all honesty, I had never thought until now, it never occurred to me when reading Dante in school how antithetical the inferno of  the Comedìa is to the Catholic concept of hell, at least as it is expressed nowadays, when we never claim to be able to know who might be there.
It was a public high school, so the catholicity of its theology wasn't really on the radar.

In the middle ages did people so presume?

"Sin"

Don't you hate it when hysterics are right? (It's like when hypochondriacs are sick, or professional victims call attention to actual anti-Catholicism.)
Julia can be an hysteric.

(Diana Quick was extraordinary, she didn't act that unactable monologue, she simply was. that. person. That character whom Waugh had tried un- almost successfully to write, she made real the unrealistic words he had given her, she created Julia Flyte Mottram who simply had not existed until her performance.)

He's quite right. They know all about it... All in one word - one little flat word that covers a lifetime. "Living in sin". Not just "doing wrong", as I did when I went to America, doing wrong, knowing it's wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting it. That's not what they mean...
He means just what it says. Living in sin - every hour, every day, year in, year out. It's always the same. It's like an idiot child, carefully nursed, guarded from the world.
"Poor Julia," they say, "She can't go out. She's got to take care of her little sin. It's a pity it ever lived, but it's so strong. Children like that always are. Julia's so good to her little mad sin."
All those years when I was trying to be a good wife, in the cigar smoke, when I was trying to bear his child, torn in pieces by something already dead. Putting him away, forgetting him. Finding you - the past two years with you, all the future with you or without you.
It's a word from so long ago - Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart.
Me and Cordelia with the Catechism in Mummy's room before luncheon on Sundays.
Mummy carrying my sin with her to church, bowed under it. Mummy dying with my sin, eating her more cruelly than her own deadly illness.
Mummy dying with it.
Christ dying with it nailed hand and foot, high among the crowds and soldiers. No comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief. Hanging forever, over the bed in the night-nursery. There's no way back - the gate's barred. All the saints and angels posted along the wall. Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down. Nameless and dead. 

And -

How can I tell what I shall do? You know the whole of me. You know I'm not one for a life of mourning. I've always been bad. Probably I'll be bad again - punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean, starting a life with you - without Him. One can only see one step ahead.
But I saw today there's one thing unforgivable, like things in the school-room, so bad they're unpunishable, that only Mummy could deal with.
The bad thing I was on the point of doing that I'm not quite bad enough to do - to set up a rival God to God.
It may be because of Mummy, Nanny, Sebastian, Cordelia, perhaps Bridey and Mrs Muspratt - keeping my name in their prayers.
Or it may be a private bargain between me and God.
That if I give up this one thing I want so much, how ever bad I am He won't quite despair of me in the end. Now we shall both be alone. And I shall have no way of making you understand.  
Yes, I've been thinking way too much, or at least too disjointedly, about sin.

But I think the Synod fathers would have made a much better go of it if they had just watched the last two episodes of the grandest, finest mini-series of all time.

The Catholic blogosphere is full of hysterics right now. And some of them, even when they are right, are so hate-filled I am ashamed for them.
And that goes for both Ratzingerites and Kasperites, which division of the Body of Christ doesn't exist, of course, Cdl Marx, sorry to have brought it up!

"Do as I do: trust in God and yourself."

I don't know much about the politics of the '60s, or '70s... even, admittedly of the '80s, (when I had an obligation to pay attention. Mea culpa.) Himself is a current events, history and politics junkie, on the other hand.

We were watching someone, politician or would-be politician, say something horrible and ugly on the news, and bemoaning the polarization of current political discourse in the country, and he said something to the effect that it didn't use to be like this, and he mused about pinpointing the change to a particular event or person.

As I said, I don't know much about it, but it occurred to me that from what little I did pay attention to, it seems to me that when I was young and when I was younger, there could be open disagreement between people of good will on the subject of fiscal philosophy.
There was discordance on the best way to keep our nation safe, and therefore war.

But other than lingering institutional and codified racism, (and that is no small sin against morality,) there was consensus on matters of simple decency.

One did not fornicate in the governor's mansion, one did not mock the elderly while cheating them of their life savings, one did not proudly murder the baby in the womb, one did not brag about acquiring a trophy to replace the older model spouse one was dumping, one did not smirk about or bashfully admit to paying prostitutes, one did not present filth as art in serious venues.

Oh, people did these things, they got away with doing them, and probably profited from them.
But they had the decency, frankly, to be hypocrites, and at least try to keep them on the down-low.

There were, across religious denominations and political parties and ethnic groups, some small areas of consensus.
There are still people who hold to these standards, but one has very little faith that even ones friends and colleagues share them.
And I think that is the factionalism at the root of the incivility of modern politics and intellectual discourse.

I like to quote her, but Jane Eyre's moral strength would make her a laughing stock were there to be a faithful adaptation of Bronte's work for popular consumption, wouldn't it?
What used to be called "common" decency is high comedy now.

I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad—as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth—so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane—quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.  

 And in answer to a "Catholic" magazine which had inquired, as if chastity were some Sisyphean task, What should a gay Catholic do? I had imagined her answering,

Do as I do: trust in God and yourself. Believe in heaven... I advise you to live sinless, and I wish you to die tranquil.... We were born to strive and endure -- you as well as I.

O the times, O the mores... I am feeling old.

Jane Austen Classic, "Sin and Synodality," Finally To be Filmed

At long last, "Sin and Synodality" to grace the screen, starring Sandra Bullock.

IT is a truth universally, (that is to say, catholicly,) acknowledged, that a single bishop in possession of a diocese must be in want of adding tax payers souls to his flock. 
However little known the feelings or views of such a bishop may be on his first entering a synod, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the Vatican spokesmen, that the Truth is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of the various factions and their mouthpieces trying to bend the Church to their will.

All the male roles to be played by Eddie Marsan.

 

                    

There is Nothing New Under the Sun, My Fellow Liturgical Musicians

Wait...  here we are with a new book treating of beloved characters from an old book... hmm, I shall have to consider the paradox.
Let us exchange the previous axiomatic cliche ['zat redundant?] for "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

I don't read novels anymore, literally, none.
About twelve years ago I went from voracious consumption mostly of literary novels and classics, never fewer than a half dozen stacked up on the floor on my side of the bed, didn't matter as long as they were light enough, (literally, of a low enough weight, so as not to strain wrists or eyesight in bed,) several a week, (when is the new AN Wilson coming out, I must know!!!!!!!! and oh, look I never read this Charlotte Bronte novel, PLEASE let it be as good as Villette!!!!!) to zero.
 I still read tons, but just, somehow, not novels, and I can't figure it out.

But that's really not my point.

Himself is crazy for his Kindle, and is reading Go Set... and made me read a passage that had me in stitches.

From the time of Jean Louise’s earliest ecclesiastical recollection, Maycomb had sung the Doxology in one way and in one way only:

Praise—God—from—whom—all—blessings—flow,

a rendition as much a tradition of Southern Methodism as Pounding the Preacher. That Sunday, Jean Louise and the congregation were in all innocence clearing their throats to drag it accordingly when out of a cloudless sky Mrs. Clyde Haskins crashed down on the organ

PraiseGodfromwhomall Bles—sings—Flo—w

PraiseHimallcreatures He—re Bee—low

PraiseHimaboveye Heav’n—ly Ho—st

PraiseFatherSonand Ho—ly Gho—st!

In the confusion that followed, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had materialized in full regalia Jean Louise would not have been in the least surprised: the congregation had failed to notice any change in Mrs. Haskins’s lifelong interpretation, and they intoned the Doxology to its bitter end as they had been reared to do, while Mrs. Haskins romped madly ahead like something out of Salisbury Cathedral.
Jean Louise’s first thought was that Herbert Jemson had lost his mind. Herbert Jemson had been music director of the Maycomb Methodist Church for as long as she could remember. .... He had devoted thirty years’ spare time to his church, and his church had recently rewarded him with a trip to a Methodist music camp in South Carolina.
Jean Louise’s second impulse was to blame it on the minister. He was a young man, a Mr. Stone by name...
Mr. Stone had long been suspected of liberal tendencies; he was too friendly, some thought, with his Yankee brethren; he had recently emerged partially damaged from a controversy over the Apostles’ Creed... [but he] was tone deaf.
Unruffled by Herbert Jemson’s breach of allegiance, because he had not heard it, Mr. Stone rose and walked to the pulpit with Bible in hand.
[Jean Louise] felt amusement turning into indignant displeasure and she stared straight at Herbert Jemson throughout the service. How dare he change it? Was he trying to lead them back to the Mother Church? Had she allowed reason to rule, she would have realized that Herbert Jemson was Methodist of the whole cloth: he was notoriously short on theology and a mile long on good works.
The Doxology’s gone, they’ll be having incense next—orthodoxy’s my doxy. ...
Mr. Stone had pronounced the benediction and was on his way to the front door when she went down the aisle to corner Herbert, who had remained behind to shut the windows. Dr. Finch was faster on the draw:
“—shouldn’t sing it like that, Herbert,” he was saying. “We are Methodists after all, D.V.”
“Don’t look at me, Dr. Finch.” Herbert threw up his hands as if to ward off whatever was coming. “It’s the way they told us to sing it at Camp Charles Wesley....The music instructor... taught a course in what was wrong with Southern church music. He was from New Jersey,” said Herbert....
“He said we might as well be singing ‘Stick your snout under the spout where the Gospel comes out’ as most of the hymns we sing. Said they ought to ban Fanny Crosby by church law and that Rock of Ages was an abomination unto the Lord....He said we ought to pep up the Doxology.”
“Pep it up? How?”
“Like we sang it today.”...
“Apparently,” [Dr Finch] said, “apparently our brethren in the Northland are not content merely with the Supreme Court’s activities. They are now trying to change our hymns on us.”
Herbert said, “He told us we ought to get rid of the Southern hymns and learn some other ones. I don’t like it—ones he thought were pretty don’t even have tunes.”
Dr. Finch’s “Hah!” was crisper than usual, a sure sign that his temper was going. He retrieved it sufficiently to say, “Southern hymns, Herbert? Southern hymns?”....
“Now, Herbert,” he said, “let us sit quietly in this sanctuary and analyze this calmly. I believe your man wishes us to sing the Doxology down the line with nothing less than the Church of England, yet he reverses himself—reverses himself—and wants to throw out … Abide with Me?....What about When I Survey the Wondrous Cross?”
“That’s another one,” said Herbert. “He gave us a list.”
“Gave you a list, did he? I suppose Onward, Christian Soldiers is on it?”
“At the top.”
“Hur!” said Dr. Finch. “H. F. Lyte, Isaac Watts, Sabine Baring-Gould.”
Dr. Finch rolled out the last name in Maycomb County accents: long a’s, i’s, and a pause between syllables.
“Every one an Englishman, Herbert, good and true,” he said. “Wants to throw them out, yet tries to make us sing the Doxology like we were all in Westminster Abbey, does he? Well, let me tell you something.... your man’s a snob, Herbert, and that’s a fact.”
“He was sort of a sissy,” said Herbert.

Bulwer-Lytton Contest Winners

 Some wonderful stuff, (good for reading on any dark and stormy night such as this,) and the Grand Prize, written by one Dr. Joel Phillips of West Trenton, NJ, is a doozy.
But strangely I've lost my appetite.

 Seeing how the victim's body, or what remained of it, was wedged between the grill of the Peterbilt 389 and the bumper of the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT, officer "Dirk" Dirksen wondered why reporters always used the phrase "sandwiched" to describe such a scene since there was nothing appetizing about it, but still, he thought, they might have a point because some of this would probably end up on the front of his shirt.

I have to admit, I don't really get the Sci-Fi winner?

The gravitational pull up here on Mars is much less than it is back at home base, of course, so your tongue sticks to the roof of our mouth and everyone sounds like Eleanor Roosevelt.